So far, Andrew C. McCarthy has earned his reputation as the go-to guy for information on the Mueller investigation. So I suggest, now that he’s reacted at some length to the Manafort indictment (boy, he’s quick!), that you read the whole thing.
Here’s an excerpt:
Even from Paul Manafort’s perspective, there may be less to this indictment than meets the eye ”” it’s not so much a serious allegation of “conspiracy against the United States” as a dubious case of disclosure violations and money movement that would never have been brought had he not drawn attention to himself by temporarily joining the Trump campaign.
From President Trump’s perspective, the indictment is a boon from which he can claim that the special counsel has no actionable collusion case. It appears to reaffirm former FBI director James Comey’s multiple assurances that Trump is not a suspect. And, to the extent it looks like an attempt to play prosecutorial hardball with Manafort, the president can continue to portray himself as the victim of a witch hunt.
Of course, most people don’t read Andrew McCarthy. The MSM will be spinning this quite differently.
For example, we have this headline from our old friends at the NY Times: “Paul Manafort, Who Once Ran Trump Campaign, Told to Surrender.” Well, it’s true, isn’t it? Even though the Manafort charges have nothing to do with Trump or his campaign.
Here’s the history of Manafort’s connection with the Trump campaign, by the way:
He joined Donald Trump’s presidential campaign team in March 2016 and served as campaign manager from June to August 2016.
If you want to see the approach of the left to this story, there are plenty of examples here. The gist of it is that this is just the beginning of very very bad news for Trump.
I’m not at all sure the ordinary person will see it that way.
Actor Kevin Spacey has now been accused of molesting (or attempting to molest) actor Anthony Rapp 30 years ago, when the latter was 14 and Spacey 26. Here’s the situation:
In an interview with Buzzfeed, Rapp said Spacey picked him up, put him on his bed and “was trying to get with me sexually” in 1986. Spacey was 26 at the time.
In response to the allegations, Spacey tweeted that he was “beyond horrified to hear [Rapp’s] story.”
Spacey tweeted: “I honestly do not remember the encounter, it would have been over 30 years ago.
“But if I did behave then as he describes, I owe him the sincerest apology for what would have been deeply inappropriate drunken behavior, and I am sorry for the feelings he describes having carried with him all these years.”
Spacey, who has been famously private about his personal life, said that he now lives as a gay man — which marked the first time the actor has made a public statement about his sexual orientation.
“This story has encouraged me to address other things about my life,” Spacey said in his tweet. He continued that he has had “relationships with both men and women,” and added, “I have loved and had romantic encounters with men throughout my life, and I choose now to live as a gay man.”.
This is a very problematic story on a lot of levels, and the LGBT community is understandably upset at the timing of Spacey’s coming out. It perpetuates the idea that gay men are more likely to seduce underage boys, for example, and is seen as an attempt to deflect attention from Rapp’s charge to the topic of Spacey’s long-debated sexual orientation.
The situation is a mess. Although Rapp’s story is impossible to substantiate, it has the ring of truth to me and although I would not convict Spacey on such evidence, I believe it occurred much as Rapp describes (including the fact that Spacey was drunk at the time, which does not excuse him).
The question of whether gay people are more likely to molest children is a third rail, and I’ve tried many times to get an idea of what the truth is about it. The best I’ve been able to do is to say that the vast majority of gay people (like the vast majority of heterosexual people) are not pedophiles and do not pursue children, but some subset of gay people (like some subset of heterosexual people) are pedophiles—or, in the case of gay people and Rapp’s allegations, hebephiles, who are attracted to post-pubescent teenagers who have not reached the age of majority.
Last February I wrote a lengthy post on child-molestation and teenage-molestation in the gay community and elsewhere, in which I said this:
I deplore sexual abuse of children and teenagers, and there’s plenty of blame to go around about such both in the gay world and in the heterosexual world. I’ve done a lot of reading on the question of whether gay adults are more likely to be child molesters than straight adults…and in my opinion the jury is still out on that. If you want to read about the question in depth, I suggest this article for the “yes, they are more likely” side, and this article for the “no, they’re not more likely” side.
Spacey is probably the tip of a very large iceberg of child actor molestation—or attempts at molestation—in the theater and the movies.
One of the more subtly disturbing parts about the Spacey story can be seen if you look at Rapp’s more detailed description of what happened:
Rapp, an actor with a long Broadway career who is now a regular on the TV series “Star Trek: Discovery,” was a child actor in 1986 when he says he met Spacey. They were both performing on Broadway shows, he told Buzzfeed. They met at a post-show gathering and Spacey invited him to a party at his Manhattan apartment that was happening a few days later.
Rapp attended the party alone, but got bored because everyone else there was an adult, and he did not know anyone. He told Buzzfeed he went into a bedroom and watched TV past midnight. Rapp said he realized that the other guests had left the party when Spacey appeared at the doorway and approached him.
Rapp said his initial impression when Spacey came in the room was that he was drunk.
“He picked me up like a groom picks up the bride over the threshold. But I don’t, like, squirm away initially, because I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ And then he lays down on top of me.”
“He was trying to seduce me,” Rapp told the website. “I don’t know if I would have used that language. But I was aware that he was trying to get with me sexually.” He said he felt Spacey “pressing into me” and “tightening his arms.”
Rapp said he was able to “squirm” away and left the apartment.
So in addition to the obviously disturbing part (the molestation or attempted molestation of a minor), what was the “subtly disturbing” part to which I referred? You may or may not have noticed it, but it was the fact that a fourteen-year-old was at a party like this, unescorted, in the first place. This was no cast party; it was an adult party at Spacey’s apartment, with drinking. What was going on with Rapp’s parents? Were they unaware of this, or did they not think Rapp would be at risk in attending such a venue? It wasn’t as though Spacey was an old and trusted family friend, either (not that it would be okay to go alone to an adult party even under those circumstances). He was just an actor Rapp had met.
In no surprise whatsoever, that fish is none other than Paul Manafort (along with his former business associate, Rick Gates):
The charges all relate or derive from Manafort’s business activities that predate Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign (although various related deceptions are alleged to date). I don’t believe that Gates ever had any involvement with the Trump campaign to begin with.
The charges have nothing to do with collusion. As Andrew McCarthy anticipated this past August, they are evidently intended to put the squeeze on Manafort to provide evidence against principals in the Trump campaign.
In addition, there’s this:
A man described as a former foreign policy adviser to Trump’s 2016 campaign has also now been revealed secretly to have pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to the FBI about his outreach to Russian officials. The former foreign policy adviser is one George Papadopolous…He reportedly suggested that Trump meet with Russian leaders. I take it that his efforts were unsuccessful but that his guilty plea is indicative of cooperation with prosecutors.
So far, this seems to be about business irregularities that precede any involvement Manafort had with Trump, and lying to investigators. The hope does seem to be that Manafort will spill the beans on someone higher-up, if there are any beans to spill:
For present purposes, however, I am more interested in reports that business records, connected to Manafort’s taxes and foreign bank transactions, were the object of the raid ordered by Special Counsel Robert Mueller. That seems peculiar if the rationale for ordering a home search, rather than simply issuing a subpoena, was fear that Manafort would destroy evidence.
It makes perfect sense, though, if the prosecutor is playing hardball…
The special counsel is not limiting his inquiry to the Russia investigation that Congress has been pursuing; rather, Mueller intends to scorch the earth as necessary to make a case ”” any case ”” on Manafort, for purposes of squeezing him to become a cooperating witness against others, potentially including the president.
That was written by Andrew C. McCarthy in early August, 2017. McCarthy’s a smart man, as I’ve said many times before. And he has lots of prosecutorial experience. I believe he’s correct, and events subsequent to his writing that piece have borne his theory out.
When I first read about the Las Vegas concert shooting it struck me almost immediately that the mass murder it most resembled was Columbine. And yet I’ve been surprised that almost no one else I’ve heard or read has focused on the Columbine analogy. It’s not for lack of searching for a motive, either; there’s been a great deal of puzzled speculation on that topic.
I believe the failure to seriously consider the Columbine killers’ motives as similar to that of the Las Vegas killer comes from two things: (a) superficially, the crimes appear quite different (school shooting with young perps vs. concert shooting from a high perch with much older perp), and (2) the vast majority of people have never learned about the deeper motives and aims of the Columbine shooters or the enormous scope of their plans and preparation, which took about a year.
The Columbine massacre was supposed to kill well over 600 people and only failed to do so because of Harris and Klebold’s relative incompetence as bombmakers. What sort of plans did they make?
They had wanted to bomb first, then shoot. So they planted three sets of bombs: one set a few miles away, timed to go off first and lure police away from the school; a second set in the cafeteria, to flush terrified students out into the parking lot, where Harris and Klebold would be waiting with their guns to mow them down; and then a third set in their cars, timed to go off once the ambulances and rescue workers descended, to kill them as well. What actually happened instead was mainly an improvisation.
Just before 11 a.m. they hauled two duffel bags containing propane-tank bombs into the cafeteria. Then they returned to their cars, strapped on their weapons and ammunition, pulled on their black trench coats and settled in to wait.
Judgment Day, as they called it, was to begin at 11:17 a.m. But the bombs didn’t go off. After two minutes, they walked toward the school and opened fire, shooting randomly and killing the first two of their 13 victims. And then they headed into the building.
The idea that Columbine was some sort of ordinary school shooting (if such a thing can be called “ordinary”) motivated by retaliation for past bullying was the initial story that got out, and most people are completely unaware that it wasn’t the case. I believe that Paddock—like the Columbine killers—wanted to kill on a much bigger scale than his actual kill total, and that (again, as in Columbine) something stopped him. I’ll return to what that “something” might have been in PartIIIB.
Unlike Paddock, Harris and Klebold left a great deal of information about what they were planning and even why they were planning it, and although there was less about the “why” than about the “what,” it wasn’t hard for authorities to feel they could describe the motives once they had finished digesting all the material. Passages such as this one from Harris demonstrate some of the flavor of his thought processes:
It’ll be like the L.A. Riots, the Oklahoma bombing, WWII, Vietnam, Duke and Doom all mixed together…I want to leave a lasting impression on the stupid world.
I could be wrong, but I contend that this is exactly the sort of thing Paddock had in mind: the desire to leave a lasting impression on the stupid world. That’s the sort of sentiment you may recognize from this clip, if you’re a movie buff:
It was really Harris who was the classic psychopath of the duo, and he led the typical double life of a psychopath:
Harris…was sweet-faced and well-spoken. Adults, and even some other kids, described him as “nice.” But Harris was cold, calculating, and homicidal. “Klebold was hurting inside while Harris wanted to hurt people,” Fuselier says. Harris was not merely a troubled kid, the psychiatrists say, he was a psychopath.
In popular usage, almost any crazy killer is a “psychopath.” But in psychiatry, it’s a very specific mental condition that rarely involves killing, or even psychosis. “Psychopaths are not disoriented or out of touch with reality, nor do they experience the delusions, hallucinations, or intense subjective distress that characterize most other mental disorders,” writes Dr. Robert Hare, in Without Conscience, the seminal book on the condition…”Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why. Their behavior is the result of choice, freely exercised.” Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath represents neither a legal defense, nor a moral excuse. But it illuminates a great deal about the thought process that drove him to mass murder.
Diagnosing him as a psychopath was not a simple matter. Harris opened his private journal with the sentence, “I hate the f—ing world.” And when the media studied Harris, they focused on his hatred – hatred that supposedly led him to revenge. It’s easy to get lost in the hate, which screamed out relentlessly from Harris’ Web site…
What follows in the Slate article (based on interviews with a forensic psychologist and an FBI agent who were involved) is a list that Harris wrote of his hates. It shrieks with rage even in written form—and strangely enough, this is the first item on it:
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!? Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!! . . .
It wasn’t just hate, it was contempt that drove Harris—towering contempt for everything and everybody but himself [emphasis mine]:
He is disgusted with the morons around him. These are not the rantings of an angry young man, picked on by jocks until he’s not going to take it anymore. These are the rantings of someone with a messianic-grade superiority complex, out to punish the entire human race for its appalling inferiority. It may look like hate, but “It’s more about demeaning other people,” says [psychologist and expert on psychopathy] Hare.
Harris lied constantly as well, and he did it not just to get out of trouble but for fun:
“Duping delight”- psychologist Paul Ekman’s term – represents a key characteristic of the psychopathic profile.
Harris married his deceitfulness with a total lack of remorse or empathy – another distinctive quality of the psychopath.
Here’s a video that gives an idea of what I’m talking about. I cued it up to show only about a minute and a half:
I believe that if we ever manage to find out more about Paddock (and it’s not clear that we ever will) we’ll discover that Paddock had the same sense of his own superiority and the same contempt for others that Harris had (in Klebold’s case, it masked depression, because he was more depressive than psychopathic). I believe that Paddock’s father—who was a famous con man—had the same “duping delight” described by Ekman, and that Paddock probably shared that trait as well.
In fact, the “duping delight” may have even been part of the motive for Paddock’s crime—the surprise the world would feel at this mysterious and mild-mannered erstwhile accountant turning into a rampaging mass murderer.
[These thoughts and comparisons will be expanded in PartIIIB, coming soon.]
Ever heard of “progressive stacking”? I hadn’t either, but apparently it’s all the rage on college campuses. Take a look (and in case you need a crib sheet, “POC” is “people of color” and “WW” is “white women”):
U. Penn history teacher explains what 'social justice' really means in university classes. pic.twitter.com/mx0gDfPQRe
In subsequent post, McKellop explains that the tactic – called progressive stacking – was one learned from a professor in undergrad. ‘In normal life, who has the easiest time speaking, most opportunities? Flip it,’ they added.
‘The classroom is the place YOU get to control social setting.’
McKellop would continue to tweet about the reaction they were receiving for teaching the method and added: ‘Penn thinks I’m racist and discriminatory towards my students for using a very well worn pedagogical tactic which includes calling on [people of color].’
Being “well-worn” doesn’t make it right, of course. And no one objects to “calling on people of color.” It’s the preferences and the exclusions that are the problem, as McKellop no doubt realizes.
When I first heard about college affirmative action I was a liberal. I was all for equal opportunity for every race and every individual, and it’s probably because of that fact that I felt a strong stirring of unease. Two wrongs don’t make a right was my reaction. And More injustice can’t be the proper remedy for injustice.
It puzzled me at the time that I was seemingly in the minority in that opinion, which seemed to me at the time like the obvious reaction for a liberal but certainly was not. I had a lot to learn about myself and my fellow liberals.
It’s not that I had a quick solution to the problem of prejudice. I understood that injustice had certainly been prevailing in my youth, and that it needed to be corrected. But I thought it was already in the process of being corrected and that we needed to keep going in the direction of color-blindness and merit. The idea at the time was that black people had long been unfairly held back even when qualified, and that they also hadn’t gotten the same educational and societal advantages as white people. That was true. But the remedy had been thought to be to correct the educational imbalances and punish those who unfairly discriminated (there was certainly plenty of that) and the rest should follow, although it would take time. Preferential treatment would lead to resentment and would be the replacement of one unfairness with another.
And it has come to pass, and practices such as progressive stacking are the result.
Yes, there was a Republican publication—the Washington Free Beacon—involved in funding some research by Fusion right at the beginning, before Robert Steele or the Russians or the Trump dossier had anything to do with it. But Steele and all the rest was strictly a funded-by-Democrats operation:
Since its launch in February of 2012, the Washington Free Beacon has retained third party firms to conduct research on many individuals and institutions of interest to us and our readers. In that capacity, during the 2016 election cycle we retained Fusion GPS to provide research on multiple candidates in the Republican presidential primary, just as we retained other firms to assist in our research into Hillary Clinton. All of the work that Fusion GPS provided to the Free Beacon was based on public sources, and none of the work product that the Free Beacon received appears in the Steele dossier. The Free Beacon had no knowledge of or connection to the Steele dossier, did not pay for the dossier, and never had contact with, knowledge of, or provided payment for any work performed by Christopher Steele. Nor did we have any knowledge of the relationship between Fusion GPS and the Democratic National Committee, Perkins Coie, and the Clinton campaign.
The MSM had us all guessing which GOP candidate it was, and Jeb Bush was the hands-down leader.
You can’t make this stuff up. Actually, you can. You can make up all sorts of things—and you can try to twist the news of it even now, if you’re the NY Times:
“Conservative Website First Funded Anti-Trump Research by Firm That Later Produced Dossier” is the headline [in the Times\ that should give one pause immediately. The Times identifies the “website” as the Washington Free Beacon, a first rate on-line investigative journal that’s uncovered a lot of information that the Democrats would rather have die in darkness.
WFB is “funded by a major Republican donor” say Haberman and Vogel. No, really? Were we expecting it to be funded by a Democrat donor, perhaps? In this way, the Times tries to implicate “hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer” in the matter of the nasty dossier, though Mr. Singer says he first found out about it when BuzzFeed, a left-leaning website, published it. Hedge fund billionaires are bad when they fund Republicans. The good ones fund the Clintons and the left-wing media.
The Times states that WFB hired Fusion GPS in October 2015 to do opposition research on “several Republican presidential candidates, including Mr. Trump” but terminated the assignment in May 2016, when Trump secured the Republican nomination. The opposition research eventually included “a salacious dossier describing ties between Mr. Trump and the Russian government,” but who commissioned the dossier?
The Times wants you to believe that it’s WFB and/or its nefarious major donor, Mr. Singer. Only an inconvenient truth creeps into this story. In April 2016 the Clinton campaign and the DNC retained Fusion GPS “to research any possible connections between Mr. Trump, his campaign team and Russia.” But that was a month before Fusion GPS was terminated by WFB. Confused yet?
There’s more, but you get the idea. The Times piece is purposely convoluted and the headline purposely misleading—but hey, what else is new?
Meanwhile, if you want some lucid coverage, go to Andrew C. McCarthy.
The musical “Oklahoma” came out in early 1943, a welcome nostalgic respite from the trauma of World War II. The movie (far inferior, IMHO) was released in 1955.
I was raised on Broadway musicals. I know just about every word of every musical (except the flops) of the 40s through the 60s, including “Oklahoma” (which I only saw in revival, at City Center). I learned these lyrics as a young child, which a great many adults around me found quite amusing. For example, one of my favorites was “Fugue for Tinhorns” which I could warble at around age 3, as well as “Doin’ What Comes Naturally”. The first is about betting on horses and the second about sex, albeit in a fairly cleaned-up way.
And then there was “I Cain’t Say No” from “Oklahoma.” It’s sung by a girl who knows the basic mores of the time but has trouble saying no to men who proposition her. It begins this way:
It ain’t so much a question of not knowin’ what to do
I knowed what’s right an’ wrong since I been ten.
I heared a lot of stories an’ I reckon they are true
About how girls are put upon by men…
Here’s the movie version:
I immediately thought of this song when I read the latest accusation of sexual harassment against Mark Halperin [emphasis mine]:
Dianna Goldberg was a young researcher at ABC News in 1994 when she asked a colleague, Mark Halperin, for some information about a story. He readily agreed to help her and asked her to come to his office.
Close the door, he said when she arrived. Come over here, he said, seated at his desk. Sit down and I’ll give you the information, he said. He motioned to his lap.
“What?” she remembers thinking. “I don’t want to sit on your lap.” But Halperin was the political director of the network, a rising star who was highly regarded by ABC’s management, including “World News Tonight” anchor Peter Jennings. Goldberg, who now goes by her married name, May, thought that refusing him could injure her career.
She reluctantly agreed and sat down briefly. Halperin, she recalled on Wednesday, had an erection.
The same routine happened on three or four other occasions, she said. Each instance left her confused, shaken and ashamed…
“I didn’t know what to do,” said May, now a lawyer. “He was important. He wasn’t my superior, but he was certainly in a superior position to mine. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know how to at the time. I knew it was wrong.
This is nothing like Ado Annie, the character in “Oklahoma” who revels in the attention and seems to consent with full awareness of what she was doing—including the “wrongness” of saying “yes” (“I knowed what’s right an’ wrong since I been ten.”). Annie had also “heared a lot of stories” of this sort and had “reckoned they were true”, so none of it came as a surprise—in 1943 and in 1955. And there’s even a lyric in the song “soon as I sit on their laps, something inside of me snaps…”
But Annie seems to be happy about the attention, unlike Goldberg and her sisters. Women like to be referred to as “women” when they’re in college these days, but they seem a lot less sophisticated—and to have a lot less agency—then the “girl” Ado Annie claims herself to be. Halperin was hitting on young women (he himself was rather young at the time of this incident, by the way: about 29 years old) and using his position of power, although not issuing any threats or promises. And once Goldberg had sat in his lap the first time, he certainly had reason to think he could hit on her again. Perhaps he even thought she was a willing rather than a reluctant participant.
Why on earth was someone like Goldberg—who later became a lawyer—so passive and pliant? It reminds me of Stanley Milgram’s obedience to authority experiments, as well as the favorite saying of everybody’s mother “If he jumped off a cliff, would you follow him?”
Yes, Halperin was a user, a sexual opportunist who chased after women in the workplace and used his power to get sexual perks. But in his sexual harassment he was preying not just on the youth and inexperience of these women but on their own ambition as well. Goldberg says she wanted to refuse, but that she thought a refusal would injure her career. But she seems to have expressed nothing of her hesitation to Halperin, and gave in—not once, but many times.
Abuse of power for sexual favors is very wrong. That’s why we condemn priests who abuse children (or who have sex with adult parishioners, for that matter, because priests have taken a religious vow and also have a position of power and influence over adults). Same is true of therapists who come on sexually to clients and of teachers. The workplace contains power differentials, too, so is all workplace sex now verboten? And if it’s not, how on earth is anyone supposed to figure out when an advance is wanted versus when a person is only saying “yes” because she (or he) feels an unstated threat to career ambitions?
If I were a man in the workplace today, I would never say a single sexual thing to anyone, not even a joke. It’s too dangerous out there. And I’d keep many feet between me and anyone I spoke with. I’d also follow the Mike Pence rule—which the liberal press used to say was something that harmed women:
Pence is not the only powerful man in Washington who goes to great lengths to avoid the appearance of impropriety with the opposite sex. An anonymous survey of female Capitol Hill staffers conducted by National Journal in 2015 found that “several female aides reported that they have been barred from staffing their male bosses at evening events, driving alone with their congressman or senator, or even sitting down one-on-one in his office for fear that others would get the wrong impression.” One told the reporter Sarah Mimms that in 12 years working for her previous boss, he “never took a closed door meeting with me. … This made sensitive and strategic discussions extremely difficult.”…
Because of that, when men avoid professional relationships with women, even if for noble reasons, it actually hurts women in the end. “The research is irrefutable: Those with larger networks earn more money and get promoted faster. Because men typically dominate senior management, there’s evidence that the most valuable network members may be men,” wrote Kim Elsesser, a research scholar at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women, in the Los Angeles Times recently. “Without access to beneficial friendships and mentor relationships with executive men, women won’t be able to close the gender gap that exists in most professions.”
Men are to blame for everything, right? That’s sarcasm, by the way. But if women want to be called “women,” they need to earn the title and be women—not girls—women who can say “no” if that’s what they’re thinking.
I thought this subject had been fully aired, but it came up again on a thread yesterday, so I thought I’d address it again very briefly.
The question is whether Paddock could have made money playing video poker. The answer is “yes, if he started with a huge stake and was an obsessive numbers guy, and particularly if he started quite a few years ago when the machines had better odds for the patient and focused video poker obsessives among us.”
The odds are actually not too bad to at least break even if and only if you know what you’re doing and have a lot of patience. Paddock apparently knew what he was doing and had a lot of patience (read: obsessiveness). Here’s the scoop:
For years, Paddock and other professionals had figured out how to make the machines pay, tipping their advantage by a few hundredths of a percentage point by identifying the right games and maximizing points while playing…
“The video poker machines that Paddock played often attract locals who are not seeking the excitement and rowdiness of live poker games,” said Scott Roeben who runs the Vital Vegas blog. “It is not glamorous, it’s not exciting. It’s a game of just slogging away. It’s methodical and solitary.”
For Paddock, who was also a multimillion-dollar real estate investor, it was at least a steady income over a period of years…
But those familiar with the world of video poker say winning has become much harder as casinos, mostly on the Las Vegas Strip, have added machines that hold a better house advantage.
Sometime a little more than a decade ago, the odds changed. And not in Paddock’s favor…
The elimination of most machines that don’t have a broad, built-in house edge has narrowed the field of those who are ready to drop millions, said Jean Scott, who has written several books about video poker and has played at a professional level for decades. “The advantage plays have gone away in recent years. It is getting hard to win,” Scott said. “The casino bean counters are getting tougher.”
Anthony Curtis, a professional gambler who runs one of the authoritative guides to the Las Vegas casinos, the Las Vegas Advisor, said Paddock was what is known as a “comp hustler” ”” someone who plays well enough to get significant compensation in the form of suites, limos and food.
“These kind of players play for the complimentary services ”¦ this guy was not social, but he liked to see himself, his girlfriend and anyone else he brought along be treated well,” Curtis said. “He was a relatively knowledgeable video poker player and definitely knew what he was doing. A player like him does not really lose money ”” they play within their means to an actual plan.”
That fits everything we know about Paddock, and all the reports I’ve seen of his personality and habits are consistent with it. He didn’t actually make five million dollars playing poker, but he started out with millions and apparently kept those millions fairly intact while living what he considered the high life.
The universe shouldn’t technically exist, according to top scientists who have spent their careers trying to figure out how the beginning of everything didn’t immediately destroy itself.
I believe they actually mean “Technically, the universe shouldn’t exist” rather than “The universe shouldn’t technically exist.” But let’s not worry too much about that; bigger things are at issue [emphasis mine]:
The current model for the birth of the universe predicts that equal parts of matter and antimatter were produced by the Big Bang.
But, since matter and antimatter are identical except for their opposite electrical charges, they annihilate each other…
Researchers at the European Organization for Nuclear Research have been looking for any type of variation between matter and antimatter that would have allowed matter to dominate and explain how you’re reading this right now.
“All of our observations find a complete symmetry between matter and antimatter, which is why the universe should not actually exist,” Christian Smorra, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “An asymmetry must exist here somewhere but we simply do not understand where the difference is. What is the source of the symmetry break?”
Good luck with that.
I have long thought that our knowledge of these things is highly incomplete and perhaps even deeply flawed. There are plenty of things “we simply do not understand.” I’m not knocking cosmologists—I couldn’t do what they do—but the built-in limitations seem to me to be permanent, at least on this mortal coil.
Science is one way to approach it. Mystics approach it another way. There’s this, for example, which has become a sort of cliche but is actually profoundly mysterious:
For kabbalists, Ayin became the word to describe the most ancient stage of creation and was therefore somewhat paradoxical, as it was not completely compatible with “creation from nothing”. Ayin became for kabbalists a symbol of “supreme existence” and “the mystical secret of being and non-being became united in the profound and powerful symbol of the Ayin”. There is also a paradoxical relationship between the meaning of Ayin and Yesh from kabbalistic point of view. Rachel Elior, professor of Jewish philosophy and mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, writes that for kabbalists Ayin (nothingness) “clothes itself” in Yesh (everything there is) as “concealed Torah clothes itself in revealed Torah”.
And this, one of my favorite Shakespeare quotes: “There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
The DOJ reached an undisclosed monetary settlement with over 400 conservative groups that had their applications for tax exempt status delayed “based solely on their viewpoint or ideology,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Thursday.
“The [Internal Revenue Service]’s use of these criteria as a basis for heightened scrutiny was wrong and should never have occurred,” Sessions said in a statement Thursday. “It is improper for the IRS to single out groups for different treatment based on their names or ideological positions.”
The Trump administration reached a settlement in two separate cases, one including 41 groups and another filed by 428 plaintiffs…
The IRS admits that its treatment of Plaintiffs during the tax-exempt determination process, including screening their applications based on their names or policy positions, subjecting those applications to heightened scrutiny and inordinate delays, and demanding some Plaintiffs’ information that TITA determined was unnecessary to the agency’s determination of their tax-exempt status, was wrong,” the IRS said in court documents. “For such treatment, the IRS expresses its sincere apology.”
The settlement comes days after the House Judiciary Committee released internal Obama DOJ emails, that revealed the agency selectively funneled big banks’ predatory lending settlement money to liberal non-profits to the exclusion of conservative organizations.
Note that this apology is not an admission that these conservative groups were targeted for political reasons. It was just some sort of clerical error or something of the sort. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but I think it’s impossible (unless you’re a Democratic hack) to come to the conclusion that this pattern of behavior was the least bit innocent and not politically motivated.
And hey, it worked, right? And unless I’m mistaken, the DOJ will use taxpayer money to pay the injured parties. So we’re all going to be the ones paying for it. And no one from the IRS will ever be tried.
I’ve already said I don’t automatically believe women or men as a class. In fact, I don’t believe or disbelieve a member of any group simply because that person is a member of that group. I evaluate each accusation on its own merits, knowing how difficult that is when the only evidence is often just the competing stories of the parties.
That’s why the proliferation of accusations that are part of the #MeToo campaign on Twitter and elsewhere troubles me. Sexual harassment exists; no doubt about that. There are all kinds and all degrees. There are avenues for redress. And there are sometimes reasons that the victims don’t report the offenses when they first occur.
And there are also lies, both big and small, on all sides.
The process of sorting it out is very difficult, and doubt often remains. But now it’s happening more often that the legal process is circumvented and we are left with the court of public opinion, and the acceptance of every accusation as the gospel truth by a huge segment of the population.
I don’t operate that way. But I seem increasingly to be a dinosaur.
Some of the newest misdeeds reported include an old man’s lame joke. Really? Is a woman so very weak and defenseless that this constitutes some heinous crime? Can’t we save the real outrage for more egregious offenses such as those Weinstein is alleged to have committed, and/or times when there is a quid pro quo (or threat) stated or at least implied?
Five women told CNN that Halperin sexually harassed them while at ABC News, with some accusing him of inappropriately propositioning him and pressing his genitals against them without consent. Halperin served in powerful positions at ABC, including as the network’s political director, though none of the women who spoke with CNN say Halperin threatened their careers or promised to help them in exchange for sex.
In a statement to CNN, ABC News said that Halperin has not worked at the network for a while and that “no complaints were filed during his tenure.”
The five women told CNN that they did not report the incidents to human resources because they feared retribution from Halperin. They spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity because they know Halperin is an influential member of the media.
I hold no brief for Halperin. I don’t ordinarily watch the news on TV and until today was almost completely unfamiliar with him except for a few brief moments he was connected to some story or other. He appears to be guilty of some of these offenses, having admitted to the following:
Halperin apologized for “[pursuing] relationships with women that I worked with, including some junior to me”, but denied pressing his genitals against a woman and grabbing another woman’s breast.
More about the accusations:
On October 26, 2017, CNN reported that five women had come forward and accused Halperin of sexual harassment. One woman told the network she was assaulted after visiting Halperin in the early 2000s. “I went up to have a soda and talk and ”” he just kissed me and grabbed my boobs,” the woman said. “I just froze. I didn’t know what to do.” Another woman told CNN that Halperin once pressed his penis on her shoulder during the 2004 campaign cycle. “I was obviously completely shocked,” she said. “Given I was so young and new I wasn’t sure if that was the sort of thing that was expected of you if you wanted something from a male figure in news.”
As I said, it seems to me that Halperin is guilty—perhaps not of every single element of every single alleged offense, but of the general pattern and of many if not most of them. They are not trivial; although they’re not in Weinstein territory, they are offensive if unwanted.
But I am surprised at these women’s self-reported reactions, too. After all, these are not women who came of age in the 40s and 50s. These are women steeped in the idea that they are strong, and that unwanted touching is bad and that they can report people who sexually harass them at work and get some sort of redress. So, they “froze” and “didn’t know what to do”? Why not? Even a woman of my generation knows what to do—have some courage, and step up to the plate! Is it so hard to tell someone his behavior is unwanted and unacceptable? Is it so hard to report him? Is it so hard to do something that might jeopardize your job? Isn’t it the case that people often have to take a stand that might threaten their jobs, or risk being morally compromised? Is it too much to ask that people do it anyway?
Apparently, it is. Here’s some more:
Halperin served in powerful positions at ABC, including as the network’s political director, though none of the women who spoke with CNN say Halperin threatened their careers or promised to help them in exchange for sex.
In a statement to CNN, ABC News said that Halperin has not worked at the network for a while and that “no complaints were filed during his tenure.”
No threats. No promises, either. And no complaints.
So why were these women so very afraid? What are they willing to stand up for if it threatens their job? Anything? Are they only coming forward now—post-Weinstein, post Ailes and O’Reilly—because it involves so little risk?
I’m not asking everyone to be a profile in courage. But certainly, in the absence of any overt threat, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that a woman report harassment. If you want to mix it up in corporate life, you have to have some sort of spine, don’t you? Must everything be a completely Safe Space, with no risk whatsoever and no responsibilities on your part to even defend yourself in the ways that are available to you?
The Justice Department on Wednesday night released a former FBI informant from a confidentiality agreement, allowing him to testify before Congress about what he witnessed while undercover about the Russian nuclear industry’s efforts to win favorable decisions during the Obama administration.
Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores confirmed to The Hill a deal had been reached clearing the informant to talk to Congress for the first time, nearly eight years after he first went undercover for the FBI.
…the informant was unable to provide answers to lawmakers’ recent inquiries because he had signed a nondisclosure agreement with the bureau. He also was forced by the Justice Department in 2016 to withdraw a lawsuit that threatened to call attention to the case during last year’s presidential election.
This won’t be for public viewing, though, and the man’s identity will be kept confidential.
