Me and TurboTax

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I did my taxes by hand this year, as usual, and once again I began to wonder about halfway through why I do such a thing. Isn’t everyone just plugging numbers into a computer program these days, or using an accountant if their taxes are remarkably complex? I remembered that last year I had tried TurboTax and had a bad experience with it, but I didn’t remember the details. Then I read this post from last year. And I remembered. Oh, how I remembered! So I thought I’d repeat the post in honor of Tax Day.]

Every year around this time I’m busy with my taxes. I like to joke that I may just be the person in the US with the highest ratio of tax complexity to income, because although I don’t make much money I have to fill out a lot of tax forms beyond ye olde 1040.

Self-employed and business owner, with multiple (relatively small) sources of income. Some investments with interest or dividends, a few modest capital gains and losses, and until recently I itemized my deductions. Then there’s the state.

Well you might ask: why not an accountant? I’d be paying quite a bit for not a whole lot, except of course some savings in time and stress. Also (and this may be the real reason), each year I learn (or at least, I think I learn) from the previous one, and each year I think it’ll now be a piece of cake to do this all myself.

It never is a piece of cake. More like chewing on hard crusts of stale bread, over and over and over.

But this year I made a decision. This year I’d buy TurboTax and use that. It made perfect sense. The ads (and even some actual human beings—friends—I talked to) said TurboTax would simplify things mightily and wasn’t very expensive at all. So I decided to do a little research online to decide what version to buy.

Well, it turns out that took a while. Many hours, actually, because first you have to answer some questions, and TurboTax informed me that I needed the most extensive and expensive version, which would be (I’m doing this from memory) something like $119 at the time. That seemed a bit steep, and maybe unnecessary; it was predicated on my being a business owner, but my business taxes are actually a very simple part of the equation for me.

So the next step was seeing what forms are actually supported by the different versions, because I know what forms I need to use. That took me quite some time to find; the information was buried rather effectively, but I finally found it after a rather frustrating search. Turns out that the not-quite-as-complicated and less-expensive version (“Premier”) would do quite nicely for me.

So that was the beginning of my sense of unease about TurboTax and its recommendations. That unease would only increase.

I decided to buy the downloaded version, because it would be a bit more secure. But when I bought it (from Target, which at that moment seemed the cheapest way to go), the website automatically added more sales tax than it should have. The irony was not lost on me: I was trusting TurboTax to be accurate about my federal taxes, but the process had already made an error about sales taxes.

I spent a tedious amount of time trying to correct that error, waiting on hold with Target (or someone somewhere in Asia answering the phone for Target), who ultimately said there was nothing they could do, but would refer me to some other team there. The amount of money involved in the error was relatively small, but by that time I’d worked up quite a head of steam about it, and spent another lengthy time on hold with the new people, who immediately admitted they’d done me wrong.

But they couldn’t fix it, either. They referred it to some other group which supposedly would give me the refund in a week or so. Fine. But I’d already spent approximately four or so hours on things related to TurboTax, and I hadn’t even looked at the actual program yet. How far could I have gotten with my taxes in that amount of time, doing them by myself in the old-fashioned way?

I took the next step, which involved downloading the TurboTax program. It didn’t work. I tried everything I could think of; still didn’t work. I Googled it and read the instructions for if you encounter downloading problems; very complex and still didn’t work.

Now it had been about six hours of wasted time with TurboTax. I wanted a refund, and I had no intention of using the product. So I called Target again, and this time the person who answered the phone (after a long wait) was adamant: TurboTax was not refundable. Period.

I started ranting, or what I’d call ranting. This product was defective. I couldn’t load it. Don’t they stand by their product? The answer was “no.” After quite some time with this, I asked to speak to a higher-up. She refused to connect me. We got into quite a loop; me insisting, she resisting. Finally she said that if she even tried, “they” (the higher-ups) would not accept my call. I got to the point of just repeating “I don’t want to talk to you anymore; connect me to someone else” over and over.

So finally she did, and whoever answered the phone immediately agreed to give me a refund.

Then I took a several-hour break from the whole thing; had to decompress. When I returned to my computer, I found that in the interim my browser had crashed. When the smoke cleared, there on the screen was what had never been there before: “Welcome to TurboTax!” or some such message. The download had been successful; I have no idea how many hours it took, but it was definitely more than one or two.

My faith in the program was nil, but I was curious, so I went a little further. If the upshot was that it seemed to be working well, I’d eat crow, call Target again, and say I didn’t need the refund I’d fought for.

The next step was that I needed to update, said the instructions, even though the thing had just loaded. And then (you may have guessed it) the updates all failed, some of them with big warnings in red saying things like “Critical update failed!”

Not exactly trust-inducing.

Next were some questions. Very elementary questions like—where can last year’s tax return be found on your computer? Well, of course mine wasn’t even on my computer; I’d done it all by hand. But TurboTax, in its less-than-infinite wisdom, didn’t have “nowhere” as a choice. Their assumption was that of course you had your taxes somewhere on your computer; doesn’t everyone? It took some time for me to figure out how to work around that, and then get going with the next few questions.

The next questions were all geared to helping TurboTax figure out what forms I needed, but I already knew exactly what forms I needed, so it all was a waste of time. At this point what was my tally of time wasted with TurboTax—seven hours? eight? I didn’t know for sure, but I knew I’d had enough. And the stress had been greater than the stress of just doing my taxes by myself.

So I uninstalled the program from my computer and called it a day.

There, I feel better now.

My taxes are almost done, in less time than it took me to figure out that TurboTax wasn’t for me. I may even get the completed tax forms sent out before the last possible minute, although last-minute mailings are a personal tradition of mine. But TurboTax will not become one.

Ilhan Omar and the victimhood competition

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Sebastian Gorka on Ilhan Omar and some other freshman Democrats in the House:

Behold the face of the Democratic Party: minority, young, and racist. This is the fruit of identity politics. Be it Omar, who is on the cover of the current issue of Newsweek, Rashida Talib (D-Mich.) who signaled the need to obliterate Israel on her first day in office, or the leader of the pack, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.), a proud supporter of the anti-Israel BDS movement, the “new faces” of the DNC constitute a united front in their hatred for our Semitic brethren.

And no matter what Pelosi says, Omar will not be reined in.

Let me add that I think it is no accident that these faces are for the most part young, minority, female, and attractive. No, I am not saying those characteristics are necessary in order to be anti-Semitic and/or leftist, because that’s not the least bit true. What I am saying, or trying to say, is that those characteristics make the message more palatable, the person more electable, and facilitate the speaker’s wrapping herself in the cloak of sainted victimhood protectiveness.

More:

To call Stephen Miller a “white nationalist” [which Omar did] is more than simply obnoxious, given that white nationalism is an ideology which targets those of color generally, and Jews specifically.

Now, Jews are not people of color, unless they are Ethiopian Jews or other Jews who actually are also people of color. But white nationalists are certainly anti-Semites, and it is just another example of the knife-twisting in which Omar likes to indulge (with a pretty smile) to call Stephen Miller a white nationalist.

But Omar keeps going:

…[A]a disturbing video surfaced on social media in which the congresswoman casually described the mass murder of 2,977 people by jihadists on September 11, 2001 as an event where “some people did something.” This was before she used 9/11 as the justification for the establishment of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Hamas-front founded in 1994. A federal court in 2008 designated CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorist-financing trial in American history. The FBI had to sever all ties with the group exactly because of its ties to the Holy Land Foundation and its leaders who were convicted in that trial for sending $12.4 million to Hamas from the United States.

Gorka’s last paragraph is a clarion call:

Freedom of speech is a right of all Americans. But so is our choice to denounce, call out, and recall racists. Ilhan Omar is the most flagrantly racist figure in politics today. Every day her vile beliefs and words are tolerated by Nancy Pelosi and her fellow partisans is a day that proves just how morally bankrupt and devoid of any legitimacy the Democrats have become.

Omar has a huge number of fans, as you can see if you go to this YouTube video of her appearance on Steven Colbert’s show and read the comments there.

In all the brouhaha from the right about Omar’s describing 9/11 as “some people did something”—a neutral, non-judgmental refusal to characterize the attack in any pejorative way—it’s often been lost that the main thrust of her mentioning it at all was to talk about how Muslims faced a backlash as a result. So not only did she fail to name the perpetrators as radical Muslims, or to say it was a heinous terrorist attack, but she focused on Muslims as the ultimate victims. And, as Jonathan S. Tobin points out, for the most part such a backlash failed to occur [emphasis mine]:

…[T]hose who have rallied to [Omar’s] defense have resurrected the myth of a post-9/11 backlash against Muslims. That has shifted the narrative of that trauma from one of an Islamist terror war against the West into one that focused on the victimization of Muslims. But the ability of Omar and her defenders to use it to effectively deflect charges of anti-Semitism and to essentially legitimize her as a public figure is something that out to alarm everyone, no matter what your politics or religious beliefs…

Omar refused to back down [for her earlier anti-Semitic remarks for which Congress was initially set to criticize her] and found herself the object of much public sympathy for what supporters claimed was an attempt to single her out solely because she was black, Muslim and an immigrant. Omar emerged triumphant from that fiasco. If there was any doubt about that, it was removed by the way Democrats instinctively moved to protect her from criticisms of her 9/11 remarks, and instead condemned the Post and Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) as racists for calling her out.

In one sense, the kerfuffle is a typical inside-the-Beltway absurdity, with AOC asking Crenshaw—a decorated former Navy SEAL who lost an eye fighting in Afghanistan—what he has ever done to fight terrorism. But this is more than just the usual political tit-for-tat on Twitter.

In her speech to CAIR, Omar claimed that the group had been founded after 9/11 in order to defend Muslims against a backlash after the attacks. This is patently false. CAIR was founded in 1994 as a political front for the Holy Land Foundation, a group that raised funds for the Hamas terror group that was eventually shut down by the Treasury Department. Her support for CAIR is consistent with her backing for the anti-Semitic BDS movement.

But the broader point to be made here is the way the effort to shift the discussion about 9/11 from a seminal moment in the long struggle against Islamist terror to a mere excuse to discriminate against Muslims is now being used to downplay Omar’s anti-Semitism.

The debate about this mythical backlash has been going on for a decade, especially during the controversy over an abortive attempt to build an Islamic center within the shadow of the fallen World Trade Center towers. At that time, I wrote in Commentary magazine about the way false fears were being used to make Muslims appear to be the true victims of the slaughter. The mainstream media had accepted as truth the claims that Muslims had been the subjects of a wave of discrimination after 9/11, even though there was no objective proof to back up that assertion.

(Please see NOTE below for some further discussion of that issue.]

As Omar herself indicates here, she has an enormous intersectionality advantage due to her membership in several victimhood groups:

If you haven’t watched Omar before, please note her great charm. It’s an illustration of the Shakespeare quote: “That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”

[NOTE: On the issue of whether there really was a widespread backlash to 9/11, I want to point out that there were indeed a couple of extremely serious incidents post-9/11 in which Muslims were the intended victims, but these were few and far-between (please see this and this). I say “intended victims,” because, in a strange irony, two of the three people killed in these two crimes were a Hindu and a Sikh. The third was a Pakistani Muslim, and one other person wounded and left partially blind in one eye was a Muslim from Bangladesh named Rais Bhuiyan, who opposed his would-be murderer Stroman’s death penalty:

A year after the killings, [the murderer] Stroman expressed no remorse for his crimes. He wrote on his blog that what he did was not a crime of hate but an act of passion and patriotism. Up until his date of execution, Bhuiyan protested Stroman’s death sentence, believing he did not deserve to be executed. Bhuiyan sued and tried to stop the execution but was unsuccessful. Bhuiyan argued that his Muslim beliefs told him to forgive Stroman and that killing him was not the solution. The courts denied his requests.

In his later years of imprisonment, Stroman expressed remorse for his crimes. After learning that a surviving victim of his shooting spree was appealing to save his life, Stroman changed his views, and described Bhuiyan as “an inspiring soul”. His racist views were reportedly altered. He eventually spoke to Bhuiyan and thanked him for his compassion.

Stroman was executed in 2011.]

Sanctuary cities and Trump the Alinskyite

The New Neo Posted on by

Aside from the very specific charges connected with the whole Russiagate story, or anything about Trump’s politics, the Trump opposition has consistently followed certain basic themes in characterizing Trump’s performance as president in terms of his personality and capability. These are not mutually exclusive nor meant to be exhaustive, but they’re the main ones I’ve noticed:

(1) Trump is abysmally stupid.

(2) Trump is a crook.

(3) Trump is losing his mind or has lost it.

(4) Everyone in the Trump administration is about to desert him.

(5) Trump is a mean son of a bitch.

The MSM’s and Trump’s opponents’ reaction to Trump’s proposal to send illegal immigrants to sanctuary cities has featured mostly number five on the above list: Trump is a mean mean man. Just two examples should suffice; they are very typical of the genre [emphasis mine]:

Mayors from across the country were quick to respond to Trump’s latest portrayal of immigrants and sanctuary cities as threats.

In New York City, where nearly 40 percent of the population are immigrants, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Trump’s immigration policy was rooted in cruelty.

“He uses people like pawns,” de Blasio said in a statement. “New York City will always be the ultimate city of immigrants – the President’s empty threats won’t change that.”

In Philadelphia, known as the city of brotherly love, Mayor Jim Kenney said in a statement that his city “would be prepared to welcome these immigrants just as we have embraced our immigrant communities for decades.” He said the White House was demonstrating “the utter contempt that the Trump Administration has for basic human dignity.”

In turn, one can look at each of those statements, so similar to each other, and note how both mayors conflate “immigrants” with “illegal immigrants” as though the two types of arrivals are identical. This is entirely characteristic of the left as well; they want you to think the two groups are identical, too. But if a city failed to make a distinction between, for example, “shoppers” and “shoplifters,” its merchants might have a few objections after a while.

In addition, there’s the obvious question one might ask: why would it be “cruel” or “contemptuous” of “basic human dignity” to take people from camps across the border to a supposedly flourishing city that welcomes them? Nor is anyone penning them up in those cities; they are free, apparently, to go anywhere they wish in this land of opportunity.

And here I thought the word “sanctuary” meant “offering safety and refuge.” So, maybe not?

What Trump is doing here is what he’s done many times before, following Alinsky’s Rule #4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” Actually, he’s following #5 and #6 as well, to a certain extent: “”Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” and “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” He might need to worry about #7 at some point, “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag,” but that point has not yet been reached, and Trump is usually rather good at switching things up anyway.

Trump is an Alinskyite, a term describing his tactics rather than anything about his political orientation. Whether Trump’s a natural at it or whether he’s purposely studied it I don’t know, but I think his use of Alinskyite methods is something that ties the left in knots, because although they are also practitioners of the Alinsky art, they have long considered that they own it and are rather unused to anyone on the right using it against them. It miffs them.

On another level, I think when they are talking about how cruel and callous Trump is with this sanctuary city offer, they actually mean that they think he’s toying with them, using the illegal immigrants as a rhetorical device for effect, and that Trump knows that the mayors of these cities (all blue blue blue) want none of it.

However, if it ever came to it—and I doubt it will—the mayors just might feel that they must accept the influx of illegal immigrants in order to prove that they’re not hypocrites. Then Trump will have made them live up to their own set of rules.

Democrats vote to eliminate women’s school sports

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, not exactly, but perhaps ultimately, because this is where the Democrats stand at this point:

Every single Democrat in the House of Representatives — with the exception of 1 — has decided to do away with that old “We’re the party for women” jazz. In its place, they’ve chosen for women to never again have an equal opportunity (equal to that of men) to excel in school sports…

The Dems’ Equality provision — to be tacked on to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — would make it a federal crime for schools to refuse males who wish to compete in women’s sports.

There’s a hierarchy of preferred victims for the Democrats, and I guess women have just gotten bumped. You’ve come a long way, baby.

I looked at a document cited as supporting the idea that transgender women aren’t a problem in female sports, and this is how the issue is treated:

Opponents of equality in athletics for transgender athletes have argued that girls who are transgender have unfair physiological advantages over cisgender girls and as a result, will dominate women’s competitive sports. Some have also suggested that girls who are transgender pose a threat to their cisgender teammates both on the field and in shared locker rooms. None of these arguments are rooted in fact. Existing evidence shows that denying opportunities and access to students based on their gender identity causes actual harm to those students, while there is no data to suggest that girls who are transgender are dominating athletics or posing a harm to their cisgender counterparts.

Not exactly convincingly mounting the evidence; merely stating not to worry about it.

I doubt that “harm” in the classic sense (as in assaults, violence) has been dealt out by transgender female athletes to those born female. And of course transgender females don’t completely dominate female athletics. First of all, there probably aren’t enough such students to make a lot of difference at the moment in every field; just in some. Secondly, not everyone who is a transgender athlete is going to be a good athlete. But that said, a person born male and who has gone through even part of adolescence as a male (genetically and hormonally), and certainly those who have gone through all of adolescence as such, would have a distinct advantage all else being equal. That is why quite a few of the paltry number of transgender athletes in female sports have managed to—yes, to dominate their sports.

I have written before on the subject (please see this) and I’m not going to go into the physiology in depth here. But I will point out that no one seems to be making much of a stink about trangender males (that is, people born female who identify as men) entering men’s sports, for the simple reason that it obviously confers no advantage on them. That right there should tell you something.

In case you’re wondering in what manner the Obama administration spied on Trump…

The New Neo Posted on by

… Jasper Fakkert is pleased to be of service. He lists six ways:

1. FISA Warrant: Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page was targeted with a FISA warrant by the FBI in October 2016. The warrant was subsequently renewed three times for 90-day periods. Other members of the Trump campaign might have had FISA warrants on them, as well.

2. Unmasking: Hundreds of so-called unmasking requests were made for the identities of members of the Trump campaign in intelligence reports…

3. Undercover Informant: The FBI used Stefan Halper, an undercover agent, to infiltrate the Trump campaign. He contacted Trump campaign associates Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. Halper has ties to the CIA, as well as MI6.

4. National Security Letters: The use of national security letters to target the Trump campaign was first revealed by officials to The New York Times in a May 16, 2018, article. National security letters allow the FBI to secretly subpoena customer records from banks, phone companies, internet service providers, and others.

5. Foreign Intelligence: British intelligence agency GCHQ provided officials within the CIA with information on the Trump campaign as early as late 2015…

6. Reverse Targeting: Brennan admitted in an Aug. 17, 2018, interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that the CIA had obtained the communications of Americans associated with the Trump campaign through what appears to have been the use of reverse targeting. “We call it incidental collection in terms of CIA’s foreign intelligence collection authorities,” Brennan said.

Fakkert adds that no evidence was ever found of the supposed crimes that supposedly warranted the spying. It’s not just that no evidence was found after a thorough investigation, but none appears to have been found prior to the investigation in order to justify it; the evidence had to be manufactured in various ways, either by attempts at entrapment or by sheer imaginative efforts.

Now, that does not mean that we know everything. It is certainly possible that at some point we’ll learn—from the fuller Mueller report, from some IG report, from a report that Barr will end up issuing—that there was not only some evidence, but enough evidence that it would have fully justified the enormous steps that were taken by the opposition to spy on a candidate for the presidency.

But so far, nada. And if it continues that way, it is more than disturbing. It is exceedingly, tremendously disturbing—an outrage.

Greg Craig and process crimes

The New Neo Posted on by

I happen to agree with this:

My position is, if DOJ/FBI cannot manage to successfully prosecute Mr Craig on a primary crime, then they should leave him the hell alone. None of this “Obstruction” or “Lying to the FBI”—unless it’s an enhancer and specifically to the aforementioned primary crime that they are also prosecuting him on.

However, I also believe that if those on the right are prosecuted for mere process crimes, those on the left should be, too. At the moment, that’s the situation. However, I would advocate strongly that neither side be prosecuted for those things.

I also believe that the FBI should have to record its interviews. There’s no reason to rely on their word anymore, if in fact there ever was such a reason. In case anyone is unfamiliar with FBI procedure, familiarize yourself with the 302:

A FD-302 form is used by FBI agents to “report or summarize the interviews that they conduct” and contains information from the notes taken during the interview by the non-primary[further explanation needed] agent…

The use of the FD-302 has been criticized as a form of institutionalized perjury due to FBI guidelines that prohibit recordings of interviews. Prominent defense lawyers and former FBI agents have stated that they believe that the method of interviewing by the FBI is designed to expose interviewees to potential perjury or false statement criminal charges when the interviewee is deposed in a grand jury and has to contradict the official record presented by the FBI. They have also stated that perjury by FBI agents allows the FBI to use the leverage of a potential criminal charge to turn an innocent witness into an informant.

The potential for abuse is enormous.

Greg Craig: and speaking of boomerangs…

The New Neo Posted on by

…which I was, in my previous post today—

One of President Obama’s former counsels, Greg Craig, is expected to be indicted. This was reported in none other than the NY Times, and since it’s something that doesn’t sit kindly with them and they’re still reporting it, my guess is that it may in fact be true:

The New York Times reported last night that Gregory B. Craig, a counsel in Obama’s White House, is expecting to be indicted in the near future on work he did on behalf of the Russian-aligned Ukrainian president and that’s linked to disgraced Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort…

…the expected indictment…is reportedly based on the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and whether Craig lied about needing to register under it for work he did in the Ukraine…

An Ivy League-educated lawyer who held prominent positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations, Mr. Craig would become the first person who made his name in Democratic Party politics to be charged in a case linked to the special counsel’s investigation…

The link between Manafort and Craig is related to a report Craig produced while a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom firm in 2012. Manafort at the time was a political consultant for the pro-Russia Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych, and apparently commissioned a report from Skadden Arps for $5.2 million in 2012 and 2013 that would be used “to use to quell Western criticism of the prosecution and jailing by Mr. Yanukovych’s government of one of his rivals, the former prime minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, and to train Ukrainian prosecutors handling matters related to the case.”

Craig then, as ironically as possible, was quoted in The New York Times discussing the report and his firm was subsequently contacted by the DOJ and questioned as to why they had not registered under FARA. The crux of the potential indictment has to do with Craig insisting that he nor his firm proactively reached out to reporters to distribute the report. In a letter he sent to the DOJ he said that he only gave news outlets the report “in response to requests from the media.”

It was always clear that the prosecution of Manafort was motivated at least in part by politics and the need to try to get him to turn against Trump, and it was always clear that other people (including Democrats, of course) had probably violated at least portions of the same laws he violated, although perhaps not as flagrantly.

My question is whether Tony Podesta is next, and I would guess that’s Podesta’s question, too. The following is from an article that appeared in Vox back in July of 2018:

Earlier this year, special counsel Robert Mueller referred a case regarding Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to federal prosecutors in Manhattan. But it turns out, Cohen might not be the only one.

CNN’s Erica Orden reported Tuesday that, since the spring, Mueller made additional referrals to prosecutors in the Southern District of New York regarding whether US lobbyists failed to register their work supporting the Ukrainian government. Those referrals include Democratic lobbyist Tony Podesta and lobbyist and ex-Minnesota GOP Rep. Vin Weber. Sources told CNN that former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig was also referred by Mueller to federal prosecutors in New York.

No charges have been filed against any of the individuals. The Washington Post reports that the referrals were made months ago, and there hasn’t been much activity on their cases since.

As I said, that was back in July. Bill Barr assumed office on Valentine’s Day, 2019 (hmmmm—is the date another irony?). And now perhaps these things are being moved on.

Of course, it’s only a story in the NY Times, so even though it’s a development about which the Times can’t possibly be happy, we need to take it all with a grain of salt.

[NOTE: I’ve read a bunch of stories about Greg Craig and this possibly pending indictment, and in the little summaries of Craig’s career it keeps mentioning that he was Obama’s White House Counsel for a while. That’s certainly true, but his name rang another bell for me, a great big gong actually. I didn’t notice it mentioned in any of the stories I saw, but I recalled quite vividly that he was one of President Clinton’s lawyers to argue on behalf of Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial. Sure enough, that was the case (and note that Podesta was one of the people he worked closely with):

Craig worked in the White House during the Clinton administration from 1998 to 1999, holding the title of assistant to the President and special counsel. Craig’s old friend and law partner Kendall was Clinton’s personal attorney. Craig was brought on specifically to coordinate the White House’s defense of Clinton during impeachment proceedings against him. Termed the “quarterback” by Clinton, Craig worked from the West Wing and oversaw legal, political, congressional, and public relations aspects of the defense, reporting regularly to President Clinton and consulting with John Podesta, the White House chief of staff. However, Craig claimed in an interview with PBS Frontline in July 2000 that Podesta was the one who recruited him and that Podesta told him that the White House needed a “coordinator quarterback.” He also stated that he mainly coordinated with Podesta and that “I could name to John ten other lawyers in America that could do the job as well, if not better.”

These people have certainly been movers and shakers for a long, long time.

I want to add something with which I expect many of you to disagree. But first, a quote from Craig at the Clinton impeachment trial:

In the second day of the President’s defense in his Senate trial, Craig, a special White House counsel, appealed to the senators not to “throw our politics into the darkness of endless recrimination” and not to “inject a poison of bitter partisanship into the body politic which, like a virus, can move through our national bloodstream for years to come.”

He added: “If you convict and remove President Clinton on the basis of these allegations, no President of the United States will ever be safe from impeachment again.”

Most of you probably think Bill Clinton deserved to be impeached and perhaps even convicted. I’ve said many times that I do not. Most of the arguments around that on this blog have occurred in the comments section rather than in a separate post, and I’m not going to go into the details here. But I refer you to this, this, this, and this, and please be sure to follow all the links in all those links.

The reason I’m bringing the topic up again here is that I believe that Craig was correct in this particular quote, or at least partially correct. Now, would the same have happened if Clinton hadn’t been impeached? Perhaps. Maybe even probably. Maybe it had already happened at the time; I certainly don’t think that but for that impeachment action by the GOP, comity would have prevailed. Nor do I think that “the Republicans started it” (some will cite what happened to Nixon, some Bork, and plenty of other incidents). But the Clinton impeachment certainly added fuel to the fire, and all for nothing in the end, IMHO.

I’m well aware, as I already said, that a great many of you may differ strongly with me on that.

At any rate, it may be that Greg Craig will now see himself on the other end of a courtroom proceeding.]

[ADDENDUM: I’d like to add that I agree with this:

My position is, if DOJ/FBI cannot manage to successfully prosecute Mr Craig on a primary crime, then they should leave him the hell alone. None of this “Obstruction” or “Lying to the FBI”—unless it’s an enhancer and specifically to the aforementioned primary crime that they are also prosecuting him on.

However, I also believe that if those on the right are prosecuted for mere process crimes, those on the left should be, too. At the moment, that’s the situation. However, I would advocate strongly that neither side be prosecuted for those things.]

At what Democrats thought would be their time of triumph, instead they fear a day of reckoning may come

The New Neo Posted on by

Democrats seem both angry and frightened, and their kneejerk and perhaps even somewhat panicked response right now is to try to destroy Barr.

You can feel the frisson of fear they emanate. They waited two years for the blow of the Mueller report to fall on Trump, and now other investigative blows may fall on them. The Mueller report combined with Barr’s appointment could end up being a sort of ironic boomerang (whether or not boomerangs can be ironic I leave to you to decide).

How could this have happened? they must be thinking. How could the worm have turned? But they are spinning in the usual manner, hoping that—as so often has happened in the past—their confederates in the press will work their magic to make all of it go away and boomerang back to Republicans instead.

But whatever comes of it all, if anything, Democrats cannot believe that at least right now their dreams have turned to dust and they taste, instead of the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat.

And so we get statements such as those portrayed in this medley (I have it cued up to show about two minutes of highlights):

Discovery of new human species?

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps:

In a handful of fossilized teeth and bones, scientists say they’ve found evidence of a previously unknown human species that lived in what is now the Philippines about 50,000 years ago. The discovery deepens the mystery of an era when the world was a melting pot of many different human kinds on the move.

Small-jawed with dainty teeth, able to walk upright but with feet still shaped to climb, these island creatures were a mix-and-match patchwork of primitive and advanced features in a unique variation of the human form, the scientists reported Wednesday in the journal Nature…

Using a technique called uranium-series testing, which measures the rate of radioactive decay in a sample, the scientists determined that the bones dated to a time between 50,000 and 67,000 years ago.

The creature’s teeth, toes and finger bones appear to mix aspects of the other human species in existence elsewhere at the time, including Homo sapiens, Denisovans, Neanderthals, Homo naledi and Homo floresiensis, nicknamed the hobbit species for its small stature and big feet.

So far, the scientists haven’t found evidence that these creatures used tools to hunt or to process their food, which might indicate how highly developed their brains might have been. The scientists also have been unable to isolate DNA from the bones and teeth that could be used to understand how closely they were related to other human species.

And this seems especially interesting:

The scientists also don’t know how these creatures reached the island, which was isolated from the mainland of Asia in that primordial era by deep ocean, just as today. Their more primitive ancestors may have been washed ashore on storm-driven debris or perhaps sailed on rafts, as much as 700,000 years ago, they said.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio

Barr: investigating the investigators

The New Neo Posted on by

Barr’s recent tetimony:

The big story was the affirmative answer [Barr] gave to a question about whether he was planning to investigate the provenance of the Russia probe itself. That would, of course, include the FISA court scandal and the Steele dossier, not to mention strange–let’s call them spooky– occurrences in the UK well before the election. Barr noted he also would look at the eight criminal referrals of DOJ personnel and others coming from Devin Nunes. He further noted we could expect the inspector general’s report on these matters in May or June. He was filled with such news, much of it spontaneously given…

In other words, Barr’s obviously been paying attention to the larger situation and that is bad news indeed for Democrats. This is particularly true because the Mueller probe did not come up with any crimes connected to Russia collusion, but even the beginnings of an investigation of what prompted the probe in the first place has already come up with several.

More are undoubtedly coming. Is it an accident Judicial Watch was finally able to uncover “422 pages of FBI documents showing evidence of ‘cover-up’ discussions related to the Clinton email system” just the other day? Or does it have something to do with the installation of Barr? Impossible to know at this juncture, but what is clear is we will be dealing with this a long time, all the way, it’s quite likely, to election 2020.

I certainly do think that getting responses to Judicial Watch’s requests has something to do with Barr being at the helm now, rather than Sessions. The entire operation was in a deer-in-the-headlights holding pattern when Sessions was in charge.

I spent some time puzzling over why Trump didn’t fire Sessions earlier. I don’t ordinarily trust The Atlantic’s take on the working of Trump’s mind, but I do think that this has the ring of truth:

Legal experts and political strategists who have either worked directly with the president or observed his behavior from afar attribute Trump’s reluctance to fire Sessions to two major considerations: Fears in the White House that the move would cost the president support among GOP voters and members of Congress, who generally like and support Sessions, and the risk of provoking further allegations of obstruction of justice—both of which could deepen the challenges already facing the administration.

Whatever the reason for Sessions’ relative longevity as AG, Barr’s in charge now and the change in atmosphere is clear:

Attorney General William Barr dropped a bombshell Wednesday, telling a group of senators that he believes spying against the Trump campaign did take place in 2016.

“I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” Barr said during an exchange with Democratic New Hampshire Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Shaheen asked in a follow-up whether Barr believed the FBI spied on the Trump team.

“You’re not suggesting, though, that spying occurred?” Shaheen asked.

“I think spying did occur. Yes, I think spying did occur. But the question is whether it was predicated, adequately predicated,” Barr said.

This promises to be very interesting, although I wouldn’t bet that any charges come from it.

How USA Today covers Netanyahu’s election

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s how USA Today covers the Netanyahu election:

The outcome would also affirm Israel’s continued tilt to the political right and further cast doubt on hopes of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, partly because of Netanyahu’s close relationship with President Donald Trump.

Israel’s mostly been tilting right since 2000, and with good reason, although the authors of the piece don’t allude to the reason why, which was the utter failure of the peace plans and negotiations the left had championed (see this). The end of the Camp David talks in 2000, which featured Israel’s giving an enormous number of concessions to Arafat and Arafat walking away, made it clear that the whole thing had been a charade on the part of the Palestinians, and unless something changed very drastically there would be little to no hope of a negotiated solution—certainly not of the conventional sort—although the MSM and the left have been pretending otherwise.

So, how has Netanyahu’s close relationship with Trump cast further doubt on a negotiated solution? Did the fact that Obama hated Netanyahu and treated him like dirt lead to productive negotiations? Don’t think so.

More:

Trump’s decision to reverse decades of U.S. policy toward Israel, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem even though both the Palestinians and the Israelis claim that city as their capital, has embittered Palestinians.

Ah, so that’s what’s embittered them. Glad the authors can shed light on that. After all, the Palestinians were so unembittered before Trump did that.

And by the way, the Palestinians don’t just claim that Jerusalem is their capital, they want a right of return to Israel and to essentially stop Israel from being Israel. Good luck negotiating with that.

The article goes on to describe the reaction to Trump’s peace plan, the details of which no one knows:

It’s expected to be unveiled soon but critics have dismissed it even before its release because of Trump’s Israel actions. Foreign Policy magazine described it as a “disaster waiting to happen” and Shalom Lipner, who served seven consecutive Israeli prime ministers, wrote in a recent Politico analysis that it looked “dead on arrival.”

As I indicated earlier, if this plan is “dead on arrival” it’s only because all such plans are, not because of “Trump’s Israel actions.” It’s a convenient fiction for the left and Trump’s other opponents to pretend otherwise. So I tend to agree with these critics that it isn’t going to succeed, although I don’t know what the plan entails.

Danial Pipes says, on the other hand, that he’s got some of the details. I wonder. He also thinks it won’t work, but his opinion is that it’s too much like the old plans of previous administrations and gives too much away, although Pipes says one difference is that Trump’s plan will require the Arabs to make concessions first, unlike previous plans that required that of Israel or that called for simultaneity.

My guess is that Trump will attempt to do it somewhat differently and that he has a few extra tricks up his sleeve. But I am not the least bit optimistic about the results; I just think the situation is too stuck and the Palestinian leaders gain too much from keeping the wound festering. But it would be very nice to be pleasantly surprised.

One thing of which I’m fairly sure is that Trump and Netanyahu will have a good working relationship.