Plan ahead:
That Whitmer kidnapping trial looms
I’ve covered this topic already in many posts, but here’s a newer article that focuses on some of the corruption of the FBI agents and informants involved in entrapping the Michigan Whitmer kidnapping defendants. I use the word “entrapping” purposely, because I have become convinced that’s what went on.
Here are two sentences from the article that I want to highlight:
That situation is complicated by the fact that the case has become a political lightning rod, with right-wing commentators calling it a prime example of government overreach. Some even baselessly assert that the Michigan investigation was a test run for what they claim was a false flag operation conducted on Jan. 6.
Typical, typical. We call it “baseless,” so just trust us – we don’t actually have to look to the stated basis for the claims to which we refer. Plus, “right-wing commentators” – say no more; must be false, right?
But if you’re been following the case, the main go-to guy for the entrapment claims is Glenn Greenwald, who is anything but a “right-wing commentator.” In fact, if he has any political leanings at all, he’s always been on the left, although he’s primarily libertarian (but a left libertarian). And you be the judge as to the strength of his thesis about entrapment, the Michigan plot, and the January 6th demonstrations. I find his arguments quite compelling; for example, please read this, and he’s written plenty more on the subject. You can also find many of my own posts about the issue here.
The word “baseless” and the contention that it’s only “right-wing” people making this claim acts as a signal to readers to ignore any such claims. We see the use of that technique many times, because it’s a favorite of the left and the MSM – and it works.
Some of the Whitmer kidnapping defendants seem to be facing possible life sentences. The defense of entrapment – which I assume they will raise – is very hard to prove; the law favors law enforcement (the FBI) in such cases. It’s a golden opportunity for government to launch the infiltration of marginal groups, encourage foolish young men (it’s usually young men) who otherwise would not be committing crimes to plan said crimes, led and egged on by the FBI and their informants, and then to slam them with the possibility of very serious prison time. It’s been going on for a long long time – even back when I was in law school, and it disturbed me then. Back then the targets were on the left, after 9/11 they were Muslims, and now they’re white guys on the fringe right.
Biden has lost the approval of many voters under 30, but…
…before you think this is great news, take a look at the reasons.
For “some,” it’s because he hasn’t been quick enough or thorough enough in implementing the full leftist wishlist:
According to YouGov/The Economist polling, support for President Biden among Americans under 30 has taken quite the beating this year — an average of just 29 percent of these young voters now approve of the job Biden’s doing as president, compared with an average of 50 percent who disapprove. That net rating of -21 points “is the worst for any age group,” writes The Economist…
Some respondents told YouGov the president hadn’t yet done enough to combat issues of climate change and health care; others cited Biden’s unfulfilled student debt promises as reasons for disapproval.
From that Economist link:
This is a sharp reversal from the beginning of the year, when young voters gave Mr Biden a net approval rating 32 points higher than older people did. And Mr Biden is falling out of favour fastest with the youngest groups.
However, if young voters stay away from voting for whatever reason – even if it’s Biden’s failure to be leftist enough – that’s not good for Biden and it could be good for the GOP. And then of course Biden may not run in 2024 – and/or his opponent may be Trump again, who seems to “energize” young voters to vote for his opponent, even if it’s Biden.
Then again, what is this “some respondents” bit? What percentage of respondents? Isn’t this a poll? Where are the actual figures?
Not that it matters so much. Polls have lost much of their power to persuade, they’ve been wrong so often. Then again, they do tend to be able to show trends, and my sense is that Biden’s falling numbers are a real trend.
Vox and public health officials struggle to make Omicron sound really scary…
…and fail.
The omicron variant, the latest curveball in the pandemic, may lead to less severe cases of Covid-19 than earlier strains of the coronavirus, according to one of the largest real-world studies of omicron released so far.
That’s good news, but it could be overshadowed by other data showing that the variant is far more contagious than any version of the virus to date — and that it can evade some immune protection from vaccines and prior infection.
Taken together, these traits make for a counterintuitive situation: Omicron poses a lower risk to most individuals, at least for those who are vaccinated, but the threat to the overall population is high. The question now is whether omicron will infect so many people that it overwhelms the health care system and drives up hospitalizations and deaths — in spite of the smaller percentage of people who come down with severe disease.
Yoohoo Vox – perhaps you could tell us what that percentage might be? I don’t see that figure anywhere in the article, which continues this way:
The answer [to Omicron] is partly in our hands. The strategies that have contained Covid-19 throughout the pandemic still work against omicron, but governments, institutions, and individuals have to be willing to use them.
The strategies that have contained COVID? I haven’t seen too much about any such containment that is consistently related to one strategy or another. Correlation is not causation, etc, and at any rate many of the most draconian strategies seems to have occurred in the areas where COVID hit most seriously. But oh yes, we’ve got to keep going with this stuff…because…whatever.
The article cites a South African study:
The study showed that hospitalization risk was 29 percent lower with omicron infections compared to infections in South Africa last summer, even after controlling for vaccination status.
Once again, we are given no actual rates, just comparative rates.
More:
“One thing we found was that the patients were staying for a shorter time in hospital, and that was across all age groups recently, compared to over time,” said Harsha Somaroo, a public health medicine specialist at the University of the Witwatersrand. Somaroo is also an adviser to the health department of Gauteng, the South African province that has become the epicenter of the country’s omicron wave.
So Omicron isn’t only causing lower hospitalization rates, it also involves shorter hospital stays and less serious disease even among those who are hospitalized.
Nevertheless, Vox would like you to know:
Most US cases are still driven by the delta variant, but omicron could end up fueling a towering spike in hospitalizations and overwhelm the health system just as the winter respiratory infection season hits its peak.
A towering spike. Overwhelm the health system.
Still more:
But almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, public patience is wearing thin, and the will to pursue many tactics is fading. The news that omicron may be less severe than other variants could worsen a sense of complacency. It’s also a tough messaging challenge for public health officials.
“How do we confront this where many of us will be at relatively low risk if we end up getting infected — but the secondary impacts of an out-of-control wave that fills up the hospitals with cases … could be quite dire?” asked Lessler.
I’ll take that one: you can’t. People aren’t listening to you anymore. It’s not that we don’t respect the fact that COVID can kill; of course it can, and we’re aware of that. It’s just that the absolute risks seem quite low right now, and with Omicron they seem especially low. You’ve cried wolf on this “the hospitals will be overwhelmed!” theme way too many times. We are tired of you.
So yes, it’s a “tough messaging challenge.” Too bad. Your grip on the public may finally be waning.
Open thread 12/17/21
Derek Chauvin pleads guilty to federal charges
I’ve written exhaustively on the subject of Derek Chauvin and the death of George Floyd. I’m not going to go into the details again here, but suffice to say that Chauvin was following police recommended procedure at the time, and there is an enormous amount of reasonable doubt that he actually caused Floyd’s death.
It was also clear pretty much from the start that Chauvin had been labeled a monster by the world, and that he would be convicted no matter how weak the evidence against him. In addition, for personality reasons, Chauvin just isn’t a naturally sympathetic defendant at all.
And so it came to pass.
It was also clear that the feds would be pursuing him, although it’s unusual to do so when the person has received such a long sentence as a result of state proceedings. So it’s no surprise whatsoever that Chauvin has realized that resistance is futile and he has pled guilty:
Chauvin also faced civil rights federal charges along with three other officers in Floyd’s death, as well as charges related to alleged abuse of a 14 year old during an arrest…
The NY Times reports:
“A federal prosecutor said in court that the government had reached a plea deal with Mr. Chauvin under which prosecutors would seek to have him imprisoned for 25 years. That sentence would run concurrently with his state sentence, meaning it would lengthen Mr. Chauvin’s prison term by about two and a half years.
“Under the proposed sentence and rules about credit for good behavior, the earliest Mr. Chauvin would be released from prison would likely be around 2042, when he would be in his mid-60s. The sentence will ultimately be up to a judge at a later hearing…
“The terms of the plea agreement call for Mr. Chauvin to serve his time in a federal prison, which is generally considered to be safer and could separate Mr. Chauvin from prisoners he may have arrested. The agreement would also prohibit Mr. Chauvin, who was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department one day after Mr. Floyd’s death, from ever working as a police officer again.”
That last sentence is especially absurd, since it’s obvious Chauvin could never work as a police officer again. Why on earth would he want to, and who would hire him? Plus, how many 65-ish-year-old police officers are there?
And what of that 14-year-old he is alleged to have abused? You may not remember, but that’s a case I wrote about at great length previously (last April), in a post titled “Why don’t they just stone Chauvin to death and get it over with?”. Please read it if you want to understand what was involved with that 14-year-old. As is often the case, the facts may surprise you.
“Build Back Better” is dead (for now), but HR1 may be undead
Joe Manchin has foiled the Democrats again – for now. by refusing to pass the monstrous Build Back Better bill:
Democratic senators now concede there is no chance of passing the Build Back Better Act before the end of the year, as they had hoped.
They may have “hoped” they would pass it, but there was never any indication that it could be passed, so the only news here is that Manchin hasn’t folded yet. Maybe he will do so later on, and maybe he won’t.
More:
But more importantly, there is also a chance the entire Build Back Better bill will have to be reworked to accommodate Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) opposition to including a one-year extension of the expanded child tax credit in the bill.
Manchin says he does not oppose the tax credit, which he has backed in past legislation. But he argues that because the credit is likely to be renewed over the next decade, its true cost is not reflected in the current bill’s official Congressional Budget Office score.
The West Virginia senator wants the bill to reflect the 10-year cost of the tax credit, which would require other tax hikes or spending cuts to prevent the official cost of the bill from rising heavily.
Is that his only objection? If so, why didn’t they already accommodate him? Well, perhaps it’s not his only objection:
The 10-year extension of the tax credit would cost about $1.5 trillion, but Manchin also wants to keep the overall cost of the bill at $1.75 trillion.
That means there would be little room for other Democratic priorities in the legislation, such as long-term home health care, generous child care subsidies, expanded Medicare benefits, universal prekindergarten and raising the cap on state and local tax deductions….
But there’s no clear path forward, because Manchin has made it clear that he’s not eager to pass the bill anytime soon and has thrown up various objections to different elements of the bill.
“Apparently, Manchin’s approach to this has changed a lot. I don’t know where he is today or where he’ll be tomorrow,” Durbin said.
This seems like nonsense to me. Even I have known for quite some time that Manchin has had multiple objections. In addition, I think that he’s not the only one in the Democratic Party worried about this bill. He’s just the one who can afford to say so. The others are too afraid.
Manchin holds a lot of power right now. That includes the power – if he should choose, although I don’t think he ever will – to switch parties and throw the entire Senate to Republican control.
If you recall the election of 2020, once the Senate got into Democratic hands, it was clear they had big big plans. But the foundation of those plans involved jettisoning the filibuster, which was necessary for almost all the rest, due to their exceedingly slim majority. The plan was: get rid of the filibuster, pass HR1 (the “voting rights” bill that took federal elections out of state hands and guaranteed opportunities for fraud), and then admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as states. With those three moves, the Democrats calculated – and correctly, I believe – that they would establish permanent control over the government. That would be Game, Set, Match – for the foreseeable future.
They were thwarted because Manchin and Sinema didn’t support nuking the filibuster. Yesterday there was news that this plan was undergoing a renaissance, and that there might be some agreement on the filibuster and a revival of the HR1 abomination. Well, today there’s this:
Of course, some Democrats are happy to get rid of the filibuster. The problem is that Sen. Sinema isn’t one of them. So Democrats have given up on trying to convince her to end the filibuster completely and are instead trying to pitch some kind of one-time workaround just for this voting bill. Instead of the nuclear option, this would be the tactical nuclear option:
“Manchin and Sinema both attended a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Sens. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Angus King (I-Maine), centrists who are advocating for a workaround to the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation…
“Democrats are no longer trying to scrap the filibuster altogether given Manchin’s and Sinema’s opposition. Instead, they’re pivoting to an attempt to sway the two moderates on a reform that could enable anti-gerrymandering and a restoration of the Voting Rights Act to evade the 60-vote requirement. The leading options include installing the talking filibuster, forcing the minority to hold the floor and continuously put up at least 41 votes to block legislation or an exception specific to the issue of elections and voting…
“In a statement to POLITICO, a spokesperson said that Sinema ‘continues to support the Senate’s 60-vote threshold, to protect the country from repeated radical reversals in federal policy which would cement uncertainty, deepen divisions, and further erode Americans’ confidence in our government.’”
One would think there would be more than one or two Democrats holding that position, and willing to do so publicly. But if one thought that, one would be wrong.
Open thread 12/16/21
Time for some new messaging: the polls must be really really bad for the Democrats
Hey, it’s cleanup time! For example:
San Francisco Democrat Mayor London Breed launched a crackdown on crime on Tuesday as the city grapples with a plague of rampant lawlessness exacerbated by soft-on-crime city leaders.
“It’s time that the reign of criminals who are destroying our city, it is time for it to come to an end,” Breed declared. “And it comes to an end when we take the steps to be more aggressive with law enforcement … and less tolerant of all the bullsh-t that has destroyed our city.”
The mayor’s plan includes a series of initiatives to implement a 180-degree reversal from blind compassion to “tough love.” Outlined in a Medium post, Breed’s proposals take aim at illegal drug sales and restore funding for police with targeted resources dedicated to the low-income Tenderloin neighborhood. The mayor calls for:
Executing an Emergency Intervention Plan in the Tenderloin neighborhood
Securing emergency police funding to ensure we have the resources to combat major safety problems over the next several months
Amending our surveillance ordinance so law enforcement can prevent and interrupt crime in real time — something they’re effectively barred from doing now — to better protect our homes and businesses
Disrupting the illegal street sales of stolen goods that have become a clear public safety issue and are contributing to retail theft
So it’s “time” now? Why wasn’t it “time” before all the destruction had been accomplished? The results of the soft-on-crime program were easy to predict. This is not rocket science. And of course, Breed doesn’t seem to be acknowledging that it was Breed herself who was in charge of the decline:
Just 18 months ago, Breed diverted $120 million in law enforcement funding to minority welfare programs. Coupled with a district attorney refusing to prosecute crime, the results have been devastating.
Duh.
Breed has been the city’s mayor since a special election held in July of 2018 and was acting major already in December 2017 (after her predecessor died). She was re-elected in November of 2019, for a four-year term.
I think the word has gone out to all Democrats: time to regroup and pretend we’re not responsible for the implosion of our cities into chaos and crime. Whether the person is up for re-election next November or (like Breed) not until the next year, it’s time for some “let’s fool the public into thinking we are not responsible for the mess America’s in.”
You see it almost everywhere, and it includes a group of sudden statements that the COVID pandemic is over, or at least somewhat over, or at least not needing the Draconian measures on which the Democrats have insisted for two years.
“The depths of human depravity are bottomless”
One of the hallmarks of the character Iago in Shakespeare’s “Othello” is that his evil is left somewhat unexplained. Unlike most people who do evil, he seems to have no clear motive for his actions other than to do evil (although some people have come up with a few). You might say that Iago represents a pure evil impulse:
He remains famously reticent when pressed for an explanation of his actions before he is arrested: “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. From this time forth I never will speak word.”…
Shakespearean critic A. C. Bradley said that “evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the evil character of Iago”, and also states that he “stands supreme among Shakespeare’s evil characters because the greatest intensity and subtlety of imagination have gone into his making.” The mystery surrounding Iago’s actual motives continues to intrigue readers and fuel scholarly debate.
You might say that Iago was a psychopath, but giving it a name doesn’t really explain much. Suffice to say that certain evildoers seem to be like that.
Which brings us to commenter John Tyler’s observation:
The Russians wanted the Czars gone; they got their wish and in came Lenin and Stalin. The latter being the worst mass murderer in world history (up until Mao of China came along.) Note that the body count of Stalin’s murderous policies did NOT deter USA born / raised and highly educated Americans from spying FOR Stalin.
The depths of human depravity are literally bottomless; and here I am referring to the Americans who spied for Stalin.
But was this actually depravity on their part, or just hideously poor judgment and then subsequent rationalization and denial? You may ask what difference it makes, and I agree that in the practical sense it makes no difference at all. They enabled, aided, and abetted evil. But in the philosophical/psychological sense – and that’s the sense I’m discussing here – it seems to me that “depravity” isn’t really what many of them were about. They believed they were doing good in the end.
That they were incredibly wrong, almost indescribably wrong, is also the case. But one of the strengths of evil, and one of the reasons it can take hold in an entire country like the USSR, is not only that “good men do nothing” but that some otherwise “good” mean and women convince themselves that some bad things must be done in order to finally emerge into the Utopian light.
Of course, one thing of which people should be aware is that any belief in Utopia is a danger sign that evil lurks under sheep’s clothing. But that takes more wisdom than most people have.
This is a version of an argument we’ve had on this blog many times before. I expect a lot of people will disagree with me. But if evil regimes depended solely on supporters who were evil and wished to do evil, they would never acquire the power they do. Sayings such as “the road to hell is paved with good intentions” exist for a reason.
Open thread 12/15/21
How did I first come across this piece of music? When I was a child I saw “The Moor’s Pavane” by modern dance choreographer Jose Limon, and the music got my attention perhaps more than the choreography. It was a puzzling dance piece for a child – a spare and mime-like re-enactment of “Othello,” a play with a plot I didn’t know. But Limon, who danced the part of Othello, had undeniable power and menace in his movements and even his stillness.
Fortunately, YouTube has an old film of the work with Limon in it. I’ve excepted the part that corresponds to the musical movement I’ve featured above, with a few introductory bars in which Iago tries to influence Othello:
A look back: on desperately wanting to elect Joe Biden
Yesterday I happened across this article by Alex Wagner that appeared on March 24, 2020 in The Atlantic. It’s entitled “Stay Alive, Joe Biden,” and the subtitle is this revealing sentiment: “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence.”
Think about that – the idea of a figurehead president was fully envisioned and fully accepted, right around the time that Biden was finally seeming to be the nomination frontrunner. Nothing more was necessary; certainly not that certain something known as “leadership.” It was okay that Biden do nothing and be unable to do anything competently. The idea was apparently that (a) getting rid of Trump at the helm would magically solve all problems; and (b) the country could just about run itself after that, as long as Democrats were in control.
That’s not just hubris, that’s hubris squared.
Here are a few excerpts from Ms. Wagner’s piece:
Voters seem to have coalesced around Biden for his past—who they have known him to be for the past four decades in American politics—rather than for anything in his present. It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate.
That certainly was true, as far as it went. I think it’s dangerous; Wagner thought it just fine, as long as the idea contained the words “not Trump.”
More:
if you were on the campaign trail for the past three months, what struck you was not Biden’s organization (there was little), or his resources (there were few), or even the campaign messaging (Joe Biden has been—and forever will be—Joe Biden). What was striking was the sense of anguish and urgency articulated by everyone, everywhere, all the time. And that was before the pandemic.
The “anguish and urgency” was indeed felt by most of the Democrats I know. Trump was so obviously terrible, so profoundly and distressingly evil and destructive, that anyone who could replace him was perfectly fine with them. Where did this anguish come from? Not from anything that was actually happening as a result of Trump – unless they bought the bizarre and evidence-free idea that if only Trump had not been president COVID wouldn’t have taken hold (obviously, since it took hold in most of the Western world, that could not possibly be true – and as Wagner rightly observes, this attitude of sheer desperation predated COVID).
The anguish was purposely drummed up by a combination of the MSM and the Democrats, and was fed and watered by a series of their egregious lies. During Trump’s presidency, it was so obvious to me that things were going relatively well – much better than I had expected – that for a while I actually entertained the thought that even some Trump-hating Democrats might notice and be glad. That was obviously an error, one that became apparent fairly quickly.
More from Wagner:
There were the Bernie Sanders supporters on the campus of Florida International University who told me, however reluctantly, that they would vote for Biden because Donald Trump had to be stopped. There were the soccer moms canvassing for Amy Klobuchar in Johnson, Iowa, who made clear that their primary concern (more than Amy’s chances) was whether Trump was going to get reelected. There were the Culinary Workers Union members in Las Vegas who hadn’t been fired up by any candidate in particular, but who told me they felt as if they faced an existential threat from the Trump administration—and that was enough to drive them to the voting booth and pull the lever. There were the older black voters in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who woke up at 7 a.m. to check out Michael Bloomberg, mostly because they were worried that Biden was slipping, and Trump had to be removed—and if Joe couldn’t do it, they said, then they had to find someone else who would.
I wonder how the Las Vegas Culinary Union members are doing these days. I assume they still exist, and so the “existential threat” they faced from Trump’s continued presidency has been averted.
Now comes the heart of the matter as far as Wagner and all the others were concerned. As usual for this sort of list, no examples are given for each of these Trumpian traits. They are considered so obvious, so well-understood and repeatedly proven to the satisfaction of anyone with a functioning brain and moral sense, that no examples were needed:
Ending the Trump presidency — because of the lies, the cruelty, the indignities, the misogyny, the incompetence, the fraudulence, the corruption, the clownishness, the recklessness, the lawlessness, the selfishness, oh, the list went on — that was something that united men and women across the United States and left them in a state of anguish…
…Democrats—some independents, and some Republicans too—were terrified and furious at the prospect of another four years of Donald J. Trump.
That carefully-cultivated “state of anguish” – a sort of delusional hysteria – was not just important to a 2020 victory for the Democrats; it was necessary, and they knew it. For the rest of us, on the outside looking in, it was a lesson in how Orwell wasn’t far off when he described the Two Minutes Hate and its unifying effects, and how something somewhat similar could be employed to influence and guide a modern voting public, and people who consider themselves intelligent and sophisticated.
Whether or not you think Biden won fair and square in 2020 or because of fraud, it hardly matters to the point I’m attempting to make. The reality is that many millions of people, close to half the country if not over half the country, voted for a man who was clearly not up to the task, and rejected the man who was and who had been doing a rather good job by the usual objective measures.
One of the reasons they talked themselves into doing this was that they did not think it necessary to have any skills in order to be president – and by “skills” I mean any record of having made good decisions in forty or so years of public service. They seem to have thought that a country such as the US was on some sort of automatic pilot and would fly quite nicely without much guidance – again, as long as Democrats were in charge.
And indeed, those Democrats didn’t have to be chosen for skills or track records, either. They could all be chosen because they were “progressive” and checked certain demographic boxes. Kamala Harris would be a good example, but so could most of Biden’s Cabinet.
I can’t find anything recent that Alex Wagner has written about Biden. But his plummeting polls – even among Democrats – indicate that at least some people have finally noticed that more than a mere
“corporeal presence” might be necessary to steer the ship of state. Unfortunately, a great deal of damage has already been done, with no end in sight.