Many of those on the right who seem to detest DeSantis have been extremely critical of the fact that he didn’t address the iffy news of a possible Trump indictment immediately. I saw this phenomenon on various websites that seem to draw a lot of commenters of that ilk. Whether they be real or leftist trolls trying to stir up trouble on the right I don’t know, but my guess is that at least some of them are bona fide.
“If you have a prosecutor who is ignoring crimes happening every single day in his jurisdiction, and he chooses to go back many, many years ago to try to use something about porn star hush money payments, you know, that’s an example of pursuing a political agenda and weaponizing the office. And I think that that’s fundamentally wrong.”
DeSantis pointed out that the problem isn’t just Bragg; all Soros-funded district attorneys are following the playbook. “They ignore crime and they empower criminals, and that hurts people, hurts a lot of people every single day,” DeSantis said before calling these district attorneys “a menace to society.”
More than HALF (56.3%) of liberal white women age 18-29 have been diagnosed with a mental health condition. That’s more than DOUBLE the percentage (27.3%) of conservative white women in the same age bracket.
If you look at the charts at the link, the same is true of other age groups (although the differences between liberal and conservatives in other age group are considerably less, they follow the same pattern) and it’s also true for white men. In fact, the differences are even more stark for liberal white men versus conservative white men, and there’s a huge disparity in all age groups for that population.
Most of the speculation on this seems to focus on women; I’m not sure why. And I’d be curious if this effect is only found among white people.
I have my own theories about it, which involve propaganda and the use of the mental health care system. Leftist media and pundits are constantly drumming up fear in their readers and listeners, whether it be about global warming or our racist society or whatever. Therefore, they appeal to and draw people who might naturally be more prey to certain kinds of fear, and then they labor to augment that fear. It’s not that conservative media doesn’t prey on fear at times also, but I think the leftist message is more constant and generally more catastrophic and more likely to attract those who are more inherently fearful in their psychological makeup.
But being more fearful in general isn’t the same as having a “mental health condition.” However, being more fearful, plus perhaps having better health insurance and being part of a culture or group that is friendly to the idea of going for therapy – probably drives more liberals than conservatives to seek the help of some sort of mental health counselor in the first place. And counselors themselves are far more likely to be on the left as well, which can discourage conservatives from going to one for help.
Then, once a person goes to a mental health counselor, even if that person is merely having ordinary problems in relationships or in life, the person is extremely likely to receive a mental health diagnosis of some sort. There is a very practical and simple reason for that: reimbursement. A diagnosis is necessary for third-party payment. And almost any problem in living can be shoehorned into a diagnosis.
It’s not the whole explanation, but I bet it’s a significant one.
One would think that the most basic task of those running a large city would be to preserve civic order. Not a perfect order, of course; that would require a level of control and a restriction of freedom that would be onerous. Crime is always going to exist. But there are certain standards to which we in the Western world have grown accustomed and which make life pleasant and relatively safe.
In many blue cities in the last few years, that is no longer a priority. Or rather, as Heather Mac Donald describes here, it is something to which the leaders of these cities pay lip service while simultaneously supporting policies that sharply undermine it. And many of the citizens of these cities vote to keep these very same politicians in power, or at least don’t vote to remove them.
The driver of all of this seems to be the over-representation of black people in the sentenced and incarcerated population (it’s actually black men because women commit far fewer crimes than men, but strangely enough no one seems incensed about the male/female disproportion in the prisons). But actually, there are differences in crime rates and violent crime rates among all sorts of groups: ethnic, cultural, national, socioeconomic, and sexual, for example. We don’t really understand the reasons for the differences, but I think the reasons are far more about culture than something innate.
But to the left, the black over-representation must be explained by discrimination and disparate policing and justice-dispensing in a legal system skewed against black people because of bigotry. And to fix that – or to pretend to fix that – it is necessary to dismantle that system and sacrifice the law-abiding people of all races (with non-criminal black people suffering disproportionately, I might add).
Mac Donald explains:
Since Floyd’s death in May 2020, the mainstream media and Democratic elites have relentlessly sent the message that blacks are the victims of endemic racism. President Joe Biden claims that the criminal-justice system treats blacks unfairly. That message inevitably spreads into such underclass enclaves as South Central Los Angeles, where it produces more alienation and contempt for the law.
California’s policymakers had targeted alleged criminal-justice racism long before the George Floyd race riots. In 2011, the legislature banned state prison sentences for most property and drug felonies, since those sentences had a disparate impact on blacks. That law—Public Safety Realignment, or AB 109—sent “realigned” convicts to county jails, where overcrowding soon spurred the release of thousands of repeat felons back onto the streets…
Proposition 47, passed in 2014 with the help of George Soros money, downgraded felony theft to a misdemeanor if the thief sated himself with $950 worth of stolen goods…
The Public Safety and Rehabilitation Act of 2016 (Proposition 57) eased standards for early release from prison. District attorneys warned that the measure would benefit habitual felons with violent records. Sure enough, the state prison authority has started using Prop. 57 to cut sentences further for incarcerated gun felons. A 2018 law prohibited violent teenagers, aged 14 and 15, from being tried as adults, no matter how heinous their crimes.
These earlier decarceration and decriminalization measures reduced California’s prison population by 25 percent from its peak in 2007 through the end of 2019, the last year before the Floyd earthquake. Crime responded accordingly…
The Floyd convulsion further constricted policing.
I suggest you read the whole thing, but I want to highlight the following [emphasis mine]:
Racism is not the explanation for these correctional disparities; differences in criminal offending are, however taboo it may be to say. In 2021, blacks constituted 51 percent of all robbery suspects in Los Angeles whose race was known. Blacks are 8 percent of L.A.’s population. Whites, 29 percent of L.A.’s population, made up 5 percent of 2021 robbery suspects whose race was known. Blacks in L.A. are 37 times as likely to commit a robbery as whites. Blacks were 34 percent, and whites 4 percent, of homicide suspects whose race was known in 2021, making blacks 31 times as likely to commit homicide in L.A. as whites. Those suspect identifications come from the victims of, and witnesses to, violent crime, who are disproportionately minorities themselves.
Unless one posits a huge epidemic of unreported white-on-white crime or white-on-black crime, these statistics don’t lie. But the left is determined to either deny them or explain them away as the result of an irredeemably racist society policed by racist cops and administered by a racist judiciary and prison system. That is so deeply ingrained on the left that reality must bend under its weight. Efforts of voters to recall some of the DAs responsible for implementing what Mac Donald calls “crimino-centric” policing and justice have only been successful in a couple of cases (she also calls these policies of the left “The Great Abdication”). The majority of voters appear to be onboard; part of Mac Donald’s article describes how that has ended up happening so far.
It is a tragedy of a now-familiar sort: imagology trumping reality, a phenomenon I described back in 2005:
Here’s a quote from Kundera’s 1990 work Immortality that I think bears another look. He is talking about the ascendance of imagery (which he refers to as “imagology,” meaning suggestive images and slogans) over ideology, or even over reality:
“For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience…”
It is even worse now than that, because I would guess that the voters of Los Angeles, for example, know “through their own experience” – either experiential or observational – that problems exist. But virtue-signaling requires them to deny them or to believe that a preposterous and dangerous “solution” will somehow make things better. As Los Angeles’ DA Gascon once said:
On taking office, Gascón asked the public to close its eyes and imagine the end point of his decarceration push: safe neighborhoods “with parks, playgrounds, and . . . kids playing.” What Angelenos see at present if they open their eyes is more like a Third World country, as Governor Newsom himself said in January 2022.
If imagology and ideology is more important to people than reality, you get a very nasty reality that you must continue to deny.
Of course, there’s also the possibility that those in charge want crime and chaos to increase. Perhaps they even count on election fraud to keep them in power. If that is so, what would be the motive? Power? Revenge? Or it this?:
I finally got around to watching a Netflix series someone close to me had recommended: “The Good Place,” which premiered between 2016 and 2020. I don’t tend to watch much TV, but I felt the need for some distraction, and so I started this one and at first I didn’t like it. But the recommendation had included a warning to stick with it past the first season, which I did, and I have to say I ended up appreciating it.
There were plenty of things I didn’t like about it, too, but the two draws for me were that (a) it had some genuine laughs, and (b) it was thought-provoking. That latter element is rare enough that it’s worthy of note. The show is actually about moral philosophy, played for yuks but also quite serious. If that sounds strange – well, it is. But it has a few things in common with one of my favorite movies of all time, the absolutely wonderful “Groundhog Day,” by being a show that makes a person think about the Big Questions while intermittently laughing. A pretty good combination.
“The Good Place” doesn’t present an afterlife that is conventionally religious, but it does deal with some of the conceptual problems in picturing any afterlife, plus the age-old question of what makes for a good life. The viewer has to be patient, though – getting past that first season is a bit of a stretch.
While in the Capitol, Gold stayed within the velvet ropes and delivered her speech against government vaccine mandates and lockdowns. She told the CPAC audience that she “had never seen a more respectful crowd.” In her mind, they were not seditious rioters, but patriots and guests of the Capitol. If not, who opened the Columbus Doors for them and why was no one getting arrested? Gold was in the Capitol for about 45 minutes, 25 of which she was waiting for an opportunity to exit as more people poured into the building. Having enjoyed the experience and not knowing there was any wrongdoing, she posted a clip of peaceful footage on social media, which was subsequently banned. Social media outlets were removing peaceful footage, in favor of the clips quite familiar to us now.
Despite the extensive video footage supporting her claims, Gold was charged with obstructing a proceeding of Congress, a felony punishable by up to 24 years in prison. Like many other J-6ers facing the same charges, she accepted a plea deal. The U.S. district judge for the District of Columbia, Christopher Cooper, sentenced Gold to 60 days in prison, followed by 12 months of supervised release and a $9,500 fine.
John Strand, Gold’s bodyguard and co-defendant, rejected the plea deal. He was found guilty on all charges and faces sentencing of more than 20 years in prison. During the CPAC panel, Strand criticized the court’s verdict, “I am an individual. I should be answering for my actions, not the crowd’s.”
It’s no accident that the two posts I’ve written so far today deal with “lawfare” – the left’s practice of using the law for purely political purposes. They do this for three reasons: they reliably control the legal system in certain venues, it intimidates many of their opponents, and they have the support of the propagandist MSM.
It gives new meaning to the phrase “trumped-up charges.”
Democrats, the left, NeverTrumpers on the right, and the MSM have had this as their goal for a long, long time. And they were going to get there if they had to turn the legal system into a pretzel and the US into a high-tech banana republic. Well, congratulations; mission nearly accomplished:
There have been reports swirling the last couple of days that Donald Trump will be charged and arrested next week by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office on charges relating to payments to Stormy Daniels. The exact nature of the charges and the basis is not known yet, but based on prior leaks to the media, it appears that Bragg has come up with a novel theory that an otherwise lawful payment become criminal if it is accounted for incorrectly, a so-called falsifying business records offense. Even the NY Times noted this is highly unusual:
“In New York, falsifying business records can amount to a crime, albeit a misdemeanor. To elevate the crime to a felony charge, Mr. Bragg’s prosecutors must show that Mr. Trump’s “intent to defraud” included an intent to commit or conceal a second crime.”
Combining the criminal charge with a violation of state election law would be a novel legal theory for any criminal case, let alone one against the former president, raising the possibility that a judge or appellate court could throw it out or reduce the felony charge to a misdemeanor.
For those familiar with the charges against Netanyahu, the parallels are clear. Netanyahu’s enemies came up with a very novel theory involving supposed bribes. Caroline Glick describes it:
To achieve their political goal, the police descended on Netanyahu’s advisers one by one, and gave them the treatment generally reserved for terrorists and violent criminals. They were dragged from their beds at dawn, in front of their families, and carted off to investigation rooms and flea-ridden jail cells. They were denied food. They were subjected to public humiliation in the media. Their electronic communications were illegally tapped. Their families were threatened. Their livelihoods were destroyed…
And the police didn’t let them go until they gave them something—anything—to incriminate the prime minister of Israel.
Since Netanyahu had committed no crime, then-Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit and State Attorney Shai Nitzan reinvented the bribery statute to claim that lawful actions Netanyahu did undertake were criminal.
Like every politician on the face of the planet, Netanyahu sought positive coverage from news organizations. The prosecution decided that this effort amounted to a solicitation of a bribe. Netanyahu signed regulatory decisions that affected a telecommunications firm owned by his friend. The prosecution decided this was a favor—a payment for positive coverage from his friend’s news website. Unfortunately for the prosecution, Netanyahu received terrible coverage from the website. But no matter, the prosecutors simply updated the definition of bribery. They said Netanyahu received “undo responsiveness” from the website’s management to his requests for better coverage, and that was now the definition of a bribe.
…They invented laws just for him. They defined politics and journalism as criminal enterprises to criminalize Netanyahu’s non-criminal actions—which, it turns out, he didn’t even take. They trampled the very notion of the rule of law in their “ends justify the mean” campaign to force Netanyahu from power.
Netanyahu may get the last laugh; he’s now in charge again. I don’t know what will happen to Trump. The Manhattan DA, Alvin Bragg, is a Soros-funded extremist who will stop at nothing, and this is a state charge in New York, which is a blue state. The charges are obviously preposterous, but that doesn’t matter, because there are plenty of people who believe that getting Donald Trump is worth perverting the justice system even further than it’s already been twisted.
Trump has called for protests, but of course the Democrats are probably salivating at the idea of something they can turn into another January 6th “insurrection,” which will give them an opportunity for more kangaroo courts and political prosecutions, as well as a platform for sanctimonious and deeply hypocritical defense of the sacred rule of law.
The charges, if not more substantial than described so far, are a fraudulent abuse of power aimed at manipulating the political process as we enter a presidential election cycle. Make no mistake, this has happened before and cost Republicans politically, including the fraudulent prosecution of then Senator Ted Stevens, which was overturned due to prosecutorial misconduct but not before Stevens resigned setting in motion events that gave Democrats the votes they needed to pass Obamacare.
The abuse of prosecutorial power by Democrats will, to paraphrase Chuck Schumer’s attack on the Supreme Court, unleash the whirlwind. We just don’t know in which direction it will hit.
I sometimes think that about half the population is numb at this point, and/or lacks understanding of what’s happening and what it means. And a great many people think that Trump is evil personified, and legal proceedings would just be a formality rubber-stamping what we already know a million times over, which is that he belongs in prison with the key thrown away. It doesn’t matter what he’s done or not done; he needs to be handcuffed both actually and metaphorically, according to them.
Once a large portion of the populace – and, more importantly, of those in charge – accept and believe that, a country is in enormous trouble.
We are in enormous trouble, and have been for quite some time.
[NOTE: This action has another goal, one we’ve mentioned before: a chilling effect on any politician or aide on the right who might dare to challenge the left and the Deep State.]
Hunter Biden “had more than a reasonable expectation of privacy that any data that he created or maintained,” reads the lawsuit filed with a Delaware federal court Friday morning. The president’s son was under the impression it “would not be accessed, copied, disseminated, or posted on the Internet for others to use against him or his family or for the public to view.”
Lawyers representing Hunter Biden have challenged Mac Isaac’s assertion that his failure to retrieve the laptop after 90 days granted the Delaware repairman its ownership.
“Contrary to Mac Isaac’s Repair Authorization form, Delaware law provides that tangible personal property is deemed abandoned,” the lawsuit explained. Rather, the legal team insists that Hunter Biden had rightful ownership to “assert or declare property rights to the property for a period of 1 year.”
In late January, Mac Isaac hired a private investigator to locate Biden in Culver City, Calif., and serve the president’s son with a $1.5 million lawsuit seeking damages. The computer repairman alleges that Biden and his legal team are trying to pursue criminal charges against Mac Isaac as an act of reprisal for sharing the contents of the laptop.
A Delaware federal court would probably be quite sympathetic to a lawsuit brought by Hunter Biden.
Of course, this is an admission that the laptop is his. But that was disclosed long ago, even by the MSM, after the lie that it wasn’t his laptop had served its political purpose.
In other Biden family news, we have the revelation that Beau Biden’s widow (and Hunter’s girlfriend) Hallie Biden was one of the Biden recipients of a Chinese largesse:
BREAKING: @GOPoversight releases bank records showing that Biden family associate Rob Walker, used his company to transfer money from a Chinese energy company to Hunter Biden, James Biden, Hallie Biden, and a fourth “unknown Biden.” pic.twitter.com/Bu6bFCs8IR
The Jacob Chansley case presents the interesting question of how far the prosecution must go to disclose exculpatory evidence.
I’ve noticed in other cases that some prosecutors deal with the Brady rule (the requirement to disclose exculpatory evidence) by using a document dump – that is, giving the defense so much evidence that they will be unable to wade through it in time, or ever. Sometimes this dump is performed very late in the game; sometimes not. But generally the defense in a criminal case has limited resources, often very limited, and simply can’t sift through a mountain of evidence.
This may have been the situation in the case of Jan 6th “shaman” Chansley [emphasis mine]:
In a filing on Sunday, the DOJ said it provided the tapes to Chansley’s attorney during the discovery phase of Chansley’s trial in 2021, therefore satisfying the requirement of producing exculpatory evidence, or evidence favoring the defendant, to the defense counsel…
[The defense’s] Brady claim therefore fails at the threshold, because nothing has been suppressed,” the DOJ wrote, basing it on the claim that it had provided Watkins with the “necessary tools” to identify relevant CCTV evidence notwithstanding the voluminous discovery.
The DOJ has almost unlimited resources; the defense most certainly does not.
More:
[Chansley’s lawyer] Shipley says that the government may have violated Brady because they did not identify the tapes and their nature as potentially exculpatory evidence during Chansley’s trial. Making them available without making sure the defendant knows of the existence of the tapes may constitute suppression, according to Shipley.
“Suppression simply means it went undiscovered by the defendant beyond a point at which it could be made use of,” Shipley, who was a federal prosecutor for 21 years, said. “If the government produced thousands of hours of video and said, ‘There’s a minute of evidence that’s favorable to Jacob Chansley—good luck,’ that production is not an effective Brady disclosure.”
If the DOJ can play a game of hide-and-seek with exculpatory evidence, what good is the Brady rule?
