Austria moves to the right

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a trend:

Angela Merkel’s misguided migration policy ”” which allowed nearly 1 million people from Africa and the Middle East to enter Germany in 2015 ”” has claimed another political victim. Her centrist Christian Democratic government lost a great deal of support to the populist Alternative for Germany in last month’s election because of her mishandling of the migration flood. And today, Christian Kern, the left-wing Social Democratic chancellor of Austria, lost his job because of his own party’s involvement in opening Austria to 75,000 new migrants. Germany borders Austria, and many refugees and economic migrants entered Germany through Austria, with 75,000 remaining.

Festering public anger at uncontrolled immigration, crime, wasteful spending, and bureaucratic arrogance has hurt all established political parties. But the damage to left-wing parties has been the most severe. Taken together, the three left-wing parties in Germany ”” the Social Democrats, the Greens, and the Left party ”” won only 38 percent of the vote in last month’s elections. Twenty years ago, the three combined won 53 percent. Similarly, in Austria, the three left-wing parties together won only 34 percent of the vote today, with the environmentalist Greens shut out of parliament for the first time in more than 30 years.

People don’t like being condescended to and not listened to.

The Austrian political situation also seems to represents a coup by the young against a more staid Old Guard, the latter perhaps somewhat equivalent to our Republican establishment that’s aroused so much ire in the US from former supporters impatient with them. I don’t pretend for a moment to be conversant with Austrian politics, but that’s what the following sounds like to me:

The clear winners are the parties of the populist Right. Take Austria. The center-right People’s Party was floundering early this year, trapped in an unpopular, status-quo coalition with the leftist Social Democrats. Then, in May, 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz ”” the leader of the party’s youth wing ”” mounted a coup and ousted the party’s complacent leadership.

Kurz quickly moved his party to the right. He promoted tougher policies in a range of areas: migration, welfare benefits for foreigners, relations with the European Union, and border controls. He called for a ban on the wearing of burqas. He then announced his party could no longer govern with the Social Democrats, forcing this month’s snap election…

Here are the actual results:

In the end, Kurz and his party took first place, with 31.4 percent of the vote. The Freedom Party won 27.4 percent, and the Social Democrats won 26.7 percent. Even Chancellor Kern of the Social Democrats had to admit the nation has seen a “massive slide to the right.”…

The almost certain outcome of the election will be a coalition government of the People’s Party and the Freedom Party. They governed together once before, from 2000 to 2005, and were able to implement what for Austria were radical economic reforms before they split after various scandals.

Kurz himself seems to be some sort of wunderkind. He’s not just young; at 31, he’s nearly fetal. He’s a fairly handsome guy, too, in the mold of the youngish Justin Trudeau, who at 45 seems positively geriatric in comparison.

[NOTE: In the US, by the way, a 31-year-old could not become president; the age requirement is 35.]

Does a single day go by…

The New Neo Posted on by

…without an MSM article on this sort of theme: “Inside the ”˜adult day-care center’: How aides try to control and coerce Trump”?

There’s a steady stream that never flags. They all seem more or less the same to me. Some focus more on Trump’s immaturity, some on his craziness, but I believe they are designed to keep readers on the left (and/or those on the right who detest Trump) in a constant state of anxiety, fear, rage, and hope.

The “hope” for Democrats is for Democratic control of the House in 2018 and the resultant impeachment of Trump. That drum is being beaten with greater vigor than ever lately.

And then we also have this article from Jane Mayer in The New Yorker that basically says “be careful what you wish for in impeaching Trump.” It tries to stir up fear about Pence. The article is incredibly long and incredibly boring. I tried to skim it in order to glean its main content, but what I mostly got was “Pence is in the pocket of the evil Kochs.”

I’ve read quite a few of these “Trump could be impeached after 2018” articles, and haven’t seen any of them dealing adequately with the question of what would happen next in the Senate after impeachment. If it’s mentioned at all that the conviction and removal of a president can only be accomplished by a 2/3 vote in the Senate, the lack of probability of that happening with Trump and the fact that if it didn’t happen his impeachment would be practically meaningless is rarely if ever dealt with. I find that a bit puzzling, except when I reflect that the purpose of these articles is mainly psychological, and that the authors are probably banking on the fact that most readers may think that “impeachment” is equivalent to “removal from office.” The Clinton impeachment and failure to convict/remove is probably ancient and nearly-forgotten history for a great many voters today.

Literary leftists: Bertrand Russell on the Bolsheviks

The New Neo Posted on by

Betrand Russell was a socialist, but he wasn’t impressed by the Communists:

I am compelled to reject Bolshevism for two reasons: First, because the price mankind must pay to achieve Communism by Bolshevik methods is too terrible; and secondly because, even after paying the price, I do not believe the result would be what the Bolsheviks profess to desire.

In this piece he wrote in 1929 for The Nation, he painted an illuminating portrait of Lenin and to a lesser extent Trotsky. In his description of Lenin in particular, I recognize the type [emphasis mine]:

I have never met a personage so destitute of self-importance. He looks at his visitors very closely, and screws up one eye, which seems to increase alarmingly the penetrating power of the other. He laughs a great deal; at first his laugh seems merely friendly and jolly, but gradually I came to feel it rather grim. He is dictatorial, calm, incapable of fear, extraordinarily devoid of selfseeking, an embodied theory.

“An embodied theory.” I know what he means; I have known political fanatics like that. Very cold-blooded.

I got the impression that he despises a great many people and is an intellectual aristocrat. …

I found in him, as in almost all leading Communists, much less eagerness than existed on our side for peace and the raising of the blockade. He believes that nothing of real value can be achieved except through world revolution and the abolition of capitalism…

He described the division between rich and poor peasants, and the government propaganda among the latter against the former, leading to acts of violence which he seemed to find amusing.

Ha ha ha.

And this is the most important part. After saying that Lenin had no love for liberty, he adds [emphasis mine]:

Perhaps love of liberty is incompatible with wholehearted belief in a panacea for all human ills. If so, I cannot but rejoice in the skeptical temper of the Western world. I went to Russia believing myself a communist; but contact with those who have no doubts has intensified a thousandfold my own doubts, not only of communism, but of every creed so firmly held that for its sake men are willing to inflict widespread misery.

The very same thing happened to the historian Will Durant when he visited Russia. I described his change of mind in this post. In the case of both Durant and Russell, most of the other members of their entourage did not share their disillusionment, and remained enthralled with Russia. Therein lies the difference between the changer and the true believer.

But neither changed all that much, although Durant went further than Russell. Durant remained a liberal; Russell remained a socialist, much as Orwell did during his lifetime of criticizing Communism. This is exceedingly puzzling, I think, and I attempted to explain it in regard to Orwell in this post. With Orwell, I think he just was so disgusted by the inequalities and unfairnesses of life that he greatly desired that it be possible to reconcile socialism and its goal of equality with liberty, although he realized the two were almost certainly incompatible. Russell seemed to realize the same thing, too, but he clung to socialism (intermittently, anyway) despite that fact.

Perhaps he was able to do so because he was something of a political dilettante. You don’t believe me? Russell said so himself:

At various points in his life [Russell] considered himself a liberal, a socialist, and a pacifist, but he also admitted that he had “never been any of these things, in any profound sense”.

People are mysterious, aren’t they?

Trump, defender of the Constitution re Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

You may think the title of this post is sarcastic. After all, as commenter “Bill” wrote today, in regard to Trump’s recent announcements on Obamacare :

I don’t know enough about the changes, yet, to know if they will be bad or good.

I do know that the “if congress won’t act, I will” shtick is just as abominable to the spirit of our system of three co equal branches and checks and balances as it was when we were all howling about Obama ruling by EO…

Maybe congress is completely ineffective…It’s still their job to do the legislating, regardless of if they are good at it and regardless of all the great ideas any given President might have. If they won’t do it we can vote them out. But as a nation it seems we’ve learned to just vote in Presidents who dig the “stroke of the pen, law of the land. Pretty cool huh?” method. It doesn’t end well.

That’s all quite true—and I would have no disagreement if it were relevant in this case. However, that’s not what’s going on with Trump’s end to the cost-sharing insurance company subsidies, although much of the MSM would have you think otherwise.

For clarification on the subject, please read National Review (most decidedly not a Trump-friendly establishment) on the subject. Take a look at this by Andrew C. McCarthy, this by David French,this by Chris Jacobs, and this by the editors.

If you are familiar with National Review, its editors, and those particular writers, you would have to conclude that theirs is not some knee-jerk support of Trump. That’s not their bag; au contraire. And yet they are saying that what Trump did regarding payment of the insurance subsidies was not only constitutional, it redressed Obama’s unconstitutional actions and was something that—if a president was actually intent on following the Constitution—was not even discretionary but obligatory.

I really could quote any of those four articles to illustrate, but I’ll choose McCarthy’s because in the past I’ve almost always found him to be fair, knowledgeable, and clear. The title of his piece is “Trump Faithfully Executes Obamacare; Media, Democrats Go Nuts”:

It’s ironic. Notwithstanding the many outrageous, mendacious things the president says and tweets, the press is aghast that his “fake news” tropes against mainstream-media stalwarts resonate with much of the country. Well, if you want to know why, this latest Obamacare coverage is why. What Trump has actually done is end the illegal payoffs without which insurance companies have no rational choice but to jack up premiums or flee the Obamacare exchanges. The culprits here are the charlatans who gave us Obamacare. To portray Trump as the bad guy is not merely fake news. It’s an out-and-out lie…

The media-Democrat narrative that President Trump is imperiously flouting the rule of law has it backwards. In cutting off the insurance-company subsidies, Trump is enforcing the ACA as written, consistent with his constitutional duty to execute the laws faithfully. It was President Obama who usurped Congress’s power of the purse by directing the payment of taxpayer funds that lawmakers had not appropriated.

Almost all the articles on the subject I’ve found so far deal with Trump’s order regarding the subsidies; that’s what the main hue and cry from opponents seems to have involved. I’m not sure about the constitutionality of Trump’s other changes in Obamacare, because I’ve only located one article that discusses them, but that author says:

Third, [Trump’s] order directs agencies to consider giving employers more flexibility in designing and offering health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) to their employees. Prior to Obamacare, HRAs were health care accounts employers could create for employees to fund a broad array of health care expenses on a pre-tax basis, including individual health insurance premiums. The Obama administration, however, banned employers from using HRAs and other arrangements to fund individual market premiums pre-tax…

The Trump administration is on sound legal footing to roll back this ban. As far as I’ve seen, I’m the only attorney to subject Obama’s ban to serious legal scrutiny before Trump took office. In a detailed white paper on the issue, I concluded the ban “contradicts prior federal court and agency holdings and, moreover, conflicts with provisions in the ACA that show Congress intended to continue allowing employers to fund individual premiums pre-tax.” Simply put, the ACA never empowered the Obama administration to bar employers from funding individual health insurance. Trump’s executive order will correct this.

An executive order going against explicit provisions of the statute establishing Obamacare would most likely be wrong in the sense of unconstitutional. But to undo a ban Obama established by executive order (a ban that conflicts with provisions in the ACA) is quite the opposite.

Looking-glass world.

Trump untweaks Obamacare

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read the whole thing:

In just three short years, Obamacare has severely damaged health insurance markets across the country, leaving some markets on the brink of total collapse. Going into 2018, consumers will have access to just one health carrier in nearly half of the counties across America. In many cases, this sole health carrier does not include local doctors in its network, forcing people to switch doctors and drive long distances for care. Average premiums on the individual health insurance market have doubled since 2013, escalating premiums beyond what most people can afford…

Also see this as a counter to the inevitable denunciations:

Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul has been pushing for a plan that would allow people to come together to form groups and purchase insurance plans across state lines. The free market approach, according to Paul, would encourage insurance companies to compete for these groups, giving people more choice, and reducing costs.

On Thursday, Paul got his wish after President Donald Trump singed an executive order allowing this kind of plan to happen. According to Paul, he and the president had been working on the plan for months, and the order is now the first step to a real repeal and replacement of Obamacare.

But detractors have already begun lambasting the bill for disadvantaging low-income households and individuals. Paul dismissed the idea on Fox and Friends on Friday morning.

According to Paul, the ability for many low-income workers to come together to form a group represented by one person would give the power to the consumer, allowing many who can’t afford good insurance plans on their own to become a pile of accumulated money that can.

Paul said that this kind of group plan “requires no discrimination,” and “protects against pre-existing conditions,” since the coverage would be the same kind you get at big corporations. Corporations do not refuse you employment because you have a pre-existing condition, or fire you because you get sick.

Paul explained that his plan that was enacted on Thursday allows individuals to have the same purchasing power as corporations, essentially putting purchasing power into the hands of the people…

Paul has not until now been exactly a buddy and fan of Trump.

It will take some time to digest the new directives and what they actually might mean for Americans affected by Obamacare—which is all of us, although some are more directly affected than others.

Trump on the Iran deal

The New Neo Posted on by

We’ve been hearing for quite some time that Trump was going to make an announcement on the Iran deal and would refuse to re-certify it. Well, this is it.

That’s breaking news, and I haven’t had much of a chance to evaluate it. But here’s what happened:

President Donald Trump on Friday threatened to terminate the Iran nuclear deal if Congress doesn’t strengthen it, warning the agreement was merely a “temporary delay” in Tehran’s quest to obtain nuclear weapons.

In a speech at the White House laying out what he called a “new strategy” for dealing with Iran, Trump also accused Iran of violating both the letter and spirit of the deal and said the U.S. would impose new sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite security and military organization.

By declining to certify that Iran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear agreement, Trump put its future squarely in the hands of Congress, which will now have to decide whether to attach new conditions to the agreement or reimpose sanctions on Iran with regard to the country’s nuclear program. Those sanctions were lifted as part of the agreement, and reimposing them would effectively destroy the deal.

And Trump, who throughout his campaign and his presidency has expressed intense disdain for the deal, made clear Friday that he wouldn’t hesitate to cancel it if complications with Congress arose in moving forward on toughening it.

In other words, Iran is on notice of something it already knew—that the deal was with Obama and that Trump isn’t Obama. Presidents make foreign policy, although Congress certainly has a say in the matter. The Iran deal was not a popular move at the time—even a lot of Democrats didn’t support it—but Obama did it anyway and now Trump may undo it unless Congress wants to get heavily into the act.

Iran is almost as big a fiasco for the US and the west as North Korea is in terms of the development of nuclear weapons. One difference is that Iran is not run by a single madman, it’s run by a group of fanatical zealots. We’re more familiar with the aims and behavior of the Iranian leaders, which makes them marginally more predictable. Something needs to change for the better, and I cannot even begin to say whether anything Trump or Congress does will effect this change:

In a briefing with reporters on Thursday afternoon, Tillerson and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster explained that the administration’s goal would be for Congress to create “trigger points” for Iran that would mandate the reimposition of sanctions if Tehran doesn’t meet specific revised criteria…

n his speech Friday, Trump outlined a more aggressive overall strategy for Iran, focusing on the country’s “destabilizing influence” in the region, including its support for terrorism and militants and on its development of ballistic missiles.

There was also this:

The Trump administration on Friday designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, a move that President Trump followed up with by calling for tougher sanctions against the organization.

“I am authorizing the Treasury Department to further sanction the entire Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for its support for terrorism and to apply sanctions to its officials, agents, and affiliates,” Trump said in a White House speech.

“I urge our allies to join us in taking strong actions to curb Iran’s continued dangerous and destabilizing behavior,” Trump added.

“The IRGC has played a central role to Iran becoming the world’s foremost state sponsor of terror,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Friday. “We urge the private sector to recognize that the IRGC permeates much of the Iranian economy, and those who transact with IRGC-controlled companies do so at great risk.”

I think some of this is long overdue, particular the call for greater sanctions on this group.

There’s no question, however, that most Democrats and a great deal of Europe will be incensed over Trump’s suggestions. Europe potentially has a lot to lose by what he said:

The billions of dollars of western trade and investment that have flowed into the Islamic republic since sanctions were lifted in January 2016 has been crucial for both the companies involved and for galvanising Iranian support for the agreement, European officials say.

Now they fear the trade ties could be thrown into jeopardy…Decertification would have no immediate legal effect on companies investing in, or trading with Iran. But Congress would then have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose the sanctions.

European governments are among the staunchest backers of accord…

One of the ideas behind the Iran deal was that it would help bring Iran into the community of nations and normalize it to a certain extent, which would encourage the Iranian leaders to relax their tyrannical grip on their own people, as well as their sponsorship of terrorism. Those two things are laudable goals. But I haven’t read anything that indicates that either thing (especially the latter) has changed, at least so far. Actually:

Trump’s case against the deal is more political and strategic: His team believes that Iran is an enemy of the United States, one that frustrates US objectives in places like Iraq and Yemen, and that the nuclear deal hasn’t done much to solve the problem.

“Iran is an adversarial power that is working against the vital interests of the region. The deal doesn’t make Iran any better, so the deal doesn’t serve our interests,” James Jay Carafano, a foreign policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation who served on the Trump transition team, tells me.

There’s a core truth to this case: Iran’s behavior is extremely problematic in a whole host of ways, from testing ballistic missiles to funding violent militia groups around the Middle East.

No one ever said this would be easy. Since 1979, Iran has been a thorn in our side, a troublemaker, and an oppressor of its own people, and I have yet to see any president make a dent in that reality. I wish Trump luck.

Those were the days—or were they?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a movie clip—an old one.

I first saw this movie, “The Major and the Minor,” about a year ago. It’s meant to be light family entertainment, made in 1942 and starring Ginger Rogers (but no dancing, alas).

However, this opening scene was a bit more repellent than I’d expected, and the Weinstein scandal made me think of it again. Unfortunately, this particular clip is a slightly speeded-up version of the original for some reason, so their voices sound Mickey-Mousey. And the full frame of the movie isn’t shown; we can’t see the very tops of their heads in many of the shots.

In other words, this is a bad version of the movie, but it’s the only one I could find online. I’ve cued it up to show one particular scene. I think it conveys the idea that this sort of behavior was acknowledged even back then (or maybe especially back then) to be commonplace, though smarmy. Of course, the guy in the movie (actually, there are two) is a whole lot more easily dissuaded than Weinstein, and the scene is played for laughs. But note at 4:23 how he threatens her with getting her in trouble at her job, and how she has to brandish the raw egg to get out of there (you’ll understand what I’m talking about when you watch it). It’s also pretty clear that this sort of behavior from men, which seems everywhere around her, is what’s making her want to leave New York.

Here, Rogers’ character is arriving at a hotel to give a big muck-a-muck a scalp massage. She’s been newly-hired by a company that offers that service, and he is apparently a regular customer of said company:

The movie continues on a rather odd and ever-so-slightly icky trajectory. I’m not going to even try to explain the fairly convoluted plot, but it turns on the Rogers character’s disguising herself as a 12-year-old child.

The West Point rot

The New Neo Posted on by

Many people (me included) wondered how it was that the openly-Communist Spenser Rapone was allowed to graduate from West Point. It’s not as though Rapone was underground with his point of view as a proud Communist. And West Point isn’t Evergreen State College—is it? So how on earth did Rapone fall through the cracks?

Now the professor who had originally reported Rapone to West Point authorities (to no avail), retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Robert Heffington, has issued an open letter to West Point graduates with a word—actually, many words—of explanation:

Here is the text of the letter. After you’ve read it, you will understand that Rapone didn’t fall through the cracks. There weren’t any cracks. If what Heffington says it’s the truth—and I’m definitely inclined to believe it—then West Point has apparently become a standardless, permissive, PC, open (and perhaps bottomless) pit.

Honor hearings are rarely scheduled and reports of honor infractions actively discouraged, and students are rarely disciplined for violations even when admittedly guilty. Academic standards are non-existent; it seems nearly impossible to flunk out. Heffinton isn’t sure when all this started—he thinks about 10 years ago, but my guess is that it began at some point early in the Obama years, with their emphasis on a PC military.

And what education does occur seems to have been taken over by the HowardZinn/BillAyres school of pedagoguery:

The plebe American History course has been revamped to focus completely on race and on the narrative that America is founded solely on a history of racial oppression. Cadets derisively call it the “I Hate America Course.” Simultaneously, the plebe International History course now focuses on gender to the exclusion of many other important themes. On the other hand, an entire semester of military history was recently deleted from the curriculum (at West Point!). In all courses, the bar has been lowered to the point where it is irrelevant. If a cadet fails a course, the instructor is blamed, so instructors are incentivized to pass everyone. Additionally, instead of responding to cadet failure with an insistence that cadets rise to the challenge and meet the standard, the bar for passing the course itself is simply lowered. This pattern is widespread and pervades every academic department.

Conduct and disciplinary standards are in perhaps the worst shape of all. Cadets are jaded, cynical, arrogant, and entitled. They routinely talk back to and snap at their instructors (military and civilian alike), challenge authority, and openly refuse to follow regulations. They are allowed to wear civilian clothes in almost any arena outside the classroom, and they flaunt that privilege. Some arrive to class unshaven, in need of haircuts, and with uniforms that look so ridiculously bad that, at times, I could not believe I was even looking at a West Point cadet. However, if a staff or faculty member attempts to correct the cadet in question, that staff/faculty member is sure to be reprimanded for “harassing cadets.”…

t seems that the Academy’s senior leaders are intimidated by cadets…I found it impossible to believe that the several hundred field grade officers stationed at West Point could not make teenagers wear the uniform. This anecdote highlights the fact that West Point’s senior leaders lack not the ability but the motivation to enforce their will upon the Corps of Cadets.

In other words, West Point has become the same as just about any other university, afraid of its students and subservient to the PC dictates. And the general public is only getting the chance to notice this now because Rapone felt so secure that he flaunted his views to the outside world. He’s not a one-off, he’s a symptom of the West Point (and general university) culture these days. It’s just more disturbing to find that it’s rampant at an institution such as West Point, usually thought to be one of the last outposts of discipline and standards, and—more importantly—one that sets the tone for the future of our military leaders.

It’s no accident, either; this was done purposely. Whether it began under Obama or earlier I don’t know, but it’s been going on long enough for a lot of graduates to have been trained under its umbrella. Heffington doesn’t directly say whether the lax standards are applied across-the-board, or whether certain groups are especially favored at West Point (he mentions several women getting passes at honor hearings, for example, but it’s hard to tell if women are being treated more leniently in general). He also makes reference to something called the “developmental model” that seems to be implemented at West Point, but doesn’t explain it. I’ve looked it up and found manuals such as this one, which appears to contain platitudes about training leaders and gives me no hint of what Heffington is specifically referring to (I only read a couple of pages; that’s all I could stomach of the empty claptrap).

More background:

All of this comes one week after Sen. Marco Rubio became aware of Spenser Rapone’s activism, calling the communist second lieutenant “a national security threat.” In a biting letter to Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, Rubio asked for McCarthy to investigate if West Point administrators were aware of his behavior, requesting a response within 30 days.

Now, proof has surfaced that Rapone’s chain of command was keenly aware of his radical anti-American “activism.” But judging by the viral praise for LTC Heffington’s open letter espoused by West Point graduates, his criticisms seem to evidence a much broader, systemic neglect of duty and standards ”” trickling down from some of the Army’s most senior leadership.

If all of this was an open secret, it’s shocking that there was a culture of silence around it till now. Reminds me a bit of Hollywood—or, if truth be told, most institutions. Maybe Spenser Rapone did us all a favor by being so flagrant that he drew greater public attention to the rot that’s been going on (not just in the military in general, which we already knew about, but at West Point itself) for a long time. The question is whether anything will be done about it.

Trump goes nuclear—or does he?

The New Neo Posted on by

What are we to make of this series of stories?

Headlines:

“Trump Wanted Tenfold Increase in Nuclear Arsenal, Surprising Military” [an NBC story]

“Trump suggests challenging NBC’s broadcast license.” [from Politico]

“‘I Hate Everyone in the White House!’: Trump Seethes as Advisers Fear the President Is ‘Unraveling’” [from Vanity Fair]

The second story is the easiest to evaluate. All you have to do is look at Trump’s Twitter page, where he wrote today at 6:45 AM:

Fake @NBCNews made up a story that I wanted a “tenfold” increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal. Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!

And then ten minutes later:

With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!

The Politico article I already linked to starts this way:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday suggested that NBC’s broadcast license should be pulled as punishment for the network’s reporting on his national security meetings, opening a new front in the president’s long-running battle with the press.

NBC News published a report Wednesday morning stating that Trump had surprised his national security advisers by proposing a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a July meeting. The meeting was what allegedly led Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to call Trump a “moron” ”” a comment that NBC first reported last week.

Trump lashed out at NBC, appearing to make a threat that is not even possible, given that the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t directly license networks.

Does that describe the tweets? Trump’s words are actually posed as a question. Is that the same as to “suggest that NBC’s broadcast license should be pulled as punishment”? I don’t think I’m just quibbling here. I really dislike Trump’s bringing this up even as a question; it’s the sort of thing that makes people fear we’re descending into banana republic territory or worse. It’s wrong whoever does it.

Why do I say “whoever does it”? Politico may have a short and selective memory, but I don’t, and I recall this story:

Straight out of the Democratic handbook Harry Reid used to threaten ABC’s broadcast license for showing the “Path to 9/11,” here’s Obama lawyer Robert Bauer warning station managers not to air the NRA’s new anti-Obama “Hunter” ad if they want to stay in the FCC’s good graces. Follow the link and read his letter and the NRA’s rebuttal for point/counterpoint.

It’s instructive to follow the links there, but for now I’ll just quote what Bauer wrote to ABC back then:

[T]he manner in which this program has been developed, funded, and advertised suggests a partisan bent unbecoming of a major company like Disney and a major and well respected news organization like ABC”¦ Presenting such deeply flawed and factually inaccurate misinformation to the American public and to children would be a gross miscarriage of your corporate and civic responsibility to the law, to your shareholders, and to the nation”¦

The Communications Act of 1934 provides your network with a free broadcast license predicated on the fundamental understanding of your principle obligation to act as a trustee of the public airwaves in serving the public interest. Nowhere is this public interest obligation more apparent than in the duty of broadcasters to serve the civic needs of a democracy by promoting an open and accurate discussion of political ideas and events”¦

These concerns are made all the more pressing by the political leaning of and the public statements made by the writer/producer of this miniseries, Mr. Cyrus Nowrasteh, in promoting this miniseries across conservative blogs and talk shows”¦

A bit further down in the Politico article we find the actual text of Trump’s tweets. But how many people are still reading by then, and how many stopped at that lede, which says Trump suggested that NBC’s license should be pulled as punishment?

Let’s turn now to the first headline and story, the one from NBC that said that Trump wanted to increase the nuclear arsenal tenfold:

President Donald Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest-ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.

Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve.

According to the officials present, Trump’s advisers, among them the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, were surprised. Officials briefly explained the legal and practical impediments to a nuclear buildup and how the current military posture is stronger than it was at the height of the buildup. In interviews, they told NBC News that no such expansion is planned.

I have no trouble imagining that’s a true story, although I have no idea whether it actually is true. I also have no trouble imagining why Trump might have said such a thing, either. He wants a strong America and a strong nuclear deterrent. It has been clear from the time of the 2016 campaign that Trump is no expert on nuclear weaponry. I’m not sure how many presidents are at the outset of their terms, but let’s say Trump (not having been in government) is less expert than most, which is saying something. It sounds like he become alarmed at what looked like weakness, indicated a desire for greater strength, was given some details by his advisors on the matter, and listened to them and abandoned the idea. In other words, he was at a meeting to express his opinions and ask questions and to get feedback from experts, and that’s what happened.

Fancy that.

The article goes on and on and on, the whole thing suggesting that Trump is a hotheaded warmonger. It’s obviously meant to engender fear on a subject that arouses great anxiety, nuclear weaponry.

What I’ve written so far uses as a hypothetical the idea that the report is true, and that these “three officials” can be trusted. But I see no reason why that would be so. All the anonymous sources who’ve spilled the beans on the White House so far haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory in regard to veracity. Why should we believe them now?

That doesn’t mean they’re lying. It just means we have no way to tell anymore and no reason to trust them. That’s a sad thing, but that’s the way it is.

The following also appeared in the Politico piece:

Defense Secretary James Mattis, in a statement released minutes after Trump’s media availability ended, said “recent reports that the President called for an increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal are absolutely false. This kind of erroneous reporting is irresponsible.”

So, who do you believe, NBC or Mattis/Trump?

As for that third article, the one from Vanity Fair, I have no trouble believing that Trump said he “hates everyone in the White House.” I might say something similar too, if I were president and I perceived so many moles around me. But as far as Trump’s “unraveling” goes, we’ve been hearing that from the MSM on a daily basis, and as yet I see no evidence of it. Trump continues to function. His tweets are the same sort of things he’s always tweeted. The MSM doesn’t like his tweets—and I certainly don’t like some of them—but I see no “unraveling.”

So if the NBC story is a lie, what would the remedy be? The classic answer is: “stories that refute it,” but how do you do that? Does Mattis’ denial accomplish that? At what point is a newspaper liable for printing lie and lie after lie in an effort to bring a president down? If this is what they’re doing, it’s a very dangerous game. Should there be any consequences, and can there be any consequences that don’t compromise the value of a free press?