Are you exceptionally likeable?

The New Neo Posted on by

I already know that I’m not.

Some people like me exceptionally well. But I think most people find me a trifle odd.

Maybe not just a trifle.

And now I know why. I don’t fit this profile at all, and what’s more I don’t think I find people who do fit it all that exceptionally likeable. The article describes exceptionally likeable people as having the nine characteristics I put in quotes in the following list:

(1) “They don’t talk a lot.” They listen instead.

Well, I listen too. But when I get going, I talk a lot.

(2) “They don’t blame.”

But I see nothing wrong – and a lot right, actually – in blaming where blame is due. Use it sparingly, but don’t be afraid to use it. That doesn’t preclude taking responsibility for what I’ve done, because the two aren’t mutually exclusive.

(3) “They don’t try to impress.”

I think I conform to this one, at least.

(4) “They don’t interrupt.”

Oops! I’ve been accused of this, but I usually err only in my zeal to show that I understand, or because I honestly think the person has finished talking when he or she has only paused to think. It also has to do with regional and ethnic differences in conversational rhythms. New Yorkers are not sensitive about being interrupted; they consider it part of conversational enthusiasm.

(5) “They don’t complain.”

I don’t complain much (or at least, as much as I might), because I’ve learned that people don’t like those who grouse. But whenever someone else apologizes for complaining to me, I tell them I’m perfectly fine with their doing it. Because I am perfectly fine with it, up to a point, and few of my friends ever go past that point. If friends can’t listen to complaints, they’re just fair weather friends in my book.

(6) “They aren’t controlling.”

I think I’m okay on this one.

(7) “They don’t criticize.”

I”m usually very careful to couch criticism in very polite terms, if I do it at all. But with those near and dear to me I certainly will criticize if it’s called for, and sometimes it is called for. Intimacy requires some criticism, unless one is involved with a saint.

(8) “They don’t preach.”

I think I’m okay here, too. I do discourse a bit, though.

(9) “They don’t dwell on the past.”

Depends on the meaning of “dwell.” I don’t bring up the past transgressions of anyone unless and until there’s a repeat in the present and the person acts like it’s the first time it ever happened. But I do ruminate internally on the past quite a bit, as most introspective and contemplative people do. After all, it’s only human, as Robert Burns said in 1785 to a field mouse whose nest he’d disrupted with his plow:

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,
On prospects drear!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,
I guess an’ fear!

Puberty blockers and the gender transition of children

The New Neo Posted on by

Recently a Texas jury ruled against a father who is trying to stop his estranged wife from “transitioning” their 7-year-old son to becoming a female.

Of course, in the language of the left, that son isn’t a son at all but a daughter right from the get-go – despite male genitalia, chromosomes, and (according to the father) an ordinary identification as a male child, who only identifies as female when around the mother. In a society that encourages transitioning at an age so young, as ours increasingly is, we’re sometimes (maybe often) going to get a ruling like this.

I’ve written before about some of the violations committed on very young children in the name of gender fluidity and transgender rights (here and here, for example). Fortunately, in the Texas case the governor and AG of Texas have ordered an investigation into the situation:

Top Texas Republicans have directed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate whether a mother who supports her 7-year-old child’s gender transition is committing “child abuse” — a move that has alarmed an already fearful community of parents of transgender children.

Gov. Greg Abbott declared via tweet Wednesday that two state agencies, the Department of Family and Protective Services and the Texas Attorney General’s Office, are looking into a dispute between divorced North Texas parents who disagree on whether their child should continue the process of transitioning from male to female, a path that could culminate, when the child is years older, in medical interventions.

In a letter Thursday to the state’s child welfare agency, First Assistant Attorney General Jeff Mateer declared that the child — who identifies as a girl, according to testimony from a counselor and pediatrician — is “in immediate and irrevocable danger.”

“We ask that you open an investigation into this matter as soon as possible and act pursuant to your emergency powers to protect the boy in question [from] permanent and potentially irreversible harm by his mother,” Mateer wrote, repeatedly referring to the 7-year-old as a boy. Mateer’s nomination to the federal bench was withdrawn in 2017 after revelations that he had called transgender children part of “Satan’s plan.”

A spokesman for DFPS said the agency’s “review of the allegations is already underway.”

The case’s path to public discourse began with the child’s father, Jeff Younger, whose blog has generated a maelstrom of right-wing outrage, including from U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who called the child “a pawn in a left-wing political agenda.” Younger, who also appeared at a rally at the Capitol this spring, does not agree with his ex-wife that his child is transgender. In blog posts, he has claimed his child could face “chemical castration.”

In reality, experts say, the transition process for prepubescent children does not involve medical intervention; instead, it consists of social affirmations like allowing children to wear the clothes they like, employ the names and pronouns they prefer, and paint their nails if they choose. During puberty, a transgender child might, with the consultation of a doctor, begin to take puberty blockers, reversible drugs that can stop puberty and the gender markers that come with it, like a deepening voice, the development of breasts or starting a period. Later on, experts say, transgender young adults might explore the option of surgery.

That last paragraph is purposely misleading and very carefully framed. For example:

—“the transition process for prepubescent children does not involve medical intervention.” I don’t see that anyone here is alleging that it does involve “medical intervention” (meaning drugs and/or surgery, I suppose) at this point, for a 7-year-old. But this child could indeed face medical intervention and ultimately even infertility if the present course continues.

—“During puberty, a transgender child might, with the consultation of a doctor, begin to take puberty blockers, reversible drugs that can stop puberty and the gender markers that come with it…” But the drugs must be taken very early in puberty or they don’t work as intended:

For most children, puberty begins around ages 10 to 11, though some start earlier. The effect of pubertal blockers depends on when a child begins to take the medication. GnRH analogue treatment can begin at the start of puberty to delay secondary sex characteristics. In slightly later stages of puberty, the treatment could be used to stop menstruation or erections or to prevent further development of undesired secondary sex characteristics.

And it’s a little-discussed fact that male-to-female surgical transition (“bottom” surgery) is much more difficult later on if puberty blockers have been used with a biologically male child, because there often isn’t enough penile tissue to make a functioning vagina due to the fact that the normal growth of the penis has been blocked.

Puberty blockers are hardly innocuous drugs for other reasons, too. For example, puberty blockers may:

—slow your physical growth and affect your height
—decrease your bone density (making your bones more likely to break in the future)

There’s also this, to which I alluded earlier:

We know that blockers vastly increase the likelihood that the child will remain on a medical pathway. In real life, it is the ‘online’ wisdom about desistance that is correct: ‘children’s GD/GV persists after puberty in only 10-30 percent of all cases’. As the GIDS team reported in 2016, these figures change if we provide puberty blockers:

“Persistence was strongly correlated with the commencement of physical interventions such as the hypothalamic blocker (t=.395, p=.007) and no patient within the sample desisted after having started on the hypothalamic blocker…”

In this report, every one of the patients on the blocker persisted while 90.3% of those not on the blocker desisted. Either clinicians have semi divine powers of insight or the blocker itself strongly affected the outcome for the child. This drug is not the neutral reversible intervention that was claimed because “it freezes youngsters in a prolonged childhood, secluding them from certain aspects of reality and isolating them from peer groups.”

If puberty blockers have been used and a child goes on to transition without going through a puberty matching his/her biological sex, the result is infertility. And for a child born male such as the child in Texas, there is as yet no way to harvest and store fertile sperm from a child who has never undergone puberty, so there is no recourse for the infertility.

The dangerous nature of this approach is being whitewashed for the public for political purposes.

The plot against Flynn and the meaning of “pretext”

The New Neo Posted on by

As soon as I heard that Sidney Powell was on the Flynn appeal I figured she’d sink her formidable teeth into it.

And she has:

Powell’s most explosive charge is that the FBI falsified the Form 302 that recorded the content of its agents’ interview with Flynn in order to set him up for prosecution…

“Those changes added an unequivocal statement that “FLYNN stated he did not”—in response to whether Mr. Flynn had asked Kislyak to vote in a certain manner or slow down the UN vote. This is a deceptive manipulation because, as the notes of the agents show, Mr. Flynn was not even sure he had spoken to Russia/Kislyak on this issue. He had talked to dozens of countries. Exs. 9, 10, 11.

Second, they added: “or if KISLYAK described any Russian response to a request by FLYNN.” That question and answer do not appear in the notes, yet it was made into a criminal offense.”…

Many of the juicy tidbits come from texts between Peter Strzok and his illicit lover, Andrew McCabe’s Special Counsel Lisa Page. These texts have dribbled out over a considerable period of time, and I take it that at least some of the ones quoted here are new. For example:

“As news of the “salacious and unverified” allegations of the ‘Steele dossier’ dominated the media, Strzok wrote to Page: ‘Sitting with Bill watching CNN. A TON more out. . . We’re discussing whether, now that this is out, we can use it as a pretext to go interview some people.'”

Please read the whole thing.

And here we thought we’d seen a great many Strzok/Page texts. Well, we had, but not quite enough of them. It was always suspected (on the right, anyway) that some very important ones had been successfully deleted and/or were kept from public knowledge. And it continues to amaze me that the plotters – with their background and supposed knowledge in the field known as “intelligence” – carried on their business through text and email; how sloppy and reckless of them! They must have thought it impossible that any of this would come to light, or that it would matter if it did.

The word “pretext” in particular caught me eye. Was Strzok really saying what I thought he was saying, which was a candid admission that the leaks were used in order to start the investigation but were a fake reason to start it, a mere excuse? Yes, that’s the meaning of the word “pretext“: “a purpose or motive alleged or an appearance assumed in order to cloak the real intention or state of affairs.”

Doesn’t that just about say it all?

[NOTE: Powell appears to have a source within the DOJ or FBI giving her information and documents, which would explain some of these new revelations.

I began this post by saying I figured Powell would be a smart and aggressive advocate for Flynn. That’s because I’ve seen her speak before, and she immediately impressed me with the depth and breadth of her knowledge on the issue of government misdeeds of the legal variety. The first time I ever saw her, I wrote this:

…[L]ast night I happened across Mark Levin’s show on Fox, and saw an interview with Sidney Powell, an attorney who wrote Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice.

Please note her book’s date of publication: May 1, 2014. Therefore, it had to have been written some time before that—and certainly long before the FBI and the DOJ were engaged in investigating Donald Trump and his aides and acquaintances.

Powell herself immediately got my attention in a way that few speakers do. She was calm and logical, and presented a case so distressing—in particular about Andrew Weissmann, Mueller’s right-hand man, but hardly limited to him—that I was riveted for the entire interview…

Powell’s been talking about this for quite some time, too.]

Aldi saves money, but I still don’t like it

The New Neo Posted on by

I love to save money, so when I recently went to an Aldi market for the first time I expected it to become a new favorite. But I was surprised to find that I didn’t much like it.

In fact, I didn’t like it at all, and I doubt I’ll return. I guess I’m not as much of a cheapskate as I thought I was.

It’s inexpensive all right, but for me the main drawback was the lack of selection. It’s not just my imagination, either:

With five or six super-wide aisles, Aldi only stocks around 1,400 items — compared to around 40,000 at traditional supermarkets and more than 100,000 at Walmart supercenters.

Some people apparently like that:

For time-strapped shoppers like Youngpeter, Aldi’s simple layouts and limited selection save her time. “I’m a busy mom. I don’t have time to navigate a huge grocery store with kids begging to get out and go home,” she said. “I can get in and out of an Aldi in no time. I’m not sifting through 50 different varieties of salsa.”

But how much time does it take to go to the salsa aisle and get the one you like, the one you always get (disclosure: I don’t ordinarily get salsa)? Granted, I don’t have kids begging and crying to go home, but if I remember correctly, when I did my kid loved the grocery store and riding around in the cart looking at stuff was entertainment.

Have you been to an Aldi? What do you think?

Corrupt Democratic Congresswomen: Katie Hill

The New Neo Posted on by

With the increase in the number of women in Congress we’re getting an increase in revelations about corrupt women in Congress. And if the allegations against Ilhan Omar and Katie Hill were mounted against a Republican man, we would never hear the end of it. But with Democratic women, not so much.

I’ve written about Omar before, so I won’t go into all that again in this post. As for Hill, to me the salient point is that the woman with whom Hill was allegedly involved was a staffer, which is a no-no. Here’s how Hill is approaching her defense (she is being investigated by the House on possible ethics violations):

Hill sent a letter to her constituents Wednesday night admitting to a relationship “despite my better judgment” with a campaign staffer and apologized.

“I am saddened that the deeply personal matter of my divorce has been brought into public view, even the false allegations of a relationship with my congressional staffer, which I have publicly denied, and I am fully and proactively cooperating with the Ethics Committee,” Hill wrote. “This smear campaign will not get in the way of the work I am doing every day to move our district and our country forward. I am truly grateful for the outpouring of support I have received from colleagues and constituents alike, and I know we will get through this together.”

In a statement, the Ethics Committee said the fact that it was investigating the allegations “does not itself indicate that any violation has occurred, or reflect any judgment on behalf of the Committee,” said Reps. Ted Deutch and Kenny Marchant in a statement Wednesday evening. Deutch and Marchant are the chairman and ranking member of the committee respectively.

So she erred, but it was against her “better judgment.” See, she’s got good judgment; she just went against it for a moment. But let’s emphasize her good judgment even as she admits to transgressions.

And even though one of the allegations is absolutely true and she has admitted to it, it’s a “smear campaign” that she will “get through.” A victim, that’s what Katie Hill is.

And I will go out on a limb and predict that the Ethics Committee will only give her the mildest slap on the wrist, almost a love tap.

Personally, I don’t care about Katie Hill’s sex life or her messy divorce. I’ll leave that between Hill and her soon-to-be ex-huband. I do care that her dalliance was with a staffer. I do care about her weaselly apology. And that would be true for me about a man or woman of either party.

The dueling investigations race: is it to the swift?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a race:

The race is on to see who will survive—the duly-elected president of the United States or a modern-day Praetorian Guard comprised of former law enforcement and intelligence officials tasked with taking down that president.

As Barr gets closer to the key people involved in concocting the phony Trump-Russia collusion hoax—which included the use of powerful surveillance tools and government informants—House Democrats are escalating efforts in their attempt to impeach Trump before Barr’s department starts issuing indictments. If Trump goes down before Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham, his point man on the investigation, can complete their work, that investigation could be completely discredited if not halted altogether as the by-product of an illegitimate presidency…

The outcome of the multiple lines of inquiry into the conduct of the modern-day Praetorian Guard likely will be very bad news for dozens of Democratic officials, including Joe Biden, who was involved in Brennan’s Situation Room briefings in 2016 about alleged “collusion” right up until Election Day. House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has been an integral part of the collusion hoax since its inception, which is why he is working overtime on his “impeachment inquiry” before he himself is implicated.

House Republicans stormed one outpost of the Praetorian Guard on Wednesday when they breached Schiff’s secret impeachment lair and refused to leave. That move, condemned by the news media and faux “conservative” websites such as the Washington Examiner, which compared the rebellious Republicans to Antifa terrorists, represented a true republican offensive against the Guard.

It’s a race, but although speed is important, I think there are a lot of other factors that might be even more important.

The base of each side will probably be unmoved by anything that’s revealed, and the MSM will energetically work on every possible front and with every story it reports to favor the Democrats’ playbook and influence whoever might remain persuadable. The MSM is handicapped by its own squandering of the trust that was once invested in it, and yet it is advantaged by its wide reach and insistent and unified voice.

But even with all that propaganda advantage, there’s a limit to how many people you can fool how much of the time. It seems to me that all but the most fervent of the Democratic base are well aware that the MSM is not an objective player, and are also quite aware that Trump has been under attack from the opposition from day one and even earlier. So, for example, saying that Barr and Durham are part of a Trump coverup and that whatever report they issue is corrupt and illegitimate will not fly if the only argument mounted for that point of view is that their reports were issued after the impeachment inquiry.

While it is true that the Democrats are working quickly, it also seems that the release of the Horowitz report is imminent. Of course, we’ve heard that before, and the pace is slower than expected – and often the result is disappointing as well, after all the anticipation. We’re now hearing that the Barr probe has turned criminal, which raises expectations strongly on the right (although such expectations have been dashed many times before).

The Democrats’ proceedings in their “inquiry” are so unusual in terms of process that it may be that the public smells a rat already. Just as they’ve lost trust in the MSM, they may have lost trust in the inquiry and Schiff may have overplayed his hand from the outset:

A memo by the Republican National Committee (RNC) that contains internal GOP polling data shows the American public, even Democrat voters, are turning against the Democrat Party’s “impeachment inquiry” into President Donald Trump. The memo, obtained exclusively by Breitbart News, shows independent voters nationwide en masse oppose impeachment—with 54 percent opposed and only 34 percent in favor. “We have seen public polling drastically under sample Independent voters, which is one of the many reasons for so much incorrect public data over the past month,” the memo explains regarding the disparity between internal GOP numbers and public polling from news organizations and polling institutions.

What’s more, internal RNC polling data, according to this memo, shows Democrats have lost support among their own base significantly in just the past week.

Polling; what can you say other than that pollsters have lost credibility, too?

And then there’s this: how many people actually pay attention to the details of what comes out? Political junkies do, of course. But is everyone else just following the headlines?

Update on the Star Chamber that is the “impeachment inquiry”

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have noticed that I’ve not been writing about every twist and turn of the current “impeachment inquiry” run by House Democrats. That’s because it’s a travesty and an obvious one at that. If the process is rotten, the whole thing is rotten.

So in that respect I’m with Scott Johnson of Powerline:

I can’t take anything that leaks out of the closed-door impeachment “inquiry” conducted by Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff at face value. Schiff is conducting an impeachment campaign by orchestrated leaks. I decline to follow the leaked testimony until I can take a look at the full record with my own eyes.

The way the hearings have been structured is prejudicial on the face of it. The proceedings have been completely orchestrated by a prosecution (the Democratic Party) determined to find Trump guilty. There is no question about that and only a tepid and extremely half-hearted and inadequate pretense is being made to the contrary by Schiff and company. What’s more, the entire thing is being selectively leaked to an MSM completely in league with that prosecution. So if the word “lynching” is not literally true, it is an apt metaphor. But a more apt one is “kangaroo court” or “witch hunt” and/or “Star Chamber proceeding,” the latter being the term I happen to favor.

The left tries to liken this “inquiry” to grand jury testimony. Absurd. This is not a criminal proceeding under our ordinary legal system, and all precedent dictates that this is not the way to do it. This is the president of the United States, and this is about impeachment, which is not subject to grand jury proceedings.

But far more important than precedent is fundamental fairness to the electorate as well as to a duly-elected president, as well as the fact that the Founders were crystal clear that impeachment should never be used for partisan reasons.

What it really boils down to is whether the Democrats and their fellows in the MSM will be successful in convincing the public that this is on the up and up, despite the secrecy and the obviously selected leaks that cannot be checked out against any facts or even against the testimony the leaks are supposed to fairly represent. If the electorate has common sense and/or any grounding in civics or history, the vast majority of voters would recognize that this is a disgusting and un-American (yes, I think that word is appropriate) process that cannot and should not be rewarded. But does the public have those qualities? I certainly hope so.

Another factor is that the MSM has squandered most of the trust that used to be placed in it. If the electorate is going to buy this story, the MSM has to be trusted as well as the Democrats. Has the MSM cried wolf too many times? Or are enough people inclined to hate and distrust Trump more than they hate and distrust the MSM or the Democrats?

I cannot answer that question either. But another hope of mine is that the MSM, which has fully earned the public’s distrust, will not be trusted in this matter either, and that until the hearings are brought into the light of day, nothing going on right now in terms of the inquiry will be trusted.

The war against free speech marches on

The New Neo Posted on by

In Connecticut:

Two white UConn students have been arrested by campus police for repeatedly shouting a racial slur outside students’ apartments earlier this month.

The incident was captured on a now-viral video that has led to pointed conversations about racial inclusion on campus and sparked a rally Monday afternoon during which hundreds of students and the campus NAACP demanding action from top school officials.

Jarred Karal, of Plainville, and Ryan Mucaj, of Granby, both 21 years old, were arrested by the UConn Police Department and charged with ridicule on account of creed, religion, color, denomination, nationality or race, university spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz said Monday night.

The law under which they were arrested is a seldom-used statute over 100 years old that was meant to deal with advertisements. But now it’s being used by our modern Red Guards determined to make sure that no one on campus ever feels the least bit bad because of something someone says.

And make no mistake about it, the people who believe this type of arrest is a good thing will not and have not stopped at campuses, although that is the epicenter right now. And note that these students were not just suspended or even expelled, they were arrested under a law that was not meant for this purpose and is clearly unconstitutional. It’s never been tested in the Supreme Court or any other appellate court because it’s almost never been enforced. I figure that now might be a good time for such a test.

Note that “hundreds of students and the NAACP” wanted “action” from the university against the two students yelling the epithets (which were by no means exclusively racial, by the way; they seem to have consisted of a number of impolite words). The current academic atmosphere encourages and teaches that free speech is not free if it hurts someone’s feelings, particularly in a racial or sexual sense (and probably other senses on the leftist agenda as well, because that’s not meant to be an exhaustive list).

Not only do the Red Guards require the arrest of those who would say the offensive words – and since there is no official list of words, who knows what might be included on it or how much it will expand – but they also are interested in prescribed speech in addition to prohibited speech. Just ask Jordan Peterson about that.

The federal bureaucracy is “a mortal threat to America”

The New Neo Posted on by

From Stephen Miller, who is a senior adviser for policy to Trump:

n 2016, President Trump ran against Washington’s “deep state” and “permanent bureaucracy,” said Miller, and they remain so angry that they are lying, leaking, and attacking the administration’s agenda.

The latest example is the planned book written by an anonymous inside critic and that follows efforts by bureaucrats to thwart Trump policies with leaks to liberal media and Democrats on Capitol Hill.

In an interview, Miller called inside attacks a “very grave threat,” and he explained it this way:

“It is best understood as career federal employees that believe they are under no obligation to honor, respect, or abide by the results of a democratic election. Their view is, ‘If I agree with what voters choose, then I’ll do what they choose. If I disagree with what voters choose, then I won’t, and I’ll continue doing my own thing. So basically it’s heads I win, tails you lose.

“‘If you elect Hillary Clinton, then I’ll implement all of her policies very faithfully, and if I see massive evidence of corruption on Hillary Clinton’s part, then I’ll keep it all a secret. If you elect a candidate I disagree with, then I’ll lie, I’ll leak, I’ll cheat, I’ll smear, I’ll attack, I’ll persecute, and I will refuse to implement, and I will obstruct at every single step of the way.’”

I also recall that the reason “the plumbers” were called that during the Nixon administration was that their goal was to plug leaks:

The White House Plumbers, sometimes simply called the Plumbers, the “Room 16 Project,” or more officially, the White House “Special Investigations Unit” was a covert White House Special Investigations Unit, established within a week after the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” in June 1971, during the presidency of Richard Nixon. Its task was to stop and/or respond to the leaking of classified information, such as the Pentagon Papers, to the news media. The work of the unit “tapered-off” after the bungled “Ellsberg break-in” but some of its former operatives branched into illegal activities while still employed at the White House together with managers of the Committee to Re-elect the President, including the Watergate break-in and the ensuing Watergate scandal.

It’s not really a new phenomenon, although it appears to have escalated in recent years and especially against Trump.

“Permanent” ceasefire announced between Turkey and Kurds

The New Neo Posted on by

Today’s announcement:

Speaking at the White House, Trump said that while a “permanent ceasefire” will be tough to maintain in the volatile region, he hopes it will last and end the conflict between Turkey and the Kurds.

“I do believe it will be permanent,” he said. “This was an outcome created by us, the United States, and nobody else…we’ve done something very, very special.”…

Trump added that if Turkey breaches the cease-fire, the sanctions could be reimposed.

“The sanctions are lifted unless something happens that we’re not happy with,” he added.

It’s definitely one of those “time will tell” things. But so far this seems like a good development.

Trump also added:

“Today’s announcement validates our course of action with Turkey that only a couple of weeks ago was scorned and now people are saying, ‘wow, what a great outcome, congratulations,'” Mr. Trump said.

I haven’t seen that happening, except for Republicans such as Lindsay Graham, who seem relatively pleased but not exactly what you’d call effusive. If you can find some Democrats praising Trump, I’d be very interested to see who those people are and what they are saying.

Lynching: Bill Clinton vs. Donald Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Clinton and Trump are both white guys, when last I checked.

But many Democrats called the Clinton impeachment and trial a lynching, despite the fact that due process was strictly observed and the Starr report had listed evidence of actual crimes. Whereas they are now united in claiming that likening the current star-chamber-like proceedings against Trump to a lynching is a travesty, an outrage, a slur against the history of black oppression.

Some of those criticizing Trump’s use of the term are even old white guys who are on record as having used it themselves to refer to Clinton’s impeachment, such as Joe Biden:

“Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution,” the former vice president said in a tweet on Tuesday. “Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable.”

In an appearance on CNN in October 1998, however, Biden said the impending impeachment proceedings against then-President Bill Clinton could be viewed as a “partisan lynching.”

“Even if the President should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense,” Biden said.

I suppose that’s because Clinton was the first black president, remember? And Trump is of course the modern incarnation of the KKK.

Lindsay Graham – another white guy – begs to differ with the condemnation of Trump:

“Yes, African-Americans were lynched, other people have people lynched throughout history,” Graham said. “What does lynching mean? That a mob grabs you, they don’t give you a chance to defend yourself, they don’t tell you what happened to you, they just destroy you.”

Well, they actually physically destroyed you, too, which seems quite different to me. But the word is often used metaphorically, and everyone – including the Democrats raising the current stupid hue and cry – is aware of that. But in what the left loves to refer to as the Age of Trump, their knowledge of metaphor goes out the window when the metaphor is used by Trump or the right.

I seem to recall that Clarence Thomas called the Anita Hill hearings a “high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves,” and he obviously didn’t mean he was being tortured and murdered in the literal sense. Thomas has been criticized plenty by Democrats, both before and since, but I don’t recall (and can’t find in a quick search right now) him being criticized for using that particular phrase – probably because he, as a black man, was given a pass, and also because back then people understood metaphors (as they did when the Democrats used it for Clinton).

[NOTE: What Thomas actually said – that the left does not allow black people to think for themselves and leave the leftist fold – has only become more true, and more viciously and frequently enforced, these days.]