Will liberals stop trusting the MSM?

The New Neo Posted on by

Matt Taibbi thinks so, and he thinks the media coverage of the Mueller report will have been instrumental in fostering that lack of trust:

News audiences were betrayed, and sooner or later, even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize it and tune us out. The only way to reverse the damage is to own how big of a screw-up this was, but after the last three years, who would hold their breath waiting for that?

I agree with Taibbi that the MSM will not be doing that. But I don’t know what I think about his contention that “even the most virulently Trump-despising demographics will realize” that they were lied to about Trump and Russiagate. His article, which appeared in Rolling Stone, has no comment section, so it’s hard to gauge the tenor of what the responses would be from the periodical’s mostly-liberal readership.

But if I had to guess, I’d say that the number of Trump-haters who realize they were duped by the MSM will be vanishingly small. Maybe I’ve gotten too cynical, but I certainly haven’t seen a lot of soul-searching or mind-changing on this. Yes, the media’s stock has fallen even on the left and not just the right. But that doesn’t necessarily lead to mind-changing and the rejection of the basic message, or to trust of a source from the right such as National Review or Fox News.

Taibbi is about as far from a Trump supporter as you can get, and he is definitely not a Republican either (see this). But his outrage in the article is at the stupidity and mendacity of the press, and he is clear-sighted enough to see their errors in covering Russiagate. His interest doesn’t seem to be that people should have a change of political heart; his concern seems to be about the ever-falling reputation of the press, one they have justly earned.

How large can the “voting rights for terrorists” crowd be?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t think Bernie Sanders did himself any political favors when he said that even the Boston marathon bomber should have the right to vote. What constituency is he appealing to, besides hardcore libertarians?

It’s not that his argument lacks all merit. I don’t agree with Sanders—I think that certain crimes should mean that a person has forfeited the right to vote along with certain other rights, such as the right to roam freely around among us. But I well understand his argument, which he expressed this way. I just think it’s not going to wash with the vast vast majority of people, even many who otherwise support Sanders:

“This is a democracy and we have got to expand that democracy, and I believe every single person does have the right to vote,” he said, adding, “Even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say, ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

He slammed Republican governors for blocking access to the ballot box for felons, in what he described as an effort to disenfranchise voters and influence elections in their favor. “They come up with all kinds of excuses why people of color, young people, poor people can’t vote. and I will do everything I can to resist that,” he said.

Vermont and Maine are the only states that allow incarcerated felons to vote, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Massachusetts is among 14 states, along with the District of Columbia, that automatically reinstate voting rights to felons released from prison. Other states have additional restrictions, including bans on voting while a felon is on parole or probation.

I’m not the only person noting that Sanders’ extreme position is a sort of political poison of the self-inflicted kind (not that it is likely to deter his most fervent supporters—and does he really have any other kind?):

“You’re writing your own opposition ad against you,” CNN host Chris Cuomo said.

And Sanders gave this answer:

“I think I have written many 30 second opposition ads throughout my life,” Sanders replied. “This will just be another one of them.”

Well, that’s certainly true. But for most of his career he’s been in liberal/left cocoons. This is the national stage, which he entered only during the 2016 campaign. Sanders may not really want to win and actually become president; after all, he’ll be 79 by Election Day 2020. He may not think he can win. Or, he may think he can win with exactly the formula he’s had all his life, as an extreme leftist, and that his hour is finally at hand and he can let it all hang out in terms of voicing the extreme positions that made him what he is.

At any rate, his remarks have the function of moving the Overton window for the other candidates, stating the most extreme positions so that their own positions won’t seem quite as far left as they actually are. He is the lefty-ist leftist of all in that great big “who can be the furthest left?” competition that the Democratic Party has become:

Asked similar questions at CNN town halls later on, Democratic candidate and South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg said he disagreed, arguing that losing the right to vote is one of the penalties inmates should face while incarcerated. California Sen. Kamala Harris said she believed “we should have that conversation.”

Harris’s polls must have told her that such a “conversation” is political cyanide, because she backtracked from that stance the very next day and declared that murderers and terrorists should “be deprived of their rights.”

I have to say that I am heartened by the Democrats’ infighting and voicing of off-putting positions (at least I think they’re off-putting; I sincerely hope so). I would rather have them state their extremism rather than hide it, wait till they’re elected, and then pursue far more extreme policies than the ones they’ve owned up to. Of course, many of them are probably still on track for that. How far left are they really, in their heart of hearts? Extremely far. Will the American public reject this leftism? That remains to be seen, but I have hopes.

Is the handshake the next to go?

The New Neo Posted on by

The consequences of the sexual revolution (remember that?) crossed with #MeToo can be rather ironic:

Handshakes could be banned under new workplace rules to avoid expensive sexual harassment claims, an expert has said.

Kate Palmer, an associate director of advisory at HR consultancy Peninsula, said employers may ban all forms of physical contact to avoid confusion about what kind of touch is appropriate…

…[T]hree out of four people want a complete ban on physical contact in the workplace, according to a recent survey of 2,000 adults by Totaljobs.

Ms Palmer added putting a hand on someone’s back or giving them a hug when they are upset could be “too personal” and staff should be “mindful” of that kind of touch.

Various orthodox religions ban all physical contact between unmarried men and women, including handshakes, but most of the people who are demanding similar things in the workplace almost certainly don’t identify as religious at all.

People are becoming way too fragile and frightened. Ah well, pretty soon the entire workplace will exist no more, and people will only interface via computer.

A blast from the bold and racy past:

How long do vaccines last?

The New Neo Posted on by

For some diseases, not as long as one might think.

For other diseases, a really long time.

And in addition, it’s not easy to ascertain how long they last, particularly for diseases that have mostly been wiped out and for which exposure is relatively rare.

I’m so old I’m of a generation that actually contracted a lot of these childhood diseases, pre-vaccine. I remember a memorable year or two early on when I had mumps, chicken pox, measles, and German measles (rubella) in succession. I emerged none the worse for wear, and more or less immune for life (although I did manage to later get a mild case of that chicken pox sequela, shingles).

But I’m also old enough to remember when measles was a potential killer. My own cousin contracted measles encephalitis and later died of complications from the disease. So no one had to tell me how important vaccinations for these diseases were when they finally became available later on.

The 2020 census, the Court, and the citizenship question

The New Neo Posted on by

SCOTUS will be ruling on whether a question about citizenship can be included on the next census:

[It is a question] which critics say would undermine its accuracy by discouraging both legal and unauthorized immigrants from filling out the forms.

So illegal immigrants, who have defied the law to come here and continue to defy it to stay here, are afraid of answering truthfully on a census question and therefore won’t answer and won’t be counted? And for that reason we shouldn’t have the question? I’m no expert on census law, but it seems to me that as long as there is an understandable and valid reason for a question, the mere possibility of discouragement from answering it for some unknown number of people is not a reason for courts to disallow it. There is an obvious bona fide reason for this particular question.

And why would legal immigrants be discouraged?

See also this:

Justice Ginsburg, who appeared to side with the challengers…asked a question that goes to the heart of the matter: Why are the courts involved in this anyway? Congress could prohibit Census questions about citizenship, but it hasn’t:

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Letter, the Congress has the primary control over what the census will be, not the executive, and Congress has been alerted to this citizenship question for some time, and it has done nothing about it. So one question is who should decide? Congress is silent. Should the Court then step in? [Tr. 81-82]

Indeed.

I’ve done some genealogical research online about my family, and looked at quite a few census pages in many different years. Questions about citizenship were long a feature of the federal census. Here’s a timeline:

From the first time in 1820 to the most recent in 2000, when only a small sample of households were asked, questions about citizenship on the census have had a history of stops and starts, twists and turns over 200 years.

There’s a chart at the link, describing the changes in the question over the years, with examples. It’s clear that this is not a new question, and that even quite recently it’s been asked of a sampling of households (usually 1 in 6). Why it was okay to ask 1 in 6 but not okay to ask everyone? It seems an obviously valid question to me.

It also seems quite obvious why Democrats and the left are fighting this. They are afraid of what it will reveal. Note, though, that the question does not take the form, “Is this person an illegal immigrant?” The proposed question is the same one that’s been asked of a sample of respondents for decades: “Is this person a citizen of the United States?” It is ludicrous to think a nation has no right to ask such a question on its census. If for some reason that nation—the executive branch and Congress, not the courts—decides that in practice the question is actually inefficient and/or discourages responses in general, then those branches of government can decide not to use it again. SCOTUS should not be the branch to make that decision ahead of time, based on some theory about what might happen.

New Hampshire law to limit voting by non-resident college students in the state

The New Neo Posted on by

Seems to me that New Hampshire would be well within its rights to require that students vote by absentee ballot in their states of origin rather than their temporary home of NH, unless they’ve established residency in New Hampshire. But NH state Democrats as well as other Democrats oppose it:

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire senator, also calls it a “voter suppression law” in the usual Orwellian fashion of the left.

A voting age of 18 (rather than 21, as in my youth) tends to favor Democrats in general. But allowing non-resident students to vote in a state such as New Hampshire, with such a tiny resident population and a not-insignificant number of university students, means the non-resident student vote might matter even more in the outcome.

Here are the issues involved in this “voter suppression” law (emphasis mine):

Under current law, New Hampshire is the only state that doesn’t require residency.

How do you like that? Shaheen and Harris and the rest somehow fail to mention that little tidbit.

More:

[Opponents] say the law, which takes effect July 1, burdens their right to vote by requiring new voters to shift their home state driver’s licenses and registrations to New Hampshire.

“Under this law, I have to pay to change my California license to be a New Hampshire one,” one of the students, Maggie Flaherty, said in a statement. “If I vote and don’t change my license within 60 days, I could even be charged with a misdemeanor offense with up to one year in jail.”

Cry me a river, Maggie.

More:

Republican Gov. Chris Sununu initially expressed concerns about the constitutionality of the law, which was passed by the then-Republican controlled Legislature last year. He requested an advisory opinion from the state Supreme Court. The court said eliminating the distinction between “residency” and “domicile” for voting purposes would be constitutional, siding with Republicans who argued out-of-state college students who vote in New Hampshire should be subject to the same requirements as everyone else.

Sununu, who signed the bill into law in July, had said it “restores equality and fairness to our elections.” Democrats argued it amounts to a poll tax and would deter students from voting. In its ruling, the court said that even if removing the distinction between residency and domicile creates a burden on them, the state has a compelling reason for making the change…

Deputy Secretary of State David Scanlan had spoken in favor of the bill last year. He emphasized that neighboring states require those who vote in their states to become residents, subject to motor vehicle and other laws.

There it is again, that pesky little detail.

[NOTE: Just to take an example, blue as blue can be Massachusetts has this requirement for student voters:

Registering to vote in Massachusetts makes you a resident for the purposes of your driver’s license and vehicle registration. If you drive your vehicle in Massachusetts, you have 30 days from when you register to vote to register your vehicle and get a Massachusetts driver’s license. For more information, contact the Massachusetts Department of Motor Vehicles.

And Cory Booker, senator from New Jersey, has this to say:

But the NJ law seems similar to the NH law:

Voting in New Jersey may be considered a declaration of residency, potentially making you subject to other laws that govern state residents.

That would mean registering your car, it seems to me.]

Dershowitz: I get it right because I’m objective

The New Neo Posted on by

Indeed he does and indeed he is.

One would think objectivity would be a requirement for success as a legal analyst, but anyone who thinks that would be very wrong because “success” isn’t defined as getting it right and certainly not as being objective, but as drawing interest and ratings from audiences. And the best way to do that seems to be to offer what partisans want to hear, wrapped in a thin patina of legalese.

Dershowitz doesn’t operate that way, but he’s in a very small group; I’d say the others in it are Andrew C. McCarthy and Johnathan Turley (at least those are the ones I think of off the top of my head). Dershowitz is an old-fashioned liberal Democrat, McCarthy a moderate Republican, and Turley a libertarian.

Dershowitz is right about this, too (although since I haven’t seen “every single one” of his predictions, I can’t swear to that detail):

I think I’ve always tried to be objective. I am neutral and nonpartisan when it comes to analyzing the law, and every single one of the predictions I have made over the last two years has come true…

I don’t allow wishful thinking to substitute for careful legal analysis. And what happened as a result of that is, for example, CNN, which used to have me on all the time, on Anderson Cooper, on Cuomo, on Lemon, as a centrist analyst, decided no, no, it is okay to have extreme Trump supporters to use them as kind of stick figure exhibits, and then everybody else will do the narrative of CNN. What they didn’t want was a centrist liberal who went against their narrative.

That is just about the last thing they want.

They had a choice of a Harvard law professor for 50 years who’s been getting it right, who’s a centrist liberal and who has credibility, or Michael Avenatti. And they picked Michael Avenatti. In fact one night I got a call from CNN saying ‘We have to cancel you. We have Avenatti! He is coming on tonight.’ He became their go-to guy and every one of his predictions turned out to be false…

Remember when Avenetti was the darling of the left and cable news?

[NOTE: My finger is itching to index posts about Alan Dershowitz under the category “political changers.” But so far, no go.]

Democrats and NeverTrumpers can’t wholly abandon the collusion narrative, it’s too useful

The New Neo Posted on by

“Useful?” you might ask. “What do you mean, useful? It makes them look crazy and desperate.”

I don’t think they’re crazy, and I think they only look that way to the right and maybe to some moderates/independents but far from all. And think about it; to deny collusion would be to say “we were wrong for over two years.” That’s hard, very very hard. Hard, embarrassing, and humiliating. Best to double down on the Big Lie. It’s worked in the past.

As for desperate—well yes, what else do they have? Obstruction (particularly unproven obstruction, based on unchallenged testimony, devoid of any underlying crime) is relatively weak tea compared to “COLLUSION!” “TREASON!” “PUTIN PUPPET!”

Glenn Reynolds points out:

Ralph Peters, on CNN, referred to President Trump as “slavishly subordinate” to Vladimir Putin. But that’s crazy. Trump has sanctioned Russia for its actions in Ukraine, Syria, and Iran, under his command the United States military killed hundreds of Russian mercenaries in Syria, has been sending weapons to Ukraine to resist Russian invasion, and most importantly has promoted U.S. oil production, crushing Russia’s main source of money and influence.

What Peters said is incorrect and illogical. It’s a conclusion not only unsupported by facts, it’s actually contradicted by facts, as Reynolds points out. But “crazy”? I don’t think so. It’s a tactic that makes sense at this point, especially since I’d bet that most of CNN’s listeners are unaware of the facts that contradict what Peters said.

Peters is counting on the likelihood that typical CNN viewers—the audience he’s addressing—will nod sagely at what he says. And I think he’s correct to think that.

The real question (as so often is the case) is about those in the middle. How many people who were on the fence about Trump before will now be rejecting the collusion narrative and not taking up the obstruction narrative? For that matter, how many people were on the fence about Trump before?

And where will the Democrat-controlled House go from here? Will they take the whole episode to impeachment, or will they just use the Mueller report’s Part II (the obstruction-can’t-be-ruled-out part) to smear Trump in preparation for 2020? I think they’ll decide on the latter. A trial in the Senate might expose the fact that they’ve got nothing of any substance. Better the trial by public opinion in the CNN courtroom.

And an actual crime was not really the point, it was merely the pretext. The point was to get an investigation going, cast a wide net, dig up all the dirt you can, and cast it in the worst light possible. Somewhere along the line, put the squeeze on subordinates to implicate Trump and hope they’ll tell the narrative you want told (who cases whether it’s true of not). If that doesn’t work, release the report when the Democrats control the impeachment process, and let them take it from there.

[ADDENDUM: Commenter “TommyJay” has pointed out that “collusion” isn’t actually a crime. My reply is that an actual crime was not necessarily the point, it was merely the pretext. The point was to get an investigation going, cast a wide net, dig up all the dirt you can, and cast it in the worst light possible. Somewhere along the line, put the squeeze on subordinates to implicate Trump and hope they’ll tell the narrative you want told (who cares whether it’s true or not). If that doesn’t work, release the report when the Democrats control the impeachment process, and let them take it from there.]