Noted presidential historian Michael Beschloss has an alarmist prediction to make

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First, a little background on Beschloss. Nine books on the presidency. Graduate of Phillips Andover, Williams, and Harvard. He’s not a product of today’s “woke” education, either: he’s 66 years old. And yet this is the same man who said this right at the beginning of the Obama administration:

Another man entranced by Obama’s pants crease?

Fast forward to Beschloss speaking yesterday on MSNBC:

“[S]ix nights from now, we could all be discussing violence all over this country. There’s signs that may happen, may God forbid, that losers will be declared winners by fraudulent election officers, or secretary of state candidates, or governors, or state legislatures…

Another pre-emptive “election denier”? Beschloss is on the left, not the right, and he seems to be saying a version of “if Republicans win it’s because they commit fraud.” And this, despite the polls showing the GOP candidates ahead.

Next:

We could be six days away from losing our rule of law, and losing a situation where we have elections that we all can rely on. You know, those are the foundation stones of a democracy.

How many people already don’t think elections can be relied on? And many of them are Democrats. I would say, from his remarks, that Beschloss is indicating that he doesn’t think elections can be relied on – that is, unless the Democrats win despite the polls saying otherwise.

Then:

Joe Biden is saying the same thing tonight, and a historian 50 years from now – if historians are allowed to write in this country and if they are still free publishing houses and a free press – which I’m not certain of – but if that is true, a historian will say what was at stake tonight and this week was the fact whether we will be a democracy in the future, whether our children will be arrested and conceivably killed.

As Mary Chastain writes at Legal Insurrection:

I’m shocked he didn’t say the GOP will also eat them as the parents watch. Or go all Titus Andronicus and feed the kids in a pie to their parents.

Presidential historian. This is the sort of person who writes the histories so far. Some are saying he’s gone mad, but I don’t see him as deranged at all. I see attitudes such as his quite often in people who otherwise seem quite sane, a huge pocket of over-the-top terror at the prospect of the GOP taking power, which seems to be based on nothing more than years and years and years of listening to lies and inflammatory rhetoric from the left, and believing it. I think Beschloss is actually afraid and is afraid that enough Americans don’t share his fear.

But there’s more to it than that with Beschloss. I became curious about his background, and I found this article from 2012, about his father Morris Beschloss (who appears to still be alive ten years later; at any rate, I can’t find an obituary for him):

Morris Beschloss, a longtime resident of Southern California’s Coachella Valley, is a conservative economic and political expert who at 82 writes a regular column for the Desert Sun newspaper, blogs on the paper’s website, and hosts his own television show, The World Report, on the Time Warner network.

In 1939, at the age of 9, Beschloss, a German Jew, escaped Nazi Germany with his mother and older brother. His grandmother refused to leave, and several years later she became one of the six million Jews murdered at the hands of Hitler and the Nazi regime.

Morrie, as friends call him, spoke to me about his only son, Michael Beschloss. He is the Harvard educated, NBC News Presidential Historian. As the Presidential Historian, the younger Beschloss holds himself out as an unbiased, apolitical analyst of all things Presidential. Long ago, a political wedge was driven between the two, with Michael Beschloss strongly objecting to his father’s conservative politics.

Another family rift over politics.

If you’re wondering what’s wrong with Beschloss the younger, this is what his father said in 2012:

“Once you’re in bed with the devil, you begin to spout the devil’s bullshit,” he explained, when referring to what he calls NBC’s overtly liberal bias.

It seems about as good an explanation as any. But there’s more there from Morris Beschloss on his son’s wife and her leftist affiliations, as well as George Soros, whom he detests and in 2012 labeled “the most dangerous man in America.”

Michael Beschloss’ wife is Afsaneh Mashayekhi Beschloss, whose parents were refugees from the ayatollahs of Iran after the revolution there. My guess is that she has a similar beef with her parents as her husband has with his own father. The first generation has one experience and the second another, and experience is non-transferable.

The Katie Hobbs office break-in: accusations versus reality

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This is how it went.

First, the campaign office of Katie Hobbs, fading Democratic candidate for governor of Arizona, was burglarized on October 24.

Next, Katie’s campaign manager accused her opponent Kari Lake of somehow being responsible:

Let’s be clear: For nearly two years, Kari Lake and her allies have been spreading dangerous misinformation and inciting threats against anyone they see fit. The threats against Arizonans attempting to exercise their constitutional rights and their attacks on elected officials are the direct result of a concerted campaign of lies and intimidation,” Hobbs campaign manager Nicole DeMont said at the time.

Now the police have announced an arrest. And guess what, it’s not Kari Lake they arrested, it’s this guy:

The suspect who was arrested in the alleged burglary of Arizona Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs’ campaign office is an illegal immigrant from Portugal who is wanted by immigration authorities.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed to Fox News that 36-year-old Daniel Mota Dos Reis is a citizen of Portugal who came to the United States as a registered student in 2018 and is now violating “the terms of his admission.” …

Investigators named Mota as a suspect after a patrol officer saw a news story Oct. 26 featuring surveillance video from the crime scene. The officer recognized a man in the video as a suspect who was arrested earlier for another unrelated commercial burglary, police said.

The suspect, Mota, was in jail but was scheduled to be released. Authorities said the officer contacted the jail and was able to re-arrest Mota, who is charged with one count of third-degree burglary for the campaign headquarters break-in on Oct. 24.

I’m sure he’s a Kari Lake fan and hangs on her every word. And I’m sure you’ll be hearing an apology from Katie Hobbs or her campaign manager very very soon – right? Right?

Lest you think that Hobbs is a stranger to responsibility or to politics, she is the present Arizona Secretary of State. Let that sink in. She is also the former Minority Leader of the Arizona Senate. This is not her first rodeo.

Open thread 11/3/22

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Although they’re dancing together, the style is what Hines and not Baryshnikov specialized in. It’s hard to change styles, and Baryshnikov does a good job for a ballet dancer. But you can easily see the difference in training and approach. Going the other way – tap dancer to ballet dancer – is virtually impossible, except for someone like Tommy Rall who was highly trained and phenomenal in both styles (I’ve featured him here).

The origins of the word “disinformation”

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It’s such a popular word these days, isn’t it?

Ever wonder where it came from?:

“Disinformation” is not a word from the English language. It is a direct translation of the Russian word dezinformatsiya. It is a KGB form of tradecraft from the Red Banner Institute of the KGB First Chief Directorate, otherwise known as the KGB foreign spy academy.

Disinformation is definition 159 in the KGB’s “Lexicon of KGB Terms,” published internally by the Soviet foreign intelligence service before 1984. Here it is: “Misleading by means of false information; A form of intelligence work in the Active Measures field, which consists of the secret channeling towards an adversary of false information, especially prepared materials and fabricated documents designed to mislead him and prompt him to take decisions and measures which fit with the plans and intentions of the Intelligence Service.”…

“Misinformation,” of course, isn’t the same as disinformation. It is a mis-statement, or the inadvertent or careless spreading of inaccuracies or untruths, without malign intent. Yet Mayorkas and others have used the two terms interchangeably. So have many public “experts.”…

…DHS re-defined disinformation, sanitized the term of its KGB roots, and expanded the definition by removing the foreign element and applying the label to First Amendment-protected political discourse.

That article was written around the time of the governmental disinformation board. Remember that? There was such a backlash that it was disbanded after a few months. But the campaign against what is labeled by the government and the left (redundant, I know) as “disinformation” goes on, spearheaded by the MSM and social media.

And the war against the war against “disinformation” is ongoing.

Israeli election: Netanyahu seems about to return to power

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Most of the votes in the Israeli election have been counted, and it’s looking good for Netanyahu:

looked set to return to power on Wednesday after an unprecedented fifth general election in less than four years on Tuesday gave his Likud Party, and others loyal to him, a narrow majority in the country’s parliament, the Knesset.

A victory for the longest-serving Israeli leader, who was ousted to the opposition more than a year ago, means he will now be able to form a stable and ideologically aligned coalition, which critics are already calling the most right-wing government in Israel’s 74-year history. With over ninety percent of the votes counted it looks like the Likud leader will be asked to form the next government.

In his celebratory speech as the results became clearer, Netanyahu thanked those who supported him and called the win a “massive vote of confidence from the Israeli public.” He also declared he would form a coalition with the “national camp,” a collection of controversial right-wing religious and ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties that have committed to join him in forming a strong and stable government.

That Fox article I linked also mentioned Netanyahu’s legal struggles, but only way down in the article and quite briefly. But those legal difficulties actually were instrumental in causing his defeat by his predecessors, who also tricked those who voted for them by forming a coalition with groups with which they had promised not to ally. The corruption case against Netanyahu, not described in detail, was a lawfare hit job by his enemies and so far has gone nowhere when finally tested in court, as described by Caroline Glick in this article from last May:

Netanyahu’s trial opened last April. Last May he was ousted from office. To date, some 15 prosecution witnesses have taken the stand, and one by one, they have not merely demolished every aspect of the prosecution’s charges against Netanyahu, they have exposed the full partnership of police investigators and state prosecutions in their joint mission to “get Netanyahu,” that is, to oust him from power, at all costs.

The whole thing is worth reading.

I read a number of other articles about the Israeli election and Netanyahu’s victory, and most omitted any mention of lawfare and why he lost power last time. Also, good old Google prioritized coverage from the left, and plenty of it. For example, the Guardian’s headline reads “Election result marks dangerous new turn in Israel’s rightward shift.” Oh ye self-styled guardians, “dangerous” to whom? To Israel’s enemies? The article goes on to detail the more extreme views of Netanyahu’s allies, and they are indeed extreme. But later, it mentions that Netanyahu doesn’t share these views. He’s a pretty strong personality and my guess is that he will continue the sort of thing that he’s done in the past and will not suddenly veer to the far far religious right.

Like Biden, Trump, and Lula, Netanyahu is no spring chicken: he’s 73. However, his mind is sharp, unlike the first man on that list. At some point, though, Netanyahu’s dominance of Israeli politics must end. But not now – unless one of those bizarre and tricky moves for which Israeli parliamentary politics is famous takes place.

Emily “Litella” Oster in The Atlantic: let’s have a COVID amnesty

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Let’s just forget about all that lockdown stuff Democrats pushed and pushed and pushed, that was so damaging to society and in particular to kids, writes Emily Oster.

Like another Emily:

From the article:

These precautions were totally misguided. In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know.

Who is this “we”? Medical authorities knew it was based on sheer speculation.

There was a strong and consistent choice to scare the public, and much of the information was very poorly substantiated. I’m talking about this sort of thing, or the matters discussed in this July 2021 post of mine, or this sort of thing, or this post of mine from way back in April of 2020.

From the article:

To take an example close to my own work, there is an emerging (if not universal) consensus that schools in the U.S. were closed for too long: The health risks of in-school spread were relatively low, whereas the costs to students’ well-being and educational progress were high. The latest figures on learning loss are alarming. But in spring and summer 2020, we had only glimmers of information.

That’s just plain wrong. Right from the very start, we had plenty of information that indicated that children were not succumbing to COVID nor were they a big vector for spreading it. Vaccines came into play relatively early on for the adults, and yet in many places schools stayed closed or partially closed. We had data from states that opened schools early, and the news was good.

Not only that, but we who were giving out warnings that the reaction was overdone might be more inclined to forgive and forget except for one thing: naysayers to the lockdowns and all the rest, as well as the unvaccinated, were demonized unmercifully by the left. No “amnesty” for them. Why should they forgive those who did it?

Because there’s an election coming up that Democrats might lose?

The press as propaganda

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Leighton Woodhouse writes the following, in an article entitled “How the Media Trains Journalists to Lie”:

Before the internet, a politically unpopular story might trigger a flood of nasty letters to the editor, but as long as it didn’t upset any major advertisers, the haters could be safely ignored. Now that it was the readers paying the rent, things were different. A revolt by your readers, if you were a newspaper publisher post-2016, was a direct threat to your bottom line.

But there was a threat even more perilous than that: a revolt by all the young reporters you hired to cater to the millions of outraged new subscribers you had enlisted in the fight against MAGA authoritarianism…

Today, a politically unpopular article or personality can leave a publisher besieged from the outside while facing a revolt from within…

As these changes took place across the digital media industry, Twitter became a disciplinary tool for the journalistic profession. It became the means by which the partisan and ideological vanguardists huddled inside the media’s fortress walls could find their ragtag armies on the outside and wage war together against disfavored colleagues like Weiss and McNeil.

I would add a couple of things. The first is that for most journalists today, even older ones, no one has to coerce them to lie. It is something they consider part of the job description if it furthers the politics they believe are virtuous. The younger ones chose journalism for that very reason – as the author describes. But many – not all, but many – of the older ones that haven’t left the profession are fully onboard. I believe the big turning point for this attitude was Watergate, when journalists felt pride in having brought down a president they hated. That was an awfully long time ago, and the younguns who took the credit are pretty old now.

The second thing I want to add is that there are examples of journalists who left the fold to preserve some sort of integrity, who seem to be doing fine. It takes courage, but not an absolutely extraordinary amount of courage. Bari Weiss, mentioned in the quote above, seems to have landed on her feet. Glenn Greenwald as well. Not to mention Kari Lake, who explains here why she left journalism (the video is from around the time she announced her candidacy for the Arizona governorship):

The latest on the Paul Pelosi attack

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You can find the federal criminal complaint here (narration of facts are on pages 4-7), and a brief summary here.

The first federal charge: “18 U.S. Code § 115 – Influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a Federal official by threatening or injuring a family member.”

The second federal charge under Title 18 U.S.C. § 1201(d): “attempting to seize or kidnap a United States official, to wit, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.” The latter charge was based on Depape’s verbal statements to both Paul Pelosi and to investigators, as well as equipment he carried with him.

My observations:

(1) This is such a strange incident, there have been so many conflicting facts released and published, the FBI and DOJ have lost so much trust, and the entire thing has been so utterly politicized, that conspiracy theories about what really happened will probably be floating forever.

(2) That said, I think that Depape was an intruder unknown to Paul Pelosi, dressed in regular clothing and not underwear (at least, when he entered the home), and is also a bona fide crazy person as well as a Canadian who overstayed his visa by 20 years. His politics are probably a jumbled and delusional mess that could roughly be described as some form of anarchism with both right and left elements, but his politics are the least of it although the left will try to make the most of it.

(3) There remains the glaring lack of any mention of a security system, turned on or off, good or bad, malfunctioning or nonexistent. The home is in San Francisco. The Pelosis are mega-wealthy, mega-famous, and of sufficient notoriety to have received all sorts of death and/or assault threats. It would be foolhardy – and that’s a kindly way to put it – to not have some sort of very good system or even guards on hand, which they can easily afford. It matters not that Nancy Pelosi herself wasn’t home – although almost certainly there would have been better security had she been there. The Pelosi’s extraordinary wealth alone would ordinarily have sufficed to dictate some sort of system.

This is the sort of wealth I’m talking about:

The nonpartisan OpenSecrets estimated in 2009 that Pelosi’s average net worth was approximately $58 million, ranking her 13th among 25 wealthiest members of Congress. In 2014, OpenSecrets reported Pelosi’s average net worth almost doubled to approximately $101 million, ranking her 8th out of the 25 wealthiest members of Congress. Business Insider reported that Pelosi’s worth was $26.4 million in 2012 and made her the 13th richest member of Congress. In 2014, Roll Call estimated that Pelosi’s net worth was $29.35 million, ranking her the 15th wealthiest member of Congress.

Roll Call said Pelosi’s earnings are connected to her husband’s heavy investments in stocks that include Apple, Disney, Comcast and Facebook. Roll Call reported that the couple have $13.46 million in liabilities including mortgages on seven properties. According to Roll Call, Pelosi and her husband hold properties “worth at least $14.65 million, including a St. Helena vineyard in Napa Valley worth at least $5 million and commercial real estate in San Francisco”.

As of 2021, Pelosi’s net worth was valued at $120 million, making her the 6th richest person in Congress.

On the Paul Pelosi perp

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So many people have gone into the Paul Pelosi attack in depth that I don’t feel the need to do so at the moment. So I’ll just link to this as well as this.

I wrote at the outset I thought the perp would turn out to be a crazy person. Indeed, that seems to be the case. I also wrote that my biggest question had to do with why there was no security or no effective security. That’s still my question, and so far there’s been no answer.

It goes without saying that the left would try to make political hay of it by blaming the right. That’s certainly been their attempt. But at this point, I can’t imagine it convinces anyone but the already-convinced.

Lula’s back

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Brazilian politician “Lula” has won the presidency by a hair, making it his third term but not in a row.

Lula is on the left and his main opponent (and previous president) Bolsonaro is on the right. This seems to be a pattern, and not just in Brazil or the US, either: close whiplash elections leading to whiplash policies. Lula is friendly to Iran, for example, and is into the leftist view of climate change. You can learn more about him here.

In addition, Lula’s return is part of a trend that also occurred recently for the US: an elderly president. Lula is 76 years old. In addition, he’s being elected:

…after a series of corruption allegations lead to his imprisonment for 580 days. The sentences were later annulled by the Supreme Court, clearing his path to run for reelection.

That’s what the left in this country is determined to do to President Trump, of course.

Was Lula guilty? From that same Wiki profile you can see that it’s pretty convoluted:

On 4 March 2016, as part of “Operation Car Wash”, Brazilian authorities raided Lula’s home…A police statement alleged that Lula had collaborated in illegal bribes from the oil company Petrobras to benefit his political party and presidential campaign….

On 16 March 2016, Rousseff appointed Lula as her chief of staff, a position comparable to that of prime minister. This would have shielded him from arrest due to the immunity that went with the position…Supreme Court Judge Gilmar Mendes suspended Lula da Silva’s appointment on the grounds that Rousseff was trying to help Lula circumvent prosecution…

Lula was found guilty by the lower court of accepting R$3.7 million in bribes ($1.2 million US) in the form of improvements to his beachfront house, made by construction company Grupo OAS [pt], which in turn received lucrative contracts from the state-owned oil company Petrobras. Lula also faced other charges, including money laundering, influence peddling and obstruction of justice. On 12 July 2017, Sergio Moro sentenced Lula to nine and a half years in prison. Lula remained free pending his appeal. Lula’s lawyer accused the judge of bias and the judge replied that nobody, not even the former president, should be above the rule of law…

On 23 March 2021, the Supreme Federal Court ruled by a 3–2 decision that Moro, who had overseen Lula’s trial in a case, was biased against him…

On 5 April 2018, Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court (STF) voted 6–5 to deny Lula’s habeas corpus petition. The court ruled that Lula must begin serving the sentence relating to 12 July 2017 conviction, despite not having exhausted all of his appeals…

On 9 June 2019, The Intercept published leaked Telegram messages between the judge in Lula’s case, Sérgio Moro, and the Operation Car Wash lead prosecutor, Deltan Dallagnol, in which they allegedly conspired to convict Lula to prevent his candidacy for the 2018 presidential election…

On 8 November 2019, Lula was released from prison after 580 days when a Brazilian Supreme Court ended mandatory imprisonment of convicted criminals after their first appeal failed…

Judge Edson Fachin of the Supreme Federal Court annulled all convictions against Lula on 8 March 2021, ruling that the court in Curitiba which convicted him lacked jurisdiction to do so, and ordered a retrial in Brasilia. A full Supreme Court bench later upheld the ruling by an 8–3 decision on 15 April.

The UN also got into the act, as well as Bernie Sanders and the NY Times. At any rate, that’s where it seems to have ended, and now he’s president.

More here on the election:

The former leader’s victory on Sunday was the latest in a political wave across Latin America, with wins by left-leaning politicians in Argentina, Colombia and Chile. But Lula da Silva – a former union leader with a blue-collar background – has sought to reassure moderates throughout his campaign…

Hours after the results were announced, Bolsonaro had yet to concede defeat or make any public statement. Meanwhile, videos on social media showed his supporters had blocked highways in two states to protest against Lula da Silva’s victory.

“We will only leave once the army takes over the country,” one unidentified Bolsonaro supporter said in a video taken in the southern state of Santa Catarina…

[Lula] may find that enacting his agenda is an uphill battle…especially with a hostile Congress. Seats that were from the traditional right are now occupied by the far right…

In the latest elections, Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party increased its representatives in the lower house from 76 to 99, while in the Senate it doubled from seven members to 14. Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party has also increased its number of deputies from 56 to 68 and senators from seven to eight – but overall, conservative-leaning politicians will dominate the next legislature.

A split-personality result that results in a leftist president and a legislature on the right.

NOTE: The reference in the title of this post is to this song: