Cassidy Hutchinson plays a game of telephone

The New Neo Posted on by

The big news of the last two days is Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the January 6th committee on all the awful things Trump did, or what others said he did, or what she says others said he did.

Andrew C. McCarthy wrote this piece in which he credited Hutchinson’s testimony with being devastating to Trump, and yet he nevertheless wrote this curious passage:

The day’s lone witness [Hutchinson] pulled back the curtain that countless advisers and aides kept around the mercurial Trump for four years. There are significant questions about aspects of her account, particularly where it involved hearsay — things she had been told about the president’s actions, as opposed to the things she herself witnessed. We also have to reserve judgment, even allowing that she seems impressive, because the highly partisan, unapologetically anti-Trump committee merely presents its side of the story, and has gone to unseemly lengths to exclude cross-examination and alternative perspectives.

So why on earth should we credit anything she says? McCarthy’s reasoning seems to be because it’s so devastating to the man so many love to hate (including McCarthy, who has been quite intense on the subject, particularly since January 6). So McCarthy follows that seeming disclaimer up with this:

All in all, though, Hutchinson showed the nation, moment by moment, what he was like on a day when, undeniably, Trump was at his worst.

It was worse than America thought. Even Americans with extraordinarily low expectations about the former president’s previously undisclosed, behind-the-scenes behavior during the hours when the riot unfolded.

Skillfully led through a prosecutor-style direct examination by committee chairwoman Liz Cheney, Hutchinson explained that Trump was like a wild beast at the Ellipse shortly before his gasoline-on-the-fire speech…

And then he goes on to describe her testimony – whose veracity he’s already cast doubt on – in great detail, as though it’s the truth. Why? It’s the truth because it fits McCarthy’s preconceived notions, I guess. He also tries to invalidate the objections of those who deny they said what she said they said.

The most recent comment I saw to that article when I looked at it yesterday was: “I don’t think her testimony or this piece will age well.” The comments there careened between loving McCarthy’s piece and finding it awful. There’s one there by someone with the moniker “Tom Jones” who states very well how bias confirmation works, although he doesn’t seem to realize that’s what he’s doing:

If someone tells me the sun rose in the east this morning, I don’t need cross examination to believe it. Trump’s reported behavior is 100% exactly, precisely the way he would be expected to behave. It takes a willing suspension of disbelief to delude oneself that he wouldn’t behave this way.

So it fits a preconceived notion held by Trump-haters, ergo it is true. I think that dynamic is operative in so many of these rumors about Trump.

Here’s an article that appeared in The Federalist:

Moments after the Hutchinson’s testimony, NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Peter Alexander reported “a source close to the Secret Service tells me both Bobby Engel, the lead agent, and the presidential limousine/SUV driver are prepared to testify under oath that neither man was assaulted and that Mr. Trump never lunged for the steering wheel.”…

CBS News followed up with “confirmation” of the agency’s categorical denial, likely from the same sources.

Hours later, another pillar of Hutchinson’s testimony fell apart when a spokesman for Former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann told ABC News a handwritten note for which Hutchinson claimed authorship was actually written by Herschmann.

The note, displayed by Cheney as an exhibit, included a statement for the president to read as the riot unfolded on Capitol Hill.

“The handwritten note that Cassidy Hutchinson testified was written by her was in fact written by Eric Herschmann on January 6, 2021,” a spokesperson for Herschmann told ABC News Tuesday night. “All sources with direct knowledge and law enforcement have and will confirm that it was written by Mr. Herschmann.”…

Here’s a later piece by McCarthy in which he tries to salvage some of what he said in his first piece on Hutchinson and Trump. This second one is pretty weak, and rests on a lengthy discussion of hearsay and why her testimony might not have been hearsay and why that doesn’t matter in the legal sense. I know something about the complex rules of hearsay, having learned them a long time ago (please don’t give me a pop quiz!), but that’s not the issue here. When most people criticize something as “hearsay” and they’re not in a court of law, they’re not using the legal definition and they’re not often even aware of what the word actually means in the technical legal sense. They’re using it in the vernacular sense to mean something like: “it’s a game of telephone, and we can’t credit it when someone says I heard so and so say to so and so,” and the comments overheard are offered for their truth. Of course – as McCarthy points out – Hutchinson may actually have overheard such a thing, or thought that she overheard it. But it doesn’t matter, because the only reason her statement on this was put out to the public by this committee was that we are supposed to think it is the truth about Trump and about what happened on Jan 6.

What’s more, it was offered knowing it was very poorly sourced, and without any opportunity for the opposition to cross-examine Hutchinson (as McCarthy has also pointed out), which is the hallmark modus operandi of this show-trial committee. And even further, it was done without bringing the people Hutchinson describes as having said it to testify on the matter, even though they appear ready and willing to do so in order to discredit her.

All of this is done this way to get the lie out there, because the members of the committee are well aware, and are very practiced in, the principle of a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its boots on. They’re in the business of speedy lie dissemination, and it’s often worked quite nicely for them so far.

The SCOTUS theme for today: who gets to decide what?

The New Neo Posted on by

SCOTUS handed down two rulings today that seem to clash politically: one against the administration and one for the administration. But otherwise they actually mesh, if you see them as SCOTUS deciding what branch of government gets to decide what.

In West Virginia v. EPA, the Court was asked to decide this question:

In 42 U.S.C. § 7411(d), an ancillary provision of the Clean Air Act, did Congress constitutionally authorize the Environmental Protection Agency to issue significant rules including those capable of reshaping the nation’s electricity grids and unilaterally decarbonizing virtually any sector of the economy-without any limits on what the agency can require so long as it considers cost, nonair impacts, and energy requirements?

In other words, how far-reaching was the power given the agency under this act of Congress? Is it the authority to gut a hugely important industry? The Court said this (6-3):

Since passage of the Act 50 years ago, EPA has exercised this authority by setting performance standards based on measures that would reduce pollution by causing plants to operate more cleanly. In 2015, however, EPA issued a new rule concluding that the “best system of emission reduction” for existing coal-fired power plants included a requirement that such facilities reduce their own production of electricity, or subsidize increased generation by natural gas, wind, or solar sources.

So during the Obama administration there was a shift in the EPA from reducing pollution by clean operation to reducing pollution by reducing production of electricity itself. That’s a shift too far, says the Court:

Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible “solution to the crisis of the day.” New York v. United States, 505 U. S. 144, 187 (1992). But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme in Section 111(d). A decision of such magnitude and consequence rests with Congress itself, or an agency acting pursuant to a clear delegation from that representative body. The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is reversed…

Congress needs to legislate and not allow unelected agency administrators to decide huge matters of national policy. And that’s an extremely important statement for the Court to make.

Then there’s the Court’s decision that Biden could fail to abide by “remain in Mexico,” thus reversing a policy of Trump’s:

Roberts wrote a long-winded opinion, but Kavanaugh’s stuck out to me.

The laws we have only give DHS two options, Kavaugh pointed out. DHS can “grant noncitizens parole into the United States if parole provides a ‘significant public benefit.’” DHS can also “choose to return noncitizens to Mexico.”

“In general, when there is insufficient detention capacity, both the parole option and the return-to-Mexico option are legally permissible options under the immigration statutes,” wrote Kavanaugh. “As the recent history illustrates, every President since the late 1990s has employed the parole option, and President Trump also employed the return-to-Mexico option for a relatively small group of noncitizens. Because the immigration statutes afford substantial discretion to the Executive, different Presidents may exercise that discretion differently.

In other words, this is Congress’ and a president’s call, and Biden’s decision was within the parameters of the act of Congress involved here. I suppose if Congress wants to change that, it can pass a different law.

What the DOJ and FBI are up to these days

The New Neo Posted on by

From Scott Johnson at Powerline:

The FBI appears to have taken up the role of the ruling party’s enforcement arm.

I submit that that happened a long time ago.

The post contains many links to help you get up to speed. It’s very chilling.

Andrew McCarthy has his own take on it, beginning with this:

The Justice Department is engaged in subterfuge to conceal its focus on the former president.

In the last week, the Biden Justice Department has taken aggressive investigative actions against former Trump administration officials and advisers. What is going on could not be more obvious: Egged on by the House January 6 committee and progressive Democrats who want former president Donald Trump to be criminally charged in connection with the Capitol riot, the department has obtained search warrants to raid the home of former Trump Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark and seize the cellphone of John Eastman, one of Trump’s private lawyers.

I think they are afraid of Trump 2024. But I think deSantis could be an even stronger candidate. Nevertheless, they would like Trump and anyone who ever helped him to be put away as a warning to others in the future and as revenge against him for the past.

Might this put a damper on the “fast-track surgery for trans” movement?

The New Neo Posted on by

A man is suing for damages from the surgery that was intended to make him a woman. His story occurred in Britain, and it appears in The Daily Mail.

The 35-year-old man had a history of mental problems. An online discussion group convinced him that becoming a woman would solve them. This is not an unusual story these days; online groups are very influential in the growth of the numbers of trans people in both this country and Britain.

After seeing him for two 30-minute sessions, a clinic agreed and put him on hormones. His story is that he never wanted what is euphemistically called “bottom” surgery (penis and testicle removal and vaginoplasty), but after a while he got the message that he would be refused continuing services if he didn’t do it. By that time he was feeling suicidal, and so he reluctantly agreed and had the surgery in 2018 with great trepidation. Afterwards he’s been left with serious damage:

Ritchie claims he was fast-tracked into making “the biggest mistake of [his] life.” He’s been “left infertile, incontinent and with ongoing pain.”

He asserts the NHS clinic took no account of his mental health issues, which might’ve led him to believe he was transgender. Furthermore, he wasn’t properly warned of the medical risks of his procedures.

The story is chilling, to say the least. And I’m thinking that as time goes on and more such cases surface both in the US and Britain – two of the main centers of trans surgery – authorities may become more careful about doing so much of this surgery, for fear of litigation and the resulting expenses.

It used to be that such surgeries were only approved after a very lengthy process and only to adults, and mental health status – and the sort of history this man mentions – was part of the evaluation and considered a huge red flag. No more. Also, the ages have gotten younger and younger.

The idea of a “gender-affirming therapist” is an absurdity, as Jordan Peterson has pointed out:

There’s no such thing as a gender-affirming therapist. It’s a contradiction in terms. Because you don’t affirm if you’re a therapist. It’s not your business to affirm. You come to see me because there’s something wrong. … Am I going to affirm what you think? No, it’s not up to me to affirm it. You don’t get a casual pat on the back from a therapist for your pre-existing axiomatic conclusions. That’s not therapy; that’s a rubber stamp.

Peterson is describing a type of therapy that has increasingly been jettisoned in the last forty years or so. Now many therapists have an explicit bias and don’t do what used to be known as “therapy” at all.

Singing about a love you’ve never met

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s take a break from all the heavy politics, and talk about music.

Have you ever noticed that certain songs dealing with the very same themes are very different? Love of course is one of the main topics of songs – you might say it’s the most common subject treated. Why is it that music – particularly pop music, but certainly opera as well – and love align? Or is it heartbreak that aligns, or yearning? Fulfilled happy love can be the subject of a song, but the number of songs about happy love probably pales in comparison to the number of sad ones.

One song theme I’ve noticed before is that of a person who is imagining a love somewhere in the world, someone he or she has never met but wants to meet – sometimes desperately wants to meet, depending on the singer’s degree of loneliness. So I hereby offer four variations.

The first is “Goodnight My Someone” from “The Music Man.” This is from the original cast album, which is the version I saw in person on Broadway as a kid and loved (I identified with the bookish librarian, and I was drawn strongly to Robert Preston’s brash energy – what charm he had!). I was only a little girl, but this song meant something to me. And I was aware quite early on of something I thought odd yet intriguingly satisfying about it – it has the same melody as the revved-up blockbuster “Seventy-Six Trombones” from the same musical, even though this is quiet and contemplative:

I never much cared for this next song, even though I like Linda Ronstadt and I know it was really popular:

And then there’s this song of clever repartee between two people who think they haven’t yet met their true loves but who profess to know exactly what they want. The joke is that of course they end up in love with each other by the end of the show, after many twistings and turnings. They just haven’t a clue as yet. This is also from an original cast album; I can’t stand the movie. The male singer here is Robert Alda, Alan Alda’s dad:

Last but not least we have the Bee Gees – of course. Love in all its manifestations was their grand theme, although they also wrote about other things. Loneliness was a big one, too, particularly with Robin, who put his plaintive voice to good use. I love love his voice; your mileage may differ. But I love all three of them, as you no doubt already know. And I like the use of the heartbeat sound in this one. It’s a bit hokey but effective and hypnotic:

And I’ll close with this poem by Vikram Seth. It’s deceptively simple:

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hands to left or right,
And emptiness above –
Know that you aren’t alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

ADDENDUM: There are so many other songs on the same theme that could be included. See the comments for readers’ suggestions.

Roundup time

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Ghislaine Maxwell receives a 20-year sentence for her grooming role in Epstein’s sex crimes perpetrated on minors. It was less than she might have received but more than her attorneys wanted. Epstein and Maxwell remind me of another famous couple who collaborated in grooming minors but who not only were not sentenced but whose activities in that arena aren’t widely known even today: John-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, whose repellent behavior I wrote about in this previous post.

(2) At least 46 people were found dead in a truck that had illegally crossed into the US from Mexico and then was abandoned. But press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “The fact of the matter is the border is closed.”

(3) More SCOTUS news: “The Court blocked a ruling by Obama-appointed judge Shelley Dick, in which she declared that Louisiana’s updated congressional maps must include a second majority-minority district.”

(4) During the Obama administration, accused men (and it was mostly men) under Title IX in colleges were deprived of due process rights – because, you know, women don’t lie or some other utter nonsense like that. Trump correctly removed the impediments and gave these men back some ability to defend themselves. But Biden has taken us back to those glorious earlier times. Under the rules that he’s set up again in colleges, Biden himself would have been found guilty of sexual harrassment and assault. But fortunately, he’s not a college student.

Please read the whole thing.

(5) The Democrats need some young blood for 2024. So – are you ready for Hillary?

This couldn’t have had a good effect on people’s health

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I had a doctor’s appointment for a regular checkup, and she asked me when I’d last had a mammogram. I had a strong memory of its having been about six months ago.

I’m usually very conscientious about such things. But I also usually get yearly reminders in the mail that I’m due and need to make an appointment.

Later I went home and checked my calendar but couldn’t find anything recent. Same when I checked my insurance statements. Then I called the mammogram place and asked them to check the records and see when I’d last had one, and the answer was July, 2020.

That’s two years ago. I was so shocked that I didn’t believe her. But after more checking I determined she was right. How had two years passed with me thinking it was six months?

I blame all this COVID stuff – the passage of time gets more difficult to sense when nothing all that much differentiates most of the days. “COVID time” seems like a big blob, some sort of Lost Weekend that went on and on and on.

It’s not that I haven’t been going about my normal business for quite some time. But normal social life and activities of that sort haven’t totally picked up again even now. And elective medical tests and procedures were on hold for a long time.

Then again, look at that date: July 2020. That was at the height of pre-vaccine COVID. And yet I went for a mammogram. So what happened during the next two years to change that?

Next, I called to make an appointment for a mammogram and I asked them why I hadn’t gotten any reminders of the sort they usually send, and the answer was “Oh, because of COVID.” I pointed out that that made little sense; plus, I still haven’t gotten any reminders, and things picked up quite some time ago. After years and years and years of reminders, people come to rely on them. And why, I asked her, hadn’t they started sending them out again?

“We got behind,” was her answer – whatever that means. It still makes little sense to me. But I’m not going to expect any reminders in the future.

Fortunately the mammogram itself was fine. And actually, at my age, the guidelines for them are a bit arbitrary: every year is recommended by many organizations but some say every two years. At any rate, this isn’t really about me – I’m just using myself as an illustration. A lot of tests have been postponed for a lot of people, and to what effect? The almost inescapable conclusion is that it caused some people to receive serious diagnoses later than they otherwise would have, and that can affect their treatment and prognosis negatively.

Open thread 6/28/22

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t think I’d watch this video for more than about five seconds, but the whole thing ended up mesmerizing me. I’m not sure why, except the food seemed so unusual – different from the Japanese dishes I know – and this woman took so much care making multiple little tidbits for each meal:

SCOTUS is on a roll

The New Neo Posted on by

June is usually a big time for SCOTUS decisions, and here comes another:

Today the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned lower court decisions in the consolidated cases of Ruan vs. United States and Kahn vs. United States. The two physicians were convicted of prescribing opioid pain medicine “outside the usual course of [medical] treatment” and were sentenced to prison.

The jury in Ruan was not instructed to consider Dr. Xiulu Ruan’s “good??faith defense,” i.e., that he was indeed prescribing the drug “legitimately” to treat pain based upon his good??faith assessments of his patients’ medical contexts and requirements. The Eleventh Circuit Appeals Court denied Ruan’s request to vacate the lower court decision on the grounds that he was denied a “good faith” defense.

The Supreme Court held “the Government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner.”

And you know what? That decision was unanimous.

Another case was handed down today:

The case is about a high school coach who used to go out to the middle of the field and offer a private prayer after a game. He did this alone and without inviting anyone to join him. However, some students and players did wind up joining him, as did players from the other team.

The prayers were short.

The District he worked for forbade him from doing this, claiming that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, and the Lemon “endorsement” test, required them to forbid him from privately praying.

He did it anyway, and the District dropped him as an employee.

Please read the whole thing. This ruling in favor of the coach’s right to offer a private prayer (in public) in the school sports setting was decided by the familiar 6-3 vote.