Actually, it’s Bob Fosse he’s dancing like here, not Michael Jackson. It’s a different look for Astaire, circa 1953:
Now everyone on the internet knows you’re a dog – or a troll or imposter or bot or paid liar
It’s a saying that’s probably as old as the internet:
But sometimes it’s possible to tell. And X has just made it a lot easier by rolling out a feature – first temporary but which supposedly will become permanent – that reveals the location of accounts as well as other facts such as where they were first created. And it turns out not just that there were some imposters in the political sphere, there were a ton of them:
And it turns out that some of the most “pro-American” American First or America Only accounts are located in the patriotic states of Turkey, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. …
I’m sure you will not be surprised to learn that the most aggressive Jew-hating “America First” accounts are actually based in Islamic countries. …
“Counter-AIPAC,” which rails against foreign Jews subverting American politics through AIPAC, turns out to be, get this, an Egyptian subverting American politics by representing himself as America First. …
Other accounts seeking to subvert American politics are owned by leftists in Canada. But they claim they’re rootin’-tootin’ American patriots. …
One odd thing: There are apparently a lot of “Native American” accounts calling for hatred and violence against the white man for stealing their land. They turn out to be based in… Bangladesh.
Lots more at the link, as well as here and here and well, just about everywhere on the right. This is my first post on the subject, and I don’t plan for it to be my last. There is so much food for thought here it will take some time to digest it.
It’s clear that a great deal of what transpires online, especially in social media such as Twitter (“X”), is fake. We already knew that – but the question has always been, how much? And what are the forces behind this? And what’s to be done about it?
One thing I strongly believe is that although many of the accounts may be fake, they do influence real people to think a certain way and to think they are part of a larger movement (a partly illusory one). Again, we’ve all known this, but the proportions of fake to real are important and that is unknown as yet. Will it ever be known?
Cases against Comey and James dismissed without prejudice
That last part – without prejudice – is important, at least potentially. It means the cases can be refiled – perhaps. The “perhaps” is because, at least for Comey, the statute of limitations has run out. I cannot find a source that explanations whether that means the clock starts again, or whether it started with the original indictment. Comey’s attorneys will argue that it has run out, of course. But will the argument hold? I suppose it depends on the judge, and then might be appealed to SCOTUS.
Not sure why the case was filed so late, but I assume because there was disagreement about filing it at all, and/or the evidence was still being uncovered. At any rate, the whole thing seems to have been sloppily done, for such an important case. The judge – appointed by Bill Clinton – doesn’t seem to believe the case against Comey can be re-opened, since the original filing becomes invalid.
The stated reason the cases against Comey and Letitia James were thrown out was procedural, and had to do with the appointment of the US attorney:
U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie disqualified interim Lindsey Halligan of the Eastern District of Virginia. …
Comey was indicted for obstruction of proceedings (18 U.S. Code § 1505) related to the Trump-Russia investigation.
James was indicted for bank fraud (18 U.S. Code § 1344) and making false statements to a financial institution (18 U.S. Code § 1014) regarding alleged mortgage fraud.
James accused President Donald Trump of violating Section 546 of Title 28 and the Appointments Clause by appointing Halligan.
Currie wrote:
“In sum, the text, structure, and history of section 546 point to one conclusion: the Attorney General’s authority to appoint an interim U.S. Attorney lasts for a total of 120 days from the date she first invokes section 546 after the departure of a Senate-confirmed U.S. Attorney. If the position remains vacant at the end of the 120-day period, the exclusive authority to make further interim appointments under the statute shifts to the district court, where it remains until the President’s nominee is confirmed by the Senate.
“Ms. Halligan was not appointed in a manner consistent with this framework.”
For what it’s worth, I’ve never believed they would be convicted, although it was (and remains) certainly possible. My reason is that Comey in particular was and still is too powerful, and there are too many judges who automatically rule against Trump and the right. Then again, these cases seem to have been rushed and handled in a sloppy manner, as I already stated. However, Trump only has been president since late January and the Comey case would have expired at the end of September, so perhaps it had to be rushed. Turley explains, also, that this decision by Judge Currie can be appealed.
James’ case could be re-filed; I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations problem there. As for Comey, I suppose it’s possible that he could be indicted in a different case – a conspiracy case, perhaps – arising from his behavior, but I wouldn’t sit on a hot stove until that happens. And I will add that the nitty-gritty procedural aspects of law were never my especially strong suit.
Open thread 11/24/2025
If you’re buying holiday gifts on Amazon, please use the new neo portal
It’s that time of year again: Christmas, Chanukah. If you’re like me, you’ve probably postponed your shopping – but there’s still plenty of time.
If you use Amazon, please click on the Amazon link on the right sidebar on desktops and laptops, and towards the bottom of the site as it displays on cellphones and the like. I get a small percentage from every purchase. The Amazon link is in the text below the “donate” button. You may have to disable your ad-blocker to see it. Thanks very much!
And by the way, the Vanderleun poetry book is coming out very soon. I’m waiting for the book proof in the mail, and if I give my approval it will be available about five days after that. I was hoping it would be earlier, but if all goes well it should be ready for purchase in time for Christmas.
Roundup
(1) Majorie Taylor Greene is retiring from Congress in January. No great loss, IMHO.
(2) Say what you will about Caroline Kennedy’s politics, she has had a very tragic life. There was her father’s assassination when she was a child, and then the loss of her mother when relatively young, and her brother – leaving Caroline the sole survivor of her nuclear family. One child, her son, seems to be highly troubled. And now her daughter, 35, has been given a terminal cancer diagnosis; terrible news. Caroline’s daughter has two very young children.
(3) All Epsteins look alike to Jasmine Crockett.
(4) The Somalis of Minnesota seem to specialize in fraud.
(5) Megyn Kelly versus Mark Levin, if you care to read about it. Did he call her a Nazi or did he call her a grifter?
It’s an old story: elite dictatorships in the name of democracy and the proletariat
I found the following at Ace’s:
DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican
Hello Alex,You say your work is dedicated to strengthening democracy. I have one simple question for you.
In your 30th anniversary publication, you had an article from your longtime head of Open Society Fund-Serbia, Sonja Licht. She also happens to be one of the most decorated civilians in Europe and widely considered an expert in democracy:
… In the article for Open Society, Licht openly discusses the problem of whether democracy can survive without trust in their leaders.
Her solution: “I believe the time has come for a responsible, courageous elite, those who care far more about addressing the genuine social problems than about election results. Only a political elite with vision, prudence and a focus on the general good–to whom the electorate, with their active involvement in public life, can cede part of their sovereignty in the elections… spearhead… our struggle to survive.”
Read that again.
The idea of democracy as pushed by the head of one of your foundations is to literally stop “election results” and to have the public cede their trust to a technocratic elite.
End democracy to save democracy itself.
I recently noticed a new word: “anarchotyranny.” At least, it’s new to me. I first time I saw it was yesterday, when commenter “Griffin” used it in the thread about the 67-year-old man sent to prison for gun violations in New York. Lo and behold, just a few hours later I saw this discussion at Ace’s of the very same word:
A term that’s enjoying new popularity — because it describes the hell that the left is imposing on us — is “anarchotyranny.”
The idea is that we live in a tyranny filled with lawlessness (anarchy). Those seem to be opposites, which would make anarchotyranny a contradiction in terms, but you have to remember that only some get tyranny while others get anarchy. …
If you’re a rapist, a mugger, a killer, a drug-dealer, an illegal alien, you get anarchy, with the government staying out of your business and letting you harm your fellow citizens and ply your criminal trade with little government interference.
But if you’re among the working population with a family and a mortgage and commitments you just can’t walk away from, you get the tyranny, the endless laws, the endless demands for you to get a permit to do every single thing that free men used to do freely, and strict and brutal punishment from the state when you ignore a law here and there. Don’t you know that only the hardcore criminals get to ignore the laws with impunity? …
The left wants to control people, and so they focus on the group of people who actually will obey all (or most) of the laws they pass: the naturally, inherently law-abiding. The people who can’t afford to spend six months or a year in jail.
Meanwhile, for the criminal class: complete freedom to do whatever they want to do.
Another reason that chaos and crime is allowed and even encouraged is that the violence can then be used as an excuse to crack down even more on the law-abiding. That’s how increased types of gun control, as in a city like New York, is justified and advocated by the left. The obvious contradiction – that such laws don’t stop criminals from owning guns, just the law-abiding – has a logic that would make it seem counterproductive. But it’s not counterproductive if the real aim is to cause more chaos and more justification for more restrictions, which then enable the leaders to exercise more control over the populace.
And then there’s the dictatorship of the proletariat, which was a stage in Communism, as used by the Soviets, whereby after the proletariat revolution a supposedly temporary state of dictatorship was established by elite leaders acting on behalf of the proletariat and for their supposed benefit [my emphasis]:
Marxism–Leninism … seeks to organise a vanguard party to lead a proletarian uprising to assume power of the state, the economy, the media, and social services (academia, health, etc.), on behalf of the proletariat and to construct a single-party socialist state representing a dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat is to be governed through the process of democratic centralism, which Lenin described as “diversity in discussion, unity in action”. Marxism–Leninism forms the official ideology of the ruling parties of China, Cuba, Laos and Vietnam, and was the official ideology of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the late 1920s, and later of the other ruling parties making up the Eastern Bloc.
I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.
Today is the 62nd anniversary of the JFK assassination
I consider that event Ground Zero for the popularization in the US of what one might call conspiracy culture. That’s not the best term for it, because conspiracies sometimes exist and are sometimes real. Maybe I should call it false conspiracy culture, or default conspiracy culture, which involves the assumption that conspiracies are operating in certain events even when there is little to no evidence of it.
I’ve written many many posts on the subject of the JFK assassination and the conspiracy theories that have proliferated in its wake. You can find them here, and I’d like to call particular attention to this post. In it, I quote the Bugliosi book on the subject, Reclaiming History, which can be found online here:
It is remarkable that conspiracy theorists can believe that groups like the CIA, military-industrial complex, and FBI would murder the president, but cannot accept the likelihood, even the possibility, that a nut like Oswald would flip out and commit the act, despite the fact that there is a ton of evidence that Oswald killed Kennedy, and not an ounce showing that any of these groups had anything to do with the assassination.
It is further remarkable that these conspiracy theorists aren’t troubled in the least by their inability to present any evidence that Oswald was set up and framed. For them, the mere belief or speculation that he was is a more-than-adequate substitute for evidence. More importantly, there is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists either don’t realize or fail to take into consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor; namely, that in the real world—you know, the world in which when I talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera—you cannot be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly incriminating evidence against you…
…[T]he evidence against Oswald is so great that you could throw 80% of it out the window and there would still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable doubt…
The Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists display an astonishing inability to see the vast forest of evidence proving Oswald’s guilt because of their penchant for obsessing over the branches, even the individual branches. And, because virtually all of them have no background in criminal investigation, they look at each leaf (piece of evidence) by itself, hardly ever in relation to, and in the context of, all the other evidence.
Whenever I post about the assassination, people argue with me about my certainty that Oswald killed him and that he acted alone. It’s no surprise that this would occur, because the vast majority of Americans believe that it was a conspiracy of some sort. The most recent poll I could quickly find right now is a 2023 Gallup poll, but it says what most polls have said for many years: that a little less than a third of Americans believe that Oswald was the sole assassin. In fact, if you look at this chart, there have been times when even fewer Americans have believed that:
I’m harping on this because I’ve long thought that this strain of American life is damaging. No, I don’t automatically trust the government – that would be absurd. But I do try to look at evidence and to use logic, realizing that absolute and complete certainty is never possible.
And of course, it’s possible to ignore the evidence by saying it’s manufactured, which already presupposes the existence of a conspiracy (making up false evidence), further solidifies that belief, and then uses the resultant state of mind in the populace to plant an idea about who is really to blame.
The ways in which I’ve seen this play out in recent years are many. Russiagate was a conspiracy theory fostered by actual conspiracists on the left to hurt the right, and is believed to this day by an enormous number of Democrats. The uncovering of the perpetrators of the conspiracy theory, and attempts to describe what happened, is itself called a conspiracy theory. Likewise, we indeed were told lies about COVID, and they were damaging, but they also eroded trust so much that now people believe all sorts of things connected with the vaccine in the absence of actual evidence or through misrepresentation and/or misinterpretation of actual evidence (I’ve written a great deal about that, too; for example, here, here, and here).
There are other examples, but the most recent one is the ancient conspiracy theory about Jews running the world and being responsible for everything that’s bad. It has the appeal of being simple, and there are those on left and right busily engaged in spreading the word. Many times recently I’ve heard Candace Owens – who has gazillions of devoted followers and does indeed merit the title “influencer” – reference the JFK assassination, tie it to Kirk’s assassination, and accuse just about everyone of killing Kirk but mostly the Jews/Israelis. She explicitly says Israel killed JFK, and doesn’t even seem to feel the need to offer any evidence whatsoever, because her audience is so ready to believe anything about the killing of Kennedy.
The JFK assassination functions in the US as the Mother of All Conspiracy Theories, and it’s a very useful one indeed to those who would spread Jew-hatred – or any other hatred or distrust.
Open thread 11/22/2025
Remember way back when it was alleged that Obama was receiving illegal foreign donations?
Well, the wheels of justice grind slow:
Grammy-winning rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees was sentenced on Thursday to 14 years in prison for a case in which he was convicted of illegally funneling millions of dollars in foreign contributions to former President Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign.
Michel, 52, declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly sentenced him.
In April 2023, a federal jury convicted Michel of 10 counts, including conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. The trial in Washington, D.C., included testimony from actor Leonardo DiCaprio and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
Justice Department prosecutors said federal sentencing guidelines recommended a life sentence for Michel, whom they said “betrayed his country for money” and “lied unapologetically and unrelentingly to carry out his schemes.”
Note he was charged prior to Trump becoming president.
If there were indeed foreign contributions to Obama – and back then I assumed it was probably true that there were such donations – I wouldn’t have imagined that a rapper would be the conduit. I didn’t see many details in the article about how all of this was engineered, but this piece has a bit more information:
US prosecutors said Michel received more than $100m (£80m) from Malaysian billionaire Jho Low that was used in two efforts to influence US politics. He was also convicted of lobbying on behalf of China’s government.
Prosecutors said Michel “betrayed his country for money” and for nearly a decade he “sought to exploit and deceive” various entities in the US government, including the White House and FBI, as well as his own co-conspirators, according to court documents. …
Businessman Mr Low, who funnelled money to Michel, was accused of stealing about $4bn from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund during the infamous 1MDB scandal.
The justice department reached an agreement with the fugitive financier in June 2024 to return more than $100m (£79m) allegedly embezzled from Malaysia’s state-owned wealth fund.
Michel was accused of helping to lobby officials in the first Trump administration to abandon their investigation into Mr Low’s part in it.
His co-defendants got very light sentences or were pardoned, and his lawyer argues that Michel only got such a lengthy sentence because he wanted a trial. I’m inclined to believe that; FARA violations aren’t being prosecuted so harshly anymore unless the behavior of the perps amounts to espionage.
This 67-year-old man is going to prison
In New York, a great many violent criminals with long rap sheets seem to evade incarceration for long periods of time. But this 67-year-old guy has gotten four years for a weapons violation, under the following circumstances:
A Queens senior citizen who shot dead a man who tried to rob him will spend four years in prison after admitting to toting an unlicensed revolver — as his lawyer ripped the city’s “draconian” gun laws.
Charles Foehner, 67, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal weapons possession Thursday in a deal to end his case more than two years after he fatally shot would-be thief Cody Gonzalez, who charged at him near his Kew Gardens home.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office chose not to prosecute Foehner, a retired doorman, for Gonzalez’s killing after he told cops that he’d defended himself from a mugger who lunged at him late at night holding what looked like a knife — but which turned out to be a pen.
So instead, they threatened him with a 25-year sentence for weapons possession, and he pleaded guilty in order to get only four years. As far I know, he has no prior arrests, although Gonzalez had “at least” fifteen arrests and a history of mental illness. Sounds familiar.
From Foehner’s attorney – the same one who defended Daniel Penny:
Kenniff called Foehner a “hero” who was put in an “impossible position” by what he called “draconian” Big Apple gun laws that make it difficult for “law-abiding citizens” to obtain permits to carry firearms.
“If this was a state and a city that had its affairs in order, Mr. Foehner would be getting a plaque, not a prison sentence,” Kenniff told reporters on the courthouse steps.
NOTE: Meanwhile, also in NYC, this lady skates because her case was initially assigned by Bragg’s office to a student, and then botched:
A conservative influencer who was slugged in the face by an unhinged pro-abortion crusader has accused progressive Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg of botching the case against her attacker, who won’t face charges after leaving her battered and bloodied.
Savannah Craven Antao, a 23-year-old pro-life activist, was sucker-punched by a woman while she was conducting man-on-the-street interviews in Harlem in April.
Her attacker, Brianna J. Rivers, was arrested and charged with felony assault, but Bragg’s officer later downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor — and then flubbed the “onerous” discovery requirements, leading the case to be tossed.
The victim is suing:
The suit also accuses prosecutors of refusing to refile charges as a felony and declining to pursue hate crime charges — despite evidence that Rivers’ attack “was committed in the context of her mockery of [Antao’s] Christian beliefs.”
One of the comments to the article says “I am surprised [Bragg] didn’t find a way to charge the victim.”
Here’s a clip of the attack:
Did you ever have one of those days …
… when you keep trying to get to work, but distractions pile up? The phone keeps ringing with things you need to tend to, and each task takes longer than you think it will?
That’s today for me so far. Posts will be forthcoming, but I can’t believe how late it is already.