Those Republicans, Comey and Mueller

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “TommyJay” asks an interesting question:

I may have this wrong, but didn’t both Comey and Mueller rise to power in the FBI as card carrying members of the Republican party? Didn’t we hear this from Democrats when they felt the need to support these two guys over the last couple years?

Can we call them Double Agent Democrats now?

Well, that’s several interesting questions. But I’ll stick to trying to answer the first one.

Actually, neither man rose to power within the FBI; both men’s careers up to the point of being named FBI director had been spent entirely outside that organization.

James Comey was with the Department of Justice under Bush II (2003-2005, US Attorney in Southern NY, and then Deputy AG). But in 2005 Comey left, and for the next eight years held a variety of non-governmental positions in business as general counsel and also in academia at Columbia University. Then in 2013 he came back into the federal government on his appointment by Obama to head the FBI.

So Comey had no direct FBI experience prior to his heading the agency, and had been out of government work in general for quite a few years. It turns out it’s not uncommon for FBI directors to have worked only for the DOJ prior to their directorship of the FBI, although some have done some prior work with the FBI (see this).

I have no idea whether the repeated assertions that Comey was a Republican are based on anything other than his own reports. I had little success in getting to the bottom of it—that is, I’ve only found articles such as this one, in which Comey states that for most of his life he was a registered Republican. It’s apparently based on this from his testimony before the House on July 7th of 2016:

REP. GERALD CONNOLLY (D), VIRGINIA: Thank you.

And welcome, Director Comey and although our politics are different, I gather you’re a Republican. Is that correct?

COMEY: I have been registered Republican for most of my adult life. Not registered any longer.

This was, of course, before the election of Donald Trump and before his nomination, but after he had clinched the nomination. However, unless Comey had just changed his registration, my guess is that it had happened some time before the Trump phenomenon began, although I have no way to know.

It is claimed that Comey contributed money to both the McCain and the Romney campaigns, which indicates Republican affiliation but not conservatism. It’s also curious that I could not find the information by a search at the site where the writers of the previous link said they found it. Maybe it’s been removed, or maybe I did the search improperly.

My best guess is this: that Comey was indeed a moderate, country-club type Republican for many years. At some point, probably between 2012 and 2016, he left the party (he was appointed to head the FBI by Obama in 2013, but I don’t know how that figures into his ideological timeline). One thing of which I am virtually certain is that, by the time Trump secured the nomination of the Republican Party, Comey was a NeverTrumper who hated Trump and wanted to make sure he did not become president. His subsequent increasing revulsion towards and virulent animus for the GOP stems almost entirely from that, IMHO. It’s not an unheard-of trajectory.

At this point, Comey is indistinguishable in his actions from a liberal or leftist Democrat, whatever his general political leanings may be now or may have been in the past. He’s not shy about his activism, either.

As far as that statement about being a registered Republican for most of his life goes, however—for most of my life I’ve been a registered Democrat, but that statement would give you a very poor idea of the nature of my politics for the last fifteen or so years. The fact that Obama appointed Comey could mean he’d secretly converted to being a Democrat by then, or it could mean nothing at all.

Here’s an article from 2013 explaining why Obama chose Comey despite his supposedly being a Republican.

As for Mueller, here’s an interesting article written in July of 2001 when he was tapped by President Bush to become head of the FBI. Previously, much like Comey (who succeeded him as head of the FBI) he was from the DOJ and had been a US Attorney (in San Francisco in Mueller’s case):

Some suggested that Mueller’s lack of experience within the FBI could hurt him. Freeh, in contrast, had served as an FBI agent before becoming a federal prosecutor and judge. But others argue that change can best be implemented by an outsider. “There is a delicate balance they were trying to strike between someone who could restore confidence as an outsider, which Mueller is, and someone who knows enough about the FBI so that he could start off running when he takes over,” said Ronald Kessler, author of “The FBI: Inside the World’s Most Powerful Law Enforcement Agency.

Again, it’s not clear on what basis Mueller is sometimes called a “conservative Republican.” He doesn’t sound all that conservative to me:

Mueller is a conservative Republican, but one with unusual bipartisan credentials. He was appointed to his current prosecutor’s post in San Francisco by President Bill Clinton with the strong support of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

He headed the Justice Department’s criminal division under Bush’s father, and he temporarily served as Attorney General John Ashcroft’s deputy in the first few weeks of the current administration.

That’s about all I was able to come up with. I will add that being in a position of power often seduces people into abusing that power.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

It’s my fifth anniversary at Legal Insurrection!

The New Neo Posted on by

Wow, time doth fly when you’re having fun. And Professor Jacobson has written a very gracious post over at Legal Insurrection in honor of my fifth anniversary there.

If you’re unfamiliar with Legal Insurrection, it’s a very fine, very popular, and very highly-ranked conservative blog with Cornell law professor William A. Jacobson as founder, lead author, and head organizer of everything and everybody. I’m one of a group of contributing authors there. As you could guess from the blog’s name, the specialty of the blog is current legal issues and news, but it’s hardly limited to that. Two other topics LI has been especially active in reporting on are the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement against Israel, and all the anti-free-speech anti-liberty PC extremism on campuses.

One funny thing I’ve noticed sometimes in the comments to my posts at Legal Insurrection is that every so often someone assumes I’m a man and uses male pronouns for me. In Professor Jacobson’s post about me today, I see that he managed to dig up a number of old photos I had forgotten existed on the web. Don’t get excited; none of them show my face, but they certainly show enough of me to indicate that I’m not a man (hmmm, that sounds more risqué than I intended). It brought back memories of the reason I decided to put my photo on this blog in the first place, long long ago: everyone, and I mean everyone, who was coming to my blog back then had assumed I was a man.

It was a curious thing. It made me wonder—do I write like a man, whatever that means? Or did the moniker “neo-neocon” conjure up a masculine vibe? Would “neo-neocona” have been better? Or was it just that most conservative political bloggers (in those days, and probably now as well) were men?

I don’t have a clue what the actual reason was for the assumption that I was a man, but I figured that a photo would help disabuse people of that notion. But, since I was anonymous at the time, I didn’t want a full-face photo, and it was my son who came up with the idea of the apple. It immediately struck me as an appropriate visual reference, plus a solution to a knotty problem.

Now it’s become my trademark. A few years ago I asked people if I should do away with the apple, and the consensus was “no.” Someday I might, however. I also might update the photo, because the one I’ve been using on this blog is old, and I’ve gotten—well, let’s just say more mature—since it was taken.

[NOTE: This post was originally on my older blog and had comments, but unfortunately the comments didn’t transfer over here.]

A little interlude for an emotional reaction

The New Neo Posted on by

These last few days have been especially wearying and disheartening in terms of politics, haven’t they?

It’s one of those situations in which no matter how low I tune my expectations, people continue to go lower, and they do it in a smooth segue from somewhat reasonable/rational to less so to even less so to unhinged.

I’ve never seen anything like it in this country, and I’ve seen a lot because I’m pretty old.

So I guess this is just an open thread to talk about…the whole thing.

Frozen diet dinners: Healthy Choice Power Bowls

The New Neo Posted on by

Yeah, yeah, I know—“frozen diet dinners” don’t sound all that exciting. But I’m always looking for a way to have a quick, convenient, and tasty meal that’s pretty healthful and not incredibly salty, and these are the best I’ve found yet. I had no idea till I went to that site I just linked that the brand had so many varieties, because my local market only stocks three of them. Quite a few of them are ethnic-food-inspired, and for frozen food (and diet food as well) they actually taste pretty good.

I cook them longer than they say to; about 5 minutes seems to do the trick. Then let stand a minute, and mix it up. The one I’ve liked the best so far is this:

And this one is really good too, but it’s extremely spicy. So if that’s a problem for you, beware. Usually, prepared food that says it’s spicy isn’t very. Or, if it actually is spicy, the heat is all you can taste, and it’s harsh. This one was extremely spicy but still tasty. A little goes a long way—which is fortunate, because this being a diet meal, the portions are hardly huge:

Trouble among the Swedish literati

The New Neo Posted on by

And I mean big, big trouble.

No Nobel Prize in literature will be awarded this year as a result. Pity (that’s sarcasm, in case it’s not clear).

That first link I gave is to a very long story about the rot on the Nobel committee that ordinarily awards the prize, and the repercussions. If you don’t want to read something that long, that second link is much shorter. Here’s an excerpt from the latter:

The Academy, the 18-member body that chooses a laureate and awards the Nobel Prize in Literature annually, has seen seven of its members depart, including its first-ever female leader. In a release, the Academy noted that this would be the eighth time in its history it had chosen to declare what it called a “reserved prize,” and the fifth time the delayed prize would be awarded at the same time as the following years time.

But this time is different. The Academy has been reckoning with accusations of sexual harassment as the #MeToo movement continues to spotlight sexual abuse and misconduct that has long gone unaddressed in numerous entertainment industries, including the literary and publishing worlds.

The uproar surrounds the behavior of French photographer Jean-Claude Arnault, an associate of the Academy—he is married to one of its former members, Katarina Frostenson—who has been accused of sexually assaulting at least 18 women, including, possibly, the princess of Sweden. Arnault, through his lawyer, has denied all claims.

It’s a lot more complicated than that, actually, and also involves Frostenson, who’s been accused of separate (non-sexual) offenses. The longer article goes into that in exhaustive detail, but the bottom line is that these people seem to be incredibly full of themselves and to feel that rules are only for the little people.

Is “moderate Democrat” a complete oxymoron? Take the case of Jeanne Shaheen

The New Neo Posted on by

Jeanne Shaheen is a US senator from New Hampshire. New Hampshire is still considered to be a purple state, although it has gotten more blue in recent years. Shaheen is a Democrat and was a three-term governor of the state, who came to the Senate in 2008 and was re-elected in 2014. She was popular in New Hampshire as governor by positioning herself as a moderate who appealed to both sides, and although she did propose various taxes in a state which prides itself on not having a sales or income tax, her proposals were shot down by the legislature. For most of her ten years as senator she’s tended to keep a fairly low profile and has been a loyal Democrat voting the party line.

Today Shaheen tweeted the following:

Extraordinary.

Or, it would have been extraordinary even a year or two ago, particularly from the “moderate” Shaheens of the political world. But now it’s apparently standard to openly suggest such an unprecedented level of distrust and overreach. That someone with Shaheen’s history would tweet this sort of thing shows what the Democratic Party has become.

One of the saddest things about this is how few people probably realize how dangerous these developments are. Apparently anything is now okay, because TRUMP. And so far I haven’t seen all that much discussion of Shaheen’s tweet, except for this post by Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff, who writes sarcastically:

But why stop with the translator? Meetings with Putin aren’t the only opportunity to sell out the U.S. Why not demand testimony about what is said at meetings of the National Security Council or during conversations between Trump and John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Gen. Mattis, etc?

Why not make Trump wear a microphone and a body camera at all times?

Back when Obama was caught on an open mike talking to Medvedev about his own increased “flexibility” post-election (when he no longer would have to answer to the public), and Medvedev said he’s convey the message to Putin, no Republican suggested increased oversight of Obama’s dealings with Russia. He was the president, after all, although he had said something incredibly suspicious there, thinking it was off the record.

Shaheen’s behavior is an indication that the Democratic Party must see this sort of behavior on their part as a winner with the public, because otherwise they wouldn’t be speaking (and tweeting) so freely about their intentions. If Shaheen of New Hampshire feels free to be this route—or even compelled to go this route—it’s a very bad sign.

Would he or wouldn’t he?

The New Neo Posted on by

Today President Trump has said he actually meant “wouldn’t” instead of “would” when he uttered this phrase during the Helsinki news conference:

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be [Russia]. But I really do want to see the server.

Hmmm; that seems somewhat odd. But it’s actually somewhat believable. People become exhausted and they really do sometimes make errors like that. When Obama did it I defended him (and others, as well).

And this correction by Trump actually makes more sense than the original, because of the word “but” at the beginning of that second sentence:

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t be [Russia]. But I really do want to see the server.

If he had meant what he had originally said—that he didn’t see any reason why it would be Russia—then why wouldn’t he have said “And I really do want to see the server” instead of “But I really do want to see the server”?

Not that his explanations or excuses will make a particle of difference. Trump critics will laugh at “would” instead of “wouldn’t.” Those who like him still like him. The corrections also don’t change the basic thrust of Trump’s remarks, which was to try to take a middle position and not choose either side.

Trump actually took a somewhat different position today as a whole (not just about “would” or “wouldn’t”), now that he’s home:

President Donald Trump says he meant the opposite when he said in Helsinki that he doesn’t see why Russia would have interfered in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Back at the White House on Tuesday, the president told reporters that he said he meant he doesn’t see why Russia “wouldn’t” be responsible.

He also said he accepts the American intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia interfered in the election, but he denied that his campaign had colluded in the effort.

This furor will probably die down. But Trump didn’t help himself at that Helsinki press conference.

A suggestion for Trump (or for anyone): when answering a “gotcha” question, go process instead of content

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall that I’ve written about the content/process distinction before, particularly here:

When I was studying interpersonal communication and how to track an argument, one thing that was very much emphasized was the difference between content and process. Content is just what it sounds like: the subject matter about which two people (let’s say, a married couple) are arguing. “Did you do the dishes last night?” Process is everything else—for example, the emotion with which something is said, the type of vocabulary used, tone, repetition, body language, and the unspoken subtext.

Some of the most confusing disputes are the ones where one person begins an argument on the content level and the other person introduces a process rebuttal at some point. It can be especially tricky when someone switches back and forth between one level and the other in rapid succession. In the heat of the moment, the other person can fail to notice it, so that the person doing the switching gets at least one step ahead of the other.

That’s about arguments. But the same is true for interviews or any question-and-answer process.

Once you understand the distinction between content and process, you can notice it constantly. For example, when Trump responded to questions at the Helsinki news conference, one of the problems as I see it is that he sometimes went content when he should have gone process. In this case, “process” would have been to have called the press on the nature of the question itself.

If you go back and look at the transcript of the press conference or read my post on the subject, you’ll see that most of Trump’s more talked-about remarks were made in the context of answering questions rather than during his prepared statements. And some of those questions were “gotcha” questions—as was the entire situation concerning the indictment of 12 Russians right before Trump’s meeting with Putin.

It had been obvious to anyone paying a particle of attention that the timing of the indictments was no accident. A trap was being set and Trump would be left with no good response to the inevitable questions about the subject that would be asked at the Trump-Putin press conference.

Here’s one exchange I’m referring to; the question asked of Trump was this:

Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did.

What — who — my first question for you, sir, is who do you believe?

Trump had the following choices in terms of a content response:

(1) I believe our intelligence. In other words, Putin’s lying—and of course Putin was standing right there and the eyes of the world were on them both, so whatever negotiations and rapport that might have been established at their previous meeting would have probably been undone by a statement like that from Trump

(2) I believe Putin. In other words, our intelligence is lying, which would create another firestorm if he’d said it.

(3) I’m somewhere in-between. Trump actually chose door #3, which seemed safest, when he answered:

…I’ve been asking…for months…Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question. My people came to me, Dan Coates came to me and some others, they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia.

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server.

But I have — I have confidence in both parties. I — I really believe that this will probably go on for a while, but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server…

So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.

And what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer. OK?

But as you know, this resulted in an enormous hue and cry, and it pleased just about no one. It gave an opening to many people to declare that Trump was saying that he believes Putin over our intelligence, although he didn’t say that. But it was a reply from Trump that was neither fish nor fowl, and it was somewhat confusing as well.

I actually have sympathy for Trump’s position and the trap he was placed in, but Trump is usually very good at getting out of such traps. This time I think his instincts somewhat failed him, because I believe that the best way out would have been a process response rather than any sort of content response at all.

Now don’t get me wrong—I actually don’t think any answer Trump could have given would have failed to draw harsh criticism. So what I’m about to suggest would have drawn criticism too. But I believe it would have drawn criticism from fewer people, and I believe it would have been a course of action that would have given them the least ammunition possible.

Something like this sort of response is what I’m talking about:

We’re in Helsinki, we just had a conference between the heads of state of Russia and the US, and we talked about all kinds of extremely important and substantive issues which I mentioned in the address I just gave. But you’d like to get me to be accusatory towards Russia right now, or accusatory towards US intelligence agencies right now, and I won’t do either thing. I won’t play that game, although you’d like me to. I’m going to focus on the task at hand, and I’d like you to do that, too.

That’s a process response. It’s evasive and sidesteps the issue, to be sure, but it was an issue that needed to be sidestepped. There’s plenty of time to address it later, and Trump has already addressed it earlier as well.

Why didn’t Trump answer in that manner? I’m not sure, but I do know that he made a different decision. What motivated him? The issue of Russian interference in the 2016 election isn’t a neutral one for Trump. In addition to the more general issues involving the US and the protection of its election process, the topic has more personal elements. The first is the accusation that Russian interference was biased in favor of Trump and therefore he didn’t really win the election. It has the potential to taint his victory, and that’s certainly very personal. The second related personal element is the charge that Trump actually colluded with them to do it.

Those two personal elements probably account for Trump’s repeated need to deny that Russian interference happened at all. Most people think not only that Russians meddled with our 2016 election but that they’ve been meddling in our elections for a long long time—as have other countries—and that we meddle in the elections of other countries as well. That seems pretty obvious, actually (although I doubt their meddling mattered in the outcome of our 2016 election).

So why deny it? Well, I just stated the special reasons Trump has for denying this particular act of alleged interference.

In addition, at this point, why would anyone trust our intelligence agencies? I used to trust them, for the most part. But no longer.

They’ll make a conspiracy theorist of me yet.

At the drop of a fly or a hat or a goose

The New Neo Posted on by

The other day I was talking to a friend and I mentioned that something was “dropping like flies.”

And then I paused to wonder what on earth is the origin of the phrase. After all, it’s not as though we see flies dropping right and left, struck down in mid-flight. Why not “dropping like fall leaves?” Why flies?

So I looked it up and found that nobody knows the answer. Oh, there’s speculation, the leading one being that the life of a fly is short. But that doesn’t make sense to me in terms of the expression, because it’s not as though we notice the brief span of the individual life of the individual fly: “Oh, that cute one I named Henry was around yesterday but I haven’t seen him today; I wonder if his short life is over? I wonder if he dropped—like a fly?”

The best explanation was the one I’d suspected all along, and it involves what happens when we swat a fly. It drops immediately, like a stone—or like a dead fly.

All of this brought to mind the phrase “at the drop of a hat.” I had to guess at that one, too, and I thought maybe they used to start races by dropping hats. That seemed a bit dubious, but sure enough, it turned out to be the case, at least partially:

In the 19th century it was occasionally the practice in the United States to signal the start of a fight or a race by dropping a hat or sweeping it downward while holding it in the hand. The quick response to the signal found its way into the language for any action that begins quickly without much need for prompting.

Then there’s that old expression, “to drop like a goose.” You never heard it? Well, watch this clip, which I found in a link at Ace’s (some language here):

Yeah, I know; there’s no expression “drop like a goose.” However, while watching that, I thought, “Hey, those guys could actually tell their wives that they were on a wild goose chase.”

That phrase is nicely illustrated by the video. It’s awfully hard and awfully tiring to try to catch a goose. The phrase has a long history:

Our current use of the phrase alludes to an undertaking which will probably prove to be fruitless – and it’s hard to imagine anything more doomed to failure than an attempt to catch a wild goose by chasing after it. Our understanding of the term differs from that in use in Shakespeare’s day. The earlier meaning related not to hunting but to horse racing. A ‘wild goose chase’ was a race in which horses followed a lead horse at a set distance, mimicking wild geese flying in formation.

Hey, it’s better than talking about politics—right?

The NY Times is homophobic

The New Neo Posted on by

Or rather, homophobia is excused and even celebrated by the Times if it’s in the service of anti-Trump propaganda.

I already wrote such a long post today on the Trump-Putin news conference and the media storm around it that I’m loath to say much more. But this hypocrisy cannot be ignored:

The staid Gray Lady no more.

That cartoon (which you can watch if you click on the still) is part of a series of animated shorts being reviewed by the Times, so it’s not something they generated all by themselves. But choosing to include it in a tweet is really quite extraordinary.