A “pretty darn invested” Obama rallies the troops and gives them their talking points

The New Neo Posted on by

Within moments of the Russiagate document release, the left and MSM chorused nearly the same thing almost in unison: this is a travesty of justice! And they weren’t talking about the wretched excesses of the state apparatus regarding the framing of Flynn, they were talking about Barr and the refusal to pursue the charges against Flynn. It’s a political vendetta! It’s the end of the rule of law! James Comey’s tweet, which I wrote about on Thursday, was a good example of this.

I’ve long thought that Obama has been a major player not only in Russiagate as a whole, but in the entire course of events, and in particular the media and Democrat spin, of the Russiagate-related reaction since he left office. I just don’t think he’s the type to walk away from politics or from protecting his legacy. Although he likes to play golf and relax, too, he’s still deadly serious about the same agenda he had as president. He may or may not be the sole and undisputed leader of the Resistance, but he’s certainly a very big – and still-respected – player in it.

For example, back in November Obama publicly warned the Democrat candidates not to go too far left. And although he was careful not to mention any particular candidate by name, it was clear who he was talking about:

In what seemed a rebuke of Warren and Sanders’ stances, Obama, who is still held in exceptionally high regard by Democratic voters, spent considerable time during his speech counseling against adopting left-wing populism as a party platform.

His implicit message was: don’t show your left hand so openly; dissemble like I did.

Also, there are indications that Obama was influential in coaxing candidates to drop out when they did, or at the very least to endorse Biden after dropping out, in order to stop Sanders (see also this).

Now we have the “leak” of a “private” phone call between Obama and some-bunch-or-other of those who worked in his administration. In an article written by none other than Michael Isikoff, who had his own role in Russiagate as one of the first to write about the infamous Steele dossier, Obama’s call gets across the ex-president’s opinions about the recent revelations regarding Flynn.

And guess what? It’s all about the violation of the “rule of law” – not the egregious and audacious violations committed by Obama’s own minions, of course, but the decision by the DOJ to cease pursuing any of the fake ginned-up charges.

Obama, that putative “expert” (that quotation mark key on my computer is getting quite a workout) on constitutional law, had this to say:

Former President Barack Obama, talking privately to ex-members of his administration, said Friday that the “rule of law is at risk” in the wake of what he called an unprecedented move by the Justice Department to drop charges against former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn…

“The news over the last 24 hours I think has been somewhat downplayed — about the Justice Department dropping charges against Michael Flynn,” Obama said in a web talk with members of the Obama Alumni Association.

“And the fact that there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. That’s the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic — not just institutional norms — but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk. And when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

Perjury? A first-year law student knows the difference between lying to the FBI – in a matter in which there is no evidence of any crime whatsoever, and the target is not allowed to have a lawyer or be read his rights or even informed he’s being interrogated as a target – and perjury. Obama knows it, too, so why did he use the word? He probably thinks it’s a good talking point because it sounds really bad, and he doesn’t think most people will care about the finer points.

Or maybe he’s just forgotten all the law he ever knew. But I go with: tactical lie.

As Jonathan Turley writes:

The Obama statement is curious on various levels. First, the exhaustive search may have been hampered by the fact that Flynn was never charged with perjury. He was charged with a single count of false statements to a federal investigator under 18 U.S.C. 1001. I have previously wrote that the Justice Department should move to dismiss the case due to recently disclosed evidence and thus I was supportive of the decision of Attorney General Bill Barr.
Second, there is ample precedent for this motion even though, as I noted in the column calling for this action, such dismissals are rare. There is a specific rule created for this purpose. Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a) states the government may dismiss an indictment, information or complaint “with leave of the court.” Moreover, such dismissals are tied to other rules mandating such action when there is evidence of prosecutorial misconduct or fundamental questions about the underlying case from the view of the prosecutors. I wrote recently about the serious concerns over the violation of Brady and standing court orders in the production and statements of the prosecutors in the case.

Third, there is also case law. In Rinaldi v. United States, 434 U.S. 22 (1977) which addressed precedent under Petite v. United States, 361 U.S. 529 (1960) dealing with the dangers of multiple prosecutions. There are also related cases in Bartkus v. Illinois, 359 U. S. 121 (1959), and Abbate v. United States, 359 U. S. 187 (1959). The Rinaldi decision involved a petitioner convicted of state offenses arising out of a robbery, who believed that the government should have moved to dismiss a federal offense arising out of the same robbery under the Department’s Petite policy. The Court laid out the standard for such motions. The thrust of that controversy concerned double jeopardy and dual jurisdictions. However, the point was that the rule is key in protecting such constitutional principles and that courts should be deferential in such moves by the Department: “In light of the parallel purposes of the Government’s Petite policy and the fundamental constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy, the federal courts should be receptive, not circumspect, when the Government seeks leave to implement that policy.”

There are also lower court decisions on this inherent authority. For example, in the D.C. Circuit (where the Flynn case was brought), the ruling in United States v. Fokker Servs. B.V., No. 15-3016 (D.C. Cir. 2016) reaffirms the deference to prosecutors on such questions. The Court noted that this deference extends to core constitutional principles…

Fourth, there are cases where the Department has moved to dismiss cases on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct or other grounds touching on due process, ethical requirements or other concerns. One that comes to mind is United States v. Stevens where President Obama’s own Attorney General, Eric Holder, asked the same judge in the Flynn case to dismiss that case. That was just roughly ten years ago. As with Flynn, there was an allegation of withheld evidence by prosecutors.

If Turley was Obama’s law professor and Obama his student, Obama would be getting a solid “F.” But Obama is no longer in school; he’s now the mostly-respected ex-president, speaking regretfully of all the sad things that have been happening under Trump’s watch, and lamenting the abandonment of the Obama-type “rule of law.”

Obama is a sanctimonius, arrogant, dangerous, viper.

What really is without precedent – at least in the US, although not in certain countries usually referred to as “banana republics – is the way in which Obama used the DOJ and the FBI and the entire state apparatus to spy on and destroy an incoming president of the opposing party. Watergate was a tea party compared to this.

And indeed, as Obama pointed out (and he should know) “when you start moving in those directions, it can accelerate pretty quickly as we’ve seen in other places.”

Obama also managed to add this:

In the same chat, a tape of which was obtained by Yahoo News, Obama also lashed out at the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster.”

Can you imagine any previous president saying something like that about a successor? I’ve been around a long time, and I never heard anything of the sort until Obama. There was an unwritten rule, one that ex-presidents of both parties followed, not to say anything particularly bad about a successor, even though the ex-president might be sorely tempted. And another rule was for ex-presidents to throw away partisanship during a crisis.

But Obama thinks such rules were meant to be broken – by Obama.

Last night, when I looked at the comments to that Yahoo article, I didn’t see any that supported Obama. They’re all on the order of “you’ll get yours, you lying POS.” But I am certain that plenty of people are buying what Obama and the MSM are selling.

And here’s an audio of that fortuitously “leaked” “private” call:

The last passage on the tape is fascinating, too. Obama says:

So I am hoping that all of you feel the same sense of urgency that I do. Whenever I campaign, I’ve always said, ‘Ah, this is the most important election.’ Especially obviously when I was on the ballot, that always feels like it’s the most important election. This one — I’m not on the ballot — but I am pretty darn invested. We got to make this [a Democratic victory] happen.

“Pretty darn invested” – well, that’s certainly an understatement. He’s “pretty darn invested” indeed; seeking not just to protect his legacy, to be able to tell President Joe Biden what to do, to have Biden choose as aides and cabinet members the old Obama crew and implementing the old Obama agenda (only carrying it further than Obama ever had time for), but also to protect himself from further revelations at the hands of Barr and Trump. If Biden is elected, all of the investigations into Obama’s role will be dropped like a radioactive potato.

Pretty darn invested.

The press, the people, Russiagate, and the truth – plus, whistleblowers?

The New Neo Posted on by

From commenter “Cornhead”:

When there are indictments this summer the Fake News can’t ignore that.

Actually, they could. But I agree that they won’t. What they’ll actually do is call it a politically motivated lynching, the worst miscarriage of justice in American history. And whether they succeed in getting this Orwellian message accepted by the majority of the American people depends on how closely the public is willing to dig, because they’ll have to go to sources on the right to get the actual story.

As commenter “John Tyler” writes:

Here in the USA we have the massive 24/7/365 propaganda machine that is the media that many folks listen to and believe they are hearing objective news. The power and influence of propaganda can not be under estimated. I will speculate that more folks watch/listen to the media than read websites such as this…

I have no doubt that Neo’s uber liberal friends are well educated, but as she herself states, she has no illusions that they will alter their views based on new and INCONTROVERTIBLE FACTS.

Why?

Is it because they have heard for 3 solid straight years from the media that Trump is a Russian stooge and a sick joke?

Would NEO’s liberal friends hold this same opinion if the media supported Trump as they did Obama?

IMHO they would all be in love with Trump if the media fell in love with him, as they did with Obama .
I know my liberal acquaintances would be tripping all over themselves with praise for Trump if the media supported him…

Such is the power of propaganda; it’s like hypnosis and most bizarre of all, the level of one’s education or accomplishments seems to have zero affect on one’s susceptibility to it.

Very well put, particularly that last sentence, which expresses the mystery of it all. I’ve been thinking about the “why” of it for at least fifteen years, and have not penetrated its secrets. The conclusion I’ve come to, however, is that personality and some sort of basic intelligence is much more important than book learning. In fact, the latter can be very counterproductive. And by “personality” I mean the willingness and drive to question what you hear and even what you believe, the stubbornness to keep following a trail, the courage to go against what all the people you know might think and believe, and a basic ability to be logical and to evaluate evidence and data.

And here’s a comment from “Snow on Pine” that’s more specific to the agency malfeasance revealed during the last few days:

Notice that all of this manipulation of the law, all of these “irregularities,” all of these lies were backed up by meetings, and discussions, and paperwork–which means that there was a whole supporting cast of people at these two law enforcement agencies who had to have at least some knowledge of what was going on–some inkling of how “irregular” and crooked all of this was.

Yet, as far as I can see, no word of this leaked out; these “irregularities,” these massive multiple railroad jobs, this attempted coup, triggered no whistle blowing, and no protests.

This says to me that this corruption is not confined to just these few high profile actors—to the surface, to the skin–but that this cancerous tumor has burrowed deeper, into muscle and bone.

Frankly, given all that has been revealed by just these 6,000 pages, with much more–and supposedly much worse, to come–I don’t know how these agencies as they exist, with such deep corruption, can actually be “reformed.”

I generally agree with everything that “Snow” says there, troubling and depressing though it may be. But I do have one – perhaps small – point of disagreement, which is that there were some leakers. At least one, anyway. That’s how John Solomon got his information, information which was widely derided in the MSM and on the left, of course.

I suggest you read today’s piece by Solomon in its entirety, but at the moment I want to call your attention to this part:

Shortly after my colleague Sara Carter and I began reporting in 2017 on the possibility that the FBI was abusing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to spy on Americans during the Russia investigation, I received a call. It was an intermediary for someone high up in the intelligence community.

The story that source told me that day — initially I feared it may have been too spectacular to be true — was that FBI line agents had actually cleared former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn of any wrongdoing with Russia only to have the bureau’s leadership hijack the process to build a case that he lied during a subsequent interview.

In fact, my notes show, the source used the words “concoct a 1001 false statements case” to describe the objections of career agents who did not believe Flynn had intended to deceive the FBI. A leak of a transcript of Flynn’s call with the Russian ambassador was just part of a campaign, the source alleged.

The tip resulted in a two-and-a-half-year journey by myself and a small group of curious and determined journalists like Carter, Catherine Herridge, Greg Jarrett, Mollie Hemingway, Lee Smith, Byron York, and Kimberly Strassel to slowly peel back the onion.

Who was this source? And note that the person who actually contacted Solomon was a middleman for the source, an “intermediary” for someone much higher up.

Nor does Solomon say this person was the only source on whom he relied.

I would never underestimate the courage it takes to spill the beans like that, because (as Chuck Schumer so helpfully stated): “You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

We are in very deep waters here, make no mistake about it.

“They can’t arrest us all”: the Laguna Beach uprising

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: American Digest.]

Actually, they could arrest them all, if they called in enough police, and wanted to. But they don’t really want to at this point.

One of the most interesting things to me in the video is the woman with the flag who ran onto the sand with a rallying cry. It’s pretty clear that she planned that action from the start; note the stars-and-stripes fabric of her bathing suit when she strips down. She’s prepared.

Also interesting are the demonstrators’ reactions when she urges them to follow. Most hesitate for a moment, thinking. My guess is that this wasn’t in the game plan of many of them. After that moment of decision or indecision, some follow. As the numbers grow, more are emboldened, and someone says “They can’t arrest us all,” which is the principle behind many mass acts of civil disobedience.

Laguna Beach is a liberal part of California, voting heavily Democratic in presidential elections since the 1990s. But even California has some conservatives, or perhaps these are libertarians.

It’s quite a scene:

The Democrats’ Reade dilemma

The New Neo Posted on by

Tara Reade’s accusations against Biden have presented the Democrats with a serious dilemma when they can least afford one. At first glance, it seems that if they wish to be consistent they must choose either a “believe all women” position – which would mean they have to jettison Biden – or a “due process” position, which would mean they have to disavow their dreadful treatment of Kavanaugh. Of course, they wish to do neither, and yet they probably don’t want to risk being exposed as principle-discarding hypocrites, especially with the potentially angry MeToo crowd.

That letter to the editor from Martin Tolchin that I wrote about the other day offers a third way, and the Times spread the word by publishing his letter. Tolchin’s letter cuts the Gordian knot and proudly embraces the contradiction through claiming allegiance to the highest principle of all in the minds of the left: getting rid of the enemy Trump. His message is the necessity of discarding abstract principles, because the only allegiance is to victory at any cost.

And to Tolchin, that is true no matter what Biden’s shortcomings or even crimes may be. Biden’s not Trump, and if that’s good enough for a formerly-respected journalist such as Tolchin, the Times is letting its readers know that it should be good enough for them, too.

That approach is mostly a suggestion to voters; it would be harder for Democratic politicians to fess up to the need to discard whatever principles they pretend to have. They’re in a hard place no matter what, but with the protection of the MSM – which will either make excuses for them or pretend there’s no contradiction – they forge ahead. One example of this is long-time Senator Dianne Feinstein, whom you may recall was instrumental in the Democrats’ Kavanaugh caper:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), however, is traveling on a different path in all this. Manu Raju, in a rare act of actual journalism for a CNN reporter, got the longtime Senator and prominent Biden supporter/booster to go on the record Thursday with her thoughts on Reade’s allegations. And boy, were they something.

Here’s the Twitter thread Raju posted:

Adam Schiff and the art of lying

The New Neo Posted on by

How do you know Adam Schiff is lying? His lips are moving.

Schiff’s lies have been obvious for a long long time. But although the evidence was both clear and stark – the Schiff memo vs. the Nunes memo, just to take a single example – it hasn’t really seemed to hurt him, except on the right.

It’s depressing even now to look back at it, and I’m not going to do so in any depth, but you can do a search yourself for “Nunes memo vs. Schiff memo” and follow it from the early MSM reports praising Schiff to the skies and excoriating Nunes, to the IG report exposing Schiff’s as being full of lies and Nunes’ as being accurate, to the spin by the MSM that tries to cover up or minimize those findings. If you want one article summarizing the whole thing, I refer you to this by Mollie Hemingway.

Then of course there was Schiff’s performance at the impeachment, complete with fake paraphrasing of the famous phone call. More recently, we have the fact that Schiff has been suppressing the transcripts of the hearings his committee held in 2017-18 into supposed Russia election interference, and then the threat to Schiff by Director of National Intelligence Grenell that if Schiff didn’t release them Grenell would, which has somehow convinced Schiff to do so at long last.

Fancy that.

And fancy this: those transcripts reveal a pack of lies and liars, such a disparity between their public statements and their long-secret congressional testimony (under oath and threat of perjury) that one is tempted to go around, like Diogenes, carrying a lamp looking for an honest man – or woman, in this case. It’ll be a long search, in terms of the cast of characters trying to sink the Trump administration.

Ace details (here, here, and here) just three of these people (or entities, in the case of Crowdstrike) and the difference between their public statements and their testimony before Congress. Funny thing, the pattern is the same for all: public accusations, private disavowals.

For example:

Or this:

The gist of it all is this:

The transcripts, which were released by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., revealed top Obama officials were questioned over whether they had or had seen evidence of such collusion, coordination or conspiracy — the issue that drove the FBI’s initial case and later the special counsel probe.

“I never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting/conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election,” former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in 2017. “That’s not to say that there weren’t concerns about the evidence we were seeing, anecdotal evidence. … But I do not recall any instance where I had direct evidence.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power, according to the transcript of her interview, was asked about the same issue. Power replied: “I am not in possession of anything—I am not in possession and didn’t read or absorb information that came from out of the intelligence community.”

When asked again, she said: “I am not.”

Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice was asked the same question.

“To the best of my recollection, there wasn’t anything smoking, but there were some things that gave me pause,” she said, according to her transcribed interview, in response to whether she had any evidence of conspiracy. “I don’t recall intelligence that I would consider evidence to that effect that I saw…conspiracy prior to my departure.”

When asked whether she had any evidence of “coordination,” Rice replied: “I don’t recall any intelligence or evidence to that effect.”

When asked about collusion, Rice replied: “Same answer.”

Former Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes was asked the same question during his House Intelligence interview.

It goes on that way: Ben Rhodes, Loretta Lynch, and so forth. And that article I linked, from which the quotes come, also contains Schiff’s response. It’s as you might imagine: twist, turn, spin, repeat.

However, I am pretty sure that were I to bring this matter up with my Democratic-voting friends and family, they would all react to the news with one or more of these responses:

(1) I haven’t followed it.
(2) Well, there’s plenty of other evidence (and then quoting Schiff, or someone else’s statement that’s been debunked)
(3) That’s just Fox’s take on it, so it’s not true.
(4) I hate Trump anyway and want him gone.

One can’t get too cynical in these matters, unfortunately. Many years ago I had an assumption that revelations such as these would change the minds of most people. But in the last twenty years or so I’ve learned that’s very rare, although it does happen. It is especially unlikely in the current climate – a climate that became especially apparent during the Obama years – in which the MSM will do anything and say anything to protect the left no matter what they do.

And of course Adam Schiff is well aware of that. That is what gives him the arrogance to lie and lie and lie and consider himself untouchable. If only the likes of Fox and the NY Post and the Federalist and Jonathan Turley call him out on it, he knows the vast constituency on which he depends will never read it, and if they do they will apply the time-tested arguments trotted out by him, the NY Times, the WaPo, and the rest. It is a phalanx, an army of liars who present a united front against their common enemy, which is the right.

ADDENDUM: Kayleigh’s on the case:

So, how are all those New York stay-at-homes getting infected?

The New Neo Posted on by

Governor Cuomo of New York has announced the following, and asks some questions I’d like answered:

With everything we’ve done – closed schools, closed businesses, everybody shelter at home, all the precautions about where a mask, where gloves, etc. – you still had 600 new cases that walked in the door yesterday,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said. “Where are those new cases still coming from, because we’ve done everything we have to close down? How are you still generating 600 new cases every day?”

In trying to answer why patients keep being brought in and what their backgrounds are, a stunning finding jumped out. That shocking detail: Of all the places patients come from, like nursing homes and so on, most – 66% – were said to be social distancing at home…

“Eighty four percent were at home, literally. Were they working? No. They were retired or they were unemployed,” Cuomo said.

When you take away the percentages of those not working or retired you are left with just 17%, including essential workers in close contact with the public…

He said the finding shows the importance of following basic precautions.

That last sentence is a complete puzzlement. The finding shows no such thing. The finding shows our utter puzzlement about what’s actually going on here – or at least, what’s going on in New York City, whose metro area has half the US cases.

These statistics aren’t about cases as a whole in NY, either; they’re about hospitalized cases. They probably were skewed towards older patients, but still, how are these people getting infected if they really are staying home?

I don’t have an answer. Unless these people are using buses or the subway and hiding that fact, that means the mechanism for infection isn’t the public transit system, as so often thought. Are they seeing friends who do use those services? Family? Is it the grocery stores? Or, as some have suggested, is it something about apartment living: walking the halls, riding the elevators, picking up their mail in the lobby, or even the air circulation system?

I find these remote causes somewhat hard to believe, but they’re possible. Any better ideas out there, folks?

[NOTE: About half of these patients are either black or Hispanic. But that doesn’t really say all that much, because those two populations added together represent slightly more than half of all New Yorkers anyway.]

DOJ has MAJOR announcement: Flynn a free man

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of us who’ve followed Flynn’s persecution/prosecution from the start concluded years ago that Flynn was railroaded. But in the last few days we really know, because incontrovertible evidence came out – so much evidence that even the few honest people left who had previously doubted it could doubt it no more. For example, CNN analyst James Gagliano wrote a piece on May 4th that said:

…[F]urther irrefutable proof emerges that a small cabal of FBI headquarters decision-makers was hellbent on undoing a presidency.

I know it sounds strange to hear me make such an accusation. I’m the guy who long attempted to thread the needle, accounting for honest human frailties, trusting that mistakes should not always be chalked up to malice or sinister intent. Cautious skepticism was a default mindset that served me well across a quarter century as an FBI investigator. That condition failed me here because one thing is clear.

Michael Flynn got railroaded.

And the DOJ has heartily concurred:

The Justice Department on Thursday said it is dropping the criminal case against President Donald Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, abandoning a prosecution that became a rallying cry for the president and his supporters in attacking the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

The action was a stunning reversal for one of the signature cases brought by special counsel Robert Mueller. It comes even though prosecutors for the past three years have maintained that Flynn lied to the FBI in a January 2017 interview about his conversations with the Russian ambassador.

That’s the AP story, trying desperately to make it seem as though Flynn is somehow guilty, because “prosecutors maintained” for three years that he lied. I could go on and fisk the whole article, which is an exercise in typical “Republicans pounce” crapola and manages to postpone and mostly avoid talking about the overwhelming evidence that the entire thing was a perjury trap set with malice aforethought and knowledge by the FBI and Obama’s DOJ that there was no wrongdoing at all. But why should I bother? We know the drill; the press will do what the press will do.

Meanwhile, Flynn, Trump, and Sidney Powell – Flynn’s most recent lawyer, who is a veritable bulldog – get to celebrate.

And I hope that Flynn’s prosecutors, his former defense lawyers, and everyone in the FBI and DOJ responsible for the travesty of justice and attempted coup that the Flynn entrapment represented, is shaking in their boots right now. Although I doubt it.

Kaleigh McEnany is a word warrior

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have seen the clip elsewhere already, because it’s all around the right side of the blogosphere. But here are the closing moments from new WH press secretary Kaleigh McEnany’s press conference yesterday:

“Prepared” doesn’t even begin to describe it. And she’s beautiful, composed, and sharp as she uses a jujutsu move to attack the reporters and the networks by using their own words against them. Note how nearly as soon as the question begins, she is already looking at her notes to quickly locate the correct passage, and is ready before he’s even finished asking the question.

You know those films where the heroine suddenly flips a couple of men around because she’s so strong, even though it’s obvious it’s a fiction because the actress playing said heroine couldn’t do any such thing in real life? A lot of recent action films adore that scenario. But this is its equivalent in the cerebral action film known as the political news world. It’s a passage that’s incredibly satisfying to watch, and it’s not fiction.

[NOTE: McEnany is 32 years old, and was an early Trump supporter. She’s married to Sean Gilmartin, who’s a major league pitcher for the Tampa Bay Rays, and they have a baby only about six months old. Busy lady. Somehow I get the feeling she gets by on about three hours of sleep, although she doesn’t look it.]

Governor Abbott of Texas bans jail for business openers…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and frees Shelley Luther.

NOTE: This is almost completely irrelevant, but I keep being struck by their names. With a slight change in spelling: “Abbot frees Luther.” It has a certain ring, doesn’t it?

I don’t know whether…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this is the feel-good story of the day, the most terrifying story of the day, the funniest story of the day, or the most audacious story of the day.

Maybe all of the above.

Oh, and a lot of people in the comments to the photo there mention that they think the kid was way older than 5, because he seems big. I’ve seen a lot of big 5-year-olds, though. And this particular 5-year-old had big plans and expensive tastes.

[NOTE: Much much more here.]

Dennis Prager thinks the worldwide lockdown may have been the biggest mistake in history

The New Neo Posted on by

I sometimes agree with Prager, but not here:

But for those open to reading thoughts they may differ with, here is the case for why the worldwide lockdown is not only a mistake but also, possibly, the worst mistake the world has ever made. And for those intellectually challenged by the English language and/or logic, “mistake” and “evil” are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.

The forcible prevention of Americans from doing anything except what politicians deem “essential” has led to the worst economy in American history since the Great Depression of the 1930s. It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe. And the consequences in much of the world will be more horrible than in America.

The United Nations World Food Programme, or the WFP, states that by the end of the year, more than 260 million people will face starvation — double last year’s figures. According to WFP director David Beasley on April 21: “We could be looking at famine in about three dozen countries. … There is also a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself” (italics added).

That would be enough to characterize the worldwide lockdown as a deathly error. But there is much more. If global GDP declines by 5%, another 147 million people could be plunged into extreme poverty, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Much more at the link.

It’s not that I disagree with the idea that the lockdown was a mistake. I think it almost certainly was, although we don’t have an alternate earth where we can test out that hypothesis. It’s also not that I disagree with the idea that the economic and even some of the health consequences are vast and very serious. But I can think of a lot of worse mistakes in history, right off the top of my head.

The first that comes to mind is the aged and worn-out von Hindenberg’s appointment of Hitler to the post of chancellor of Germany. Many people believe erroneously that Hitler was elected to the post, and later he was, but only after the Nazis had obtained complete control through naked power plays and intimidation and violence against all rivals. Initially, Hitler was not elected chancellor – and in fact, the Nazis had been losing power at the time rather than gaining it. Hitler came to power as the result of an error of judgment by von Hinderberg:

Hindenburg, intimidated by Hitler’s growing popularity and the thuggish nature of his cadre of supporters, the SA (or Brownshirts), initially refused to make him chancellor. Instead, he appointed General Kurt von Schleicher, who attempted to steal Hitler’s thunder by negotiating with a dissident Nazi faction led by Gregor Strasser. At the next round of elections in November, the Nazis lost ground—but the Communists gained it, a paradoxical effect of Schleicher’s efforts that made right-wing forces in Germany even more determined to get Hitler into power. In a series of complicated negotiations, ex-Chancellor Franz von Papen, backed by prominent German businessmen and the conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP), convinced Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as chancellor, with the understanding that von Papen as vice-chancellor and other non-Nazis in key government positions would contain and temper Hitler’s more brutal tendencies.

Hitler’s emergence as chancellor on January 30, 1933, marked a crucial turning point for Germany and, ultimately, for the world. His plan, embraced by much of the German population, was to do away with politics and make Germany a powerful, unified one-party state. He began immediately, ordering a rapid expansion of the state police, the Gestapo, and putting Hermann Goering in charge of a new security force, composed entirely of Nazis and dedicated to stamping out whatever opposition to his party might arise. From that moment on, Nazi Germany was off and running, and there was little Hindenburg or von Papen—or anyone—could do to stop it.

That’s a mere summary of a much more complex process; you can read the details on many sites. They are heartbreaking as well as frustrating and infuriating. The gist of it is that some people thought they could tame, contain, and control Hitler, and in the process they made the enormous error of judgment of elevating him to a position of power it seems he would not have attained otherwise. This certainly would qualify as one of the biggest mistakes in history – the consequences of which, in terms of human suffering, dwarf what we are likely to experience from the lockdown.

In sum: Hitler was evil, but he came to power through a mistake, one of the biggest mistakes in history if not the biggest. There are other historical errors I can think of, one being the calculation made by various European powers that WWI wouldn’t last all that long and wouldn’t be all that difficult to win.

I am sure there are many more errors of great magnitude of which I’m not even aware. But I don’t think the lockdown will be quite in that particular league. At least, I hope not. I think that, if the lockdown ends soon, the world can recover – not overnight, but in a few years – fairly well.

I also think the lockdown has had some good consequences, or at least potentially good consequences. I’ve heard of some families with children realizing that they need to slow down more and spend more time together as a family, and I hope that will continue post-lockdown. I think that, at least for a while, people will feel appreciative of things they may have previously taken for granted – friends, the ability to go to concerts and sports events, restaurants, parties, and a host of others. I think more people have come to realize how easy it is for people to become cowed by petty tyrants of the Whitmer variety, and perhaps they’ll be more cautious about electing such people in the future. Perhaps. And I think more people have been made aware of the grave danger represented by China, and of the need to free ourselves from dependence on it as soon as possible. And I think we may – accent on the “may” – be more hesitant in the future to issue such extreme measures on the basis of shakily-based computer models for things about which we lack important information.