…isn’t good for the gander.
And the gander’s doing something about it.
The napalm girl photograph: the myth continues
It never seems to end, does it?
I’ve written about this famous photograph several times before, at great length here for PJ Media, and also here and here on the blog.
Is television ready for angry women?
That’s the title of this Atlantic article that caught my eye.
Actually, it caught Pocket’s eye, which decided to recommend it to me on the basis of some algorithm or other.
My immediate reaction was a stomach-churning “No!!” Hasn’t TV and just about every other form of media been full, been positively loaded, been inundated, with angry women telling us all the things they’re angry about?
The very thought makes me—angry.
I actually clicked on the article and started to read it, but it was so profoundly boring that I exited pretty quickly. One thing I took away from it is the idea that a lot of women are angry about the way the laws of sexual attraction work. Good luck with fighting that particular set of circumstances.
Nunes on the “spy”
Worth watching:
Mark Penn, special counsels, and consistency
I spend a lot of time reading the work of other writers on politics. Some of them—probably the vast majority—purport to be objective journalists but write with an obvious bias. What’s so obvious about it? Well, one thing is that they never break with the talking points or the party line on their side. Funny thing, but their side is always right, the other side always wrong, and that’s the case even when the facts on each side might look remarkably similar and you’d think the same arguments should apply to both.
I have a great deal more respect for the far rarer group of pundits who sometimes find themselves defending the opposite side. By “opposite side” I don’t always mean “opposing party.” Sometimes the person is defending someone he or she previously hasn’t approved of but who is on the same basic political side. A good example of that sort of thing would be Andrew C. McCarthy defending Trump and criticizing Mueller during the collusion investigation; although McCarthy is on the right he has never liked Trump.
But sometimes it truly is someone on the opposite side, such as Democrat Alan Dershowitz’s spirited defense of Trump—a person Dershowitz can’t stand, didn’t vote for, and probably will never vote for—to the horror of most of Dershowitz’s friends and admirers, who think he’s gone over to the Dark Side. I have long admired Dershowitz for his legal acumen and the clarity of his advocacy, but this incident only makes me admire him more.
Lately we’ve also had Democrat and Clinton-buddy Mark Penn. I mentioned him recently in this post, and I noticed today that he’s come out with a strong attack on Mueller and defense of Trump—with the argument that it’s for the good of us all. Here’s the money quote:
This process must now be stopped, preferably long before a vote in the Senate. Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again…
Stopping Mueller isn’t about one president or one party. It’s about all presidents and all parties. It’s about cleaning out and reforming the deep state so that our intelligence operations are never used against opposing campaigns without the firmest of evidence. It’s about letting people work for campaigns and administrations without needing legal defense funds. It’s about relying on our elections to decide our differences.
The blurb on Penn after the article contains this description of his history: “Mark Penn served as pollster and adviser to President Clinton from 1995 to 2000, including during his impeachment.” It’s also true that Penn was an influential advisor to Hillary Clinton during her successful Senate campaigns and her unsuccessful presidential bid in 2008.
In other words, Penn is a guy one might expert to be spearheading the Trump investigation and impeachment push, not opposing it. But in the interests of consistency, and of protection of the political process against the weaponization of the special counsel against that process, he is taking a very consistent stance. It can’t earn him credits in the eyes of most of his cronies, but for what it’s worth it earns him credits in mine.
Penn explains himself further here:
To Penn’s mind, an investigation such as this one ”” especially given its unbounded nature ”” will always be detrimental to the operation of a successful administration and federal government. “I think a lot of people see it as a sporting event: ”˜Just get the president! What difference does it make?’” he explains. “They think it’s a wholly legitimate tool to use against a president and an administration you don’t like. My attitude on that is, if you don’t like him, vote him out. Introducing these elements into politics is a kind of tool. It had a bad impact in ’98, and a bad impact here.”…
“What’s unprecedented here is the fuzziness of the accusation of ”˜Russian collusion,’ which led to the prosecutors examining everybody in the campaign, getting every email and piecing together virtually every meeting about everything, and then investigating everybody in the White House, in this search for that one contact with Russia that might prove it,” he says.
According to Penn, this process could very easily dissuade people from joining campaigns, presidential administrations, or other parts of the government, because it will lead them to believe that to do so could put them at risk of facing costly legal fees, FBI investigation, and possible prosecution. “We can’t run a campaign, democracy, or government under this kind of open-ended investigation,” he argues.
By the way, I also was against the impeachment of Bill Clinton and am against the continuing investigation of Trump, so I’ve been consistent too. I have different reasons for being against each, but I’m with Penn on the idea that you have to have good evidence to begin such an investigation and its scope should be circumscribed. I would go further and say that you should only pursue it if the issue is one of abuse of state power or a really high crime.
I keep saying that some day I’ll write a long post (or probably series of posts) on why I was opposed to the Clinton impeachment and continue to be opposed today, but I haven’t done it yet and it’s a huge topic. However, I touched on some of the arguments in this comment thread and in particular this one as well as this. And please follow all the links; it’s complicated. And that’s not even inclusive; there’s much more.
RIP Bernard Lewis
I was thinking about Bernard Lewis the other day and wondering whether he was still alive, because I remembered that even at the time of 9/11 (when I’d first heard of him) he was already pretty old. I got my answer yesterday, on reading the news that he had died the day before at the age of 101.
RIP.
Lewis was a giant in the study of Islamic culture and history. By my count of the list at this site, he wrote 33 books, 2 of which (Semites and anti-Semites; What Went Wrong?) I have read.
Lewis’ reputation depends on who you’re talking to:
“For some, I’m the towering genius,” Dr. Lewis told the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2012. “For others, I’m the devil incarnate.”
I’m in the “genius” camp.
There are few academics or historians who have matched the achievements of the emeritus Princeton University professor. He has written more than 24 books, received 15 honorary degrees, and fluently speaks, according to Ms. Churchill, eight languages which include the four languages of the Middle East – Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish – as well as Danish.
I’m tempted to think that there will never again be anyone like Lewis ”” that he is the last of a certain type of scholar. The last of the first-class scholars. But this cannot be true. . . .
I’m sure that, in the time of Thucydides, and shortly thereafter, people said, “That’s it ”” history-writing has come to an end. There will never be another one who is up to the job.” And it wasn’t true.
Nonetheless, I can’t imagine another scholar ”” another scholar of the Middle East ”” like Lewis.
And Martin Kramer:
An entire syllabus on the history of the Middle East since the advent of Islam could be compiled exclusively from the writings of Bernard Lewis. (And, so numerous are the translations of his works, it could be done in several languages.) In this respect, he towers above all of his contemporaries and successors and arguably also over his famed Orientalist predecessors, none of whom was trained as a historian. It will be a long time, perhaps generations, before the study of Islam and the Middle East will invite and admit another genius of his caliber.
In the meantime, we have his classic works to guide us through this dark age of obfuscation.
This is why they’re called “retrievers”
Retrievers retrieve:
But how on earth does a deer get into the ocean?
I’ve also seen retrievers nearly drown a person in their exuberant drive to retrieve that person.
Watergate II: Collusiongate
Unlike Watergate, the current crisis in government/spying/politics doesn’t have a memorable name. But for those of us who lived through Watergate it has a certain resonance with that event as well as major differences, imparting a strange sense of familiarity, dislocation, and increasing alarm.
This isn’t some burglary to get some dirt on the opposing party, and it isn’t a threat (unfulfilled) of using government entities to “get” the opposition. This is the marshaling of those government entities by one administration in order to “get” the next, and nearly succeeding.
And—as Roger L. Simon points out:
One of the more notable differences between Watergate and the metastasizing scandals involving the FBI, our intelligence agencies, and the Obama administration — subjects of the soon-to-be-released inspector general’s report — is that the media exposed Watergate. They aided and abetted the current transgressions.
By providing a willing and virtually unquestioned repository for every anonymous leaker (as long as he or she was on the “right” side) in Washington and beyond, the press has evolved from being part of the solution to being a major part of the problem.
However, it depends what side you were and are rooting for. For example, if you believe that Donald Trump and his associates colluded with Russia to try to defeat Hillary Clinton, then you believe that the media has been exposing Collusiongate, just as they did with Watergate.
And if you believe that FBI second-in-command Mark Felt, who turns out to have been the Woodward and Bernstein informant known at the time as Deep Throat, was right to leak to them, then you might believe that all of today’s leakers are also right to leak to MSM outlets like the Times in order to spread the word of Trump and Co.’s perfidy.
Now, I happen to think the evidence is powerful that Trump is innocent and that he was not only wrongly investigated but that he was most likely set up by the opposition—almost entrapped, although so far it seems the Trump people didn’t take the bait except for some go-nowhere incidents like the Trump Tower meeting between the Russian lawyer and Trump Junior. But those who read and admire the NY Times these days would beg to differ with me, and that group includes most of my friends and family.
As always, Andrew C. McCarthy has some especially cogent things to say on the subject of Collusiongate:
The fons et origo of the counterintelligence investigation was the suspicion ”” which our intelligence agencies assure us is a fact ”” that the Democratic National Committee’s server was hacked by covert Russian operatives. Without this cyber-espionage attack, there would be no investigation. But how do we know it really happened? The Obama Justice Department never took custody of the server ”” no subpoena, no search warrant. The server was thus never subjected to analysis by the FBI’s renowned forensics lab, and its evidentiary integrity was never preserved for courtroom presentation to a jury.
How come? Well, you see, there was an ongoing election campaign, so the Obama Justice Department figured it would be a terrible imposition to pry into the Democrats’ communications. So, yes, the entire “Russia hacked the election” narrative the nation has endured for nearly two years hinges on the say-so of CrowdStrike, a private DNC contractor with significant financial ties to the Clinton campaign…
Despite the absence of any evidence that the Trump campaign conspired in Russia’s espionage, the Obama Justice Department ”” led by then”“acting attorney general Sally Yates ”” relied on the Logan Act to conduct a criminal investigation of General Michael Flynn, a 30-year decorated combat veteran. A key Trump campaign adviser who played a central role in the Trump transition and was designated as the incoming national-security adviser, it was Flynn’s job to communicate with such foreign counterparts as Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, a Washington fixture whose dance card has never been short on Democrats. Flynn was also an intense Obama critic, and the outgoing administration understood that he was preparing to reverse Obama policies.
The Obama Justice Department and FBI investigated Flynn ”” including an ambush interview ”” on the theory that his discussions with Kislyak and other diplomats violated the Logan Act. Currently codified as Section 953 of the federal penal code, this statute purports to criminalize “any correspondence or intercourse” with agents of a foreign sovereign conducted “without authority of the United States” ”” an impossibly vague term that probably means permission from the executive branch. The Logan Act is patently unconstitutional, but no court has had the opportunity to invalidate it because, to borrow a phrase, no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. As our Dan McLaughlin has explained, the Act dates to 1799, a dark time for free-speech rights during the John Adams administration. Never in its 219-year history has it resulted in a single conviction; indeed, there have been only two indictments, the last one in 1852.
I can’t summarize the article; just read the whole thing. Anyone who reads even a portion of it should come away outraged at what the government has done to Trump and his associates—and the outraged should include people who oppose Trump and everything he stands for. However, that’s not the way things work in this day and age; outrage is very very selective.
One of the many differences between now and Watergate is that back then there was actual evidence on which the investigation, and Nixon’s ultimate resignation, was based. There was a break-in. There were audiotapes of what Nixon said about it. You may disagree about whether the country came out ahead because he resigned, but the facts were and are the facts.
Felt of the FBI leaked to the press, but he did not frame Nixon—nor, as far as I know, did he lie in his leaks. Collusiongate is based on almost no evidence except for the partisan manufactured kind, and is loaded with lies and blatant misbehavior and favoritism on the part of the government and its law enforcement agencies. I conclude that it is far far worse than Watergate, both in what actually happened and what it reveals about our government agencies.
[NOTE: In addition, the FBI appears to be intent on exposing its own supposedly secret source. Why? Nobody seems to know.]
Fashion at the royal wedding
No, it’s not going to be all fashion all the time today. But sometimes a person just has to relax.
A sampling of the styles at the Harry and Meghan wedding—
Oprah, nice try but I don’t think so. The color is a bit meh, the accessories are monotone, and the dress has too many horizontal lines that cut and widen the body.
The Clooneys. This lady is so tall and thin that she would look elegant in a gunny sack. But I don’t like the color of this; bright yellow is a hard color to wear successfully. And it looks like she’s dragging a yellow tail behind her:
Camilla. What can you say? She is not the loveliest of women, and time is unkind to most of us, but the frou-frou hat doesn’t seem to suit her all that well, although I bet it’s a challenge to keep coming up with chapeaus for just about every occasion. In a way I kind of like it. Why not go big and bold and fluffy?
Gina Torres is some actress Meghan knows, and although I’ve never heard of her before she sure looked fabulous at the wedding. Not an easy dress for most people to wear, but a piece of cake for her:
And Kate, who is less than a month postpartum with her third child and looks as slim as ever (unlike the rest of us mortals), looks as beautiful as ever, along with her family. And no, she’s not wearing white here, although the photo makes it look that way. The dress is pale yellow:
I could go on and on and on, but I’ll close now with Kate’s sister Pippa, who looked lovely but (as pointed out here by some observer) resembled the Arizona iced tea can. Which is a lovely can:
Pippa's dress looks like the Arizona iced tea can #RoyalWedding pic.twitter.com/pZCHVqNXYD
— Sarah Rogers (@sarahnrogers) May 19, 2018
As for me, I’m due to attend a wedding in about a month, and the dress I plan to wear is something like the above, only a different color—a periwinkle blue with blue, white, and navy flowers—and also of a more flowing fabric with a slightly asymmetrical hem.
Royal wedding, royal dress
I didn’t know until yesterday that today was the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but of course once I learned it I had to comment on the fashion.
To wit, the dress:
I happen to like plain, classic, simple, modest wedding dresses, and this one is certainly that. But I think it’s a bit of a yawn and not all that flattering. I seem to be in a minority there.
But I wish them well. Marrying into British royalty is a step into a lifetime of intense press coverage and scrutiny of one’s every hiccup, fashion or otherwise, and I hope Meghan is up to it. Harry had no choice—he was born to it—but she did.
I’m not sure when the last time that an American married into the inner royal family of Britain. Does Wallis Warfield Simpson count? After all, her intended, Edward VIII, was already king when they contemplated marriage, so that’s marrying into the family big time. But he had abdicated prior to their official union, for the purpose of marrying her (and perhaps because being king didn’t quite suit him anyway). Simpson was—like Markle—not only an American, but a divorcee as well, in Simpson’s case a two-time divorcee. Scandal!
Well, the times they have a-changed. What once caused a constitutional crisis isn’t all that big a deal these days (even if Harry were king right now, which he is not and is unlikely to ever become).
One more thing—Markle is biracial, which apparently has engendered a certain amount of online racist commentary from the people who get off on online racist commentary. At this point in time, for most of us, Meghan’s race is another fact about her that isn’t of much import or impact, although it’s mildly interesting and another sign of the times.
I wish the couple much good luck in the future.
[NOTE: Fashions worn by some in the crowd of guests can be found here. It’s a challenge to look chic and yet not staid when the requirements are fancy but not formal, sleeves covering arms and shoulders, no decolletage, no black or white, and a hat.]
Another false accusation of racism…
…an accusation that is easily proven false.
Why would someone make a claim that is so very easily disproved? Do people doing this fool themselves into thinking the paranoid story they’ve made up actually happened the way they’re telling it? Or do they not recognize what a bodycam is? Or are they devotees of “fake, but accurate”? Or do they just figure that the lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its boots on?
In this case the depressing fact is that the liar is South Carolina’s NAACP president Rev. Jerrod Moultrie. This is his story of a recent traffic stop:
Me: hello sir how can I help you
Officer: I am stopping you cause you fail to put on a turn signal and do you have any drugs in the car
Me: sir how would you know If I used my tum signal when you was approaching me as I turn and is there any drugs in your car?
Officer: License and registration
Me:sir can I take off my seat belt and get it
Officer: sure
Me: (as i open glove box i said )sir this is a new car i just purchased and all ! have is bill of sale, insurance card and registration from car I am transferring tags
Officer: ok where you work and who car is this and why you in this neighborhood
Me: sir I am a pastor and I live in the house on the left
Officer:And I guess I am the bill gates
Me: sir what’s the problem
Officer: I ask who car for the last time and why you in this neighborhood
Me: I told you for last time who car and where I live.( as my neighborhood starts to come out there house) By the way sir can I speak to your supervisor
Officer: walks away with my information When he returned he said did you know your tags comes back to another vehicle
Me: sir I just explain this to you
Officer: you need to park this vehicle and never drive it till you get this straight with DMV
Me: sir I have purchased multiple vehicles and never heard this now officer and I start fussing cause I said well i will be driving my car sir and anyt time I want
Officer: I am waming you to not drive this car till tags get straight and just know I am doing you a favor tonight not taking you to jail or writing you a ticket
Me: sir you might be doing your Self a favor but you certainly not doing me a favor.
The reverend finished off his post by saying that his wife and baby were in the back seat, but still he was profiled and accused of having drugs.
“Guess I can’t be a pastor and can’t drive a Mercedes Benz and live in a nice neighborhood,” Rev. Moultrie said. “”¦someone needs to answer for this behavior and this officer will.”
And here is the bodycam video:
Moultie has recently taken down his Facebook post describing the incident. This man has greatly set back his own cause and given ammunition to those who doubt all such claims as a matter of course. Why on earth would he not realize that to begin with?
The “whistleblower” on Michael Cohen’s finances
The war on Michael Cohen continues with the disclosure of some of his financial records:
Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels’s attorney, published a memo last week that he said detailed Michael Cohen’s financial transactions…
But questions arose about how Avenatti had obtained the confidential information, especially as he referenced “3 Suspicious Activity Reports” related to Cohen’s dealings and teased more significant disclosures to come. The Treasury Department launched an inquiry into the potential leak.
Yesterday, the New Yorker published a piece by the very busy Ronan Farrow that purported to give the whistleblower’s account of why the leak occurred:
A law enforcement official leaked the documents, the official told Farrow, after becoming concerned that two reports on Cohen’s suspicious financial activity could not be found in a government database. Both of those reports, according to the New Yorker, detail even more substantial financial transactions ”” about $3 million, three times the amount of last week’s disclosures.
This is an extraordinary allegation. This whistleblower is claiming the documents went missing from the database, the more sinister ”” but so far unverifiable ”” implication being that they were purposely being withheld.
We have become quite used to this sort of abuse of confidentiality among “law enforcement officers”—who of course cannot be expected to go to authorities and discover why such reports might be missing, but must go immediately to the press (and/or to Stormy Daniels’ attorney?).
But it turns out that there might be a very good reason such information went missing:
New statement from FinCEN spox – it does limit access to SARs in ongoing investigations pic.twitter.com/aoeAwggB34
— Aruna Viswanatha (@aviswanatha) May 17, 2018
Did that happen here? Why, yes, it apparently did:
A U.S. official familiar with the process says that the SAR is not deleted or removed from the FinCEN database.
The official says users attempting to view the SAR are informed that is unavailable for viewing.
— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) May 17, 2018
And this:
This still makes no sense. If it's "longstanding procedure", why would someone in law enforcement not know that? Why would this whistleblower put his/herself into the jackpot over longstanding procedure? Something else is going on here.
— Ellyn (@egayle333) May 17, 2018
In his original story, Farrow actually covered the possibility of an innocent explanation for the fact that the data couldn’t be viewed:
Yes, we explain in story that SARs likely missing from search results due to restricted access (& possibility that it’s due to request from Mueller/SDNY). 7 experts agreed this is almost unheard of & source was still alarmed by what this suggested about contents of the two SARs. https://t.co/ePblKFGPkk
— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) May 17, 2018
But because that doesn’t seem sensational enough, most of the news reports of the “missing” records ignored the possibility that the omission of the material was not a coverup.
Now this particular leaker faces the possibility of a criminal charge:
FinCEN also reiterated that the Treasury inspector general is still investigating the disclosure of the one SAR document, which is a federal criminal offense.
I recall that when Michael Cohen’s papers were raided by authorities, there was speculation that the purpose of the raid was to obtain information to leak to the media to damage Cohen and Trump. I doubt that this “whistleblower” will ever be charged with anything.