Chronicle of a porch thief

The New Neo Posted on by

This Atlantic article describes how home surveillance cameras have helped catch thieves who steal packages – predominantly Amazon packages – from porches. The attitude of the author is somewhat ambiguous, but as best I can determine she seems to lean slightly more towards sympathy with the thieves (in particular one thief who is described at great length) than with the victims of the crimes.

For example:

While porch cams have been used to investigate cases as serious as homicides, the surveillance and neighborhood social networking typically make a particular type of crime especially visible: those lower-level ones happening out in public, committed by the poorest. Despite the much higher cost of white-collar crime, it seems to cause less societal hand-wringing than what might be caught on a Ring camera, said W. David Ball, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law. “Did people really feel that crime was ‘out of control’ after Theranos?” he said. “People lost hundreds of millions of dollars. You would have to break into every single car in San Francisco for the next ten years to amount to the amount stolen under Theranos.”

That perspective was little comfort to San Franciscans in late 2017, when the city was the nation’s leader in property crime. In Potrero, Fairley had been captured on camera enough times, snatching packages or walking down the street with bundles of mail, that many in the neighborhood had a face and a name to attach to their generalized anger about ongoing nuisances. Fairley was correct in thinking that, in many cases, Amazon will replace pilfered packages. Her major miscalculation was in thinking that her neighbors would, therefore, just shrug and move on.

It’s hard to convey the flavor of the article without quoting at great length from it, but the general feeling I got was that stealing Amazon stuff from rich people’s (or middle class people’s) porches is upsetting but no biggee, but poor drug addicts (particularly if from minority groups) can be forgiven because it’s poverty that drives them.

The other sense the article conveys is how well Fairley (the porch thief featured in the article) plays the game of self-justification. She minimizes her offenses and plays the race card with great frequency. Here’s a little sample:

Arnold began combining the neighbors’ Fairley-related posts in a single document. They started with the first dispatch, from May 2017, with Margett photographing Fairley and her daughter. In October of that year, a friend of Arnold’s, then a VP at Flipboard, followed Fairley in his Prius, watching her go door to door collecting packages—a mail carrier in reverse. In November, a cam caught a lithe woman who looked like Fairley crawling up a home’s steps to seize a fat Amazon pouch of lug nuts, a rosary dangling from her neck. Two weeks later, neighbors were gardening on a shared strip of land when Fairley passed by balancing a long lamp box on her shoulder. (Fairley claimed that the box contained her own headboard and lampshade.) Seeing an address written in big letters for a home in the opposite direction, one of them grabbed the box and demanded to see an ID to prove Fairley lived there. A second man called 911 as a woman videoed Fairley’s ensuing tirade: “That’s why people get shot. You don’t pull somebody’s package off their fucking arm,” Fairley snapped, then stalked off.

And then there’s the failure of the legal system as well as the system to treat addiction:

Two incidents—the Googler and the bus; the Prius calling in Fairley—resulted in charges (petty theft, mail theft, receiving stolen property, and possession of heroin—all misdemeanors), and tickets for court dates. But Fairley regularly skipped her hearings—she’d lose track of the dates, she later told me, and just had “a lot going on”—which slowed the process of resolving the cases. Again and again, in her absence, the judge would issue bench warrants, and Fairley would eventually be arrested and booked into jail, from which the judge would release her to await her next hearing, with demands that she report to diversion programs or Narcotics Anonymous meetings—all while neighbors continued to report on Nextdoor that they were watching her steal mail.

Fairley is given many chances in many rehab programs, all of which she manages to flunk. Then, as her life spirals down from an already-low point, she loses more and more: her possessions, her public housing, her daughter. At no point does she show any inclination to take responsibility for her situation.

It’s hard to imagine any good ending to Fairley’s story; her problems seem deep-seated and intractable, her way of life ingrained and habitual. And what percentage of petty criminals resembles Fairley? How many are capable of change and how many strongly resistant to it?

Would more prison time have made a difference in Fairley’s trajectory? At the very least, it would have sent her a different message, and would have given the residents of the Portrero neighborhood a break from her thievery.

Or would it have? As this depressing article also makes clear, even when Fairley was unable to make her rounds because she was in rehab programs, other thieves took up the slack and kept stealing the low-hanging fruit – the Amazon packages – from the porches of Portrero.

Back spasms

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve had a bad back for over 30 years.

Bad backs run in my family, and despite general athleticism (or maybe because of it?) three out of the four members of my family had serious and chronic disc problems and nerve problems starting in early adulthood and lasting for the rest of our entire lives (so far, anyway).

I’ve grown accustomed to mine, and have a bunch of ways to deal with it and to protect my back. I sit a certain way, I stand to work at my computer, and I’m mega-careful in the ways I move and try to always use good ergonomics and posture. So although the first ten to fifteen years of my back issues were horrendous and involved major pain just about every day of my life, the past fifteen years haven’t been so bad.

In the last few months there’s been a little bit of exacerbation, although nothing all that terrible. But three days ago, I used my usual method (a kind of modified deep knee bend) to pick something up off the floor, and when I stood up straight I felt as though someone had shot me in the butt. The right butt, to be exact.

I couldn’t walk without involuntarily shrieking. I could barely manage to get to my bed, arrange some pillows to support my legs, and lie down and not move. That short journey had taken extraordinary effort and been extremely stressful, so much so that I shook almost uncontrollably for about ten minutes afterwards. My entire body felt under siege in fighting the pain.

I thought I was in major trouble and would be for a long time. I took some Tylenol and NSAIDs, which was all I had with me, and waited with trepidation.

The next day I felt about 80% better. This was a tremendous relief. But the question remains: why did it happen, and why was it so very bad, and will it happen again? I had developed a false sense of security and thought I knew how to prevent such a thing. But obviously, I was wrong.

I decided ex post facto that it had been a back spasm, a violent muscle contraction that can be excruciating while it lasts but doesn’t tend to last so very long. My previous back pain had been much more of the chronic nerve variety; I don’t think I’ve ever had anything happen like this before.

I bet some of you have, though. Am I right?

The nature of the present-day Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

From commenter “Snow on Pine” a few weeks ago:

It seems to me that Congress has gone so far off the rails that it no longer really represents the people–no more traditional “regular order” budgets, no major bi-partisan legislation of benefit to the people; it represents itself and its member’s interests, it represents major business interests, it represents a whole variety of ideological interests of the Left, it even represents the interests of various foreign countries which have bought influence and, perhaps, even “reality” TV.

At this point it’s going through the motions, giving the appearance of life to an empty shell that has, in recent decades, been increasingly drained of substance or meaning.

But, represent the real interests of the American people? That, it no longer does, nor–despite what it’s members might tell us–does it actually care.

I think there’s some truth to this. What’s the reason? Some probabilities: the influence of big money. The growth of gerrymandering to ensure safe districts, which in turn fosters more extreme positions, which leads to less ability to compromise. Members who are elected again and again and again and are basically career politicians.

However – take a look at the plot of the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” It was made about eighty years ago in 1939, and although the subject is the Senate and not the House, it features a political system loaded with graft and corruption, and a stalwart guy fighting against that and for the old American ideals.

I am particularly struck by this part [emphasis mine]:

The constituents try to rally around [Jimmy Stewart as Mr. Smith], but the entrenched opposition is too powerful, and all attempts are crushed. Owing to the influence of Taylor’s machine, newspapers and radio stations in Smith’s home state, on Taylor’s orders, refuse to report what Smith has to say and even distort the facts against the senator. An effort by the Boy Rangers to spread the news in support of Smith results in vicious attacks on the children by Taylor’s minions.

The movie has a happy ending. But it paints a picture of Washington DC and politics in general that’s already highly tainted by corruption and rarely serving the will of the people.

But I agree with Snow on Pine that Congress has gotten worse in recent years.

What Kamala and Beto have in common

The New Neo Posted on by

Neither is going to be the Democratic nominee.

But they each had their day in the sun as the darling of the MSM and the person who was going to rise to the top. The media is so eager to locate the great Trump-slayer that anyone will do until the public rejects that person and it’s time to move on to the next.

Beto had two big problems. The first was that he seemed profoundly bizarre as a person, and the second was that the policies he advocated were to the left of even the current Democratic electorate. Kamala’s problem has been twofold as well: she is not the least bit likeable and she was flailing in terms of policy and never figured out what she stood for or even if she stood for anything other than Kamala Harris.

But for one brief shining moment they were the press’s favorites, and at that point they must have believed that they might truly win the whole shebang. That’s a hard notion to give up.

“Thank God for the Deep State!” says a denizen of the deep

The New Neo Posted on by

A lot of people have opined about this comment by former acting director of the CIA John McLaughlin:

McLaughlin embraced the term when asked during an event with other former intelligence officials whether a CIA whistleblower complaint that sparked an impeachment inquiry feeds into Trump’s complaints that the “deep state” is out to get him.

“There is something unique you have to agree that now the impeachment inquiry is underway, sparked by a complaint from someone within the intelligence community, it feeds the president’s concern, an often used term about a ‘deep state’ being there to take him out,” Margaret Brennan, the moderator for the event, asked McLaughlin.

“Thank God for the ‘deep state,’” replied the former spook, who served as acting director at the CIA in 2004.

You can find some commentary on this here as well as here.

My own opinion is that it demonstrates what we already know about the self-satisfied arrogance and the assumption of entitlement to great power by individuals who have risen to the highest positions in government entities such as the CIA. They have become unused to answering to anyone who might disagree with them and don’t feel they should have to. If Louis XIV of France famously said “L’etat c’est moi,” then these un-elected and preening Pooh-Bahs (without the humor of the original Pooh Bah) say “L’etat profond, c’est moi.”

And they are not the least bit ashamed of it; they are proud.

Do they believe that Trump is guilty and that they, the keepers of the flame, are saving us from him and from ourselves? Some probably do, but many have a more cynical cast of mind. For that first group, who sincerely feel that they are heroes and that Trump is some sort of danger not just to Deep State power but to America and the world, they have never learned (or don’t care) that they are following in the path of tyranny by ignoring the proper process to follow, because they believe that they know best.

And they don’t have to prove it. They just know, because their judgment is infallible. So, since they know that Trump is guilty of terrible crimes and awful intent, all they have to do is find one of those crimes – or manufacture one if they can’t locate the ones they know must be there if only they could find them.

It’s a pernicious way of thinking and acting, but even worse are those Deep Staters who don’t believe Trump to be guilty of anything but undermining their power and disagreeing with policies they would advocate if they were president, and that this justifies their attempt to take him down using all the considerable power at their disposal. Their entire lives have been an exercise in growing career success (climbing up the job ladder) and increasing power, and they believe that rules are for the little people.

In addition, there is no lack of people to cheer them on. So their arrogance has been rewarded, and so far there have been no significant negative consequences for them. Will there ever be?

Beto…

The New Neo Posted on by

…we hardly knew ya [typos corrected in the following quote]:

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke is dropping out of the 2020 presidential race, according to a report by the New York Times.

The Times is reporting that O’Rourke had planned to withdraw “from the race in Iowa on Friday evening and follow up with an email message to his supporters.” According to the times, Beto stated in a draft of the message to his supporters that “he was proud of championing issues like guns and climate change but conceded that his campaign lacked ‘the means to move forward successfully.'”

And what we knew we didn’t like.

Trolls and the Times

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the most popular devices used by propagandists is the selected misleading quote. I’ve seen the method used so often that it can be called standard operating procedure. It’s not limited to the left – you can find it on the right, too – but it’s only on the left that it’s commonplace and becomes nearly constant.

In fact, that discovery was one of the reasons for my political change.

Yesterday we had a good example of the use of the technique in this post, in which I compared the treatment of Tim Morrison’s testimony and opening statement (it is only the latter for which we were allowed to see the text) by The Federalist and the NY Times. Needless to say, quite different things were emphasized by each publication.

Right on cue, our resident troll “Manju” chimed in with this, as a reply to my characterization “The [Times’] headline states ‘White House Aide Confirms He Saw Signs of a Quid Pro Quo on Ukraine.’ …directly contradicts what the Federalist reports.” Manju writes:

From Morrison’s opening statement:

“I had no reason to believe that the release of the security sector assistance might be conditioned on a public statement reopening the Burisma investigation until my September 1, 2019 conversation with Ambassador Sondland.”

The NYTimes characterization is correct. The Federalist’s is propaganda.

But even looking just at the short excerpt Manju offers as proof that the Times headline was correct and the Federalist incorrect, it doesn’t indicate that at all. Morrison isn’t saying that he himself saw any such thing. He has no direct knowledge of anything of the sort. Nor was he asserting that because Sondland said it, it must be the case.

The part of Morrison’s statement that Manju left out provides the context [emphasis and bracketed remarks mine]:

I was not aware that the White House was holding up the security sector assistance passed by Congress until my superior, Dr. Charles Kupperman, told me soon after I succeeded Dr. Hill. I was aware that the President thought Ukraine had a corruption problem, as did many others familiar with Ukraine. I was also aware that the President believed that Europe did not contribute enough assistance to Ukraine. I was directed by Dr. Kupperman to coordinate with the interagency stakeholders to put together a policy process to demonstrate that the interagency supported security sector assistance to Ukraine. I was confident that our national security principals—the Secretaries of State and Defense, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and the head of the National Security Council—could convince President Trump to release the aid because President Zelensky and the reform-oriented Rada were genuinely invested in their anti-corruption agenda.

Ambassador Taylor and I were concerned that the longer the money was withheld, the more questions the Zelensky administration would ask about the U.S. commitment to Ukraine. Our initial hope was that the money would be released before the hold became public because we did not want the newly constituted Ukrainian government to question U.S. support.

I have no reason to believe the Ukrainians had any knowledge of the review until August 28, 2019. [that’s long after the Trump phone call in question] Ambassador Taylor and I had no reason to believe that the release of the security sector assistance might be conditioned on a public statement reopening the Burisma investigation until my September 1, 2019 conversation with Ambassador Sondland. Even then I hoped that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own and would not be considered by leaders in the Administration and Congress, who understood the strategic importance of Ukraine to our national security.

I am pleased our process gave the President the confidence he needed to approve the release of the security sector assistance. My regret is that Ukraine ever learned of the review and that, with this impeachment inquiry, Ukraine has become subsumed in the U.S. political process.

The characterization by the Times and Manju lacks the context in which it can properly be understood. But that’s the point, isn’t it?

What’s more – although this is somewhat tangential to the subject matter of this post, how quotes can work as propaganda – even if Trump was doing exactly what he is accused of doing, so what? Didn’t Biden explicitly do something similar?

Plus, here’s a point made by Trey Gowdy:

Well, you know, that means something for something,” he said of the supposed “quid pro quo” at the center of the impeachment probe. “I need to know what both of those somethings is.”

“If the something is, ‘We’re not going to give you aid until you help us figure out who tried to interfere with the levers of democracy in 2016’ — Margaret, I can tell you if a Democrat did that we’d be adding something to Mt. Rushmore,” he said.

If it was the case that Mr. Trump and his allies inside and outside the administration pressured the government of Ukraine to help the U.S. determine who else, other than Russians, might have attempted to meddle in the 2016 election, Gowdy said the actions would not amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors” — the constitutional standard for impeachment.

“I mean, we spent two years as a country trying to figure out who tried to interfere with our elections. So clearly, it can’t be an impeachable offense,” he added.

But it’s moot, because there are no indications that’s what happened. And in particular, if Ukraine wasn’t even aware of any stoppage of aid, then there could not have been a quid pro quo for anything, and that includes the re-opening of the Burisma investigation.

There are several possible quid pro quo subjects, by the way, and they are often confused: an end to Ukrainian corruption in general, information about Ukrainian interference in the US election of 2016, and re-opening (note the “re”) the Ukrainian investigation into Burisma. IMHO they would all be valid subjects for Trump to insist upon, but I see no evidence that any of these subjects was made a requirement by Trump in terms of foreign aid to Ukraine, for the simple reason that Ukraine didn’t even know there was any disruption in aid.

The thing about this propaganda technique is that it’s generally very effective. That’s true for several reasons, but the main one is that most people will not go back to the original to find the context in order to check. Often it’s because they view the source of the quote as a trusted one. Often it’s because they don’t have the time or the inclination. Sometimes they even lack the knowledge that they can find the original if they try (and of course sometimes the text of the original is unavailable). Often they want to believe the version they read anyway, and aren’t especially interested in challenging it.

And so it continues.

Snap Brexit vote for UK on December 12

The New Neo Posted on by

A UK vote is scheduled for December 12 in an attempt to break the Brexit stalemate.

PM Boris Johnson is gambling that he will win a majority and be able to execute Brexit as promised, without Parliament blocking him as it has so far. The left is gambling that they’ll be the victors and can institute a Brexit vote do-over that will go their way.

And still another possibility is another stalemate in which neither side has a majority and the stalling goes on and on.

Any bets?

No wonder they don’t want us to know who the “whistleblower” is

The New Neo Posted on by

It is allegedly (and almost certainly) Eric Ciaramella, and he’s not exactly what you’d call an objective observer:

Former White House officials said Ciaramella worked on Ukrainian policy issues for Biden in 2015 and 2016, when the vice president was President Obama’s “point man” for Ukraine. A Yale graduate, Ciaramella is said to speak Russian and Ukrainian, as well as Arabic. He had been assigned to the NSC by Brennan.

He was held over into the Trump administration, and headed the Ukraine desk at the NSC, eventually transitioning into the West Wing, until June 2017.

“He was moved over to the front office” to temporarily fill a vacancy, said a former White House official, where he “saw everything, read everything.”

The official added that it soon became clear among NSC staff that Ciaramella opposed the new Republican president’s foreign policies. “My recollection of Eric is that he was very smart and very passionate, particularly about Ukraine and Russia. That was his thing – Ukraine,” he said. “He didn’t exactly hide his passion with respect to what he thought was the right thing to do with Ukraine and Russia, and his views were at odds with the president’s policies.”

“So I wouldn’t be surprised if he was the whistleblower,” the official said.

In May 2017, Ciaramella went “outside his chain of command,” according to a former NSC co-worker, to send an email alerting another agency that Trump happened to hold a meeting with Russian diplomats in the Oval Office the day after firing Comey, who led the Trump-Russia investigation. The email also noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin had phoned the president a week earlier.

Contents of the email appear to have ended up in the media, which reported Trump boasted to the Russian officials about firing Comey, whom he allegedly called “crazy, a real nut job.”

In effect, Ciaramella helped generate the “Putin fired Comey” narrative, according to the research dossier making the rounds in Congress, a copy of which was obtained by RealClearInvestigations.

The guy’s been a busy little beaver, hasn’t he? He appears to be one of those Obama holdover moles I described in this post:

Right after the 2016 election, I read some articles describing people in government who had decided to stay put and secretly sabotage Trump. These articles weren’t exposes written by the right; they were proud confessions from the left, part of the righteous Resistance.

We are seeing the fruit of that today.

I hadn’t noted the links to any of those articles at the time, so recently I got curious to see whether I could find one. Here’s an excerpt from one typical article of the type, published in Vanity Fair on February 1, 2017, twelve days after Trump’s inauguration [emphasis mine]:

“Others, however, view resistance as a part of the job. ‘Policy dissent is in our culture,’ one diplomat in Africa, who signed the letter circulating among foreign diplomats, told The New York Times. ‘We even have awards for it,’ this person added, in reference to the State Department’s ‘Constructive Dissent’ award. One Justice Department employee told the Post, ‘You’re going to see the bureaucrats using time to their advantage,’ and added that ‘people here will resist and push back against orders they find unconscionable,’ by whistle-blowing, leaking to the press, and lodging internal complaints. Others are staying in contact with officials appointed by President Obama to learn more about how they can undermine Trump’s agenda and attending workshops on how to effectively engage in civil disobedience, the Post reports.”

…And then we have this, from the same article [emphasis added]:

“When asked how the opposition emerging at this stage compares to past administrations, Tom Malinow­ski, who served as Obama’s assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, sarcastically told the Post, ‘Is it unusual? There’s nothing unusual about the entire national security bureaucracy of the United States feeling like their commander in chief is a threat to U.S. national security. That happens all the time. It’s totally usual. Nothing to worry about.'”

The “nothing unusual” part was sarcasm, of course. But the rest was deadly serious. The plan was in place from the start, and it’s not some wild conspiracy-mongering to say so. This is a clandestine conspiracy, but not a completely secret one in the sense that we were told about its general thrust in advance by the proud perpetrators themselves. An interesting detail from those quotes is that “Obama officials” were apparently in charge of orchestrating this.

And although Russiagate failed, they orchestrated its successor Whistlegate, Ukrainian phonecallgate, impeachmentgate, call it what you will. We are now watching that theatrical production.

This is the sort of thing the Democrats won’t be leaking…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and the MSM won’t be reporting in the same way.

Because it favors Trump:

A top National Security Council (NSC) official who listened to President Donald Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky testified to Congress today that he did not believe Trump had discussed anything illegal during the conversation.

“I want to be clear, I was not concerned that anything illegal was discussed,” former NSC Senior Director for European Affairs Tim Morrison testified today, according to a record of his remarks obtained by The Federalist.

Morrison testified that Ukrainian officials were not even aware that certain military funding had been delayed by the Trump administration until late August 2019, more than a month after the Trump-Zelensky call, casting doubt on allegations that Trump somehow conveyed an illegal quid pro quo demand during the July 25 call…

Morrison also pointed out key factual inaccuracies in testimony provided by William Taylor, a State Department official who works in the U.S. embassy in Kiev, Ukraine. Morrison said that, contrary to Taylor’s claims, Morrison never met with the Ukrainian National Security advisor in his private hotel room.

Morrison also said Taylor falsely claimed that Ambassador Gordon Sondland demanded a public statement from the Ukrainian president committing to investigate Burisma, a controversial Ukrainain energy company that paid Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars to sit on its board.

So, how does the NY Times tell the story? Like this:

A National Security Council aide testified on Thursday that a top diplomat who was close to President Trump told him that a package of military assistance for Ukraine would not be released until the country committed to investigating Mr. Trump’s political rivals, corroborating a key episode at the center of the impeachment inquiry.

The closed-door deposition by Timothy Morrison, who announced his resignation on Wednesday on the eve of his appearance before impeachment investigators, suggests that a Trump-appointed ambassador proposed a quid pro quo in which security assistance money allocated by Congress would be provided only in exchange for the political investigations the president was seeking. His account confirmed the one given last week by Ambassador William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, during his Mr. Morrison briefed Mr. Taylor on a series of communications involving the president and his ambassador to the European Union, Gordon D. Sondland, according to his prepared remarks for Thursday’s appearance, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

“I can confirm that the substance of the statement, as it relates to conversations he and I had, is accurate,” he said.

The headline states “White House Aide Confirms He Saw Signs of a Quid Pro Quo on Ukraine.” That directly contradicts what the Federalist reports. What’s more, about 500 words into the slightly-over-1000-word Times story, the text rather abruptly contradicts the thrust of its own headline and opening paragraphs (probably assuming most people have given up on reading the story by then, thinking they’ve already gotten the gist of it) by adding this:

In his opening remarks, Mr. Morrison resisted drawing conclusions about Mr. Trump’s involvement, and in subsequent testimony he made clear he did not view the actions of the president or others involved as illegal or improper. Instead, he characterized their behavior as bad foreign policy of the sort that could potentially squander a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” afforded by Mr. Zelensky’s election.

“Ambassador Taylor and I had no reason to believe that the public release of the security sector assistance might be conditioned on a public statement reopening the Burisma investigation until my September 1, 2019 conversation with Ambassador Sondland,” Mr. Morrison said. “Even then I hoped that Ambassador Sondland’s strategy was exclusively his own and would not be considered by the leaders of the administration and Congress, who understood the strategic importance of Ukraine to our national security.”

So the whole “White House Aide Confirms He Saw Signs of a Quid Pro Quo on Ukraine” headline appears to be referring to what Sondland told him was Sondland’s own opinion on the matter.

And of course, all we have to go on is the word of leakers and reporters writing for various non-objective media organs rather than seeing and hearing for ourselves what Morrison (or any other witness) said.

What a travesty and an outrage the proceedings are. Every American should feel that way, no matter what political side he or she is on. But of course, that’s not the case.

[NOTE: The Times adds this sly dig at the WaPo after the Times finally manages to put in those paragraphs about Morrison’s opening remarks that seem to exculpate Trump: “Mr. Morrison’s intention to corroborate Mr. Taylor’s account was first reported by The Washington Post, though it did not report his opening statement.” In other words, the WaPo left out even that little bit of truth about the opening statement that the Times allowed to sneak in there.]

The Democrats’ Orwellian impeachment vote

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democrats pretended to do something today, but it was nothing or worse than nothing.

Byron York calls the resolution they passed “The Adam Schiff Empowerment Act.” But Schiff was already informally empowered to do what the act still allows him to do, which is pretty much whatever he and the Democrats want him to do, or not do.

The resolution states that the Democrats can give the Republicans more rights than before in the process – if the Democrats want to do so. Right now they don’t want to. But they hope that by saying they can expand rights for Republicans, the American people will think they have expanded those rights.

And if the American people buy that, they’re just as stupid and malleable as the Democrats and the MSM think they are.

The Democrats say they’re responding to the Republican demand that they vote on an impeachment inquiry. But the Republicans didn’t demand a vote on this particular resolution, which merely states what was already going on and what might happen in the future and confers none of the benefits that an impeachment vote conferred to the defense in the past. This is kind of like that strange modern fiction, a promise ring – without the promise

From York:

The first thing the resolution will do is give the impeachment investigation to the Intelligence Committee. Until now, three committees — Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs — have been conducting impeachment interviews. Going forward, Oversight and Foreign Affairs will be out of the interview picture in favor of Intelligence.

Among other things, that would mean that some Republicans who have been persistent critics of the process but who have been allowed into depositions by virtue of their membership in other participating committees — two examples are Oversight Committee members Rep. Jim Jordan and Rep. Mark Meadows — will no longer be allowed in the interview room.

See how that sleight of hand works?

More:

The resolution also gives Schiff total control over whether transcripts of depositions already completed and those yet to be done will be made public…

The resolution would also give Schiff the authority to call and conduct public hearings on impeachment. Schiff will control the witnesses. Although there has been some discussion about whether Republicans will have the right to call witnesses, the resolution only gives the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Community, Rep. Devin Nunes, the right to ask Schiff to call a witness.

“To allow for full evaluation of minority witness requests, the ranking minority member may submit to the chair, in writing, any requests for witness testimony relevant to the investigation,” the resolution says. “Any such request shall be accompanied by a detailed written justification of the relevance of the testimony of each requested witnesses to the investigation.” Republicans will get nothing that Schiff does not approve.

The resolution received not a single Republican vote. Two Democrats in swing districts – Colin Peterson (MN) and Jeff Van Drew (NJ) – were allowed to vote against it. Justin Amash of Michigan, who once was a Republican (and a pro-impeachment NeverTrumper) but became an Independent last July, voted for it. So you might say that any bipartisanship here was bipartisan support for a “nay” vote.

Doesn’t matter. The Democrats will do whatever they want.

Equivocating on the impeachment vote

The New Neo Posted on by

Will it happen or won’t it?

Steny Hoyer, the House Majority whip, refused to commit to an actual vote on the matter, even though Mrs. Pelosi insists that it is, in fact, happening on Thursday. “We’re going to have to consider whether or not it’s ready to go on Thursday,” Steny said. “I hope that’s the case.”

The fact that Pelosi failed to clear matters with the majority whip, part of whose duties is to arrange things like votes, suggests a level of disorganization that beggars the imagination…

This is simply further evidence, if any was needed, that the impeachment effort is an empty scam, a massive P.R. stunt, with no substance to speak of behind it. It is a Potemkin campaign jimmied up between Pelosi, Schiff, and the anti-Trump media. The rest of the House Democrats, who can read an electoral map (skills that neither Pelosi nor Schiff ever had to develop, both representing rotten Cali districts inhabited by Demunist pod people), are not so much disinterested as terrified. They can clearly see where this is headed.

I would describe it somewhat differently.

I think it’s always been a propaganda exercise in which the Democrats were hoping to do several things. The first was to discover a smoking gun or even several. So far, no dice. The second was to control the pace of constantly negative information about Trump and hope to influence the 2020 election. They’ve done some of that, but so far the information revealed just hasn’t been negative enough.

The third was to impeach, but I think that was a somewhat distant third that was always iffy. But I doubt there was confusion or a failure to communicate on the part of Pelosi. I believe that the Democrats were planning to read the tea leaves and react accordingly. If public sentiment for impeachment didn’t build over time, then they wouldn’t hold a vote – or, they would have one and allow their House members in Trump-leaning districts to vote against it, thus retaining those representatives’ ability to say they are independent of the Democratic establishment and therefore should be re-elected in 2020 (which would also help the Democrats retain their House majority in that election). On the other hand, if public sentiment built for impeachment, they’d hold the vote and those same people would be quite willing to vote “yes.”

That’s the plan as I see it. Trump’s actual removal from office through impeachment and conviction was always an extreme longshot, and they knew it. But the Democrats were never counting on that. They were counting on damaging Trump and causing him to lose in 2020. And if that fails, they’re planning on holding the House.