I think a lot of people might vote for Trump in 2020…

The New Neo Posted on by

…in part for the entertainment value.

Trump is, among other things, a good comedian with good comic timing. The New York accent doesn’t hurt, either.

And it’s not just comedy, by any means—it’s that Trump isn’t boring. Most politicians, even the better ones, are often very very boring. They drone on. They talk jargon in voices that threaten to become (and often do become) monotonous. They never seem spontaneous. The life seems to have been drained out of them.

It’s interesting, I think, to go back and read a post I wrote in August of 2015, not too long after Trump first became a candidate. I was watching one of his rallies, the first I’d ever seen at the time, and I wrote this:

Trump has mastered not just the “art of the deal” but the art of giving a speech that sounds like ad-libbing stream-of-consciousness but is not…

Trump is a happy warrior, or at least talks like one…How he’ll get around the impediments that stand in the way is unclear, but people don’t want clarity. They like his style. They like his spirit…

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I’m not a Trump supporter, but that I also get his appeal. Watching him speak at length, I “got” it even more. He makes all other politicians look boring and stilted (hey, many of them are boring and stilted). He makes it all sound so simple—just as Obama did, but in a completely different direction and with a completely, and I mean completely, different style. Populist appeal is a neat trick in a man who’s a multi-billionaire and who grew up in enormous wealth and graduated from Wharton. But he’s got it, and although I’m sure he carefully nurtures it he manages to make it look natural.

From the start of Trump’s rise in the polls I’ve taken him very seriously as a phenomenon. I haven’t understood those who casually asserted “He’s never going to win the nomination.” I’ve long thought he could, because the force of that appeal is obvious, and he’s somehow made himself immune to being criticized for anything he says. His niche is “the more outrageous, the better,” and the more extreme his utterances the more his supporters seem to like him—although not all of what he says is extreme, of course, and some is just common sense.

If I were one of the other Republican candidates I’d be very very scared. And if I were one of the Democratic candidates I’d be scared, too.

That turned out to be prescient, although I never thought he could win the presidency.

Now his opponents seem to know enough to be scared. They used to be contemptuous, and it was no pretense. Now they still act contemptuous, and on a certain level I think many are, although it’s misplaced (“I’m so smart and he’s so dumb!”). But I think that by now they’re all at least somewhat scared, as well they should be. Now they know something of the power of Trump’s appeal. And now they also have to contend with his record of accomplishments as president, too. So even though they have the press 110% on their side, they must know he’s a formidable opponent.

James Comey is trying to do damage control…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and CNN has obligingly given him a Town Hall forum in which to attempt it. Such forums are usually reserved for presidential candidates, and although when last I checked Comey wasn’t running for that office, the field is getting so crowded one can’t be sure.

I watched a few short clips from Comey’s Town Hall and could watch no more. The man simply oozes hypocrisy and weaselly deceptiveness. Example:

“It’s possible” that Comey was a snake in a former life. Many things are “possible”—in fact, just about anything that isn’t impossible is possible. Proving something is impossible seems to be the new standard that Comey (and Mueller, in the obstruction part of his report) seem to be setting for people who are accused of wrongdoing—that is, if their name is “Trump.”

The fact that Comey was once director of the FBI is a chilling thought, one that illustrates not just the Peter Principle but something more ominous.

I saw a few moments of an interview with Rudy Giuliani last night, as well. He was discussing Comey, and he apologized for ever having appointed him US Attorney in NY. Giuliani said something curious, too—that he didn’t know what had changed Comey so much, but something had. I submit that it was two things. The first was Trump Derangement Syndrome, and then an escalation of that syndrome when Trump fired Comey. The second is the corruption that sometimes comes with power.

Heights: fear of falling or urge to leap

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting exploration of that queasy, unsteady feeling many people get when standing close to the edge of a big drop. Some describe it as an urge to jump, but that might just represent a case of crossed and competing signals.

Our fear circuitry, which includes the amygdala and other fast-acting subconscious brain regions, may send an alarm to the prefrontal cortex for interpretation. Your conscious processing, which operates at a slower speed than the fear circuitry, recognizes the alarm signal, but may not know why it was sent.

While your conscious brain would not need to scratch too hard to figure out why your hand recoils from a hot stove, you might be confused why your body automatically pulls back from the edge of a precipice. Because the void is different. You wonder, as Hames explained it: “Why did I back away? I can’t possibly fall. There’s a railing there, so therefore—I wanted to jump.”

Consistent with this theory is the fact that those people most likely to the feel urge to leap (and who’d never considered suicide) also experience more anxiety, including worrying more about their own body reactions. These sensations can include sweating, heart palpitations, dizziness, and shaky knees, all of which are common responses to high places. How you interpret those sensations can mark the difference between triggering panic, if you think “I’m going to die,” or excitement, if you love the rush of a high. “There is a subjective dimension to all of this,” Coelho said, especially when it comes to vestibular signals. “The way you interpret the vestibular system is much more up to you” than the interpretation of sight, because it operates outside of conscious awareness. Those who are most likely to feel the urge to leap also tend to worry more about other life issues, including the fear of going crazy.

These sneaky cell phone apps

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I noticed that my cell phone bill was higher than usual by about ten dollars, and so I called the company. It turned out that a fee for downloading some app had been charged to my account.

The person I spoke to was not allowed to tell me which app it was, and then helpfully offered to expunge the ten dollar charge and put a one cent purchase limit on my account so it wouldn’t happen again. In the future I would have to plug in my credit card information to actually pay for any app that tried to sneak in, which should limit the downloads to those I actually want.

I’ve noticed that sometimes my phone will just be sitting on the counter, supposedly minding its own business, and I’ll see some activity going on. Most of the time I’ve been able to grab the phone and somehow stop the unwanted download, but apparently this time I didn’t catch it in time and it succeeded in invading my phone and charging itself to my account.

It’s all about those apps that come pre-loaded on phones. Apparently not only do Androids have them, but iPhones have them too, just a different set of them. This site refers to the apps as “crapware,” which I guess is as good a name as any, and it tells you how to disable them in some way.

This stuff gives me a headache.

The Steele dossier rush

The New Neo Posted on by

It was all political:

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec’s written account of her Oct. 11, 2016, meeting with FBI informant Christopher Steele shows the Hillary Clinton campaign-funded British intelligence operative admitted that his research was political and facing an Election Day deadline.

And that confession occurred 10 days before the FBI used Steele’s now-discredited dossier to justify securing a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to surveil former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and the campaign’s ties to Russia…

The memos were unearthed a few days ago through open-records litigation by the conservative group Citizens United.

Kavalec’s notes do not appear to have been provided to the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia probe, according to former Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). “They tried to hide a lot of documents from us during our investigation, and it usually turns out there’s a reason for it,” Nunes told me…

…[T]he FBI is doing its best to keep much of Kavalec’s information secret by retroactively claiming it is classified, even though it was originally marked unclassified in 2016.

Please read the whole thing.

Arresting Barr

The New Neo Posted on by

This is how far some Democrats seem willing to go—or at least to jabber about:

…[A]s Trump-administration officials continue to defy House subpoenas related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, Democrats in control of the chamber could turn to an even blunter weapon in their arsenal: arrest…

Democrats would have three options to force Barr’s hand: They could refer the matter to the U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., who would decide whether to launch a criminal prosecution of his own boss, the attorney general. Democrats could turn to the courts to enforce the subpoena. Or they could take matters into their own hands and call their sergeant at arms. Raskin himself [he is a Democrat, a House member who is on the Judiciary Committee, and a former constitutional law professor] brought up the arrest option when I asked him how far this confrontation could go, even as he acknowledged that not many members of the House were aware of that particular congressional power, much less supported its use.

Still, Democrats have been reluctant to launch impeachment proceedings against Trump for fear that they would backfire politically. Would they really send the House’s sergeant at arms down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Department of Justice with instructions to haul the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer to the Capitol, in handcuffs if necessary? House Republicans made no such effort after they voted to hold then–Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt in 2012 over his refusal to turn over documents connected to the “Fast and the Furious” probe.

Not only did Republicans make no such effort towards Holder, but neither did Democrats at the time. It turns out that in this matter Republicans are consistent (don’t even talk about arresting AGs who are found in contempt) and Democrats are shape-shifting hypocrites.

Also, it’s of interest that Raskin is a former constitutional law professor. Back in those ancient times when I was in law school, con law professors were usually distinguished by their devotion to and respect for the constitution. Now the designation is often more of the Orwellian variety (see this, for example).

More:

Raskin: Well, the vast majority of the Judiciary Committee, much less the House itself, are just not aware of this process. So it’s just premature to be talking about it. But, you know, its day in the sun is coming. We will educate people about the power of the House to do it. The executive branch is acting in categorical bad-faith contempt of Congress. This is not like a dispute over one document or the timing of the arrival of a particular witness. This is the president of the United States ordering the executive branch not to comply with the lawful requests of Congress.

Gee, never happened before, right?

Continued:

Berman: From your point of view, would you personally support and advocate this move, which in modern times is unprecedented, to have the attorney general arrested by the sergeant at arms? Would you personally advocate that?

Raskin: Well, no, nobody has advocated that specifically. But I just want to make sure that we have all instruments on the table, and we should be aware that Congress has inherent powers of contempt that can relate to fines, orders, as well as arrests. But I, you know, nobody’s calling for that at this point.

So here Raskin backs off. He’s just educating us, you see. Moving the Overton window? Or just finding more ways to attempt to discredit Barr so that when Barr serves any of the heroic anti-Trump perps in this matter, their supporters can claim that Barr is actually a crook himself?

What ended the Colorado school shooting?

The New Neo Posted on by

Another terrible school shooting in Colorado ended yesterday with a toll of one student dead and eight students wounded. This particular shooting was one of a subtype in which there were two perpetrators (I don’t know yet whether it fits into the phenomenon I’ve described here, but it might):

This time, it was the STEM School Highlands Ranch near Denver.

Authorities believe two students, a male and a female, used a pair of handguns to open fire in two classrooms Tuesday.

An 18-year-old [Kendrick Ray Castillo] just days away from graduation was killed trying to protect other students, a classmate said…

[The school’s private secuirty] guard was among the first to confront one of the suspects, said Grant Whitus, chief operating officer of BOSS High Level Protection.

Whitus — the first SWAT officer to enter Columbine 20 years ago — declined to identify the guard but said he was “instrumental” in stopping the attack.

He said the guard drew his gun, took the suspect into custody and turned the suspect over to sheriff’s deputies…

The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office identified one of the suspects as 18-year-old Devon Erickson. Authorities identified the second suspect as a female juvenile.

In the article, after a description of Castillo’s heroism, it adds:

[A witness named Nui Giasolli ] said the gunman told everyone not to move. “And that’s when the shooting started.”

But Castillo wouldn’t stay still. He lunged at the shooter, giving classmates enough time to hide, Nui said.

Three other students also tackled the gunman and tried to subdue him while the rest of the class fled the room.

So this attack resembles the shooting at another school, UNCC, in which ROTC student Riley Howell was killed while tackling the shooter and will be buried with military honors:

Howell “took the fight to the assailant” and “took the assailant off his feet,” Charlotte-Mecklenburg Chief of Police Kerr Putney said. If it wasn’t for what Howell did, he said the assailant “may not have been disarmed.”

“Unfortunately he gave his life in the process, but his sacrifice saved lives,” Putney said.

There seems to be a pattern here. These are young men—in fact, the much-maligned white men, although I don’t think this sort of heroic behavior is particularly race-based because there are often heroes of other races. But it certainly is male-based. They seem to have learned that the students and teachers are all sitting ducks when unarmed and facing an armed person, and that the only way to prevent death or injury in that situation is to charge the shooter (preferably in groups). Call it the Flight 93 reaction.

And in some cases it’s also correlated with military service or military training. The Colorado shooting article I just quoted, from CNN, doesn’t give the reader any identifying details about those other three student who “also tackled the gunman while the rest of the class fled the room,” but it is clear that they are heroes, too—and fortunately these particular heroes survived.

You can read about one of them in this story that appeared in USA today:

A Colorado teen set to join the U.S. Marines this summer is credited with helping subdue a gunman during a shooting at his Denver-area school on Tuesday.

The Marines said Brendan Bialy helped saved lives during the attack at the STEM School Highlands Ranch. One student died, and two suspects are in custody.

“Brendan’s courage and commitment to swiftly ending this tragic incident at the risk of his own safety is admirable and inspiring,” Capt. Michael Maggitti said in a statement. “His decisive actions resulted in the safety and protection of his teachers and fellow classmates.”

Bialy joined the Marines under the Delayed Entry Program, and is scheduled to ship out for basic training this summer.

Student Nui Giasolli told NBC’s “Today” show that multiple students in her literature class jumped at the shooter, including the student who was fatally shot.

“They were very heroic,” she said of the students who confronted the shooter. “I can’t thank them enough.”

So now we know more about one of the three other students. He had already signed up with the Marines.

Speaking of males and females, there’s also something that’s not being so heavily reported at this point. The CNN story said that one of the shooters—the juvenile—is a female. But it may not be that simple:

Multiple sources close to the investigation told Denver7 late Tuesday night that the second suspect, who is a minor, is a transgender male who was in the midst of transitioning from female to male.

If this turns out to be true, I would imagine that the press won’t emphasize it—except perhaps to blame bullying as motivation for the violent reaction of the perpetrator. Nor does it really say much of anything about transgendered people in general; I know that statistically they have higher rates of problems such as depression, but I’m not aware of any increased tendency to violence. This student was probably taking testosterone, but I doubt the levels were any higher than a typical male’s. It’s also interesting that the police are referring to this person as “she.” Despite all the pronoun controversy, the police apparently go by the older rules.

More here:

[Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said] “Right now, we are identifying the individual as a female, because that’s where we’re at,” he said. “We originally thought the juvenile was a male by appearance.”

Here are some more topics that probably will not be emphasized by the press, except for more conservative media outlets:

The 18-year-old accused in the fatal shooting at a Colorado charter school shared social media posts that were critical of President Trump and Christians, but heaped praise on former President Barack Obama.

Hates Trump and Christians? Likes Obama? Doesn’t fit the narrative. You can bet your bottom dollar that if he had loved Trump and Christians and hated Obama, it would be shouted from the MSM rooftops.

Excellent and clear summation of the central problem with the Mueller report

The New Neo Posted on by

Not long after the Mueller report was issued, I wrote the following:

This is what I’ve been harping on for quite some time—that the anti-Trump Russiagate conspiracy theorists are requiring him to do something impossible, which is to prove his innocence. This is a violation of our entire system of law, but they don’t care, because their eyes are on the prize, which is to destroy Trump. The Mueller Report isn’t going to stop them, and wasn’t ever going to stop them, and in fact has given them plenty to go on with its “outrageous shifting of the burden of proof.”

To me, this “outrageous shifting of the burden of proof” should actually outrage all Americans, because it really is “a violation of our entire system of law.” But it obviously has not outraged all Americans, or perhaps even most. It’s hard to know how many Democrats it has outraged, but although this should be a bipartisan reaction it clearly has not turned out that way.

And this is not the least bit surprising to anyone who has watched the decline of thought, knowledge, and discourse in this country. How many people even know how our system of justice works in the first place, or just why the system is set up so that a person does not have to prove his or her innocence, and how it is that it ultimately protects each individual, Democrats or Republican or anyone else?

And how many people who actually do understand those principles are still willing to suspend them if they can be weaponized against an enemy?

Emmet T. Flood, special counsel to President Trump, understands:

The [special counsel’s report] suffers from an extraordinary legal defect: It quite deliberately fails to comply with the requirements of governing law…

What prosecutors are supposed to do is complete an investigation and then either ask the grand jury to return an indictment or decline to charge the case. When prosecutors decline to charge, they make that decision not because they have “conclusively determin[ed] that no criminal conduct occurred,” but rather because they do not believe that the investigated conduct constitutes a crime for which all the elements can be proven to the satisfaction of a jury beyond a reasonable doubt…

Our country would be a very different (and very dangerous) place if prosecutors applied the [special counsel’s] standard and citizens were obliged to prove “conclusively. . .that no criminal conduct occurred.” …

The [special counsel] instead produced a prosecutorial curiosity — part “truth commission” report and part law school exam paper. Far more detailed than the text of any known criminal indictment or declination memorandum, the Report is laden with factual information that has never been subjected to adversarial testing or independent analysis. That information is accompanied by a series of inexplicably inconclusive observations (inexplicable, that is, coming from a prosecutor) concerning the possible application of law to fact. This species of public report has no basis in the relevant regulations and no precedent in the history of special/independent counsel investigations.

But most of those lawyers who are Democrats (with a few exceptions such as Alan Dershowitz, who is a rara avis) conveniently ignore that. How they rationalize it in their minds is quite the act of mental gymnastics, but I’ve seen it done often enough (and not just by Democrats, either, although they are far more likely to do so and far more skilled in the art).

And then there’s this:

Not so long ago, the idea that a law enforcement official might provide the press with confidential governmental information for the proclaimed purpose of prompting a criminal investigation of an identified individual would have troubled Americans of all political persuasions. That the head of our country’s top law enforcement agency has actually done so to the President of the United States should frighten every friend of individual liberty.

It should.

It doesn’t. Or maybe, actually, it does “frighten every friend of individual liberty.” The sad thing is that such friends have become less numerous lately.

The Times’ Trump tax news and confidentiality

The New Neo Posted on by

Does anyone really care about the NY Times’ news on Trump’s taxes? I’m not even sure that the Times cares all that much at this point.

Oh, the anti-Trump forces are trying to spin this as big. But anyone who is aware of much of anything about Trump’s past knows he went through some hard times in which he was nearly bankrupted. And anyone who knows anything about taxes would know those would be years in which he would be taking losses rather than paying out.

It’s a “blockbuster report.” Yeah, right.

The report is based on printouts from his official IRS tax transcripts and figures from his federal tax form the Times obtained from an unnamed source with legal access to the information.

I don’t know about you—and I don’t know about the majority of Americans—but I wouldn’t like that even if it happened to someone I hated. I don’t like people’s tax information getting out into the public domain against their will, at the hands of the NY Times.

The Times’ source has legal access to the information. Great. All that means is that the information wasn’t stolen. Does that person with legal access have a legal right to give it to a newspaper that will publish the information? If that person is Trump’s ex-lawyer, or ex-accountant, or works for the IRS, or used to work for the IRS, does that make it okay for the Times to publish what I believe is almost certainly confidential information, and protect the source as well?

Those are rhetorical questions.

They do it because they can do it and get away with it, not because it’s the right thing to do. I just don’t happen to think this will harm Trump, and I would hope it would actually help him because people would realize that the newspaper is misusing confidential information against a political opponent.

A person can hope, anyway, right?

Oh, and there’s also this:

[New York state] Senate Dems will vote on Wednesday to approve a bill authorizing the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance to share state tax return information with Congressional committees as long as there is a “specific and legitimate legislative purpose.”

The bill, which would amend state laws prohibiting the release of private tax information, would only apply to Trump’s state returns, not his federal ones, according to sponsor Sen. Brad Hoylman (D-Manhattan)…

The president’s New York roots and his business being based in the city means a lot of the same information available on his federal returns would be included on his state documents, Hoylman noted.

Isn’t that special? If they pass this, I hope it comes back to bite them.

Comey is in trouble and he knows it

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the contention of the author of this article:

“Amoral leaders [referring to the president] have a way of revealing the character of those around them,” wrote Comey without a hint of irony or self-awareness. Those whom the former FBI director assembled around him probably rue the day they ever met the man. Most are now fired or disgraced for appalling behaviors that Comey found easy to manipulate to advance his decisions.

Then, just to make sure his op-ed was odd-salted to the max, Comey mused that the president “eats your soul in small bites.” OK, let’s step back for a moment: James Comey appears to be in trouble. His strange, desperate statements and behaviors betray his nervousness and apprehension. In a way, it’s hard to watch.

Comey will claim that everything he did in the FBI was by the book. But after the investigations by Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz and U.S. Attorney John Huber, along with Barr’s promised examination, are completed, Comey’s mishandling of the FBI and legal processes likely will be fully exposed.

I wonder.

The author, Kevin R. Brock, is “former assistant director of intelligence for the FBI [and] was an FBI special agent for 24 years and principal deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).”

The NY TImes thinks Trump should get his border money

The New Neo Posted on by

Yes, really, and it’s not just a single opinion writer, it’s in an editorial.

What’s going on?

Well, the first thing to notice is that they’re not saying “let him build the wall.” But they do write the following stunning words: “President Trump is right: There is a crisis at the southern border.” The Times wants the money for “funding for vital services” in order to prevent “a further deterioration in conditions.”

My guess is that the Times editors have decided that the stance of the Democrats vis a vis the plight of illegal immigrants is going to hurt them in 2020, and that it’s better to give Trump a little than to let him have that particular cudgel to beat them over the head with during the next election cycle.

My guess is that many Democrats are feeling pretty demoralized right about now. One thing that has sustained them for the last two and a half years is the idea that, whatever may have happened in 2016, in 2020 Trump will be easy to beat as long as they can get a better candidate in there than Hillary. And that should be easy-peasy, right?

Only thing is that so far they seem unable to find such a person. It also appears that the Democrats as a whole are engaged in shooting themselves in their myriad feet.

On being a blogger

The New Neo Posted on by

Someone once asked me about what I actually do as a blogger, and I replied airily, “Oh, I just write a term paper a day.”

It was meant to be a joke, but the joke wasn’t so very far from the truth. And the funny thing about it is that, when I was in school, I hated to write term papers. In fact, I hated a lot of assignments and a lot of my schooling, which is a funny thing because I was an excellent student.

I liked to read and write, but I liked to read what I wanted to read and I liked to write on topics that interested me. That said, I understood that coping with assignments was part of the discipline I also had to learn. But I never liked it. I certainly did plenty of it, though, and successfully proceeded through grade school, high school, college, and then two graduate schools (with some breaks in between those two).

But looking back, I’m saddened and somewhat puzzled by the fact that I can count on the fingers of one hand the college courses that I found worthwhile. They probably weren’t the sort of thing most people would consider especially worthwhile, either. But to me they were. Here’s the list:

Russian intellectual history
Drama as literature
Population genetics
Art history survey
Poetry course specializing in Robert Frost

And in law school my favorite course—head and shoulders above all the others—was called Philosophy of Law (otherwise known as Jurisprudence).

Nowadays, such things probably have been taken over by the left, like everything else academic. But back then it hadn’t happened yet, and the teachers who taught those particular courses were brilliant.

All of this may seem rather far afield from being a blogger, but I don’t think it is. You can see that my interests then were not so very different from my interests now. My “assignments” these days are my own, and although I often decide to follow the news du jour, my real love is all the rest of it.