Schumer and impeachment, now and then

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the drawbacks of serving for a long time in public life is that we have the ability to compare a politician’s previous statements to his/her present ones. Sometimes it goes like this, if your name is Chuck Schumer, and you once were speaking of the Senate impeachment trial of Democrat Bill Clinton, and now you’re talking about the Senate impeachment trial of Republican Donald Trump:

McConnell had a reply:

“The Senate is meant to act as judge and jury, to hear a trial, not to re-run the entire fact-finding investigation because angry partisans rushed sloppily through it,” he said on the Senate floor.

Ouch.

Snowstorm, power outage

The New Neo Posted on by

Fun day so far. There’s a snowstorm and a power outage where I live. Plus, I had to take a friend back and forth from the hospital for a procedure. And so right now I’m in a hospital waiting room, connected to the internet. Isn’t modern life great?

So your intrepid blogger will be posting something today besides this little missive. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 6:15 PM: Back home, power on.

If I were still a Democrat and I listened to Comey’s interview yesterday with Chris Wallace, what would I think?

The New Neo Posted on by

I plan to fisk James Comey’s interview with Chris Wallace later today or perhaps tomorrow, but right now I want to say something else about it.

I couldn’t actually watch Comey or listen to the whole interview. That’s probably a subset of the fact that I generally prefer to read transcripts rather than watch/listen to such things, simply to save time as well as the better to ponder certain statements. And in this case I did read the whole thing. I like to watch some excerpts, though, in order to get a sense of affect and demeanor, which can be very important. So I watched some of Comey’s interview, too, although I feel a sense of revulsion when I watch him.

Certain people do that to me. It doesn’t always conform to whether they’re on “my side” politically or not – for example, John Kerry made my flesh crawl even way back in the 70s, when I was a Democrat. And so when I watched Comey I wondered what I would think of him and his interview if I were still a Democrat. Would his oozing self-righteous fake-humble arrogance still strike me that way? Would it seem as though he was lying through his teeth with every word, including “and” and “the”?

I can’t know for sure, but I believe I would still be mortified, embarrassed, and angry that I was lied to by this self-serving shifty buck-passing liar. I wonder how many Democrats feel that way, though.

Of course, a person has to know some facts about the FBI investigation in question, as well as Comey’s previous claims, to see where he’s lying and how much he’s lying. I don’t know how many people follow such things, but my guess is that the majority follow them at least somewhat. I also don’t think people generally like buck-passing from the head of an organization such as the FBI, and that’s what Comey attempted to do over and over in that interview.

Comey makes me think of Iago:

Iago is one of Shakespeare’s most sinister villains, often considered such because of the unique trust that Othello places in him, which he betrays while maintaining his reputation for honesty and dedication…

Iago is a Machiavellian schemer and manipulator, as he is often referred to as “honest Iago”, displaying his skill at deceiving other characters so that not only do they not suspect him, but they count on him as the person most likely to be truthful.

Shakespearean critic A. C. Bradley said that “evil has nowhere else been portrayed with such mastery as in the evil character of Iago”…

Bradley writes that Iago “illustrates in the most perfect combination the two facts concerning evil, which seem to have impressed Shakespeare the most”, the first being that “the fact that perfectly sane people exist in whom fellow-feeling of any kind is so weak that an almost absolute egoism becomes possible to them”, with the second being “that such evil is compatible, and even appears to ally itself easily, with exceptional powers of will and intellect”.

You may disagree that Comey has “exceptional intellect,” but he’s certainly an intelligent man, and a willful one.

Obama: if women ruled the world

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Obama:

If women ran every country in the world there would be a general improvement in living standards and outcomes, former US President Barack Obama has said.

Speaking in Singapore, he said women aren’t perfect, but are “indisputably better” than men.

I wonder whether Obama ever was involved in an organization run by women. I have been, several times, and my experience of such groups has been that they have involved incompetence and pettiness. Does that mean that always happens? I don’t know, but I can hereby say that in my life, men have been far better at running things.

And I’m a woman, in case you can’t see the photo for some reason. I don’t hate women – some of my best friends are, and all that – but I’ll tell you one huge pet peeve of mine: anyone saying that if women ran the world it would be a better place. I see zero evidence of that. I bring you as Exhibits A and B, Theresa May and Angela Merkel (then again, Margaret Thatcher was pretty good at “running” the UK – although I suppose Obama wouldn’t agree).

In fact, over the years I have often challenged people who tell me that if women ran things it would be better. The people who have said that to me have usually been women – but as Obama has demonstrated, the speakers are sometime men. I usually begin my response by mentioning my own experience, and asking them if they have ever been employed by or volunteered in or dealt with an agency or group run by women, and how did it go? The answer is rarely “really, really well.”

But I don’t like to generalize about what women would do in positions of power vs. what men would do. I think I was careful not to do so here, either, or in those discussions. I speak of my own experience not to say that it would always be the case that such organizations are a mess, but to say that my experience certainly disproves the idea that women necessarily are better at this sort of thing than men.

In fact, generalizing about such things is a subset of generalizing about what a particular person – an individual – would do based on his or her membership in a group, be it sex or race or religion or anything else. I hate such generalizing and try to evaluate each person on his or her own character and accomplishments. That used to be the thing we strove for in this country, remember? It’s not all that popular an approach now, is it?

Obama also said most of the problems in the world came from old people, mostly men, holding onto positions of power. Ha ha! He really must not like Joe Biden, I guess – or Bernie Sanders, or Mike Bloomberg. We already know he doesn’t like Trump.

And of course, Obama himself is starting to verge on – old. He’s 58, which to me is still a youngish person, but in a year and a half he’ll turn 60, which is starting to get up there.

Of course, Obama’s not clinging to power, bitterly or otherwise. Right? Right? Or perhaps he’s paving the way for his wife Michelle’s entry into the fray? I’ve never seen her as inclined in that direction, but I suppose anything’s possible in this 2020 campaign, with its terrible Democratic field.

The speedy news cycle and the Horowitz Report

The New Neo Posted on by

Have you noticed how fast the news cycle goes? Purposely so, with stories the press wants to bury but can’t quite bring itself to totally ignore.

Such as the Horowitz Report and Horowitz’s testimony. The MSM and the Democrats focused on it briefly right at the beginning, in order to highlight one small point: no evidence of bias found in the opening of the investigation. This was pitched as an exoneration, and the fact-findings that were the heart of the matter and that utterly condemned the FBI and exposed its repetitive anti-Trump wrongdoing were minimized or even ignored. Horowitz’s own testimony, which made clear that his report was no vindication whatsoever for the FBI but was a litany of “errors” that only went in one direction, has been overshadowed by breathless eagerness about the Democrats’ impeachment follies.

All of this is not accidental.

However, if you’re interested in reading a good summary of the major points made in the Horowitz Report, here it is.

It may make your blood boil, though. The lies told were pervasive, basic, and extremely disturbing.

Here’s something I had wondered about but not seen previously discussed: was there no FBI acknowledgement of the caution needed due to the unusual fact that Crossfire Hurricane involved the special circumstances of a presidential campaign and dirt delivered by the opposition? Was that situation treated the same as if they were dealing with a commonplace investigation and a commonplace target?

We [said the Report] were concerned to find that neither the AG [attorney general] Guidelines nor the DIOG [FBI’s Domestic Investigations Operations Guide] contain a provision requiring Department consultation before opening an investigation such as the one here involving the alleged conduct of individuals associated with a major party presidential campaign.”

Interesting.

While we did not find documentary or testimonial evidence of intentional misconduct on the part of the case agents who assisted OI in preparing the applications, or the agents and supervisors who performed the Woods Procedures we also did not receive satisfactory explanations for the errors or problems we identified.”

Emphasis mine in the following:

“The agents and SSAs also did not follow, or appear to even know, the requirements in the Woods Procedures to re-verify the factual assertions from previous applications that are repeated in renewal applications and verify source characterization statements with the CHS handling agent and document the verification in the Woods File.”

Fools and knaves. And they almost got away with it. Actually, for a while they did get away with it.

Melanie Phillips: the working class saved Britain

The New Neo Posted on by

An interesting piece by Melanie Phillips:

The stakes in this election were enormous, not just for Britain but for the world. Labour is led by the most far-left leadership in its history, supporting terrorists abroad and incubating virulent antisemitism at home. If elected it would have wrecked Britain’s economy, attacked the State of Israel and posed a mortal threat to the security of Britain, its Jewish community and the west.

It was defeated by a seismic shift which may just have redrawn the British political landscape for ever.

What happened was something most people had believed was unthinkable. As I observed on my own blog in September, however, a tectonic shift was under way in the Labour heartlands.

The white working class, those blue-collar workers who had been tribal Labour supporters for generations, voted en masse for the Conservatives for the first time ever.

It’s not just Phillips saying this. A lot of British pundits have observed that certain areas, where voters have been Labourites for just about forever, flipped in this election. Whether this is a long-lasting change is anyone’s guess, but it’s certainly a significant one.

And the parallels to the voters in the Rust Belt who put Trump over the top are obvious. Will that change hold, as well, in 2020? And more importantly, will it last past Trump’s presidency if he is re-elected in 2020?

Here is Phillips again:

Astoundingly, economically shattered communities with very high levels of poverty and unemployment, even former mining towns whose inhabitants had voted Labour virtually from the time the party was invented, all voted on Thursday for an Eton-educated, plummy-voiced toff in preference to the leader of the Labour party.

Why? Because the British working-class is deeply, passionately patriotic and attached to democracy. They are the very best of Britain. Time and again they have saved the country in its wars against tyranny by putting their lives on the line to defend what it stands for: their historic culture, institutions and values.

That’s why in the 2016 referendum they voted en masse for Brexit. And that’s why they felt so betrayed by the Labour party, which had been instrumental in stopping Brexit in parliament and trying to reverse the referendum result without admitting what it was doing…

It’s hard to exaggerate the anger by the Brexit-voting working-class at what they saw as an anti-democratic coup by Remainer Labour MPs who were determined to stop Brexit and spit in the eye of democracy.

These working-class voters also believe in hard work, responsibility and their own human dignity. They feel patronised and demeaned by welfare dependency, and have absolutely no time for the metropolitan liberals’ social agenda.

So there was a sense of betrayal as well as an anger at how far the left had gone. Plus, the left grievously insulted its own voters. Sound familiar?

[NOTE: A great deal of Phillips’ essay goes on to discuss the voting of Britain’s Jews. Some of what she says seems confusing. For example, after mentioning how frightened Britain’ Jews were of Corbyn, she then says (without presenting any evidence) that “most British Jews voted Remain.” I have looked at exit polls and seen no evidence of that, nor does Phillips offer any. But one thing is pretty certain: Britain’s Jews did NOT vote for Labour and Corbyn, whatever other party they may have voted for. I wrote a piece prior to the election based on polls that indicated that “94% of British Jews will vote for any party but Labour.”

Britain’s Jews don’t determine anything much in terms of their voting behavior, either, because there are very few of them. Just to give you a little example of what I mean, New York City has about three times as many Jews as all of Britain put together, as far as we can tell.]

[ADDENDUM: Apparently when Ms. Phillips wrote that “most British Jews voted Remain” she was referring to the original 2016 referendum vote. Regarding this recent vote from last week, I found some statistics indicating that British Jews had deserted the Labour Party by 2017 and in the recent election as well, voting Conservative instead.

Although Jews had voted about 2 to 1 for Remain in the 2016 referendum on the subject (according to this poll), by 2017 Corbyn and Labour had already come to alarm them. They were drawn to the Conservative Party from then on:

…67% of Jews voted for the Tories in the 2017 election, and a recent Survation poll finds that 64% will vote Conservative next month. Labour garnered only 11% of the Jewish vote in 2017 and Survation says support for Labour will slump to 6% this time.]

A little stroll down memory lane on the MSM and the dossier

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ace.]

How many of these people will ever apologize and/or correct? I rarely watch their shows so I don’t know for sure, but my money would be on “none of them.”

Impeachment theater du jour: in a move that should surprise exactly no one…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the House Judiciary Committee votes along party lines to approve the two impeachment articles:

“There was an abuse of power at the Department of Justice, there was an abuse of power at the FBI,” Gohmert said in remarks after the vote. “This is a sad day for the country.”

He added, “America needs to hear from the witnesses and we didn’t get to hear from them here. This was a kangaroo court.”

Will the GOP ever get to call witnesses? That depends on what McConnell decides to do in the Senate. Of course, first the House will have to vote to impeach, but I believe that will happen, with enough “ayes” to form a little cushion but allowing quite a few of the vulnerable Democrats in swing districts to vote “no” in an attempt to preserve their re-election possibilities. Of course, voters who don’t favor Trump’s impeachment and yet who might vote to re-elect these Democratics in swing districts because they voted “no” probably don’t take into consideration that electing a Democratic majority is what ensured the impeachment in the first place.

As for McConnell, here’s what he said last night:

The gist of it is that there will be no removal, and how much of a trial will occur will be a decision that’s coordinated between McConnell and the president’s lawyers.

What will the British left learn from the UK election?

The New Neo Posted on by

A defeat such as this one can certainly make a party think. If Labour is to ever win again in the UK – and you’d better believe they deeply desire to do so – something will have to change.

Maybe the change will be events, or demographics. But other change or lack thereof will depend on what the new leadership on the left decides is the proper course correction, as well as personalities. For example, how much of their resounding defeat comes from Jeremy Corbyn having been an abominable and especially far-leftist candidate? Will the lesson they end up learning be to run someone smoother and more appealing, whose leftism is more cleverly hidden?

I don’t know tons about politics in the UK, but I know that many people say that the Tories are not really conservative by US standards, and that Johnson is no Thatcher. That seems true. Others are saying that Johnson might go back on his Brexit pledge. I don’t see that happening; it’s the foundation of his campaign and the biggest promise he made to voters. The only possible problem there is if a large enough number of Parliament members in his party turn out to be secret Remains and end up blocking his efforts to Leave. I also very much doubt that will happen, although a few might do so. His margin of victory is too great, and the message the voters sent too clear.

But have the “elites” in the UK learned their lesson – don’t thwart the will of the people or they will turn you out next time they get a chance? I doubt it very much.