Mueller is still looking for the pony: the never-ending investigation

The New Neo Posted on by

The title of this post refers to the old joke about the optimistic child:

There is a famous joke about a child who wakes up on Christmas morning and is surprised to find a heap of horse manure under the tree instead of a collection of presents. Yet, the child is not discouraged because he has an extraordinarily optimistic outlook on life. His parents discover him enthusiastically shoveling the manure as he exclaims, “With all this manure, there must be a pony somewhere!”

Robert Mueller was appointed special counsel in May 2017 as a result of a leak by the newly-fired James Comey that was intended for just that purpose. Mueller’s task was to investigate possible collusion of the Trump campaign with the Russians to subvert the election process in this country. Mueller has vast teams of lawyers at his disposal, and they’ve been shoveling the manure ever since in hopes of finding a pony.

So far, there is no convincing evidence related to the purpose for which they were appointed, although they’ve indicted a number of people in the process on charges having zero to do with their supposed purpose. As far as I can tell there are no practical limits currently being set on the investigation, either in scope or time.

I have long felt that special prosecutors and/or counsels are dangerous political instruments which serve no purpose in most cases in which they are appointed, and that goes for either side. In this, I’m with Alan Dershowitz:

I think the investigation should end and I think the Congress should appoint a special non-partisan commission,” said Dershowitz. He said he thinks a Congressional committee would be too partisan.

“That’s the way it’s done in other western democracies,” he continued. “They don’t appoint a special counsel and tell them to ‘Get that guy…’ that’s what they did in the Soviet Union. Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the KGB said to Stalin, ‘Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime!’” That’s what special counsel does.”…

The issue of criminalization [of political differences] has not been subject to rational discourse,” said Dershowitz. “Democrats hate when they politicize and criminalize political differences against Democrats… when they did it with Bill Clinton. Republicans hate when they do it against their people… President Trump. But each one supports it when they’re against their enemies and partisanship prevails over principle. It’s very hard to have a reasonable discussion.”

Dershowitz said that citizens should fear the direction of this investigation for their own sake. He warned that today criminalization of political differences appears – now – to only affect presidents and political leaders. “Tomorrow it can affect you and me. If you give the prosecutor the ability to stretch the criminal law to fit a target, it’s very dangerous.”

And I am bipartisan as well in my condemnation—for example, I was and remain against the process that ended up with Bill Clinton’s impeachment. I’ve written several times before about why I hold that opinion and will not rehash it in this post, but please go here and start reading, with special attention to the links in that last paragraph.

That post I just linked contains a quote by another Democrat (or ex-Democrat? hard to keep it all straight) whose recent work I admire, Mark Penn. Keep in mind when you read this that Penn worked for both Clintons, and was Bill’s right-hand man during the Starr investigation and the impeachment process:

To Penn’s mind, an investigation such as this one [Mueller’s]—especially given its unbounded nature—will always be detrimental to the operation of a successful administration and federal government. “I think a lot of people see it as a sporting event: Just get the president! What difference does it make?” he explains. “They think it’s a wholly legitimate tool to use against a president and an administration you don’t like. My attitude on that is, if you don’t like him, vote him out. Introducing these elements into politics is a kind of tool. It had a bad impact in ’98, and a bad impact here.”…

“What’s unprecedented here is the fuzziness of the accusation of ‘Russian collusion,’ which led to the prosecutors examining everybody in the campaign, getting every email and piecing together virtually every meeting about everything, and then investigating everybody in the White House, in this search for that one contact with Russia that might prove it,” he says.

According to Penn, this process could very easily dissuade people from joining campaigns, presidential administrations, or other parts of the government, because it will lead them to believe that to do so could put them at risk of facing costly legal fees, FBI investigation, and possible prosecution. “We can’t run a campaign, democracy, or government under this kind of open-ended investigation,” he argues.

I agree wholeheartedly with Penn and Dershowitz. But Democrats—and as far as I can tell, most people, who love it when it’s their side doing the investigating of the other side—don’t. And right now the Democrats are excitedly awaiting the discovery of the pony.

Meanwhile, today’s news is that Mueller is looking busily at Trump’s old tweets:

Special counsel Robert Mueller is reviewing President Trump’s tweets as he pursues an investigation into whether the president obstructed justice, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The Times, citing three people briefed on the matter, reported that Mueller is particularly interested in Trump’s tweets about Attorney General Jeff Sessions, former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

The president has used the social media platform to fiercely criticize each official.

Mueller’s office declined to comment to the Times.

“If you’re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public,” argued Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer representing Trump in the Russia probe, in a statement to the paper.

However, Trump’s lawyers told the Times that they don’t believe Mueller is focused on a particular action for obstruction of justice, but rather is looking at the tweets as part of a larger pattern of behavior.

Any pattern of any behavior on anything, as long as it leads them to their goal.

What is their goal? It’s multiple, and the investigation itself—even if it never directly implicates Trump—has the potential to matter. One goal is of course the obvious one of finding a smoking Trump gun, but another goal is to hurt those around him and make it dangerous to work for him so that future possible appointees will be discouraged from doing so. Wouldn’t you think twice before becoming a Trump appointee? I certainly would.

A third goal is to pressure those who once worked for Trump by indicting them and threatening them so that they will rat on him, and whether they make something up or whether it’s true hardly matters. Any ratting will do, just as with jailhouse snitches.

The fourth goal is to create a public climate that is so toxic to Trump that he cannot function.

And a fifth goal is to turn enough members of Congress of either party against him that it results in his impeachment, no matter what Mueller finds or doesn’t find. A sixth and related goal (are you still with me?) is to create so much suspicion that the public will turn Congress over to the Democrats in 2018 in order to begin the impeachment process.

I also think that investigators with power get drunk on that power as a rule, and are loath to give it up, so all these investigations have their own built-in self-perpetuating energy.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Come and get those pheromones

The New Neo Posted on by

“Low-cost pheromones!!” a bot that tried to post today on the blog advertised.

I used to get up to 10,000 spambots a day here, the vast majority trapped in a spam filter than I had to clean out several times a day or it would clog the blog and slow it somewhat. Then suddenly the total went down to about 50 a day, where it has remained.

I don’t know why, but it’s definitely a good development.

I obviously don’t usually look at them, but every now and then I glance at a couple before deleting them, and find something briefly amusing and/or edifying there. The one above was edifying.

They sell pheromones? Indeed, indeed they do. But beware, low-cost or high:

Humans technically have the organ that other animals use to detect pheromones, but many scientists argue that our vomeronasal organ (which sits between the nose and the mouth) is a puny little shell left over from ancient history, incapable of sending smells straight to our brain stem for unconscious response.

That being said, it’s totally possible that humans have pheromones — including ones that drive potential suitors wild.

But since we don’t know what those pheromones are, it’s impossible to sell them. Instead, when you buy a product that claims pheromones as an ingredient, you’re buying the finest in pig-produced chemicals. And despite what many marketers say, there’s no real evidence that humans are sexually swayed by the hormones that get pigs hot and bothered.

And I would be very careful when visiting a farm.

The whole topic reminds me of an old “Northern Exposure” episode featuring Chris (see this for a previous discussion of my love for the series). The premise of this particular episode is that Chris has become irresistible to women, perhaps due to pheromones. And here it is:

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Vienna: come for the pastry, stay for the subsidized housing

The New Neo Posted on by

This article in HuffPo describes how wonderful the housing in Vienna is, and how cheap: “Vienna’s Affordable Housing Paradise:
Public housing is the accommodation of last resort in the U.S. Not so in Austria’s capital city.”

Paragraph after paragraph describes the situation in the Austrian capital, a city of nearly 2 million, in which there is a century-old dedication to building affordable subsidized housing that is apparently quite pleasant and desirable. Anyone with an income under $53,225 a year after taxes is eligible, and 62% of Vienna’s residents live in these units* [see NOTE below] in what is called “social housing.”

Obviously this is a very different concept than our public housing, which only serves the very lowest of incomes and is riddled with problems. In Vienna, more than half the people live in these places, which makes the vibe very different:

Kathrin Gaál, Vienna’s councillor for housing, says social housing is aimed at both people with low incomes and “a broad middle class” in the city. “What makes Vienna unique is that you cannot tell how much someone earns simply by looking at their home address,” Gaál explains.

The article goes on and on about how wonderful the system is, and there is a particular effort to contrast it with the system in the US which is decidedly unwonderful. Hooray for those Europeans, right?

I kept wondering if and when the article would get around to explaining how this miracle of affordable housing is accomplished. You could read most of it and get the idea it’s done through a combination of will, benevolent kindness, and magic. But about 2/3 into the text of the more than 1000-word article you get one little laconic paragraph about it. If you blink, you might even miss it:

Social housing is a valued priority across Austria, funded by income tax, corporate tax and a housing-specific contribution made by all employed citizens. According to Councillor Gaál, Vienna’s annual housing budget—which is spent refurbishing older apartments in the city as well as building new social housing projects—amounts to $700 million with $530 million coming from the national government.

I said it was a paragraph, but it’s really only that first sentence that deals with the nitty-gritty. And the facts in that first sentence are really not all that nitty or all that gritty, because although elsewhere the article is rather specific about monetary figures, there’s nothing specific there about income tax or corporate tax rates in Austria, or about what the amount of that “housing-specific contribution” paid by all of the country’s employed citizens might be or how it is determined.

I just spent about twenty minutes Googling to find further information on the latter tax, and I gave up for now. But here’s a chart that describes Austria’s income tax levels. There are plenty of other taxes, too, including of course the VAT of 20% which certainly adds to the cost of living.

Different countries make different choices about how much shared responsibility to have for the welfare of others and how much individual responsibility, at what point to start helping, and whether help should be government-mandated or through voluntary charities or some combination of the two. The countries of Europe are generally much less individualistic than the US, and the welfare system is structured very differently with more reliance on taxes and mandated group responsibility. European countries have also benefited from US military protection, so they don’t have to spend anywhere near as much of their federal money as we do on defense. In addition, European countries have until very recently been far more homogeneous ethnically and culturally than the US, which helps them foster a sense of being all in it together.

The HuffPo article does mention a bit of a change in that regard in Vienna:

Austria has not been immune to fears about an influx of refugees benefiting from government assistance in recent years. The country elected a right-wing coalition government in December, and rhetoric about immigrants putting pressure on public resources has grown even in its cosmopolitan capital city.

“There is a still a strong idea here that public housing is something for everybody,” says Andreas Rumpfhuber, a Viennese architect. “But we have similar problems to other countries. We have right-wing populists talking about whether refugees deserve public housing. So there are still dangers ahead for the [Vienna] model.”

Surprise, surprise! That “we’re all in this together” feeling may not extend to the entire world and everyone in it.

The article also indicates that Vienna is very affordable:

In fact, the extent of Vienna’s subsidized housing makes it one of the most affordable major cities in the world.

Follow that link, though, and you’ll see that the page is only saying that Vienna is one of the most affordable cities in terms of rent. That’s not at all the same as “affordable, period.” Vienna is not currently one of the most expensive 10 cities in the world (see page 4 at that link), but other cities in Europe are on that list and none in the US. Vienna certainly isn’t one of the cheapest 10 cities either (see page 7); let’s just say that no European city except Bucharest, and no US city at all, is on that particular list. Unfortunately, to get the full list—which would divulge where Vienna ranks—one must purchase it, and I’m not about to do that. And from what I could tell, the list doesn’t even factor in tax burdens, which would seem to me to be quite an important omission.

[* NOTE: It is interesting to compare Vienna with the closest thing the US has, which is rent control and rent stabilization in New York City. Granted, New York’s system is based on a very different principle and operates differently, but according to this chart about 61% of New York’s apartments fall under some sort of rent limits rules. Interesting that the percentage is so close to the percentage who live in subsidized housing in Austria.]

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

The Cohen-Trump tapes

The New Neo Posted on by

And what of the tape CNN played of a conversation between Trump’s attorney and Trump himself discussing possibly buying the rights to a Playboy bunny’s story of Trump infidelity?

Salient points:

(1) There’s no there there. No evidence of a crime, plus no such payment was ever made.

(2) Trump ultimately waived privilege on this particular tape after it was seized along with Cohen’s other records, so it’s no longer a confidential conversation protected by attorney-client privilege although it originally was.

(3) Cohen’s making the recording is not a crime in New York, where as long as one party to a 2-person conversation is aware of the taping, it’s legal to do so.

(4) However, it’s highly highly unusual for an attorney to make a recording of an attorney-client conversation without informing the client. Except in very rare circumstances that almost certainly do not apply here, it is also highly unethical.

The desire to catch Trump in some sort of past or present activity that will doom his presidency reminds me of an insatiably hungry animal that must be fed every few minutes with fresh new meat. So far, the animal has not been satisfied. But the tidbits of meat keep coming, and the beast chomps on them hungrily each time.

One does wonder, though—at least, I wonder—why Cohen decided to tape the transaction in the first place.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Another race hoax…

The New Neo Posted on by

…much like the others:

A waiter at a Texas steakhouse made up the viral story about a customer leaving him a racist note, his employer said Monday. The story gained national attention after Khalil Cavil, a 20-year-old server for Saltgrass Steak House in Odessa, Texas, posted a now-deleted image of the receipt he claimed was left for him on July 14.

On the bill, Khalil’s name was circled and the words, “we don’t tip terrorist,” were written at the top.

Cavil wrote in his post, which was deleted as of Tuesday morning: “I share this because I want people to understand that this racism, and this hatred still exists. Although, this is nothing new, it is still something that will test your faith.” Cavil’s Facebook page also appears to have been deleted.

Saltgrass originally said it had banned the customer blamed for the message. But now, the restaurant’s corporate office says it has learned the story was a hoax.

Cavil says he doesn’t know why he did it. But the phenomenon of hoax racist comments is so common that it seems to represent a real psychological phenomenon. My own theory is that it somewhat resembles Munchausen Syndrome, in which a person falsely induces the symptoms of an illness to get attention from other people and in particular from those in the medical field.

Look how Cavil was the center of concern and publicity for the week that people thought his claim was true. They even sent him money, which he is now supposed to return. It’s a con that offers built-in psychological and monetary rewards. And it advances the SJW narrative as well. What’s not to like?

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

More on the FISA application

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s nitpicky and tedious work to analyze the FISA application, its flaws, and the claims made about it. But there are a few people who consistently do thorough and reliable work, and so I recommend you read what they have to say.

The first is Andrew J. McCarthy, to whom I often link. The second is Byron York. And the third is Mollie Hemingway, whose latest detailed effort can be found here. I recommend it.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Victor Davis Hanson on how and why the Democrats got in touch with their inner Russian hawk

The New Neo Posted on by

In this column Victor Davis Hanson opines on an ironic phenomenon that has resulted from the Democratic need to discredit President Trump: their sudden discovery of the awfulness of the Russians.

Like so many things happening today, it’s so obvious and egregious a contradiction that it would be funny if the whole situation weren’t so sad and dangerous. But that’s where we’ve arrived.

Hanson writes:

The recent orthodox progressive and Democratic view of Russia — until the appearance of Donald Trump — was largely what it had been throughout the Cold War: one of empathy for Russia and understanding of its dilemmas, and shame over supposed right-wing American paranoia over a bogus “Russian bear.”….

The Obama administration showed indifference to the absorption of Crimea and eastern Ukraine. There was also not much anger over prior Russian cyberattacks on the United States. In October 2016, Obama offered a haughty, flat-out dismissal of the notion that Russia could change the way people vote in any election:

There is no serious person out there who would suggest somehow that you could even rig America’s elections, there’s no evidence that that has happened in the past or that it will happen this time.

His optimism was apparently predicated on his certainty that Hillary Clinton would win and that a defeated and humiliated Donald Trump should not post facto “whine” about losing.

It could not be more obvious that that was Obama’s motive. But that’s so 2016. The times they have a-changed, and all good Democrats change with them.

Continued:

After a year and a half, Mueller so far has been reduced to indicting some Russians operatives for cyber crimes and a few former Trump officials on charges that have had nothing to do with collusion.

But out of the Mueller conundrum and congressional investigations arose damning information that Obama national-security officials illegally unmasked and leaked to the press the names of those surveilled. In addition, DOJ and FBI officials deliberately misled either gullible or partisan FISA court judges to obtain surveillance warrants on American citizens, on the basis of an unverified dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

Discredited FBI officials lied to federal investigators. The former FBI director leaked confidential memos written on FBI time on FBI devices, and he probably worked with CIA Director John Brennan (who had previously lied twice under oath to the United States Congress) to monitor the Trump campaign, including but not limited to implanting government informants among Trump employees…

In other words, once Mueller deviated from his original mandate in order to search for wrongdoing anywhere he could find it, he was obligated to look at the acts of illegality committed by those in the Obama NSC, FBI, CIA, and DOJ, all in connection with thwarting the Trump campaign. He did not do so because his “dream” or “all-star” legal team was overwhelmingly composed of either Democratic partisans and donors to the Clinton campaign, or biased zealots such as Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, or those with prior affinities with Hillary Clinton or her employees and supporters…

In sum, Russian collusion is a 2016 election construct. The hysteria over it serves a palliative for hatred of a presidency that so far cannot be stopped before 2020.

And what of Russia? It’s of interest to the Democrats only as a weapon—or wannabee weapon—against Trump:

The progressive-driven effort to re-create the Cold War is surreal, given the far greater threat of an ascendant China and leftists’ past appeasement of Putin.

All that is not to say that Putin would not act like China if he could, only that he lacks the wherewithal to do so…

…Yet Putin as Satan is also a dangerous notion — Russia has nearly 7,000 nuclear weapons in its arsenal. One of the stupidest policies in recent U.S. diplomacy was the prior lose-lose Obama program of first courting Putin as a misunderstood figure likely to reciprocate liberal empathies, then, when rebuffed, demonizing him as an ogre worthy of a new Cold War.

It is difficult now to imagine what else Trump might still do to punish Putin. He has already beefed up sanctions, expelled Russians, had Russian mercenary thugs killed in Syria, sent threats to Putin not to overreach in Syria, armed the Ukrainians, expanded U.S. oil production, increased defense spending, jawboned NATO to toughen up, and blasted German-Russian appeasement and the dangerous developing German dependency on Russian fossil fuels.

What more concrete action do Trump haters want: air strikes on Moscow?

They couldn’t care less about any of it. All they want is Trump gone, and to be in control of Congress themselves, as well. Then to win the presidential election in 2020 from Pence, who is perceived as weaker…

The entire Hanson article is well worth reading; it contains a great deal more than these excerpts. The arguments it makes are so obviously true that I don’t see how anyone could disagree—but of course, vast swaths of the population disagree and/or are not even familiar with anything the right has to say other than the distortions presented through the MSM filter.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Merkel’s motives: what’s Christianity got to do with it?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve had a little ongoing dialogue with commenter “DNW” on this previous thread about eastern Europe vs. western Europe and the “migrants.” You can find the start of our back-and-forth here; just start reading and scroll down if you want to follow it closely.

But right now I just want to take up one small part of what we discussed, and that is my answer to DNW’s question:

How does [Merkel] ground that “obligation” [to take in all refugees] and where did she source it? Die Bibel? Nein? Wo dann?

A portion of my answer was as follows:

They ground it in guilt, some idea of human rights [the elevation of migration to a “human right”], leftism, anti-nationalism, and in some cases the Christian religion (that may be part of what’s going on with Merkel, who is a clergyman’s daughter; see this). Perhaps it’s just rhetoric, but Merkel has said it’s her duty as head of a Christian party.

The whole idea of a “Christian Party” is foreign to us in this country. But parties with the word “Christian” in the name are rather common in Europe and have a long history, mostly involving Catholicism. Their history is not the subject matter of this post, either, although it’s certainly an interesting one. Suffice to say that in recent years they have become markedly more secular, along with the whole of Europe and especially western Europe.

However, as with the watering-down of certain Christian denominations in this country, some of the “social justice” aspects of the religions remain, in somewhat distorted form from their original intent. The distortions are introduced by leftism, so it’s hard to say where a nominal religiosity leaves off and the leftism begins (or vice versa).

I’ve written previously about the Christian religion and the migrants here, in a more general sense. In that post I advanced some arguments as to why I believe that Christianity does not dictate the taking-in of all comers.

But back to Merkel. This article has an interesting take on the influence of religion on Merkel (comments in brackets are mine):

Merkel, herself the daughter of a Lutheran pastor, has explicitly countered the growing fear of Islam in Germany with the argument that, rather than fretting about other religions, Christian Germans should return to their roots and take their own faith more seriously. Rather than suspect Muslims of fanaticism for knowing the Koran by heart, they should take some inspiration from the example and firm up on the Bible. Merkel sees both Islam and Christianity as having a place in Germany and as springs of moral conduct. As some observers have put it, it is almost as if, after years of tranquilizing citizens through a carefully calculated politics of consensus, she has thrown down a moral challenge to her own people—and, in particular, for the 61 percent of Germans who identify as Christians actually to live their faith [or her idea of the Christian faith and its dictates re migrants].

Germany’s Catholic and Protestant churches—still of considerable political importance in the country—have tried to heed the call. The archbishop of Cologne has celebrated Merkel as a “Christian politician with a heart” and offered unconditional support of her policies. But some in Merkel’s own party have opposed her Willkommenskultur (culture of welcome): the chair of the “Working Group of Engaged Catholics in the CDU” has declared that an “uncontrolled influx of refugees” was “not Christian.”…

Merkel has been most harshly criticized by Catholics (and it was Catholics who, in the recent state elections, opted for internal CDU critics of Merkel’s course, whereas Protestants tended to give their vote to Greens and Social Democrats, who support her). Some Protestants, meanwhile, think Merkel might be renewing Christian Democracy on the basis of a specifically Protestant sensibility. The theologian Rainer Bucher has credited her with a “sober Christian realism” that takes on the challenges of violent global conflict and exploitative global capitalism.

You may be of the opinion that Merkel’s brand of Christianity is fake and just a screen for a social justice agenda destructive to nationalism (and even Christianity) in Europe. But if so, she certainly uses religion in the service of taking in the so-called migrants.

You may also think that Christianity in Europe is dead as a doornail—as does commenter “Cicero” in that same thread. My reply to him was as follows:

…Christianity in Western Europe is nothing like as common or as strong as it used to be. But it is not nothing. This is what I wrote:

Western Europe has had a very strong Christian sensibility until recently and many western Europeans still do, although far fewer than in the past.

I never said that many Western Europeans had anything like the religiosity these countries used to have. Nor did I say many of them were regular churchgoers. I chose the word “sensibility” carefully. I meant a general Christian self-identity, which does not necessarily include devoutness.

If you want to learn something about religious observance in western Europe, see this, for example. 81% of western Europeans were raised Christian and 71% consider themselves currently Christian. 22% attend services at least monthly. It affects their politics, too (which, after all, is the subject matter of my post):

…[I]f it sounds like Christian is a term with loose daily-life significance in Europe, that’s not the case. The Pew study included nearly 12,000 non-practicing Christians and found that self-identifying as a Christian—even among those who rarely participate in religious services—was still a “meaningful marker” in Western Europe.

“It is not just a ‘nominal’ identity devoid of practical importance,” stated Pew researchers. “On the contrary, the religious, political and cultural views of non-practicing Christians often differ from those of church-attending Christians and religiously unaffiliated adults.”

Non-practicing Christians generally do not believe in God as described in the Bible, but do generally hold positive views of church institutions. They also express nationalist sentiments, though Western European churchgoers have stronger views on both counts. Among Christians in every country analyzed, more said they are very proud to be a citizen of their nation (50% median) than said they were very proud to be a Christian (33% median).

There is no question, of course, that in the US there is a greater percentage of religiously observant Christians. And there is no doubt that in western Europe religious observance has fallen precipitously. I have actually written about that topic several times on this blog (see this, for an example).

So it depends on how religious affiliation is defined, but it is clear that as Europeans themselves define their religious connections and beliefs, those connections and beliefs affect their politics and in particular their feelings of nationalism, which in turn almost certainly affect their attitudes towards the “migrants.”

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

The FISA application: Nunes was right (and it’s not Andrew C. McCarthy’s FBI anymore)

The New Neo Posted on by

The FISA application for surveillance on Carter Page finally was released to the public on Saturday, in a heavily redacted but lengthy version. Saturday is the time that news stories ordinarily go to die, but this one has gotten quite a bit of attention nevertheless.

The person who has been the most consistently fine reporter and commentator on everything to do with these investigations is Andrew C. McCarthy. As I’ve written many times before, he is also the most knowledgeable and experienced about procedure related to such matters.

Here’s a video of McCarthy’s initial comments in reaction:

This is a particularly important admission because confirmation bias would ordinarily cause him to think the opposite. It’s one of the reasons I so admire McCarthy; he can admit he’s wrong. He also isn’t usually wrong. But he has been consistently wrong in thinking that the same agencies (and even in some cases the same people) he used to know in another time and another setting (a non-Trump-Derangement setting) are being on the up-and-up and have some integrity in connection with their actions towards Trump and anything to do with Trump.

McCarthy can hardly believe the truth he’s learned; it’s so disillusioning. But he does believe it when he sees the evidence right before his eyes.

McCarthy has had a little more time now to write a column, and he further expands on some of the ideas he touched on in that interview. Please read his column in its entirety. Here’s an excerpt:

When people started theorizing that the FBI had presented the Steele dossier to the FISA court as evidence, I told them they were crazy: The FBI, which I can’t help thinking of as my FBI after 20 years of working closely with the bureau as a federal prosecutor, would never take an unverified screed and present it to a court as evidence. I explained that if the bureau believed the information in a document like the dossier, it would pick out the seven or eight most critical facts and scrub them as only the FBI can — interview the relevant witnesses, grab the documents, scrutinize the records, connect the dots. Whatever application eventually got filed in the FISA court would not even allude en passant to Christopher Steele or his dossier. The FBI would go to the FISA court only with independent evidence corroborated through standard FBI rigor.

…[and] in the unlikely event the FBI ever went off the reservation, the Justice Department would not permit the submission to the FISA court of uncorroborated allegations; and even if that fail-safe broke down, a court would not approve such a warrant.

It turns out, however, that the crazies were right and I was wrong. The FBI (and, I’m even more sad to say, my Justice Department) brought the FISA court the Steele dossier allegations, relying on Steele’s credibility without verifying his information.

I am embarrassed by this not just because I assured people it could not have happened, and not just because it is so beneath the bureau…I am embarrassed because what happened here flouts rudimentary investigative standards. Any trained FBI agent would know that even the best FBI agent in the country could not get a warrant based on his own stellar reputation…

…Much of my bewilderment, in fact, stems from the certainty that if I had been so daft as to try to get a warrant based on the good reputation of one of my FBI case agents, with no corroboration of his or her sources, just about any federal judge in the Southern District of New York would have knocked my block off — and rightly so.

That’s why I said it.

And what I have to say to Andrew McCarthy is this: it’s not your FBI or your DOJ anymore. You’ve been away for a while, and the entire ethos seems to have changed, and those changes are dangerous. The frenzy to get Trump has caused the people involved to cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil:

I keep putting that video up on this blog, because it keeps being relevant. The law is, among other things, a set of processes and procedures designed to protect us all. Cut a great road through it and it endangers us all. FISA courts are especially dangerous because they are secret, and the protections must be that much greater for that reason. The system has apparently completely broken down, and the change of heart of Andrew McCarthy—who previously had faith in it—on this topic is proof of how very bad the situation is.

McCarthy also has a great deal more to say in that essay about what is actually in the application and what it means. Other people have written on the same subject, and in particular on how the release of the application vindicates the Nunes memo (see this).

And yet, of course, you can find articles (this for example) on the left saying the released application proves Nunes wrong. They rehash the same old ideas such as this:

The most notorious claim of the Nunes memo was that the FBI failed to properly disclose that one of the sources cited in the original warrant application, former British spy Christopher Steele, was hired by Trump’s political opponents. According to the Nunes memo, the FBI didn’t “disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior and FBI officials.”

Democrats had later said that the FBI did acknowledge that the source’s employers were working against Trump, and sure enough, it seems Nunes left that detail out…

See that funny little shift there? That’s sophistry at its finest, and that’s the way this sort of thing is written. Nunes said the document didn’t mention the role of the DNC, the Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign. And guess what? That’s exactly what the release of the memo proves—they didn’t. Byron York deals with the same issue in much greater detail with much greater clarity and truth:

The fifth paragraph [of the Nunes memo]:

a) Neither the initial application in October 2016, nor any of the renewals, disclose or reference the role of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign in funding Steele’s efforts, even though the political origins of the Steele dossier were then known to senior DOJ and FBI officials.

[York writes] That is accurate. Readers will search the FISA application in vain for any specific mention of the DNC, Clinton campaign, or any party/campaign funding of the dossier. For the most part, names were not used in the application, but Donald Trump was referred to as “Candidate #1,” Hillary Clinton was referred to as “Candidate #2,” and the Republican Party was referred to as “Political Party #1.” Thus, the FISA application could easily have explained that the dossier research was paid for by “Candidate #2” and “Political Party #2,” meaning the Democrats. And yet the FBI chose to describe the situation this way, in a footnote: “Source #1…was approached by an identified U.S. person, who indicated to Source #1 that a U.S.-based law firm had hired the identified U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia…The identified U.S. person hired Source #1 to conduct this research. The identified U.S. person never advised Source #1 as to the motivation behind the research into Candidate #1’s ties to Russia. The FBI speculates that the identified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.”

Democrats argue that the FISA Court judges should have been able to figure out, from that obscure description, that the DNC and Clinton campaign paid for the dossier. That seems a pretty weak argument, but in any case, the Nunes memo’s statement that the FISA application did not disclose or reference the role of the DNC and the Clinton campaign is undeniably true.

But see how much longer it takes to say that? People who read that first article in NY magazine only will almost certainly not see anything amiss in the author’s assertion that the FISA application proved Nunes wrong, although in fact it proves the exact opposite.

The AP gets into the propaganda act as well. That article I just linked was written by John Hinderaker of Powerline, and he says:

With the AP, it is often hard to tell whether we are dealing with malice or ignorance.

It’s the old “knave or fool” question. But in the case of these distortions by the AP and others, I think we can safely say “malice” as well as “tactical lying.” My reason for saying that is that it’s not easy to write stuff like that; it takes effort and skill. The “mistakes” aren’t simple ones or intuitive ones. It is necessary to twist the facts in a fairly convoluted way to get there. And although I tend to think it’s wise to never ascribe to malice what can be ascribed to simple incompetence or ignorance, incompetence (or ignorance) is not what’s going on here.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Ballet of the past

The New Neo Posted on by

The ballet “La Sylphide” (not to be confused with the ballet “Les Sylphides”) is an old Romantic warhorse. It’s one of the oldest ballets—maybe even the oldest ballet—for which we still have the choreography and which is still performed with some frequency.

Romantic tales often feature imaginary creatures like woodland nymphs (the sylphide of the title). And they usually don’t end in a finale resembling a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, with everybody happy and everything resolved. Au contraire.

“La Sylphide” was a role originated by the Italian ballerina Marie Taglioni in 1832, but the choreography that has survived is from 1836. Here are some old artistic renditions of Taglioni in the role. You can see that the impression given was of being weightless, almost flying. In fact, some of the pictures of Taglioni I’ve seen in the past show her flying, which I think wasn’t just an exaggeration of the illusion she accomplished through her dancing skill, but through the use of actual stage machinery. And the sylph has wings, after all—little gossamer wings on her back—and so she is supposed to make us think she certainly could fly if she wanted to do so.

Here’s Taglioni:

“La Sylphide” is definitely a dance from the distant past of ballet. Compared to that, the video I’m about to show is almost recent. It’s from 1962, however, so we can safely say it’s from the past, too, although a not-so-distant past that even I can remember. It features Erik Bruhn and Carla Fracci (also an Italian dancer, like Taglioni), a pair I was lucky enough to see dance many times in person, including in this particular ballet. It was magical in person; but all ballets are so much better in person that it seems a shame to rely on videos.

But video is all we have (this one was from a TV show, which is usually far from ideal). Bruhn died many years ago, and Fracci is now a still-lovely 81 years old. The video is a little funky—a bit blurry, and at one point it turns black-and-white for a short while.

But please watch it; you’ll never see anything with this ethereal quality in dance today. In fact, it was rare even for its time. Fracci captures the spirit of the Romantic ballet perfectly. How does she achieve such incredible lightness? I confess that I don’t know; she wasn’t confiding in me. But I think it was because that was her overriding goal—not to show off her technique, but to hide it in illusion. “Light as air” is a cliché, but here you will see Fracci achieve the closest thing to light-as-air as a human can get. And Bruhn is elegance personified, crisp and musical at all times.

Enjoy:

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Why might Trump have some difficulty trusting the intelligence community?

The New Neo Posted on by

Might some of this be why, perchance?

And this is about all the ways in which the Mueller investigation stands to hurt our national security.

Then we have the question of whether John Brennan retains his security clearance.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

Hungary withdraws from UN pact on migration

The New Neo Posted on by

Europe has been in turmoil over the issue of so-called “migration” (which at this point in time is the arrival of people who are predominantly Middle Eastern or North African Muslims, although it is not completely limited to those groups). The basic trend of response among the European nations is that the more-protectionist (and ex-Soviet-satellite) countries of eastern Europe are pitted against the more-inclusive countries of western Europe, although countries in the latter region have recently developed sizeable factions who are increasingly simpatico with the eastern countries’ stance.

Austria seems to be the dividing line between east and west, and I believe it’s no accident that historically it was also the place where the military advances of the Ottoman Empire into Europe were stopped many centuries ago:

The Battle of Vienna…took place at Kahlenberg Mountain near Vienna on 12 September 1683 after the imperial city had been besieged by the Ottoman Empire for two months. The battle was fought by the Habsburg Monarchy, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire, under the command of King John III Sobieski against the Ottomans and their vassal and tributary states. The battle marked the first time the Commonwealth and the Holy Roman Empire had cooperated militarily against the Ottomans, and it is often seen as a turning point in history, after which “the Ottoman Turks ceased to be a menace to the Christian world”.

Austria has recently elected the extremely young Sebastian Kurz, who has talked a harder line on immigrants:

Sebastian Kurz won Austria’s election by talking bluntly about immigration…

Europe’s refugee crisis brought people to Austria “who sometimes brought ideas that have no place in our country”, Mr Kurz, 31, tells the Financial Times. “It is a new form of anti-Semitism imported by some. There are people who reject our way of living, who are against equality between men and women.”…

In government Mr Kurz’s outspokenness would spread ripples across Europe. He demands the effective defence of the EU’s external borders, a stop to illegal immigration and curbs on foreigners’ access to welfare payments.

Here’s a map of the extent of the Ottoman Empire at the time the Battle of Vienna took place. It is quite instructive, I believe, if you relate it to what’s going on today (you might have to enlarge it to see it). Make sure you take a look at where Vienna is; slightly to the left (west) of the territory:

Hungary is somewhat to the east of Austria, and Hungary has staked out an even stronger anti-migrant position [emphasis mine] so far:

Hungary will withdraw from the UN Global Compact for Migration before it comes into effect, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Wednesday in Budapest following a government meeting.

Under right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary has sought to insulate itself from influxes of refugees and migrants through increasingly hardline policies.

“This package goes against Hungary’s common sense and interests,” said Szijjarto. The agreement supports migration and considers it to be a human right, which, according to the minister, is unacceptable from Hungary’s point of view.

The text of the new treaty was agreed at the UN General Assembly last Friday, and aims to create a worldwide framework for managing migration…

The agreement is billed by the UN as the first global comprehensive framework on migration, and aims to address migration proactively rather than reactively…

Hungary rejects the quota-based distribution of refugees within the EU, and in 2015 ordered the building of fences along its borders with Serbia and Croatia to keep out migrants travelling along the Balkan route into northern Europe.

The US also rejected the UN compact last year, after agreeing to take part under former president Barack Obama.

Good for Trump; the UN should have no place in telling the US what to do about its borders. And it’s no surprise that Obama previously had agreed to take part, submitting the US to global decisions on these matters, because leftists are for open borders (or mostly-open borders). Lately the left has been calling migration a human right (the Szijjarto quote above refers to that idea), which is shorthand for “countries are not allowed to limit immigration because that would be limiting a basic human right.” And if countries manage to continue to limit immigration de jure, they’re not allowed to limit it de facto because illegal immigrants should not be turned back.

This is the goal, and Hungary and the US are correct to resist it (see also this). If any particular country in the world wishes to open its borders, it’s free to do so, of course.

[NOTE: By the way, Orban is a left-to-right changer:

At the age of 14 and 15, [Orban] was a secretary of the communist youth organisation (KISZ) of his secondary grammar school (KISZ membership was mandatory for university admittance). Orban said in a later interview that his political views had radically changed during the military service: earlier he had considered himself a “naive and devoted supporter” of the Communist regime…

In March 1988, Orban was one of the founding members of Fidesz “Alliance of Young Democrats”) and served as its first spokesperson. The first members of the party, including Orban, were mostly students…who opposed the Communist regime…

On 16 June 1989, Orban gave a speech in Heroes’ Square, Budapest, on the occasion of the reburial of Imre Nagy and other national martyrs of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. In his speech he demanded free elections and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. The speech brought him wide national and political acclaim.

In 1989 Orban would have been 26 years old.

I read much of his Wiki entry and some other articles about him, but find it hard to get a bead on his current politics except for the immigration issue. He’s been called a populist and authoritarian, but it’s hard to tell what’s going on as a whole because most of what’s written about him sticks to the issue of migration.]

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]