Hunter Biden’s laptop, Andrew McCarthy, and the commenters at The Hill

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The Hill is far from the most leftist of news outlets in the MSM. Andrew C. McCarthy has an article there on Hunter Biden’s laptap, and in his usual measured way he concludes that the laptop is authentic and the information on it very likely to be authentic too.

And yet, when I read the first group of comments there (there are over six thousand total as of now), it was nearly all “Russia, Russia, Russia.” The leftist operatives are out in force, and they are doing what they do best.

The irony of it would be funny if it weren’t so sad – the left is now in the business of pretending to see a Russian (of all things) under every bush (or Trump), and they are in the pay of big business and the mega-rich.

2020: some of the things that astound me

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They astound me, and yet they shouldn’t. Cognitively, I believe I know why and how these things are happening. Yet emotionally, I find them difficult to believe and astonishing to accept as occurring on such a scale in America.

The first is the speed of the Democrats’ capitulation to the leftists among them, and the completeness of it.

The second is the seamless voluntary morphing of the MSM into Pravda.

The third is the joining in – not just of the dot.coms, whose censorship activities are really no surprise at all – of the bulk of corporate America, including previously “all-American” sports.

The fourth is the vulnerability of so many Americans to the propaganda. It works so well because so many cultural, educational, business, and press organs agree on the message, and the voices on the right have been increasingly marginalized and demonized.

Just a few short years ago I would have thought that something like the Hunter Biden laptop revelations would sink any major party candidate. But I would have thought wrong. The left yells “Russian disinformation” (which is almost humorous, given what the left is and what it’s done with Russian disinformation) or fails to cover the story, Joe sits in his bunker, and many voters shrug and go about their business.

I think there is no limit to how far the left will go to suppress liberty and the right if given power in this country, or how corrupt they will become. And plenty of seemingly (or previously) reasonable and well-meaning people will give them the keys to it, thinking that by doing so they are doing good.

[ADDENDUM: See also this by Victor Davis Hanson.]

Hatred of Trump leads to liberal confusion about what to do: Bari Weiss gets it, and she also doesn’t

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I think Bari Weiss’ new Tablet piece is an illustration of the kind of confusion a great many liberal Democrats feel these days.

For example, Weiss puts her finger squarely on the fact that leftist Democrats such as AOC are either anti-Semitic themselves or fully at the service of other anti-Semitic leftists. But after discussing that for a while, she reverts to reflexive Trump-hate [my emphasis]:

…[M]any smart, well-intentioned people are confused. Or rather: Looking for someone to explain why an emerging movement that purports to advance the ideals they have always supported—fairness, justice, righting historical wrongs—feels like it is doing the opposite.

There is also the X factor of Donald Trump, which is impossible to overstate. Understandable hostility toward him has prevented many Jews from seeing the problem on the other side. To even look away from the obscenity in the White House for a moment strikes many, as they have told me, as irresponsible or beside the point.

I share with the majority of American Jews’ disgust toward Trump and Trumpism, which has normalized bigotry and cruelty in ways that have crippled American society. That truth doesn’t detract from another: There is another danger, this one from the left.

This way of thinking isn’t just an idiosyncrasy of Weiss’. It is typical of someone in the throes of a strong cognitive dissonance that he or she cannot easily resolve. She hates Trump, but hates the danger on the left as well. What to do?

In the second and third paragraphs of that excerpt, Weiss exhibits her Trump hatred. As is typical of the writing of Democrats, including others who think of themselves as old-style liberals, Weiss doesn’t seem to feel the need to give a single specific example of how Trump has demonstrated these terrible qualities she’s writing about. We are to take them on faith. Surely, we already know – the science, as they say, is settled. It’s a tautology that: (a) Trump is an “obscenity” (b) he is worthy of disgust (c) he has “normalized” bigotry and cruelty; and (d) that said normalization has “crippled” American society.

I think part of the reason Weiss says all of this is that she’s writing mostly for other Democrats who happen to be Jewish, although they’re not the only people who read Tablet. It’s telling that she says “I share” their supposed disgust for Trump; so she is saying “Hear me out, I’m one of you, not one of those dread Trump supporters.”

And it’s especially interesting to me that she says all of this despite the fact that the rest of her article is a lucid warning about the dangers of the far left and Critical Race Theory – which happens to actually be a huge and influential purveyor of “bigotry and cruelty” today, and to also be the force that has in fact “normalized” these things and is currently “crippling American society.”

Weiss follows up her warning about the danger of the left with this, which makes it clear she thinks the left is more dangerous than Trump, and that Biden would not be able to stop them:

And unlike Trump, this one has attained cultural dominance, capturing America’s elites and our most powerful institutions. In the event of a Biden victory, it is hard to imagine it meeting resistance.

So the only logical conclusion is to vote for Trump, right? After all, if the left is the bigger danger, and Biden won’t counter that danger, isn’t voting for Trump an obvious solution? But of course she can’t say that or even think it; she is focused on being able to fight “wokeness” from within the Democratic Party, and with Biden as president.

Good luck with that, Bari. You’ll need it.

Weiss follows that up with a recitation of liberal ideals. This is also interesting, because that list clearly tracks to the ideals of the right these days – only Weiss probably doesn’t know it.

She also (even after being booted off the NY Times because her type of liberalism no longer exists there) doesn’t seem to understand that she’s reciting ancient history, as far as the Democrats are concerned. It’s been a game of pretend for a long time, as the ostracism of Joe Lieberman many years ago should have made crystal clear:

[The ideals of America as a whole used to be] liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy…

…[T]his liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised.

She adds:

American liberalism is under siege. There is a new ideology vying to replace it.

I hate to tell Weiss, but adhering to that sort of “American liberalism” today makes her what’s known as “a conservative.” And I regret to inform her that the “new ideology” isn’t “vying to replace” that sort of liberalism among the Democrats. It did replace it quite some time ago. And the left has taken over nearly every cultural institution, including the press (as she obviously experienced at the Times).

So it’s late and getting later.

If Weiss and other old-fashioned liberal Democrats could take over that party, I would applaud them. But I don’t think there’s any chance of it happening, unless they are trounced in this election – and I’d give it only a very slim chance even if that were to happen.

The rest of Weiss’ rather long piece is quite good. It mostly describes things with which readers of this blog are very familiar, and which I’ll just summarize by saying that she discusses the philosophy and goals of the anti-racism movement and Critical Race Thoery, and how that plays out in society and also within the non-Orthodox Jewish community.

It’s pretty apparent that Weiss wrote the piece to appeal to those Jewish Democrats who can hear her and who might not know what’s been going on with the left and what it signifies. And that’s fine. But by demonizing Trump (which perhaps she must do, not only because she believes what she says but also because she thinks the readers to whom she’s appealing believe it, too), she is cutting off the only avenue to buy time for any kind of reversal of the dangerous and alarming trends on the left that she sees and describes so well.

Weiss does not see her own blind spot. Voting for Trump is a bridge too far and she cannot get there – although some people (such as Dave Rubin, for example) have. But I submit that, for now, it’s the sole option open to her and to other “liberal” Democrats.

And time’s a-wasting.

CLARIFICATION AND ADDENDUM:

I want to be very clear: the phenomenon that Weiss describes is neither specific to Jews nor limited to them. It is rife among virtually all liberal Democrats today. Weiss is primarily addressing Jews in her article, but Jews share her sentiments only insofar as they are liberals. American Jews trend liberal, particularly secular and Reform Jews, but Orthodox Jews vote majority Republican, and the more extreme Orthodox groups are more likely to vote Republican. The recent voting behavior of Jews in presidential elections has been at a ratio of a bit more than 2:1, Democrat/Republican.

Professor Bruce Gilley is a very brave man

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Gilley, a political science professor at Portland State University, is a profile in courage:

“I attribute the ease and suddenness of my latest [book publishing] cancellation to this year’s Black Lives Matter moral panic. It has taken cultural totalitarianism to new levels, challenging the U.S. ethic of freedom,” Gilley wrote…

In 2017, his scholarly article “The Case for Colonialism,” published in the peer-reviewed Third World Quarterly, led to petitions denouncing Gilley and his piece that drew upwards of 16,000 signatures, as well as demands for his firing.

The article was taken down after the journal’s editor received credible death threats. The piece was also likely the impetus for an administrative probe Gilley faced right after the controversy (he has since been cleared).

Gilley forged ahead with his scholarship, offering a class called “Conservative Political Thought” at Portland State. That, too, was cancelled by his peers in 2019…

In an essay for First Things earlier this year, he suggested five ways to take back power in the academy: enforce existing laws that protect free speech and equal opportunity employment; abolish university offices of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’; stop letting professors be the only ones in charge of hiring; abolish grievance studies; and unite the resistance.

“That kind of moral courage is what we need today if we are to release the academy from the death grip of the left and make it useful to society again,” Gilley wrote.

“The corruption of the universities has come about through the use of political power, above all in university hiring committees and diversity offices. The deliverance of the universities will be achieved in the same way.”

Much more at the link. Please read the whole thing. And see also this.

Roger Simon on the Orwellian developments on Twitter, et al.

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Roger L. Simon writes:

…[W]hen Twitter announces—via Vijaya Gadde, its “Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead”—their two new principles in the wake of the Hunter/Joe Bidenemail censorship scandal, caveat emptor.

The first, about hacked content, is so much eyewash. The second is extremely dangerous and, yes, Orwellian:

“2. We will label Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter”

I see. They will “provide context.”

This is actually more sinister than their previous approach—censorship. At least that was obvious.

This is, in essence, thought control.

You, the great unwashed, are not capable of analyzing for yourself. You need guidance—the same guidance they provided when publishing ad infinitum obvious disinformation about non-existent Trump-Russia collusion or propaganda from Javad Zarif, foreign minister of a country whose citizens are not allowed access to the internet but just happens to have 1.5 million Twitter followers.

I wrote “publishing” above because that’s what Twitter does, despite their denials and insistence that they only link to other publishers, supposedly giving Twitter itself a firewall against lawsuits.

This appears all the more ludicrous given their new rule two, which indicates that not only are they curating, they are editorializing (i.e., publishing… Congress take note).

They are our betters, and will tell us what to think. Got it.

But actually, this has been going on in the regular press for a long long time. And I don’t just mean on the editorial page; it’s expected there. Or the opinion pieces. I mean in the news.

For many years I have noticed that I could fisk almost every article written, even those that are supposedly straight news, and point out the multiple and repeated elements of such guidance. It starts with the decision as to what news to cover and what to ignore. It goes on to the headlines (“Republicans Pounce,” anyone?) and involves the placement of each fact, the emphasis it’s given, adjectives and verb and noun choice (“undocumented”), phrases such as “with no evidence” used for assertions by the right and not the left, the often-bogus “fact-checking” page, and so much more.

It is all the more effective for being subtle, at least to the people who are under its spell. Once noticed, though, it can’t be unnoticed. But the subtlety makes it more difficult to notice.

It also helps the cause greatly that the left controls all these levers of communication, except for just a few outlets. That makes for a unified message, which has extra power.

YouTube is an interesting case. It censors and demonetizes some sources on the right, but remains one of the main conduits for the message of certain people on the right, in particular many black conservatives or semi-conservatives. How long will that last?

Earlier today, commenter “physicsguy” wrote this:

The laptop is real. All the corruption to the highest levels is real. NOTHING will come of this. This morning after reading through all the above insightful comments and discussion I went and looked at the websites of ABC, NBC, CBS, and NPR news. Here’s what I found:

ABC: in a sidebar with links to minor stories in small print 5 lines down was a link about “FBI probing emails”

NBC: nothing

CBS: Over half way down the page with 12 other stories ahead of it, was a story about Guiliani being a source of Russian disinformation.

NPR: second story from top was ” ‘Questionable NYPost “scoop” driven by ex-Hannity producer Guiliani”

I didn’t bother to check CNN et al. Combine that with Twitter and FB levee building. And for 3 days carefully watching the liberal/leftist acquaintances I follow on FB, who follow politics rabidly where nothing has been even mentioned,…I now assume they really have no knowledge of this at all. It’s only on Fox and the right internet media that is carrying this story. It’s going nowhere, and even if it does eventually make it out to the general public it will be too late, and then nothing more will happen. They’ve won by controlling the information stream. Hillary’s server, the Durham facade, and now this….none of it matters and nothing will happen.

That is my fear as well.

The information from the right is stifled by the gatekeepers. But even if it happens to get through to someone not on the right, that news has already been labeled as bogus and therefore not worth the time to study for oneself. So if I happen to mention any number of such events to any Democrat friend of mine, the usual response is either that the person has no idea what I’m talking about, or that it’s a lie because the source is only on the right.

Back when the blogosphere began, it seemed to be a possible way to counter that. But after a short heyday, blogs have been enormously eclipsed by social media and then quite quickly by leftist control of social media. The regular MSM, the entertainment field, education, and the press had already been lost by the time blogs (including this one) came on the scene. And they are even more lost now.

If the Democrats with this election, any investigation into any of these problems – the Bidens, Twitter’s status as a possible monopoly and publisher – is gone. Probably forever, or at least for a long long time, because the screws are tightening.

Suggestions in the comments here for what to do at this point would be appreciated. All I can think of is to talk to some of my more open-minded liberal friends about this, and discuss some of the events about which they might not be aware – although given past experience, our talks won’t be very productive.

Biden’s repeated abysmal ignorance about policing and firearms

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Biden doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, and yet he arrogantly opines as though he does know, which is the worst kind of ignorance. Or perhaps he knows, and is merely trading on what he assumes is the ignorance of his audience.

Apparently Biden thinks that this is a really good suggestion for police. He made it in last night’s Town Hall:

…”you have to teach [the police] how to de-escalate circumstances,” said Biden. “So instead of anybody coming at you and the first thing you do is shoot to kill, you shoot them in the leg.”

That’s not just a demonstration of ignorance about how difficult it is to shoot someone in the leg (it’s easy to miss the leg, and then the person keeps “coming at you”) and how dangerous it can be to shoot someone in the leg (there’s an important artery there and a person can bleed to death from such a wound), but it’s also a demonstration of extreme ignorance about how police are presently trained.

Is Biden actually so ignorant that he thinks that police are not already “taught to de-escalate circumstances”? Does he not know that the “first thing” police do is not “shooting to kill”? Ever heard of a taser, Mr. Biden? And among other things, when police do shoot in a self-defense situation, they shoot to stop people from harming the police, not to kill – and since shooting in the leg is almost impossible for most police with a moving target “coming at you,” they are purposely taught to aim for the bulkiest place that’s easiest to hit and most likely to incapacitate the other person, which is the torso.

You can read article after article patiently explaining, to people who know zero about policing or firearms or self-defense, that if someone is trying to attack you, aiming to shoot in the leg is a bad idea.

And the story gets worse – because this isn’t the first time Biden’s said this. He had already stated his brilliant and innovative policing idea back in June, and the way in which he stated it then was even more stupid and ignorant, if such a thing be possible:

An “unarmed” person coming at you with a knife.

Giuliani on authenticating the Hunter Biden emails

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From Giuliani:

Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, told The Epoch Times that he and his attorney, Robert Costello, checked some of the written notes in the drive against samples of Hunter Biden’s handwriting, matched details about undisclosed meetings with confidential information they had already obtained from other sources, and verified the email addresses in the data trove, among other steps. Giuliani said the drive contains roughly 800 of Hunter Biden’s personal photos, including some which Giuliani alleges show illegal acts. The Epoch Times could not independently verify the claim as Giuliani declined to provide a copy of the files…

The Post conducted its own authentication effort, Giuliani said…

Along with the copy of the drive, the owner of the Mac repair shop gave Costello a receipt dated April 12, 2019, which he allegedly generated on the day Hunter Biden dropped off a water-damaged laptop and requested the data to be recovered. After Biden failed to pick up the laptop for 90 days and the shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, was unable to reach him, Mac Isaac took possession of the laptop and reviewed its contents. Mac Isaac also gave Costello a copy of an alleged subpoena for the laptop, dated Dec. 9, 2019, which the FBI allegedly used to seize the laptop the same month.

That was during the time that Democrats were busy impeaching Trump for a phone call in which he asked the Ukraine president Zelensky to investigate the Bidens’ shady business dealings in Ukraine. The impeachment itself began on December 18, but the hearings had gone on for months prior to that (September-November), after the leak of the phone call in August. Hunter’s laptop had been dropped off the April before that, but the FBI took possession of it during the heat of things, and did nothing as far as we know.

[NOTE: One thing is certain: Hunter Biden is fully capable of taking a computer to a repair shop and leaving it there. He is a drug addict, in addition to having been immersed in a host of other destructive behaviors for years. For example:

A police report said that Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden returned a rental car in Arizona that contained a cocaine pipe days before the 2016 presidential election, according to a new report.

Hunter Biden, whose legal first name is Robert, also left credit cards, a driver’s license, a Delaware attorney general badge, a cellphone, and a U.S. Secret Service business card in the car, according to the police report obtained by Breitbart News. He had rented the car from Hertz in California and it was returned in Prescott, Ariz., after hours. The car keys were not properly deposited in a drop box, but left in the car’s gas tank compartment.

In addition to “a small white and brown pipe approximately 3-4 inches long,” an officer also found “a small ziplock bag with a white powdery substance inside all sitting on the passenger seat.”

A man who called himself “Joseph McGee” called Hertz the next morning to tell the company where the keys were left, saying “his friend was feeling sick so they didn’t know what to do.”

And yet Hunter Biden got tons of money in high-powered jobs for which he was utterly unqualified. Nothing corrupt there at all, right?]

You are now free to tweet links to the NY Post’s Hunter Biden articles, except that…

The New Neo Posted on by

…instead of merely blocking links to that story and others Twitter believes are suspect in some way, Twitter will “label Tweets to provide context.”

What will the labels be? Something like “don’t pay attention to this, it’s a lie”? The actual label will be more subtle, of course, but suggesting much the same thing. A more honest label would be “don’t pay attention to this, it disagrees with our politics,” but don’t expect to see that sort of honesty from Twitter, now or ever. And don’t expect them to apply these labels to both sides of the political spectrum with any consistency.

What’s more, Twitter’s previous act of blocking the links has already done the work of guiding readers to (a) ignore the story; and/or (b) if noticed, say it’s bogus. Of course, the left can do the latter all on its own without Twitter’s help. I’ve been to some anti-Trump pro-Democrat websites and they’ve already been hard at work saying the Biden emails are Russian disinformation and that Giuliani, like Trump, is a Russian agent.

Some of these same people fully and utterly believe Russiagate, of course, and their belief is of near-religious intensity. Others are just cynically spreading the lie, knowing that their listeners are ignorant of the truth.

Dueling Town Halls

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Here’s a thread to discuss this evening’s Town Halls.

The odd thing – at least, one of the odd things – is that it’s Trump who’s not infectious right now, even though his illness is the supposed reason the original debate was cancelled. Meanwhile, it’s Biden who apparently has had some possible exposure.

Today’s Hunter Biden news

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From today’s NY Post article:

Biden was identified as “Chair / Vice Chair depending on agreement with CEFC,” an apparent reference to the former Shanghai-based conglomerate CEFC China Energy Co.

His pay was pegged at “850” and the email also noted that “Hunter has some office expectations he will elaborate.”

In addition, the email outlined a “provisional agreement” under which 80 percent of the “equity,” or shares in the new company, would be split equally among four people whose initials correspond to the sender and three recipients, with “H” apparently referring to [Hunter] Biden…

The deal also listed “10 Jim” and “10 held by H for the big guy?”

Neither Jim nor the “big guy” was identified further.

In a different deal with a Chinese company:

According to a report on Biden’s overseas business dealings released last month by Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a company called Hudson West III opened a line of credit in September 2017.

Credit cards issued against the account were used by Hunter, his uncle James Biden and James’ wife, Sara Biden, to purchase more than $100,000 “worth of extravagant items, including airline tickets and multiple items at Apple Inc. stores, pharmacies, hotels and restaurants,” the report said.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much more it would take me hours to cover it, but why reinvent the wheel? Here’s a post by Ace that lists quite a bit, with links. And here’s what Giuliani has to say – watch and judge for yourself:

I’m a bit surprised that YouTube is still allowing that video. We’ll see if it continues to be available.

And here’s another related post by Ace. Apparently the Biden camp is now taking this sketchy position (from Politico, link not given):

Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi [from Burisma, whose email to Hunter thanked him for giving Pozharskyi the opportunity to meet Joe], which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory. Pozharskyi did not respond to a request for comment.

I have more to say on all of this, but for now I’m going to tend to some things in my regular (non-blogging) life. Maybe tomorrow.

Of course, there probably will be more October surprises tomorrow. I’ve already lost count. For example, remember when Trump got his COVID diagnosis? Seems like years ago.

[ADDENDUM: See also this. Also, see this about how Steve Scully’s “I was hacked” defense falls apart.]

I was thinking about Watergate and the differences between then and now

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Being of a certain age, I remember Watergate as it unfolded in real time. My recollection is that, although it was slow to pick up steam, by the time of the hearings the nation was riveted by the spectacle. I certainly watched a great deal of it on television.

The other thing that stands out is the sense of relative unity, not just in the sense of watching together but also in terms of the political parties. Nixon’s conduct was considered egregious enough that both parties wanted him out, and the Republicans told him that they would not support him in an impeachment trial:

The release of the “smoking gun” tape destroyed Nixon politically. The ten congressmen who had voted against all three articles of impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee announced they would all support the impeachment article accusing Nixon of obstructing justice when the articles came up before the full House. Additionally, Rhodes, the House leader of Nixon’s party, announced that he would vote to impeach, stating that “coverup of criminal activity and misuse of federal agencies can neither be condoned nor tolerated”.

On the night of August 7, 1974, Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott and Congressman Rhodes met with Nixon in the Oval Office. Scott and Rhodes were the Republican leaders in the Senate and House, respectively; Goldwater was brought along as an elder statesman. The three lawmakers told Nixon that his support in Congress had all but disappeared. Rhodes told Nixon that he would face certain impeachment when the articles came up for vote in the full House; indeed, by one estimate, no more than 75 representatives were willing to oppose impeachment. Goldwater and Scott told the president that there were enough votes in the Senate to convict him, and that no more than 15 Senators were willing to vote for acquittal–not even half of the 34 votes he needed to stay in office.

And so he resigned.

Now Nixon’s conduct in Watergate seems mild in comparison to what we’ve seen in Russiagate from the Democrats and agencies such as the FBI, conduct that half the nation has either denied or just shrugged off, or perhaps even applauded. The so-called “soft coup” of Russiagate hasn’t been condemned by even a single Democrat, as far as I know. And most newspapers and other media outlets have been engaged in a coverup rather than trying to get to the bottom of it.

That says a lot about where our country is now, and it’s not good.

I sometimes wonder whether, if the parties had been reversed during Watergate – if a Democratic president had done the same things Nixon and company did – would the Democrats in Congress have gone to that president and said they would not support him, suggesting that he resign? There’s no way to know, but I think it more likely than not that the answer is “no.”

Of course, when a president resigns under such circumstances, the vice president takes over. That means that the presidency doesn’t change hands in terms of party. So the damage is less compared to a successful attempt to throw an election, which would result in the other party winning.

Originally, I think Russiagate was designed to prevent Trump from winning. But once he had won, the efforts to frame him were not necessarily engineered to remove him and replace him with Pence, although the Democrats would have been okay with that result. I believe the post-2016 efforts were mostly geared towards hampering Trump’s entire administration and disgracing him, setting the stage for a huge Democratic victory in 2020 (even the impeachment had that goal, because the Democrats knew they would be unable to remove him).

The general effort worked in the 2018 Congressional elections, although not as well as they’d hoped. And the jury is still out for 2020.