The First 48: ties that bind

The New Neo Posted on by

Although the program is thirteen years old, I only recently discovered the TV show “The First 48,” a documentary series that follows crimes (usually homicides) in various US cities by filming police as they put a case together piece by piece. To me, the show is far more riveting than any fictional representation of the same process. Neither “Law and Order” nor “CSI” nor “NYPD” nor any other TV show or movie that tries to depict crime and punishment—and there are many—compares in power to The First 48.

I tend to prefer documentaries to fiction anyway. Nothing can be as dramatic as the truth, or as real. Fiction and drama purport to be a heightened sort of reality that gives us something more interesting, with more punch, than actual reality. Not to me, though, at least not so often. Although I wouldn’t say “The First 58” stranger than fiction, I would say it’s consistently more riveting.

Why is that? We know it’s true, or at least a snapshot or portion of the truth, rather than something contrived. We can’t dismiss what we see as the product of someone’s fevered imagination. We can’t say what we’re seeing can’t be believed, because we know it must be believed—if not as the whole truth and nothing but the truth, at the very least as the truth of certain people’s behavior in a certain series of moments.

One of the strangest and most compelling things about The First 48 is how very different it is from all the fictional programs that purport to depict similar stories. The things the people (cops, perps, families) say in The First 48 are different from their fictional counterparts. The way they say those things is different. Their affect is different. The real people are not acting (unless they’re lying, in which case they’re not acting at lying, they really are lying). One would think their real lines and their real gestures and real delivery would be both less histrionic and less eloquent than the fictional versions. But instead (at least to me), their lines and gestures and delivery seem more eloquent and more expressive, as well as very different from what you find in scripts.

There are no bad actors (in the sense of play-acting) or even mediocre actors in a show like “The First 48.” Everyone is exactly who they are, and even if the person is pretending to be innocent he/she is pretending in a real and guilty way. No actor can do this, although some come close. You would almost never mistake a fictional police drama for a documentary, and once you’ve seen the documentary the fictional show looks false, the actors slick and actorish. It’s not their fault, though, that they can’t imitate reality well enough. Maybe they’re not even trying to do that. Maybe they’re just trying to engross and entertain.

Here’s one of the episodes of “The First 48” that I’ve found most fascinating. To me, it’s as gripping as any Shakespearean or Greek tragedy, except that it features seemingly ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. The slight and bespectacled police detective who investigates this crime is an especially powerful character, with a quiet intensity that is almost hypnotic as he demonstrates tremendous psychological sophistication in speaking with his interviewees.

As you watch the video, note lines such as the mother’s “I’d do anything for my kids. I’d drink a bloody river dry for them” (at minute 27:04). I think you might agree with me that this is not a statement a dramatist would be likely to write—it’s more unusual and idiosyncratic— but it’s every bit as eloquent and more amazing for being completely unscripted and spontaneous and delivered in a flatter tone than any actor would use. And when you get to the perp’s confession—well, just watch it.


The First 48 S15E17 The Ties That Bind by TJARCHER942

The dangerous threat from North Korea: would Seoul survive?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been meaning to write a big and very comprehensive post on North Korea, but I’ve been putting it off. I have a rough draft, but it’s very rough and I cannot bring myself to work on it today.

The reason is fairly clear. It’s a weekend, of course, and there are some other things I’d like to do outside of blogging. But that’s not the real reason. The real reason is twofold: it’s a huge topic, and it’s an overwhelmingly depressing one. In fact, in all my years as a blogger, I can’t recall a single situation in which all alternatives seem so terrible.

I hope I’m just being pessimistic. But I don’t think so. And the piece I’m about to recommend in the present (somewhat less comprehensive) post certainly isn’t optimistic, either. It’s by Caroline Glick, and it seems to me it states the facts of what we face in stark and uncompromisingly realistic terms.

North Korea is a problem that’s been a long time coming. We’ve watched it unfold, step by step, administration by administration, with growing anxiety and frustration and anger. How can we be so impotent in the face of such a growing danger? The answer is that North Korea has, in effect, held South Korea (particularly Seoul) hostage. As Glick puts it:

Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama all sought to appease North Korea’s aggressive nuclear adventurism because they didn’t believe they had a credible military option to deal with it.

In the 1980s, North Korea developed and deployed a conventional arsenal of bombs and artillery along the demilitarized zone capable of vaporizing Seoul.

Any US military strike against North Korea’s nuclear installation it was and continues to be argued, would cause the destruction of Seoul and the murder of millions of South Koreans.

So US efforts to appease Pyongyang on behalf of Seoul emptied the US-South Korean alliance of meaning. The US can only serve as the protector of its allies, and so assert its great power status in the Pacific and worldwide, if it prevents its allies from being held hostage by its enemies.

And now, not only does the US lack a clear means of defending South Korea, and Japan, America itself is threatened by the criminal regime it demurred from effectively confronting.

The Seoul “Capitol area” (that’s not just the city, but the general metropolitan area) has a population of about 24 million people. That’s a lot of people to hold hostage. It is very close to the North Korean border. In retrospect, this seems like quite an oversight, but there’s not much to do about it now (evacuating 24 million people would be quite an undertaking). The government of South Korea doesn’t seem to know what to do about the entire situation except keep its fingers crossed and hope for the best. Nor, apparently, do we, at least so far, and the failings on that score have been bipartisan, and inextricably linked to the fact that Seoul is at grave risk no matter what we do.

So the question becomes twofold: do we have the guts/brains to figure out what is best (or least bad) to do? And what would be the cost to Seoul? In regard to that second question, here’s an attempt (I have no idea how realistic an attempt) to evaluate South Korea’s defenses:

Since the 1990s, right about the time the Clinton administration decided not to undertake military action against North Korea’s nuclear program, the general consensus has been that Pyongyang had enough artillery to turn nearby Seoul, home to approximately 25 million South Koreans, into a “sea of fire” that could see up to one million civilians killed. This apocalyptic scenario has been a trump card against strong military action against Pyongyang, with fears it could order a bombardment of the city as an act of retaliation.

A 2011 study by the Nautilus Institute throws a considerable amount of cold water on this scenario. While the sheer number of artillery tubes could theoretically kill a large number of civilians, operational issues complicate matters and push the number of civilian casualties greatly downward. Despite the thousands of artillery pieces, only 700 heavier guns and rocket launchers, plus the newer 300-millimeter MRLs, have the range to strike Seoul. Only a third would normally be fired at once, and notional rates of fire would be slowed tremendously by the need to withdraw guns into their hardened artillery sites (HARTS) to shelter them from counter battery fire.

Other factors reduce the projected loss of life in the greater Seoul metropolitan area. The city has extensive air raid shelters for civilians that will quickly reduce the exposed population density. The North will struggle to keep these heavy artillery units supplied with shells, particularly with its aging supply system. Finally, U.S. and ROK forces will quickly begin hunting down units participating in the bombardment, causing their numbers to drop almost immediately.

Finally, the North would face a strategic dilemma. Artillery used to bomb Seoul could not be used to soften up border defenses for a general invasion, and in wartime it would be critical to capture the enemy capital quickly as possible. An all-out bombardment of the South Korean capital might very well leave Pyongyang without the ability to actually capture it, while at the same time ensuring a U.S./South Korean counteroffensive that would spell the end of the regime of Kim Jong-un. Even if a million civilians were killed in Seoul it would ensure Kim’s untimely demise, and from his perspective that is still almost certainly a very bad trade.

That was written in April, and doesn’t mention nuclear weapons. It doesn’t have to; even without them the scenario is bad enough. If you look at the comments to the article, you’ll see that the consensus is that the author is painting too rosy a picture in terms of the damage that could and would be done.

Take a look at this piece, for example, and you’ll see that a lot of things have been left out of that first article, such as chemical and biological and cyber warfare, locating weapons in relatively impenetrable locations such as caves, and the number of US casualties that would be sustained in any attack on Seoul by the North, as well as the possibility of China and/or Russia becoming involved on the side of the Norks.

One could go on and on and on reading these things, careening between a more optimistic (for example, this piece on THAAD defenses) and a more pessimistic prognostication. I’ll arbitrarily stop here, for now. But first I want to reiterate a couple of things:

(1) The time to have acted was long ago, before the threat to our shores materialized—and that threat was very predictable and easy to foresee.

(2) What stopped us then is the same thing that stops us now: fear of the ensuing conflagration, which will almost undoubtedly cause a huge loss of life. Since WWII we have gotten out of the habit of accepting such a magnitude of human loss as an inevitable consequence of large-scale war. We want (and I include myself here in that “want”—although you can’t always get what you want) sanitized wars, clear targets, minimal loss of life. But this is almost certainly not going to be possible in Korea, and time is not our friend.

It is truly a horrific prospect, and we may not have the will, heart, or guts to do it, or the knowledge to know what is best to do. That is why until now we’ve hoped for a diplomatic solution, but I think it’s been clear for a long time that that’s not possible, even though I dearly hope I’m wrong about that.

The rights of the accused come back to Title IX

The New Neo Posted on by

This is an excellent development. I have long been alarmed at the way the accused have been treated by universities under the Title IX campus sexual harassment and/or rape guidelines pushed by the Obama administration, and I’m glad that one of the things happening under Trump is an attempt to restore them:

DeVos’s George Mason speech represented a major shift; she mentioned the importance of “due process” ten times. The same phrase appeared in the text of the two principal Obama guidance documents only five times, combined, and then mostly to remind colleges not to allow an accused student’s due-process rights to trump OCR’s novel interpretations of Title IX. DeVos also described in fairly precise terms how campus disciplinary processes actually work, citing the many students who have gone to court to achieve due process from their schools. No Obama official ever acknowledged that the administration’s policy had generated a flood of lawsuits from accused students.

DeVos also stressed her personal revulsion for sexual assault and her commitment to prosecute campus rape…

Reason’s Robby Soave outlined each of the cases DeVos referenced in her speech; none of her political critics have challenged her on the facts about these abuses of the system. Their silence about the denial of due process leaves the impression that too many Title IX advocates believe that punishing innocent students is a price worth paying to address campus sexual assault. In this respect, the notorious 2015 comments of Colorado congressman Jared Polis (for which he later issued a half-hearted apology) can be seen as a type of “Kinsley gaffe””” wherein a politician accidentally says what he really thinks. In 2015, Polis informed a House hearing, “If there are ten people who have been accused, and under a reasonable likelihood standard maybe one or two did it, it seems better to get rid of all ten people.”

The article goes on to state that “college and university presidents remain committed to upholding the one-sided Obama-era policies” despite DeVros’ speech. Of course. There are many reasons for that. First and foremost is what has come to be called political correctness, which is also a reflection of the strongly leftist orientation of most academics and college administrators these days as well as the atmosphere on campuses. Any administrator who tried to buck this trend—assuming he or she wanted to, which the vast majority do not—would face a firestorm of disapproval, demonstrations, and perhaps even violent protests. But most administrators today probably would secretly agree with Jared Polis, although they may not even realize how far they’ve gone towards PC kangaroo courts in universities where the accused is guilty until proven innocent—and often doesn’t even have any meaningful opportunity to prove his (it’s almost always a “he”) innocence.

Defending the rights of the accused is a basic principle on which our legal system is based. Colleges have quasi- or extra-judicial systems, but the principle ought to remain. DeVros is determined to uphold it, and for that I salute her, and I await the new guidelines. I wonder how many universities will actually follow them.

Florida waits…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for Irma to strike.

There is virtually no doubt that there will be major property damage, particularly on the western coast of Florida. I hope that all who might be in major harm’s way in the personal sense have evacuated to safety rather than risk severe injury or death.

The storm is now considered Category 3, but it’s expected to rise again to 4 at some point when it hits Florida.

There has been widespread property devastation in some Caribbean islands (see the list at the link), but—at least so far—not so many deaths. I assume that can be attributed to modern forecasting.

These days, many storms are hyped to the skies that don’t end up being as bad as they say. There may be some elements of that with Irma, but I make no predictions and if I lived in the storm’s path I’d be heeding the evacuation warnings.

Stay safe, everybody.

Armed robbery thwarted in Cleveland

The New Neo Posted on by

Two armed robbers chose the wrong Taco Bell to hold up:

An armed robber shot and killed by three Taco Bell employees early Wednesday is identified as De’Carlo Jackson.

The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner released the 24-year-old man’s identity on Thursday.

Jackson was shot six times by Taco Bell employees after he and another masked and armed robber walked into the fast-food restaurant on West 117th Street on the Cleveland-Lakewood border, according to police.

The robbers demanded the employees get on the ground at gunpoint. Three employees complied and the robbers walked up to the cash register, police said.

Three other employees pulled out their own guns and fired several shots at the duo, killing Jackson.

The other robber ran out of the restaurant…

It looks like one of those cases where armed potential victims used firearms to turn the tables on the perps. Ohio has both open carry and concealed carry laws, by the way. A lot is unreported so far concerning this story, including whether the three employees who were armed were licensed to carry concealed weapons, and whether their weapons were in fact concealed or were carried openly. Two of them are reported to be only 19 years old, and concealed carry in Ohio requires that the person be at least 21, although open carry is allowed at the age of 18 and above.

Also, why were so many employees armed—half—in a Taco Bell? Is this a very bad neighborhood with a history of a great many robberies? Not that that need be the case in order for them to be armed—it is their right, and events proved them prescient—but I was just wondering. I also wonder about the races of the perpetrators and of the fast food employees as well, none of which has been reported although these things often are reported on if the MSM finds an angle they want to push. My preliminary hunch is that both groups were predominantly black, and that this may be a high-crime neighborhood, which could explain why so many employees might feel the need to carry.

My other hunch is that this might have a chilling effect on armed robbery in fast food restaurants in Cleveland. That many armed employees in a Taco Bell should give anyone pause.

However, it probably didn’t give De Carlo Jackson much pause. The dead man had the following background:

Jackson’s criminal history includes three convictions for attempted drug trafficking since 2012. Jackson’s cases were all referred to the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court’s mental health docket because Jackson’s IQ was below 75, according to court records.

He was released from jail in February 2016 after violating the terms of his probation in his most recent conviction.

That’s not very clearly written, but it sounds as though the perp had significant mental/intellectual deficits, had been dealing drugs, got probation and then was jailed for violating it, and was then released. A sad life, a sad end, and I’m glad no one else got injured.

Was voter fraud committed in New Hampshire in 2016?

The New Neo Posted on by

Short but true answer: we don’t know.

New Hampshire is a a small state with a small population, and that means that a relatively small number of people can change the outcome there because it’s also a purple state. So the motive to commit fraud is certainly present, because in New Hampshire you’d get a lot of bang for your buck.

And the opportunity is there, as well, because New Hampshire has some voting laws that could be exploited by people seeking to change the results there. That doesn’t mean they do exploit them, but they could. Here’s the situation:

When people talk about the potential for “voter fraud” in New Hampshire, they often point to the idea that the state allows people to register on Election Day and to use out-of-state licenses. But that alone doesn’t mean those voters are doing anything illegal.

There are reasons why someone might legitimately register to vote with an out-of-state license ”“ most obviously, they could have moved to the state recently or could be attending college here. (The state makes clear that out-of-state students attending college in New Hampshire are allowed to vote here, as long as they aren’t also voting in another state.)

To register with an out-of-state license, you still have to prove that you hold domicile in the state ”“ using a utility bill or lease, for example, or by signing an affidavit affirming you actually live where you’re trying to vote. See here for more details on what’s required for first-time voters to register in New Hampshire.

I will go on record right now as saying that I think college students should not have the option of voting in the state where they’re attending school, unless they are bona fide residents and can prove it (for example, with a non-dorm address and a vehicle registered in the state and/or a job in the state, or have grown up there and are long-time residents). But I’m not the one making the laws in New Hampshire, and at present people are very much allowed to vote in New Hampshire if they attend college there but have a driver’s license from another state, as long as they can prove they are currently domiciled in New Hampshire. The possibilities for such proof are “a valid New Hampshire vehicle registration, a utility bill or other monthly bill (with the voter’s name on it), medical bills, pay stubs showing a current address or postmarked mail within the last 30 days”.

So all they need to prove domicile, really, is a piece of mail addressed to them. Or they can same-day register as long as they sign an affadavit that they are domiciled in NH, without even offering proof.

The current brouhaha over possible fraud in the 2016 election in New Hampshire centers on the following:

New data suggest that more than 5,000 people who cast ballots in New Hampshire in the 2016 U.S. presidential election might not have been residents of the state.

These voters likely used out-of-state driver’s licenses and have not since obtained an in-state license or registered a vehicle…

The new figures could potentially call into question the validity of the New Hampshire results for Nov. 8, when Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton outpolled Republican nominee Donald Trump by a mere 2,736 votes.

The Democratic senator from the state was elected by an even smaller margin. Obviously, fraudulent votes might have made the difference, and it’s neither stupid nor duplicitous to suggest this as a possibility (as some Democrats have suggested). The accent, of course, is on the “might,” because it’s also possible that these were completely legal votes, due to the aforementioned same-day-voting law in New Hampshire that allows students and certain others to register there with proof of domicile and with out-of-state licenses, or with affidavits.

But there is also a New Hampshire law that goes like this:

Despite New Hampshire law mandating that drivers acquire a state driving license within 60 days of becoming a resident in the state, more than 80 percent of people who registered to vote with out-of-state licenses still had not received their in-state license or registered a new vehicle ”“ nearly 10 months after the election.

In addition, 196 people were under investigation for voting in two states.

As previously mentioned, quite a few election results in NH (including Clinton’s victory there in 2016) were decided by a number small enough to have been affected, if in fact a significant number of the missing license plates represent fraud. It’s not cherry-picking or misleading to say so, although it is also necessary to say it’s possible that they do not represent fraud. At the moment we have no way to know.

What we do know is that it’s quite likely that a lot of these people failed to comply with New Hampshire’s law on car registration:

Jasper addressed the criticism that the figures can be accounted with just college students, claiming there were multiple people who “did not comply with the law.”

“College students are eligible to vote if they declare domicile here, but anybody who does that then has to comply with the laws of the state,” he said, according to WMUR9. “If someone is domiciled in New Hampshire (and has a vehicle), then within 60 days, they need to obtain a driver’s license. I think we will find that within that 5,000, there will be many who did not comply with the law.”

But which law is “the law” the they may not have complied with? The one about being domiciled in NH in order to vote there? Or the one about vehicle registration in the state by a certain date, if you claim to be domiciled there? He says “we will find,” but will the state actually investigate?

I’d very much like (although I doubt I’ll get) a further breakdown on how the people with out-of-state driver’s licenses proved they were domiciled in the state. But that’s not even really required, because even without any such proof, people can sign affidavits stating they are domiciled in NH. Later, the state supposedly tries to validate those affidavits (but the votes have already been counted in the state’s total, at least as far as I can tell):

Within 90 days of the election, the Secretary of State’s [of NH] office is required to mail letters to anyone who filled out an affidavit in order to vote, using the address listed on their affidavit. (The letters are labeled with instructions that they are not supposed to be forwarded, in case someone set up mail forwarding.)

If the mail comes back as undeliverable or the voter doesn’t respond with a valid confirmation, those cases get forwarded to the attorney general’s office for further investigation. (That said: The attorney general’s office only has one part-time attorney working on election-related investigations, and the agency has made no secret about the fact that they are running behind on investigating all kinds of election law complaints, not just voter eligibility cases.

That seems pretty loose to me.

You can find a chart at the link that shows how many affidavits were not validated from the 2012 election; there were quite a few. And “validation” seems to just mean that someone returned a postcard which the state mails to the address that was given as the domicile

The secretary of state shall cause a letter of identity verification to be mailed by first class mail to each voter who executed a challenged voter affidavit or affidavit of religious exemption in accordance with paragraph I, unless the same person is sent letter of identity verification pursuant to RSA 654:12, V(b). The letter shall be mailed by January 10 in every odd-numbered year in the case of persons executing challenged voter affidavits or affidavits of religious exemption at a state primary or general election, or within 90 days after any other election. The secretary of state shall mark the envelope with instructions to the United States Post Office not to forward the letter and to provide address correction information. The letter shall notify the person that a person who did not present valid photo identification voted using his or her name and address and instruct the person to return the letter within 30 days with a written confirmation that the person voted or to contact the attorney general immediately if he or she did not vote.

As I said, seems pretty loose to me.

So, to summarize: the possibility is there, the motivation is there, and the chance that fraud would actually pay off is especially high in New Hampshire. Is it happening, and if so is it happening to an extent great enough to have swayed the election? We probably will never know.

[ADDENDUM: Recently a bill was passed to improve the situation in the state. It was signed by the governor in July. It’s not perfect, but it’s better. You can be pretty sure it will be met with legal challenges from those opposed.]

Irma

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s no question that Irma is a big, big, big, big storm. It’s already caused a great deal of damage in the Caribbean, and it’s set to do more in Florida and elsewhere in the States.

It seems to me that the press salivates at events such as this. “If it bleeds, it leads,” and Irma bleeds. It also gives the MSM a chance to hammer home its direst AGW message.

I’ve already written on that last issue in connection with Harvey. My view can be summarized as weather is weather and climate is climate and most analysts filter their point of view through a political agenda. I have no use for that sort of ubiquitous filtering, and therefore I tend to gravitate to the writings of noted climatologist Judith Curry, whose only agenda—as far as I can see—is an attempt to find the truth without preconceptions.

That is a rare thing these days, even among scientists and particularly among those who write about science for the general population. I’m pretty scientifically-minded, but I don’t have the specific climatology chops to evaluate the truth or falsehood of the vast amount of scientific data and opinion out there. I have come to trust Curry, though, who seems especially even-handed, logical, careful, courageous, and open to going wherever the truth may lead her.

Here’s Curry on Irma.

[NOTE: This is from Curry’s Wiki entry:

Judith A. Curry is an American climatologist and former chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her research interests include hurricanes, remote sensing, atmospheric modeling, polar climates, air-sea interactions, and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for atmospheric research. She is a member of the National Research Council’s Climate Research Committee. As of 2017, she has retired from academia.

Curry is the co-author of Thermodynamics of Atmospheres and Oceans (1999), and co-editor of Encyclopedia of Atmospheric Sciences (2002), as well as over 140 scientific papers. Among her awards is the Henry G. Houghton Research Award from the American Meteorological Society in 1992.

Regarding climate change, she thinks that the IPCC reports typically neglect what she calls the “Uncertainty Monster” in projecting future climate trends, which she calls a “wicked problem.” Curry also hosts a popular science blog in which she writes on topics related to climate science and the science-policy interface…

Judith Curry has argued that climatologists should be more accommodating of those skeptical of the scientific consensus on climate change. Curry has stated she is troubled by what she calls the “tribal nature” of parts of the climate-science community, and what she sees as stonewalling over the release of data and its analysis for independent review.]

Trump and the debt ceiling

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump trumps the GOP in Congress:

Republicans and Democrats alike were left scratching their heads after the president did a deal with Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) over the express wishes of the most senior members of his own party.

Trump signed up to terms proposed by the Democrats on government funding, which would soon have run out, and the nation’s debt ceiling, which would soon have been hit.

Crucially, another funding measure and another hike in the debt ceiling will be required before the end of the year.

That’s a big problem for GOP leaders including Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who wanted a longer-term deal, kicking the next likely debt-ceiling increase beyond the midterm elections in November 2018.

Why did Trump do it?

People in his orbit say that the president was demonstrating to GOP leaders that they do not have the whip hand ”” and that, if they repeatedly fail to move his agenda, the commander in chief is willing to look elsewhere.

“I think it’s a warning shot,” said Barry Bennett…

Separately, a GOP strategist with ties to the White House said that the president was “triangulating.” Trump’s overall aim, this source said, was “to show voters that [Congressional Republicans] are the real problem with Washington and that progress can be made if the will is there.”

Beyond the ranks of Trump loyalists, however, the dominant reaction was one of perplexity.

Trump loyalists, who defend whatever he does—and who usually are also people who have long been angry at Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnnell—have no problem defending this move of Trump’s and seeing it as in line with their own desire to stick it to the latter two, even if it hurts the right’s cause. So they would be eager to see Trump as doing something they want to do in the personal sense—giving the finger to Ryan and McConnell no matter what the issue.

Everyone else, however, should realize that this is what you get when you elect a guy like Trump. I spent the better part of a year documenting a few things that I’ll now review, and I’ll add a few other thoughts as well:

(1) Trump has no reliable coherent conservative philosophy. Everything he does that is conservative is gravy, and I’m grateful for it, but there is no point in relying on him to be conservative. All bets are always off with Trump.

(2) Trump is inconsistent on a lot of things. During the campaign year I called him “mutable,” and that is exactly what he is. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t sometimes do exactly what he said he would do. But you can’t rely on it. In fact, I believe he really really likes to surprise people.

(3) Trump is a New Yorker with a history of liking some big government functions. He knows Schumer quite well. It should be no surprise if he works with him sometimes and gives him what he wants.

(4) Slightly off-topic, but this “mutable” history of Trump’s is especially true of DACA, a topic on which he’s been all over the map but has signaled time and again that he is mostly inclined to go easy on DREAMERS.

(5) Trump’s supporters will rationalize whatever he does.

The article I linked goes on to offer these quotes:

“I find [Trump’s actions on the debt ceiling] very difficult to understand,” said Doug Heye, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee. “Clearly a long-term Republican majority and the long-term health of the Republican Party are not priorities for Donald Trump.”

Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist and former aide to ex-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), pronounced himself “absolutely mystified.”

Manley added: “One of the things it shows me is that [Trump] just doesn’t care or understand how the Hill operates. There is nothing the Republican leadership hates more than rounding up votes for the debt limit. And he has now forced them to take votes twice on it.”

I think the heart of the matter is this: “Clearly a long-term Republican majority and the long-term health of the Republican Party are not priorities for Donald Trump.”

Nor are they priorities for most of his supporters. I’ve spent years blogging and fielding comments from people on the right—or who consider themselves to be on the right—who hate and despise the GOP and have wished for and even worked for its demise. They’re the “burn it down” crowd, and in the main they voted for Trump because they felt he was an instrument to further that goal. I’m not at all sure he shares their “burn it down” sentiments; his actions seem more sporadic to me than that. But I would imagine that many of his supporters think he shares their sentiments and is actively working for such a goal.

So the only surprise to me is why anyone would be surprised at this latest development.

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

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“Appear complicated,” indeed.

The PC purpose of the female breast

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the latest PC war:

A children’s publisher has bowed to pressure and pulped remaining copies of a puberty guide for boys that claimed girls have breasts for ‘feeding babies and looking grown-up and attractive’.

Growing Up for Boys by Alex Frith, published in 2013, promises to ‘prepare boys for what to expect from puberty.’

But it sparked outrage among social media users after a blogger posted a page [from the book] on Facebook which reads: ‘Girls have breasts for two reasons. One is to make milk for babies.

‘The other is to make the girl look grown-up and attractive. Virtually all breasts, no matter what size or shape they end up when a girl finishes puberty, can do both things.”

Ah, the humanity! The outrage!

If, like me, you wonder “WTF?” or “Is there something I’m missing here?,” then it’s time to get with the program and understand just what is so offensive about it:

The extract was posted by Simon Ragoonanan who blogs at Man vs. Pink, ‘chronicling the fun and games of a geek father, his fangirl daughter, and their ongoing struggle against pinkification’.

He wrote on Facebook: ‘The problem is that the book is saying that looking attractive and grown up is a key purpose of the breast.

‘It’s like saying the same about a woman’s legs. Nothing wrong with finding them attractive – and I do – but it’s not their ‘purpose’ to make a girl/woman look attractive or grown up.

Ah, but Mr. Ragoonanan, no one would say that about legs because they obviously are there to stand on and to walk with, and both men and women have them in fairly similar fashion.

Not so for breasts. I know the PC crowd isn’t really interested in biology, but breasts in the human female are a puzzling anomaly. Mammals—and the human is a mammal, at least until the PC crowd gets around to revising that fact if they need to or want to—feed their young milk from breasts, but humans are the only mammals whose breasts are enlarged all the time. And this is true only in the female, so there is a great deal of male/female dimorphism on that score.

Biologists and evolutionary biologists have argued about the purpose of the permanently enlarged female breast in humans, and they are not in total agreement about it. The main function of the female breast is to feed the young milk, as with any other mammal, but the main function of its permanent enlargement is thought to be—yes, sexual attraction.

You can find a gazillion articles on the subject. Here’s one that’s fairly typical:

The full, plump bosom seen in the human ape is an anomaly. No other primate has a permanent breast. During lactation all the ape species develop a full breast to store milk. In non-human primates (and other mammal species) a full breast is a clear indication the female is suckling young. Not so in humans. In addition, females in early adolescence can start developing a breast before menarche and females maintain breasts post menopause, so the full breast is not a reliable indicator of fertility. Neither is size an indicator of milk production ”“ bigger breasts don’t necessarily produce more milk. It is the symmetry of the breasts that indicates the phenotypic quality and fitness of the individual female, not the size.

The sex appeal of rounded female buttocks and plump breasts is both universal and unique to the human primate1. Fertile women tend not to store fat around the abdomen, so the waist of a fertile female is usually slimmer than her hips. Other female primates do not have fat deposited on the rump. For example, the female gorilla has a skinny posterior and stores fat on her abdomen, as do human males. So it has been widely theorised that the plump buttock and bosom of modern women are sexual ornaments, selected for by ancestral males2.

And there’s even a theory that compares human female breasts to the tail of the strutting male peacock:

Because breasts sometimes get in women’s way, some scientists have developed an evolutionary theory they call a “handicap principle.” According to this theory, heavy breasts honestly announce a woman’s genetic health, but at a cost of her carrying them around.

Barash and Lipton explain that this same idea applies to creatures like the male peacock, which struts around with his awkward, ornamental tail in hopes of roping in mates.

One lesser-agreed upon theory, supported by Leonard Shlain, a surgeon and author of “Sex, Time and Power: How Women’s Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution,”(Viking, 2003), suggests that women’s breasts grew round after our early ancestors stood upright.

In this view, the breasts of the female ancestors of humans evolved over time, along with a gradual tilting of the pelvis, so that the vagina was more oriented to the front of the body. Together, these transformations encouraged face-to-face sex, and marked a departure from the position most commonly used by other apes, in which the male approaches the female from behind.

Ethologist Desmond Morris has also proposed this theory, and has suggested breasts are substitutes for the round, red buttocks of our female ape ancestors.

Growing Up For Boys simplified matters a bit, but all the explanations I’ve read in the past for the human female breast (and I’ve read quite a few) talk about sexual attractiveness. But shhhh, musn’t tell. Biology must bow down to our PC masters, and books that don’t do so must be destroyed.

Richard Landes on Europe’s destructive Holocaust shame

The New Neo Posted on by

Richard Landes has a piece in Tablet entitled “Europe’s Destructive Holocaust Shame: How the narrative of Israel as the new Nazis and Palestinians as the new Jews helps Western Europe avoid its culpability in World War II.” Here’s an excerpt:

And yet, in 2000, when the Western public sphere””now a global public sphere, itself an astounding creation””was split in two (right vs. left) by a civilizational crisis, both the public and the scholars whether they despised or admired Western history, showed astonishing incomprehension about the role of Jews””and Israel””in the creation and maintenance of a global civil society. If anything, the post-grand-narrativists, for whom the Western narrative is an ugly succession of oppression and injustice, see the national (autonomous) Jews (Israel) as the last remnant of the Western racist, imperial/colonial past. Israel ist unser Unglé¼ck (Israel is our misfortune). So instead of appreciating what these sovereign Jews were trying to handle (Jihad against infidels), they sought liberation from shame in embracing Palestinian terrorists, whom they welcomed as fellow victims of the vile, unbearably provocative behavior of the Jews.

For those unfamiliar with the work of Landes (who, by the way, is a friend of mine; I met him through blogging), I suggest they take a look at his blog Augean Stables and also his invaluable work in exposing the al Durah propaganda (website here). Landes is the person who coined the phrase “Pallywood,” and just about anything he writes is packed with thought and well worth reading.

Landes writes that European championing of the Palestinian cause and its equation of the Jews with the Nazis is actually a “get-out-of-Holocaust-shame-free card” for Europe. He recognized that fact long ago, and he was not alone.

The following quote on a related topic is from a post I wrote in 2006:

If the Israelis/Jews…are as bad as the Nazis and their European collaborators, this serves a double function: first, it norms Europe’s behavior during WWII (“see, there’s nothing special about the guilt of Europeans, move along now”); and second, it can even be seen as justifying the Holocaust, as well (“Jews are evil, so it was okay for us to cooperate in attempting to destroy them”).

Anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism not only both have a long history in Europe (the first phenomenon is an ancient one; the second has existed for centuries), but they both have a more recent function, and that it is to deflect and sooth European guilt.

The Landes article goes into this in much greater detail, and focuses on the function of sympathizing with the Palestinians, as well as the differences between guilt and shame and how both enter into the picture.

I would add that this desire to avoid the bad feelings inherent in either guilt or shame or both has long been part of human nature. the Roman historian Tacitus hinted at that when he wrote: ““It belongs to human nature to hate those you have injured.”

Unlike Richard Landes, I’m not a historian. So although I learned that quote long long ago, and was deeply impressed by it (I’ve seen it’s workings over and over again, and not just in politics, either), I’m unable to describe the context for the quote except that I’ve read that it comes from a book Tacitus wrote entitled Agricola, a biography written by Tacitus and dealing with “the life of his father-in-law Gnaeus Julius Agricola, an eminent Roman general and Governor of Britain from AD 77/78 – 83/84.” But my interpretation of the quote is that the motivation for that commonplace hatred of people we have wronged is a rage at the feeling of guilt and/or shame they engender in us, and a desire to escape from those feelings by blaming the victim. It’s the easy way out compared to soul-searching and redress of wrongs, and offers respite from a nearly intolerable burden. It’s no surprise that people jump at the chance.

[NOTE: In the case of Europe today, leftism has a big place in this process, as Landes also notes when he writes: “in 2000…the Western public sphere””now a global public sphere, itself an astounding creation””was split in two (right vs. left) by a civilizational crisis…”. That split has long existed, of course, but it widened considerably during the 21st Century. By the way, Landes’ professional field of expertise as a historian is Millennial Studies.]

Mayor de Blasio: you know you want the heavy hand of government, and so do I

The New Neo Posted on by

Steven Hayward at Powerline calls our attention to an interview and quote from New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio. It’s quite revealing not just about de Blasio, but about the leftist mindset about the role of government, our legal system, and what people themselves want [emphasis mine]:

Q: In 2013, you ran on reducing income inequality. Where has it been hardest to make progress? Wages, housing, schools?

de Blasio: What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property. I think people all over this city, of every background, would like to have the city government be able to determine which building goes where, how high it will be, who gets to live in it, what the rent will be. I think there’s a socialistic impulse, which I hear every day, in every kind of community, that they would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs. And I would, too. Unfortunately, what stands in the way of that is hundreds of years of history that have elevated property rights and wealth to the point that that’s the reality that calls the tune on a lot of development…

…Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.

It’s not reachable right now. And it leaves this friction, and this anger, which is visceral.

There’s an awful lot packed in there, isn’t there?

First and foremost, we have the fact that de Blasio feels comfortable enough to express these sentiments openly rather than hide them. My guess—and it’s only a guess—is that he really believes that most New Yorkers, and maybe even most people in the US, agree with him about the function of government and how much it should dictate their lives. Sentiments and goals that just a few years ago were only whispered in private by any politician hoping to actually get elected are now declared openly by the current mayor of New York.

Next we have the scope of his vision. De Blasio would like the government to control as much as possible, and not just about real estate development. He says “[People would] love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.” And if Bill de Blasio and his cronies have anything to say about it, that’s exactly what would happen—for your own good, of course, because you know it’s really what you want. When Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever,” it was a dystopian and horrific vision. De Blasio thinks it’s what we all secretly—and maybe not-so-secretly—want. And he thinks that he’s just the guy to do the stomping, only he’ll call it a love tap.

Next we have the idea that government is capable of doing this sort of regulation much better than the market ever could, and much better than free and autonomous human beings ever could. When he says that “[people] would like things to be planned in accordance to their needs,” he’s not only echoing Marx (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”), but he’s also assuming that government is capable of figuring out what people’s needs really are and designing a world that meets them. Although it’s possible that he doesn’t really believe that and he’s just cynically saying it in pursuit of power, I actually think—based on many (not all, however) of the leftists I know—that he is most likely sincere in his belief and in his hubris.

Then we have the contempt for the rule of law and for hundreds and hundreds of years of protection of property rights under it. Does de Blasio have even the remotest understanding of why our system is designed the way it is, and why property rights are so protected? I doubt it. He seems to see it as a little thing, a mere anachronism that should be pushed aside in favor of the great beneficent government he wants (“That’s a world I’d love to see..”) put in place. And he knows that you want it, too.

Lastly is the ominous phrase “right now,” found in the next-to-last sentence of the quote. We’re not there yet, folks, but if the kindly de Blasios of the world have their way, we’ll be there some day soon.