So, will the Democrats have a brokered convention?

The New Neo Posted on by

The idea’s all the rage. Since Wednesday’s debate, which has been widely (and bipartisanly, for the most part) considered a debacle, a host of articles has appeared predicting that the Democratic presidential nominee will be “none of the above” and will selected by the superdelegates and some fancy wheeling and dealing at the convention after the first ballot fails to choose an outright winner.

Here’s a fairly typical article on the subject.

I tend to be hesitant to make predictions. But hey, I sometimes make them anyway. I’m going to go out on a limb and say: I don’t think so. I think the nominee will be one of the present crew, most likely Bernie Sanders but not inevitably and necessarily Bernie Sanders.

I think the Democratic leaders’ calculation is this: they don’t really have a good candidate to draft, or one waiting in the wings. Hillary’s day is over. John Kerry is another old white man; he will be having a 77th birthday prior to inauguration day. And besides, he’s got all the charisma of Michael Bloomberg. Michelle Obama doesn’t want the job. And that leaves: nobody.

Plus, they don’t want to completely alienate Bernie’s supporters, whom they will need in order to win a national election.

I think they will be concentrating on keeping the House and winning the Senate. If they throw all their resources into that and succeed, they will be able to do three things. The first is to stop Trump from nominating more judges and justices of a conservative nature. That’s a big deal. The second is to prevent the passage of any legislation that could help Trump. And the third is to continue to investigate Trump and continue to impeach him.

They hope in that way to drive Trump crazy, drive the right crazy, and have Trump go down in that big book of history they intend to write as the only president to have been repeatedly impeached. And the next time they impeach him, if they also control the Senate in addition to the House, they’ll get a majority of votes for conviction, because this is done strictly by party and not be any principle. They won’t get the requisite two-thirds for removal, but that’s okay by them if they can accomplish all the rest.

The left can wait and is patient. It’s in this thing for the long haul.

Fighting the left: content vs. process

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”.]

Interesting article:

Capitalism, according to Marx, is filled with contradictions, all of which guarantee its eventual failure. One example is the belief that capitalists, seeking every greater profits, will increase the “immiseration” of the working class, which will in turn encourage “revolutionary consciousness,” leading to the downfall of the capitalist system. This leads to the idea of “heightening he contradictions” – encouraging matters so as to bring about the emergence of the glorious worker’s paradise even sooner. This involves activities – both propaganda and direct action – that increase anxiety and dissatisfaction among the workers while generating isolation, fear, and doubt in the targeted classes.

[This] is true of any…“senseless” or “irrational” leftist program. None of them, whether they involve introducing transsexualism to schools or placing jihadis in Congress, occurred by accident. They were meant to happen exactly the way they did, to heighten the contradictions.

How has conservatism responded? It hasn’t. In fact, there’s no sign that conservatives, mired in the Cold War interpretation of communism, have any idea that the concept [of “heightening the contradictions”] exists. The contradictions tactic is next to universal and ever-present in any leftist effort or scheme, but far from having workable countermeasures, traditional American conservatives have been utterly oblivious.

Open any conservative magazine, access any website, go through the archives of any conservative think tank, and you will find myriads of articles, blogs, and papers dealing with the issues mentioned above. All of them contain precise, carefully researched information, well-crafted arguments, all bulge with quotes from Tocqueville, Chesterton, and Russell Kirk. All of it is excellent of its kind, and all of it is utterly useless. Because that’s not where the battle is being fought. The Left isn’t interested in rational arguments, but in bringing the temple down.

What’s the solution? The answer is simplicity itself — argue the strategy. Instead of constructing lapidary responses, start out by stating bluntly and straightforwardly that this isn’t about transsexuals, or immigrants, or race, or whatever. What it’s about, first and foremost, is a method of attacking this country and its people, an effort to make an end run around the rules without admitting they’re doing any such thing. The record is clear that the Left doesn’t actually give a damn about blacks, or women, or anybody else. The record is clear that the left is not interested in solutions. Once that is made evident, the battle will be half won. You will immediately throw leftists on the defensive, forcing them into a position of having to prove their bona fides – which they will not be able to do. It will also open up the debate to past efforts of a similar type. The ball will be in their court, and they will fumble it, as they always do.

I disagree that conservative writing focuses entirely on the content of the argument (“precise, carefully researched information”). Yes indeed, a lot of that exists. But I’ve seen plenty of articles that do exactly what the author says they don’t do: argue the strategy (otherwise known as process). How many articles by conservative authors have you read, for example, that discuss the left’s Cloward-Piven strategy, which is similar to heightening the contradiction? I’ve read many. Actually, I’ve even written many (see this). And I’ve certainly heard politicians who say or read articles that state that the left is a threat to our entire way of life and traditional institutions and values, and to liberty.

The problem is actually deeper and more difficult to solve, and it has to do with another leftist strategy: the Gramscian march through the institutions. We’ve discussed that here, too, and it’s been talked about in many other venues as well. One of those institutions is education, and another big one is the press. Conservative writers are mainly read by already-conservative readers, so they’re essentially preaching to the choir. Most liberals I know have never read a conservative article or watched or listened to a conservative talk show in their lives. They shudder if you even suggest it. So how are they going to pay any attention to what conservatives write or conservatives say?

President Trump doesn’t seem to be into a lot of reading or writing about conservative philosophy about leftism, either. At least, I don’t think he is. But he feels some of it in his bones. And he’s a populist who has a huge Twitter following that is not controlled by the MSM or the school system. Therefore he’s able to reach more people than the more typical conservative writers who write those content and/or process articles about leftism.

It is also easier, much easier, for a person who has actually lived in a leftist regime such as Eastern Europe under the USSR to appreciate its perils and the lies inherent in its seductive call. Most Americans have no idea how this works, and that’s another reason the conservative message may tend to fall on deaf ears.

There’s nothing like personal experience. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

Roger Stone is sentenced

The New Neo Posted on by

He gets forty months, which is three and a third years:

GOP operative Roger Stone was sentenced to more than three years in prison on Thursday after days of drama ensnaring career prosecutors, the attorney general and the president over how severe Stone’s punishment should be for making false statements to investigators during the Trump-Russia probe.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson, while taking a firm stance toward Stone in the courtroom, also said the up to nine years originally sought by federal prosecutors was excessive. Her sentence of 40 months in prison was considerably less than that — yet far more than the probation sought by his defense and certainly tough enough to keep speculation alive about a possible pardon from President Trump.

In court, Jackson repeatedly made clear she holds Stone responsible for his circumstances, as his lawyers sought leniency.

“Mr. Stone lied,” Jackson said. She also said Stone injected himself “smack” into a political controversy and was not “persecuted.”

The fact that Jackson said the original 9 years was excessive will either be ignored by the left or taken as evidence that she was tainted by Trump’s and Barr’s comments. But it’s the simple truth: it was excessively excessive, and even the left must know that although they’ll never admit it.

However, that’s not what the problem is right now. The problem is twofold. First, the jury foreman and probably several other jurors in his case were extremely biased against him. Second, until other far more important liars such as Brennan, McCabe, Comey, and others are prosecuted for their far more important lies, Stone’s conviction and sentence is just another example of our two-tiered justice system.

I had originally thought Stone was in custody, but that was my error. He’s free on bond.

Next step is that the judge will decide “whether to grant the defense’s motion for a new trial over claims of juror bias.” Let me guess: no, she won’t.

Trump has tweeted the following:

Trump can always pardon Stone if he wishes. But he almost certainly won’t do so while Stone is free, and until the appeals go through the system. That should take Trump up to the election and beyond, and if the appeals don’t work I imagine he will pardon him.

A few words about the debate I didn’t watch

The New Neo Posted on by

I didn’t watch – I’m not that much of a glutton for punishment – but I hear tell about it.

Sounds as though there was a lot of ripping of Bloomberg. That was to be expected. Warren was apparently especially cutting about some things he’s alleged to have said thirty years ago, although we don’t know whether he actually said them or the context in which they were uttered. For example, were they jokes? The PC standards for an acceptable joke has changed a lot in the last 30 years:

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women ‘fat broads’ and ‘horse-faced lesbians,’” she said. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump, I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”

The “horse-faced lesbians” comment appears to be a reference to a 1990 booklet, “Wit and Wisdom,” of Bloomberg’s supposed sayings compiled by his former colleagues and employees for his birthday.

That’s gotta smart in today’s atmosphere within the Democratic Party.

And Buttigieg and Klobuchar went at each other. Both of them are trying to occupy the “supposedly electable moderate” seat that Bloomberg feels could be his instead. Unfortunately for all of them right now, it’s Bernie who’s the frontrunner because so many of the party’s voters have become strongly leftist. The assumption of many panicked members of the Democrats’ establishmen is that if Bernie had only one opponent (instead of many) who was more moderate than he is (which shouldn’t be all that hard to find), that opponent would get a majority of the votes. But that assumption might be false, because Bernie (who to me is an acquired taste I have not and never will acquire) seems to have major drawing power.

He’s sincere, don’t you see. People don’t like phonies. But what is Bernie sincere about? Socialism. His sincerity shouldn’t make that all right.

The trouble with all the “moderate” candidates is that (a) they’re not charismatic (b) they’re not really moderate; and (c) anything they might say that would appeal to true moderates makes them anathema to a great many voters in their party.

On the bias of DC courts and what to do about it

The New Neo Posted on by

The problem is this:

“When the District of Columbia is the venue for any prosecution with political overtones, Justice Department charging decisions must factor in the jury pool, which is solidly anti-Trump,” observed former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy…

Justice still awaits government officials who illegally leaked classified information to the media to defame Michael Flynn and Carter Page three years ago. The signers of unlawful FISA applications, including Comey and McCabe, have thus far escaped the “fair administration” of the law while their victim, Page, must live with the consequences of their malfeasance.

No, the only people who have paid a price are associates of Donald Trump. The justice system situated in our nation’s capital is toxic, destructive, and demonstrably unfair.

Barr should move any trial out of Washington—West Virginia or North Carolina, perhaps?—and at least give the accused a fighting chance. Contrary to what Barr’s detractors insist, that’s the only way to legitimately execute impartial justice and restore the rule of law.

It’s been a long long time since I knew much of anything about the rules governing the choice of court venues. And what I once did know is probably quite outdated. So I can’t say exactly what the obstacles would be to such a move. If the decision would be in the hands of the DC US District Court itself, that’s an obvious problem. I don’t know how much leeway Barr or anyone else has. A brief search for clarity on the subject has failed to yield any relevant information so far, but I invite anyone who knows something about it to post in the comments.

I did find this extremely prescient article from a year ago, about how biased Stone’s jury was likely to be. Please read the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:

U.S. District Court in Washington chooses jury pools strictly from deep-blue D.C. boundaries, a place the president calls “the swamp.”

The Constitution’s Sixth Amendment mandates an “impartial jury.” His 12 jurors would not necessarily be a jury of Mr. Stone’s peers…

Washington has no elected Republican, the last GOP city council member leaving in 2009. Republicans make up just 6 percent of registered voters.

Hillary Clinton garnered 91 percent of the vote in 2016; Mr. Trump 4 percent…

“I think it’s hopeless for Roger Stone to find an impartial jury in Washington, but I’ve lost all faith in the U.S. justice system,” Michael Caputo, a longtime Stone friend and a former Trump campaign adviser, told The Washington Times…

Sidney Powell [who later became Flynn’s appeals lawyer, in June of 2019), an appeals court attorney who has criticized Mr. Mueller’s tactics, told The Times, “It will be impossible for Stone to find an impartial jury in Washington. He should be given a change of venue to some place in the heartland of the country. Washington has become a cesspool of political corruption.”

And this is how Paul Manafort’s request to move his trial fared:

Kevin Downing, who represents former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort, asked that his trial in Alexandria be moved to Roanoke, Virginia…

U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III turned down the motion.

[ADDENDUM: See this for how jury selection objections went during Stone’s trial:

Jury selection got off to a slow start, with the judge denying most of the requests by defense lawyers to exclude potential jurors they fear could be biased against Stone.

At the outset of Tuesday’s proceedings, Jackson said she would not agree to strike prospective jurors just because they work for the federal government or because they have opinions about Trump.

That warning did not stop Stone’s lawyers from trying to strike the very first one, a woman who once served as a communications director for the White House Office of Management and Budget under Democratic President Barack Obama and whose husband is a Justice Department national security attorney.

‘She said credibly she doesn’t have an opinion on this case,’ Jackson said as she denied the motion.

The judge also blocked subsequent efforts by Stone’s defense to strike prospective jurors who worked for the IRS and the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of whom acknowledged she had voted against Trump.

‘Donald Trump is the chief executive for whom these individuals work,’ Jackson said.

Some prospective jurors were excluded because they indicated the could not put aside their dislike of Trump.

‘I think he’s very corrupt,’ one prospective juror said of Trump.

In other words, as long as a prospective juror said he or she could put aside his/her existing hatred of Trump and all his associates, it was okay with Jackson.

I don’t know whether there was also a request for change of venue. But my hunch is that there may have been – and that, if so, it was denied by Jackson.]

Chrissie Hynde speaks out for something that used to be ordinary but is now getting to be extraordinary

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m referring to the idea that differences of opinion about politics are okay, and people can love one another despite them.

Here’s what I’m talking about:

On Twitter, the Ohio-born singer [who was the lead singer of the rock group The Pretenders] wrote of her dad’s WWII service and the fact that he loved listening to Rush.

But there was more, and buckle up for this one, America: She and her father often…disagreed.

Yes — and it was okay.

Furthermore, people who can’t tolerate disagreement…well, it sounds like they’re lame.

“An open Letter to @realDonaldTrump, President of the United States.

Dear Mr. President,

I often think of how much my father, Melville “Bud” Hynde, who proudly served his country as a Marine on Guadalcanal, would have enjoyed your Presidency. The other day when you gave that award to Rush Limbaugh, my father would have been so delighted. He loved listening to Rush, which is why I allowed my song, “My City Was Gone,” to be used on his radio show. My father and I didn’t always see eye-to-eye. We argued a lot. But isn’t that the American way? The right to disagree without having your head chopped off?”

It’s sad that for someone on the left to express thoughts like Hynde’s now rates a blog post. But I think it does.

Dueling “narratives”: 1776 vs. 1619

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter Artfldgr.]

A group called the Woodson Center has launched a counter-project to the NY Times’ “1619 Project” falsehoods:

As long as the perpetrators of race grievance that are represented by the 1619 Project are permitted to go unchallenged, this country will continue its social, spiritual, and moral decline.

“1776” has enlisted a group of black scholars and social activists who uphold the true origins of our nation and the principles through which its founding promise can be fulfilled. While acknowledging that slavery and discrimination are part of our nation’s history, we believe that America should not be defined solely by this “birth defect” and that black Americans should not be portrayed as perpetually helpless victims.

Rather than giving point-by-point counterarguments to the findings and conclusion of the 1619 Project, our focus will be to identify and highlight solutions, models of success in reviving our streets and communities, and actionable goals that should be pursued.

Key themes of “1776” will be to:

— Debunk the myth that present-day problems are inevitable results of our past, using evidence to confront the incomplete and misguided economic, historical, cultural, and religious positions taken by the 1619 Project. Specifically, debunking the myth that slavery is the source of present-day disparities and injustice. America should not be defined by its failures.
— Tell stories from the past and present of resilience and upward mobility. America should be defined by its promises.

The Woodson Center is headed by Robert Woodson Sr., a black Republican activist who is now 82.

Sounds like an extremely worthy goal. I wonder whether the schools of America will be receptive to it, given how far to the left they’ve steered, and how many of them have already adopted the 1619 propagandist curriculum.

Good documentaries

The New Neo Posted on by

Many years ago I wrote about the following documentary, but I just noticed that the entire thing is on YouTube. I recommend it to anyone interested in the 1972 Andes plane crash survival story, or survival stories in general.

It’s mostly a documentary, with some good interviews and photos of the mountainous location. It also features some excerpts from the Hollywood movie about the incident. I never liked the movie at all, but it’s only a small part of the documentary and I think not too distracting:

If memory serves me, this is an even better documentary, but only the trailer is available on YouTube:

You can’t even buy it from Amazon. The only place I’ve found it for sale is here.

Trump grants pardons and commutations

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump grants clemency to Eddie De Bartolo Jr., Blagojevich, Keric, Milken, and others. Blagojevich had his sentence commuted (after serving eight years) and the rest were pardoned, along with clemency in other less high-profile cases. There is a big difference between a commutation and a pardon, because in the former the sentence of guilt remains.

I previously wrote (in 2018) about Trump’s previous pardons and his plans to commute Blagojevich’s sentence here.

Milken’s conviction is something I hadn’t previously studied. It occurred way before the time I had any special interest in politics (see this). But some of the comments on Milken at that Instapundit link are of interest in terms of what’s been happening in the law these days, such as for example this one:

Probably forgotten in all this is that the Feds got Milken to plead guilty on reduced charges by threatening to indict and prosecute Milken’s brother for crimes that guaranteed him a very long prison sentence. This is, of course, the same despicable tactic Fed prosecutors used on General Michael Flynn. I’m sure the parallel in the two cases is not lost on Trump.

I got a late start today and haven’t had time to look into whether that’s true or not, but I have little doubt that some commenters here will have opinions on it.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s a whole lot more about the Blagojevich case, by William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection.]

Judge Amy Brennan Jackson plans to go full steam ahead with sentencing Stone

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote:

Once upon a time, this sort of [juror] bias [as evidenced by Tomeka Hart] would have been something liberals would have recognized as disqualifying. But now, since it hurt Trump and Stone, I predict that the judge, Obama appointee Amy Berman Jackson (who presided over the Manafort trial as well as the Stone trial) will not see it that way.

So today we have this exceedingly unsurprising news, via The Hill:

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to delay Roger Stone’s sentencing amid the fallout over the Trump administration’s decision to intervene in the case against the president’s longtime ally.

The sentencing will move forward on Thursday at its originally scheduled time, the judge said, despite a new effort from Stone’s defense team to get a new trial.

Note the way the entire thing is framed. Those are the first two paragraphs of the story, and the focus is on Trump’s comments (which Barr said did not influence him) rather than anything about Hart. It’s obvious why it’s written that way.

The article doesn’t go into just why Stone’s attorneys are asking for a new trial until paragraph number seven, which goes like this:

It’s unclear what grounds Stone’s legal team is citing in its request for a new trial, but one of the lawyers acknowledged to The Hill last week that it was investigating the social media activity of a member of the jury.

Note how neutrally Hart’s rampant bias is described: “social media activity.” One would think they might just be objecting to her having a Facebook page and posting photos of her vacations.

Then we get to paragraph eight:

Right-wing Stone supporters seized on posts from Tomeka Hart, who served as foreperson for the trial jury, as evidence of bias against the administration after she came forward last week in defense of the prosecution.

I think the authors of that sentence/paragraph from the Hill piece should get an award from the American Association of Subtle Propaganda Writers. It’s really a thing of beauty, designed to get readers to discount such objections (see yesterday’s post of mine for example of what Hart actually wrote).

So, it was “right-wing Stone supporters” who criticized Hart? Like good old Democratic voter Jonathan Turley, who wrote:

[Tomeka Hart] referred to the President with a hashtag of “klanpresident” and spoke out against “Trump and the white supremacist racists.” She posted about how she and others protested outside a Trump hotel and shouted, “Shame, shame, shame!” When profanities were projected on the Trump hotel, she exclaimed on Jan. 13, 2018, “Gotta love it.” On March 24, 2019, she shared a Facebook post — no longer public — while calling attention to “the numerous indictments, guilty pleas, and convictions of people in 45’s inner-circle.”

More worrisome are her direct references to Stone, including a retweeted post, in January 2019, from Bakari Sellers, again raising racist associations and stating that “Roger Stone has y’all talking about reviewing use of force guidelines.” She also described Trump supporters such as Stone as racists and Putin cronies…

It certainly seems Hart had no place on the Stone jury. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declared that the “minimal standards of due process” demand “a panel of impartial, indifferent jurors.” Hart’s record suggests little that is impartial or indifferent. She was perfectly within her right to engage in such commentary and protests — but she had no right to sit in judgment of an associate of the president after her public declarations. Her participation raises serious arguments for setting aside the verdict, from the possibility of ineffective counsel to the denial of due process.

Turley is far from being a “right-wing Stone supporter.” What he is, however, is a person who loves the rule of law and tries to defend and support it impartially. And he is not alone; many of the people who are pointing out Hart’s bias are not what you’d call “Stone supporters,” although the authors of that Hill piece would have you think so, the better to discount the criticism of Hart.

Then of course, we have one of the favorite MSM verbs: “seized” (variant: “pounced”), as in “right-wing Stone supporters seized on posts from Tomeka Hart.” It indicates some sort of desperate, aggressive attention to something relatively innocuous.

And the Hill authors conclude this short-but-fully-packed sentence this way: “as evidence of bias against the administration after she came forward last week in defense of the prosecution.”

That is literally true; it is indeed when Hart’s social media posts were spotlighted. But the implication is that these “right-wing supporters” of Stone’s suddenly seized on Hart’s previously ignored posts only because she had the nerve to support the stalwart Stone prosecutors. But actually, until she outed herself at that point, no one had any idea what her identity was and therefore no one was able to scrutinize and criticize her social media posts for bias until her defense of the prosecution revealed her identity.

That is conveniently left out of the article entirely. And it goes on to talk about Trump again, and his criticism of the prosecution team.

There is also mention of this:

Jackson said that she has not decided whether to have a hearing on the defense motion, but said that it would be best to move forward with Thursday’s hearing and delay the sentence from going into effect until the motion is decided.

What’s the big old rush to sentence Stone? Has she really not decided on the motion? I would be astounded, utterly astounded, if she were to grant it. I think she just wants to get this over with and hopes the attention is away from her when she refuses to grant the motion. Otherwise, why not delay the sentencing a little while, if there’s any hope of granting a new trial?

I am going to assume that if things go as I predict, this case will be appealed and may wind up in the hands of SCOTUS. Meanwhile, Roger Stone will be in prison for less than the sort of thing that earned Andrew McCabe a nice gig with CNN.

Old home movies

The New Neo Posted on by

I recently bit the bullet and finally sent out some reels of old home movies to be converted to video files. I was worried that the films would be lost or destroyed, or the lesser but still significant worry that the copies would be of very poor quality.

Neither fear came to pass. But the anxiety was very real because these films are quite literally irreplaceable. No doubt you have old films, too, and they are irreplaceable, but mine are especially valuable, I think. And it’s not just because they’re mine, but because they are so very old. I have home movies of both sides of my family taken in the 1920s, when home movies were exceedingly rare.

On my father’s side, his brother was a camera buff and that explains it. On my mother’s side, some friend happened to take a reel of my family and gave it to them, and it ended up spliced on the larger reel. Everyone in these films is dead, sometimes long dead. Many of them – my paternal grandparents, for example – I never met.

My paternal grandfather died in the late 1920s while still in his fifties. I only have two photos of him, studio portraits of a dark, elegant, slender man with high cheekbones and a solemn look. But there are about twenty seconds of him in the movie – sitting, turning, smiling a small smile, talking to my grandmother (who also died before I was born, although in the 1940s), and looking a tiny bit less inscrutable because I can see his body language in a movie, something invisible in the photos.

He smokes what a friend told me looks like a cheroot. In fact, in this particular reel of film (running about 15 minutes and going from the 1920s to the 1940s) half the people are smoking. The rest of the time they are eating, often cakes. And yet they are quite slender for the most part, perhaps because of all the smoking.

They are also tremendously well-dressed. My grandfather, who had financial struggles, is at the park. And yet he wears a rather nice-looking suit. The women are dressed in dresses throughout, and heels, even for fairly casual occasions or a child’s birthday party. They look like models, very elegant.

And young. So achingly young. My parents wedding reception (1940) takes up a goodly portion of the film, and it chokes me up to see their youth and innocence.

And don’t get me started on my other grandmother, the one I knew and loved, who died when I was nineteen years old. Even writing this brings tears to my eyes.

Watch out for those old movies; get out that box of Kleenex.