A few more questions and observations on last night’s speech

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Did Biden’s handlers not realize that the black and deep-red theme would conjure up Nazi symbolism, or was that a conscious decision to evoke it?

(2) Did they realize the speech was given on the 83rd anniversary of Hitler’s invasion of Poland, which began World War II?

(3) Why did the major networks decide not to carry the speech? Did they have an advance copy of the text, and realized this would not be a good look for Joe? Or was there some other reason I’m not seeing?

(4) Some people on the right say this speech smacks of desperation. I don’t see it that way. In my previous post today, I wrote that it is merely an escalation in a long line of rhetoric demonizing Republican voters. Right the start, a MAGA hat was treated by Democrats not as ordinary campaign swag with an innocuous and optimistic slogan, but as an object to strike fear into the heart with an acronym that was practically tantamount to a swastika. This is why the January 6th demonstrators were called “insurrectionists” from the start.

(5) Quite a few adjectives starting with “m” come to mind for Biden’s demeanor and message during the speech. I mentioned one last night: malevolent. Others are menacing, manipulative, and malicious.

(6) Will this speech have the desired effect? Biden’s operatives certainly seem to hope so, but I don’t know.

(7) And what is that desired effect anyway? I can’t imagine that anyone previously on the fence about Trump or Republicans would be convinced by this speech to vote for Democrats in 2022, but a lot of things have happened that I didn’t imagine. My opinion, however, is that the goal of this speech is (a) to spark more January 6th type demonstrations or violence that will retrospectively validate Biden’s words and justify more crackdowns and more denunciations of the right. Probably the FBI is already working on entrapping some bitter clingers and guiding them towards something of the sort. An October surprise? And/or (b) the desired effect might be to spark attacks on Trump-supporters themselves. There’s also (c), to encourage Red-Guard style denunciations of “MAGA Republican” friends and family to authorities, for something or other. And let’s not forget (d) (which I mentioned in today’s previous post), to invalidate the election of so-called “MAGA Republicans” in 2022.

NOTE: Regarding question #1, CNN certainly seemed to realize it and apparently tried to soften the colors:

On Biden’s deplorable speech yesterday: the history of condemning your opponent’s voters

The New Neo Posted on by

What made Biden’s advisors/handlers think it would be a good idea to give this type of speech to all of America in prime time (although interestingly, the networks didn’t cover it)? Apparently, they think the time is right.

Of course, he’d already given a similar one about a week ago in which he famously called Trump supporters “semi-Fascists” – but that was at a Democratic fundraiser. Fundraisers are much more limited preaching-to-the-choir events, and often feature more incendiary language than speeches for a general audience.

You may recall slightly similar comments in speeches by Hillary Clinton, in which she called half of the voters on the right “deplorables,” or by Barack Obama, in which he referred to Republican voters in Pennsylvania or the Midwest as bitter clingers to guns, religion, and xenophobia. The thing is, both of these speeches were given at fundraisers; Obama’s in extremely blue San Francisco, and Hillary’s at an LGBT event in very blue New York City. They were also said during campaigns in which neither had been elected president, although Obama would go on to win his election and Clinton would go on to lose.

You can see a progression here, and I believe it is a planned one integral to the strategy of the modern Democratic Party. To the best of my knowledge, until Obama was campaigning for the presidency, although it was commonplace for politicians to attack rival politicians, I can’t recall any American president attacking the supporters of a rival politician. Maybe it occurred, but I certainly can’t think of it; Truman’s famously nasty 1948 campaign was directed against officeholders and not the public. And LBJ’s famously nasty ad depicting Goldwater as a person whose election would lead to a mushroom cloud was an attack on Goldwater, not his voters.

Obama broke that tradition, but only at a fundraiser and also, if you look at the actual text of what he said, it was more smugly condescending than nasty:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

It as shocking at the time, but now it seems relatively mild – Obama as therapist, psychoanalyzing the poor dears.

Hillary “deplorable” accusation was also made at a fundraiser, and a radical one at that, but she took it quite a few steps further than Obama along the path where we find ourselves today. She was no longer the least bit understanding or sympathetic to those she put down. But she did say it was only half of Trump’s supporters who were so awful:

You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people – now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets their offensive hateful mean-spirited rhetoric. Now, some of those folks – they are irredeemable, but thankfully, they are not America.

Half are deplorable, some are irredeemable – but they “are not America.” She also added an interesting echo of Obama’s sympathy/empathy/therapist-talk for the other half of Trump’s supporters. In other words, the bitter clingers:

…but that “other” basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but – he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

Trump himself could and still can be a very nasty guy, but to the best of my recollection I don’t think he ever attacked Democrats or Biden voters.

Here’s the full text of Biden’s speech from yesterday. It goes many many steps further, although he has a little bit of language in there that tries to limit what he’s saying. Here’s the attempt at limitation:

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.

Now, I want to be very clear — (applause) — very clear up front: Not every Republican, not even the majority of Republicans, are MAGA Republicans. Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology.

But “MAGA” was merely Trump’s campaign slogan: Make America Great Again. Trump supporters bought hats and T-shirts and posters that said MAGA, and I would go out on a limb and say that just about everyone who voted for Trump really did want to make American great again. The great majority of Republicans voted for Trump in both elections, and support most of what he did. So Biden is quite obviously referring to all of them.

The next line makes it even more clear:

I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans.

The only Republicans Biden’s been able to work with as president are people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Their numbers are very very few, and nowhere near a majority of Republicans in Congress or anywhere except the staff of the Bulwark (who arguably are no longer Republicans). Note also the subtle switch in Biden’s rhetoric from talking about extremist Trump voters to a very tiny number of “mainstream” Republicans he has successfully worked with, who certainly are not voters and certainly cannot be described as in the mainstream of the GOP, although he tries to label them that way.

Next:

But there is no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country.

So he immediately returns, after the short feint, to the denunciation of Republicans in general, and the labeling of them as a threat.

More:

MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.

They refuse to accept the results of a free election. And they’re working right now, as I speak, in state after state to give power to decide elections in America to partisans and cronies, empowering election deniers to undermine democracy itself.

That particular statement of Biden’s hasn’t been given much attention, but I think it is crucial. It sets the groundwork for a coming Democrat attack on the legitimacy of any “MAGA Republicans” who might get elected. After the 2022 election, Biden (or a replacement such as Harris) will still hold the presidency, and the FBI and the DOJ will of course remain in overwhelmingly Democrat hands. This passage is a preemptive strike at any winners of the next election as people who have fixed that election illegally, while simultaneously attacking the same people as “election deniers” of the 2020 election, which was a “free” election.

This is one of the more subtly pernicious passages in a wholly pernicious speech.

It’s stunning in its Orwellian reversals, and of course he uses the popular term “election deniers” – a phrase I discussed in this previous post.

Biden continues:

MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards — backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.

Remember when nice-guy Romney was asked during a 2012 campaign debate about states banning contraception? Romney was taken aback and didn’t understand where the question was coming from, but it was coming from the need to spread the false idea that Republicans might actually do such a thing:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Governor Romney, do you believe that states have the right to ban contraception? Or is that trumped by a constitutional right to privacy?

MITT ROMNEY: George, this is an unusual topic that you’re raising. States have a right to ban contraception? I can’t imagine a state banning contraception. I can’t imagine the circumstances where a state would want to do so, and if I were a governor of a state or…

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, the Supreme Court has ruled —

ROMNEY: … or a — or a legislature of a state — I would totally and completely oppose any effort to ban contraception. So you’re asking — given the fact that there’s no state that wants to do so, and I don’t know of any candidate that wants to do so, you’re asking could it constitutionally be done? We can ask our constitutionalist here…

STEPHANOPOULOS: … asking you, do you believe that states have that right or not?

ROMNEY: George, I — I don’t know whether a state has a right to ban contraception. No state wants to. I mean, the idea of you putting forward things that states might want to do that no — no state wants to do and asking me whether they could do it or not is kind of a silly thing, I think.

That was twelve years ago. Now it’s morphed into Biden declaring this is what Trump supporters are determined to do and plan to do. But then again, Biden’s the same guy who said in that same year of 2012, to an audience composed of many black people, that Romney wanted to “put you all back in chains.” Romney, one of the few people he might today describe as a “mainstream Republican.” (Note also when you look at this how much sharper Biden was mentally back then.)

But back to last night’s speech:

[MAGA Repulbicans] look at the mob that stormed the United States Capitol on January 6th — brutally attacking law enforcement — not as insurrectionists who placed a dagger to the throat of our democracy, but they look at them as patriots.

It goes on, but I’ll stop with the close textual analysis because it’s both unnecessary and sickening. The demonization and Orwellian accusations and transparently hypocritical yet sanctimonious calls for unity continue for the rest of the speech.

I’ve seen many people label it one of the most divisive speeches ever given by an American president. But they never name a similarly divisive or a more divisive one. Personally, although I’m certainly not familiar with every speech given by every president, I can’t think of an equally divisive one. I can’t think of any speech by a president that targeted the half of the country who voted for a presidential rival.

In addition, this speech had no other purpose and no other theme. We’re not talking about a sentence or a paragraph embedded in a larger message – this was the subject matter of the speech, and there was no larger message except “everyone who hates these people should unite behind me” – which is essentially the same message, just the supposedly more “positive” part of it.

People keep saying that Biden has crossed the Rubicon. But this isn’t the first time he’s crossed it; it appears to be a meandering river that he crosses over and over. But actually, I think the Democrats crossed the Rubicon a long time ago, and I certainly don’t think this is just Joe Biden speaking and planning and plotting all by himself. I’ve said before that although Joe is far more cognitively challenged than he was even just a few years ago, I don’t agree with those who call him senile or who say he’s totally controlled by others and doesn’t even understand what he’s doing. My position on Biden is that he’s fully onboard although he gets befuddled at times, but that the Democrat Party is wholly given over to the same approach. I would be exceedingly surprised if anyone on that side offers any serious dissent to what he said last night. They may not think he should have said it out loud, but they will not denounce it as it should be denounced.

And therein lies the tragic and awful situation in which we find ourselves.

Biden the Unifier makes a prime time speech

The New Neo Posted on by

He must have thought his “MAGA folks are facists” speech the other day in Philadelphia was so fabulous that he decided (or someone decided) he should repeat it to the entire nation.

Just a little unifying pep talk to declare holy war on Emmanual Goldstein, the Kulaks, anyone who ever wore a MAGA hat or voted for Trump, and all other related destroyers of our democracy – otherwise known as non-Democrats.

By the way, I did not watch the speech. I generally don’t watch political speeches anyway, I pretty much knew already what would be in this one, and I was actually at a bona fide social engagement during it.

Some excerpts to warm the cockles of your heart:

MAGA Republicans…embrace anger. They thrive on chaos. They live not in the light of truth, but in the shadow of lies.

Kind of like cockroaches. Shine a light on them, and they scatter.

More from Biden’s speech:

Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our Republic.

Apparently the speech’s lighting and setting was red and black – “blood red.” See some thumbnails and clips here.

Biden has always been a corrupt and mendacious opportunist, and a nasty one at that. There was something creepy about him that I perceived even back when I was a Democrat – and that I think America perceived as well, because until 2020 all his previous efforts at running for president were abysmal failures. Back then, even the media was willing to expose him as a plagiarist. But now they need him, and so whatever he does it’s okay with them – that is, until the left manages to find a replacement to run in his stead.

Just now, looking up the exact year when the plagiarism scandal derailed his presidential bid, I clicked on this NY Times article from September of 1987. Lo and behold, what an apropos headline: “Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not ‘Malevolent’.”

Malevolent. That is the perfect word for Joe Biden.

From the 1987 article – Biden’s defense was pretty much “I’m not evil, I’m just stupid.” As you read this, understand that this isn’t about something he did in grade school or in junior high, when he really might not have been expected to know any better. This was in law school, after he had graduated from college:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., fighting to salvage his Presidential campaign, today acknowledged ”a mistake” in his youth, when he plagiarized a law review article for a paper he wrote in his first year at law school.

Mr. Biden insisted, however, that he had done nothing ”malevolent,” that he had simply misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully. And he asserted that another controversy, concerning recent reports of his using material from others’ speeches without attribution, was ”much ado about nothing.”

Doesn’t that sound just like Joe?

More:

The news conference [defending the plagiarism] was held just before he presided over the third day of hearings on the nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork to the Supreme Court.

To buttress his assertions of sincerity and openness, Mr. Biden released a 65-page file, obtained by the Senator from the Syracuse University College of Law, that he said contained all the records of his years there. It disclosed relatively poor grades in college and law school, mixed evaluations from teachers and details of the plagiarism.

One of Biden’s previous finest hours: the borking of Bork.

And do you recognize Biden’s usual m.o. here?

Mr. Biden also suggested that the recent damaging information about him had originated with other campaigns, which he did not identify, and that it had emerged now because he was enjoying a chance in the limelight with the Bork hearings.

”Look, I’m a big boy,” he said. ”I’ve been in politics for 15 years. This is not my style. If they want to do it this way, so be it.”

Speaking of style – I certainly recognize his style of referring to himself, present even thirty-five years ago.

Oh, and the plagiarism? According to the article, Biden maintained that as a law student he had just “misunderstood the need to cite sources carefully.” I imagined that the quotes were a couple of lines from something, and he had failed to footnote them. But guess what? It was a mite more than that:

The file distributed by the Senator included a law school faculty report, dated Dec. 1, 1965, that concluded that Mr. Biden had ”used five pages from a published law review article without quotation or attribution” and that he ought to be failed in the legal methods course for which he had submitted the 15-page paper.

He copied five pages of a law review article and included a single footnote to the article. That was in the days before Google, and I wonder how many other times he submitted plagiarized papers, including in college, and people didn’t catch it. I would not be at all surprised if it was a regular thing, although we’ll never know.

More:

In a letter defending himself, dated Nov. 30, 1965, Mr. Biden pleaded with the faculty not to dismiss him from the school…

…[T]he young Mr. Biden said that ”if I had intended to cheat, would I have been so stupid?”

…The faculty ruled that Mr. Biden would get an F in the course but would have the grade stricken when he retook it the next year. Mr. Biden eventually received a grade of 80 in the course…[and when he] graduated from the law school in 1968, was 76th in a class of 85.

The rest of that 1987 article details other times Biden failed to attribute quotes to others, or lied about his participation in events. It contains the following quote from Biden:

It’ll all be dependent on the American people looking at me. They’re going to look at me and say, “Is Joe Biden being honest with me, or is Joe Biden not being honest with me?”

This bit about plagiarism may seem like a digression, but it’s not. The extent of the plagiarism and the form his excuses took in 1987 tell us how consistent Biden has been in his duplicity and his bombast. The reference to the Bork hearings reminds us that even back then he was interested in demonizing the opposition and lying about it.

And no, Joe Biden is not being honest with us.

Palin loses – what does it mean?

The New Neo Posted on by

I tend to think there are too many special things about this special election to come to many general conclusions.

The first special thing is Palin herself: my sense is that she’s no longer all that popular in Alaska, somewhat of a has-been. Her quitting the governorship probably didn’t sit all that well, either.

The second special thing is that the winner only has a few months in office before this election repeats itself and the voters will get another chance at essentially the same election, only this time for the full Congressional term.

The third special thing is ranked choice voting. That is very special indeed, and I’d like to keep it as rare as possible. Here’s how it works in Alaska:

Elections in Alaska now start with an “open” primary, in which candidates of all parties compete and all voters are allowed to participate, casting their ballots for the one contender they prefer. The top four vote-getters, regardless of party, advance to the general election.

Then, in the general election, instead of just voting for one of the top four candidates, voters rank their preferences in order. They are allowed to rank candidates one through four, but are not required to do so — voters could instead choose only to rank their preferred candidate, or only rank their top two.

If no candidate receives more than 50% of the first-place votes, then the ranked-choice system is used to determine the winner.

First, the Alaska Division of Elections eliminates the candidate with the least amount of first-place votes. The votes that had gone to that candidate are then assigned to the second choice listed on those voters’ ballots.

If no candidate has topped 50% of the vote at that point, then the Division of Elections would go through a second round of tabulation. The fourth-place candidate would have already been eliminated, and in the second round, the third-place finisher would also be eliminated.

Those who ranked the third- or fourth-place candidate first would have their votes assigned to the highest-ranked remaining candidate on their ballots.

It is too much like a game of “Survivor,” and much too susceptible to misunderstanding by voters, as well as to winners who are not really favorites.

Whether the voters in Alaska were just sick of Palin, or whether ranked-choice voting made the difference, is unclear at this point. For two divergent views, please see this from Bonchie at RedState and this from Scott Johnson at Powerline.

Happy Birthday, Barry Gibb

The New Neo Posted on by

Fangirl here, wishing Sir Barry Gibb a very happy birthday number 76 and wedding anniversary number 52.

In honor of the occasion, I offer the following video of Barry singing “Stayin’ Alive” at Glastonbury in 2017 at age 71 . He’s understandably lost quite a bit of his voice quality and some of his high notes. But this song was always extremely difficult to sing live, even with his brothers. It’s so fast, with so many words, and the breathing can be tricky.

Notice, though, how happy everybody in the audience is. If songs were measured in the amount of joy they bring, this song would be number one or close to it (yeah, I know some of you may hate it, but you are very heavily outnumbered). His son is the bearded guy with the tattooed arm playing the guitar. Note that while singing at such a fast clip, Barry also has to keep up a frenetic rhythm guitar. Not bad for an old guy who’s stayin alive.

And here’s the same song in his handsome-as-all-getout heyday:

Close to two years ago I heard that a biopic was in the works for the Bee Gees. I’m still waiting. I hope they don’t muck up the story and change the “narrative” like they did with Queen. I also can’t imagine who would be good-looking enough to play Barry, or charismatic and charming enough to play any of the Bee Gees or their brother Andy. The singing they always can lip sync. But the rest? Much more difficult, and in my opinion probably impossible.

Fascism, real and fake

The New Neo Posted on by

“Fascism” and “fascist” are popular epithets that have come to mean anything people want them to mean, but they always mean “bad.” Lately Biden and his minions have taken to calling the half of America that doesn’t agree with them – and that supports Trump – fascists. A very dangerous move, and a very purposeful one.

Among other things, “fascist” is not the same as “Nazi,” although most people are more familiar with the latter group than the former, and most people probably equate the two. If you want to know more, here’s an excellent article from 2020 by Angelo Codevilla on the subject of fascism. Fascinating and instructive.

How many people know a thing about this history? Few. How many care? These days, probably very few.

Here are some timely quotes (and remember, this was written back in 2020) [emphasis mine]:

But the fascist state’s legacy proved durable. Fascism had fathered the modern administrative state’s omnicompetent bureaucracy… fascism had habituated Italian politicians to think of power in fascist terms—in terms of control of all that bureaucratic power and patronage…

…[A] little attention is enough to separate Italy’s fascism up to 1935 from Hitler’s National Socialism. Whereas the former understood itself as bound by Italy’s characteristics going back to Roman times, as well as by the Church, and aiming at concrete improvements in the lives of Italians, Nazism was always a purely revolutionary movement, hostile to Germany’s history, reality, and welfare. The race that it purported to represent was a myth that abstracted from real Germans. Nazism’s gods were its own invention. Hitler’s last statement may have been his most telling: “The German people were not worthy of me.” That is not nationalism. The Nazis never called themselves fascist. The fascists wanted a place in the sun for Italy. The Nazis acted as if they were the sun…

In short, fascism was a reality limited to Italy. But fascist Italy was first to enact the disempowerment of legislatures and the empowerment of the administrative state that is now the Western world’s standard of government.

That’s something to mull over.

As is this, in terms of the Biden administration’s offensive against the right:

Stalin elaborated the doctrine of “social fascism” which, verbiage aside, meant that Communists should consider all to the right of them—essentially all who were not under Communist discipline—as “fascists.”…

For that claim to have force outside of the Stalinist canaille, for it to migrate into modern Western society’s bloodstream, it had to be translated into pseudo-academic form. The book The Authoritarian Personality (1950), by the Communist Theodor Adorno and researchers working at the University of California, Berkeley, began doing that by popularizing a test that purports to correlate personality traits with fascism—that is, Adorno’s F-scale (F for fascist)… The test’s fraudulence is based on the presumption that its author—not the historical record—may rightly define a historical phenomenon. The moment you have assumed the power to say what fascism, or anything, is—the moment you have taken it upon yourself to redefine reality—you may then correlate the work of your hands to anything else. And it helps if you also define that something else. The scam’s circularity is obvious—unless you’re part of it.

And this from Codevilla’s 2020 essay is a reminder – if anyone needs reminding – that the use of “fascist” by Democrats to describe and define and label the right for both silencing and retribution is nothing new (“Bushitler,” anyone?):

…[E]stablishmentarians, confident that nobody wants to be governed by fascists, now justify their claim to power and privilege just as orthodox Stalinists do: “it’s us or the fascists!” Wanting to de-legitimize their conservative opponents, they call them fascists, then define what conservatives think and do as fascism. Or they run the scam in reverse: define fascism in terms of the things their least favorite people do, and then define those things as fascism. Conservatives are fascists. Get it?

Got it.

The whistleblowers and Wray

The New Neo Posted on by

FBI agents have been coming forward to talk about Wray:

Kurt Siuzdak, a lawyer and former FBI agent who represents whistleblowers at the bureau, said agents tell him that Mr. Wray has lost control of the agency and should resign.

“I’m hearing from [FBI personnel] that they feel like the director has lost control of the bureau,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘How does this guy survive? He’s leaving. He’s got to leave.’”

I find it hard to believe that FBI agents are that naive. Who’s going to get rid of Wray? Biden?

Tell me another one.

Traitor Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

The DOJ has put out more information on the supposed rationale behind the MAL raid.

Jonathan Turley has this to say about it:

The arguments raised by the Justice Department are not just familiar but transparently weak. The government argues that Trump lacks standing because the records belong to the United States, not him. However, that is the point. The court is trying to determine who has a right to these documents. The Justice Department itself recognizes that it may have gathered some attorney-client privileged documents in this ridiculously broad search. It allowed the seizure of any box containing any document with any classification of any kind — and all boxes stored with that box. It also allowed the seizure of any writing from Trump’s presidency…

…[T]he court itself has ample authority to appoint a special master to help sort through such material…

The Court has the inherent authority to seek such assistance in an independent review of material. Special masters are fairly common helping courts establish the record for ruling on the merits of motions. It may turn out that most or all of this material is properly held by the government, but a Special Master can help establish the record for that decision, including the status of material acknowledged as potential attorney-client material.

The Justice Department also makes the same type of arguments used to oppose the release of a single line of the affidavit in redacted form. It claims that both its investigation and national security would be harmed. That is even less compelling here. A special master would be reviewing documents in a secure facility and would presumably have a clearance. Many of us who have handled national security cases have been cleared for TS/SCI material.

How exactly would a special master review materially undermine national security as opposed to the same review conducted by the Justice Department’s own taint team? The special master is an extension of the court. This is simply a court review in camera of documents….

For those of us who have litigated cases against the Justice Department, it was an all-too-familiar claim by a department notorious for over-classification and over-redaction arguments…

The Department also makes other incomplete or dubious arguments. For example, it asserts that no executive privilege claim can be made by a former president: “The former President cites no case—and the government is aware of none—in which executive privilege has been successfully invoked to prohibit the sharing of documents within the Executive Branch.” That is because this issue has not been fully litigated. It has been a long debate over the ability of former presidents to claim privilege. Indeed, under the Presidential Records Act, such assertions are honored over documents in its possession.

What is clear from this filing is that Merrick Garland will not change his refusal to seek modest steps to assure the public that this investigation is neither pretextual nor political. Instead, he is “all in” on these sweeping and untenable claims of the need for absolute control and secrecy.

There’s a lot more at the link. But Turley’s article, thorough as it is about the legal issues, doesn’t even begin to get into the larger issues here, which are political rather than legal.

First, there is the context. I have little doubt that the DOJ can find a reason to indict Donald Trump – or certainly Joe Biden and especially Hunter Biden – or any politician or you or me. The problem is that they don’t want to indict certain people – people of the Democrat persuasion, for the most part – and are laser-focused on getting Trump for something. That’s what this is about; it’s not about national security or classified papers issues; those are the MacGuffins.

They have been trying to get him from Day One, and they have been lying through their teeth right along. The right knows this and many independents know this. Even some Democrats know this, and mostly seem to think it’s fine because Trump is Evil Incarnate and the ends justify the means. They’ve come to that conclusion because (a) he’s a Republican, and Republicans are semi-Fascists or even Fascists (b) he has a big brash mouth; and (c) the media has been telling them he’s evil and he’s been accused of so many nefarious things that where there’s smoke there’s got to, got to, got to be fire.

Another element of the context for the MAL raid is that, arcane interpretations of arcane statutes and controversial disputes over the power to classify documents aside, it is truly unprecedented to try to indict a former president, and if the DOJ wants to do it, they’d better have an ironclad case of offenses so egregious that even the right sees that he positively had to be stopped.

This is quite clearly not that case here; not even close. And it feeds very strongly into the idea that Trump is being persecuted, and even makes it seems more plausible, not less, that the 2020 was stolen by fraudulent means. It certainly was influenced by lies and coverups, such as the one involving the Hunter Biden laptop.

These are not all separate issues; they form a cohesive attack. One of the assertions in that attack is that Trump is a traitor or a wannabee traitor, and the noble DOJ and FBI had to stop him. That was the leitmotif of Russiagate, the premise of which – that Trump was in Russia’s pocket – was always absurd on the face of it. He was actually one of the tougher presidents in his Russian dealings, but apparently the left, the Democrats, and the MSM either failed to notice that (unlikely) or purposely ignored it (likely) in order to drive their preferred “Trump is a Russian puppet” narrative.

Those behind the MAL raid are trying to make people believe that Trump was going to do something nefarious with these papers, something possibly approaching treason. That is especially absurd because, like Trump or not, his love for this country is obvious. The more likely explanation for the raid – that Trump had some papers with the goods on the DOJ or the FBI, and they wanted to get them back – isn’t mentioned by the DOJ, or course.

I have no idea whether that was the DOJ’s motive, because I think the desire to criminally charge Trump would have been motive enough and was motive enough. They saw a technicality on which they thought they could indict him or at the very least discredit him further than they already have done, and they went for it.

And in my opinion, that is what this is all about.

ADDENDUM: Bonchie at RedState believes they won’t actually charge Trump with anything. As I wrote in the last paragraph of my post, that may be the case and they may just be doing this as further propaganda, because making an actual case that stands up in a court of law is so much harder. But propaganda has worked quite nicely for them in the past.

Bonchie points out that the photo of classified documents scattered about and not in boxes – that was put out by the DOJ – is propaganda that has so far had its intended effect. The usual Trump-haters think this was some sort of bad action by Trump, and haven’t realized that the documents had been in boxes and it was the feds doing the raid who removed them from their containers, spread them out that way, and photographed them.

I believe that encouraging such a misperception was the intent of releasing the photo in the first place.

I also believe they may actually indict him. I can’t even give odds, so I’ll just say 50/50.

Oz pounced!

The New Neo Posted on by

The right often jokes that when Democrats mess up, the MSM story becomes “Republicans pounced!”

Well, in the Pennsylvania race, the NY Times has literally done just that, in an article entitled “When Fetterman Wasn’t Ready to Debate After a Stroke, Oz Pounced”:

It began with a spat over crudités. It has escalated into one Senate hopeful who is openly mocking another’s health after a stroke.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, has taunted his Democratic rival, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, about his stroke recovery, suddenly thrusting an issue both candidates had tiptoed around into a central theme of one of the most watched races of the year.

The Times is hardly alone. If you do a search on the topic you’ll got article after article with headlines that focus on Oz attacking poor ill Fetterman. Shouldn’t the story actually be that Fetterma’s health is not good and his level of functioning is so subpar that he won’t debate, and yet he forges on? But no, Fetterman gets the Democrats’ pass, and it’s Oz who’s the meanie for attacking and pouncing on Fetterman – which is a pretty funny picture because Fetterman is huge at 6’9″.

As for Fetterman’s actual condition, he clearly has communication issues and it’s not at all clear when and if they will resolve. That’s a bona fide problem. Fetterman claims it’s just a slight verbal glitch that will clear up soon, but he’s lied about his health before:

The Fetterman campaign reacted angrily to the assertion that Fetterman has misled anyone about his health, telling KDKA-TV, “This is exactly what people hate about politics. We’re trying to have an honest conversation about health … while Oz and his team are making mean remarks and ridiculing individuals for their health challenges. … John has been clear about his health,” said Joe Calvello, Fetterman’s communications director.

Keller disagrees, saying, “I think it’s pretty clear that John Fetterman hasn’t been clear about his health problems to voters.”

That CBS article doesn’t really say in what ways Fetterman has previously been “unclear” about his health problems. After his nomination and after his stroke (the stroke occurred several weeks before the nomination), he revealed that he’s had a heart condition for many years which he had ignored for many years:

…Fetterman’s cardiologist, Dr. Ramesh Chandra, said she first saw Fetterman in 2017, after he began experiencing swelling in his feet. “That is when I diagnosed him with atrial fibrillation, an irregular heart rhythm, along with a decreased heart pump,” Chandra wrote.

Chandra went on to write that she prescribed Fetterman medications, and advised him to improve his diet and exercise habits but “did not see him again” until June 2.

“John did not go to any doctor for 5 years and did not continue taking his medications,” the doctor wrote.

Chandra added that Fetterman now has a pacemaker-defibrillator and “is doing well.”

And he only revealed that because after he had his stroke, certain anomalies indicated that he was also being treated for previously undisclosed heart disease and some people noticed and pointed that out.

Open thread 8/31/22

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been in houses with most of these things:

My mother said that the house in which she grew up had a horse trough in front, and when she was a child there were still plenty of horses who would take drinks there.