The New Neo

More Jordan Peterson: on “equality” and where it leads

Posted on April 19, 2018 by neoApril 19, 2018

There are so many wonderful Jordan Peterson videos it’s hard to choose just one (or watch just one; they’re like potato chips).

But I think this is especially fine:

I’ll add that, having watched quite a bit of Peterson speaking without notes, it seems to me that one of the keys to his presentation (besides a great deal of knowledge and the ability to express it in language both clear and articulate) is his intensely sharp focus and marshaling of his energy to the task at hand and the question at hand.

It is something the listener can feel on a gut level, along with a sense of Peterson’s sincerity and urgency. I believe these qualities of clarity, knowledge, sincerity, and urgency are the main reasons for Peterson’s great popularity among people who usually aren’t glued to their seats when professors of philosophy opine.

[NOTE: By the way, on the subject of the kulaks and the Ukrainian famine (Holodomor), there’s a great deal of information available. The famine had many causes, but the war on the kulaks was certainly prominent among them:

[Stalin’s war on the kulaks] was formalized in a resolution, “On measures for the elimination of kulak households in districts of comprehensive collectivization”, on January 30, 1930. The kulaks were divided into three categories: those to be shot or imprisoned as decided by the local secret political police; those to be sent to Siberia, North, the Urals, or Kazakhstan, after confiscation of their property; and those to be evicted from their houses and used in labour colonies within their own districts…

Some researchers found that the famine of 1932”“1933 followed the assault on Ukrainian national culture that started in 1928. The events of 1932”“1933 in Ukraine were seen by the Soviet Communist leaders as an instrument against Ukrainian self-determination. At the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CP(b)U), Moscow-appointed leader Pavel Postyshev declared that “1933 was the year of the defeat of Ukrainian nationalist counter-revolution.” This “defeat” encompassed not just the physical extermination of a significant portion of the Ukrainian peasantry, but also the mass imprisonment or execution of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, and artists.

By the end of the 1930s, approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite had been eliminated. Some, like Ukrainian writer Mykola Khvylovy, committed suicide.

Liberty and equality of outcome (whether a truly desired policy, or a fake front to appeal to the “masses”) are always at war. They are inherently at war. Equality of opportunity is the only type of equality that can coexist with liberty and in fact foster it.]

According to Dershowitz…

Posted on April 19, 2018 by neoApril 19, 2018

…(as quoted in Politico, anyway; I couldn’t find the origins of the quote):

“That’s what [prosecutors will] threaten [Cohen] with: life imprisonment,” said Alan Dershowitz, the liberal lawyer and frequent Trump defender who met with the president and his staff over two days at the White House last week. “They’re going to threaten him with a long prison term and try to turn him into a canary that sings.”

I have little doubt that they plan to threaten Cohen with every penalty they can come up with, and more. That is one of the main reasons they are investigating him: to get him to implicate Trump. Of course, like the word of a jailhouse snitch, that sort of testimony would be at least somewhat suspect, but that’s a small matter (or no matter at all) to prosecutors compared with the prize of snagging the Great Orange-Gold Whale named Trump.

It also serves the purpose I mentioned yesterday: scaring other people off from helping Trump or serving him in any capacity at all.

It’s a twofer for partisan prosecutors, you might say.

But life imprisonment? I was unaware that murder was one of the raps they’re trying to pin on Cohen, although I suppose at this point nothing would surprise me. But if Dershowitz actually uttered that quote, I’m assuming he didn’t mean a life sentence per se, and that he meant instead that “life” would be the sum of the sentences for all the charges they’d bring against him, with the sentences not to be served concurrently.

And remember, they wouldn’t be expecting to actually convict him, nor would it be necessary to do so—merely to terrify him.

Nine ways you’re cooking pasta wrong

Posted on April 19, 2018 by neoApril 19, 2018

Nine ways? That’s a lot of ways.

I figured I was committing all nine errors. But it turns out that I’m only committing one: using too small a pot.

And I was already well aware that I often use too small a pot, and yet I do it anyway. I do it because (a) it’s much faster to boil a smaller amount of water, and I’m usually in a hurry and hungry (b) my smaller pots are right out in the open, hanging from hooks, whereas the very big ones are much more annoying to haul out; and (3) I just feel like it, so there.

But who on earth thinks things like number 8, “You think pasta is just for cold weather”? Bizarre. However, I do know that there are people who live by maxim number 9, “You throw out the leftovers.” I know several people (not just one—several—and they don’t live together) who have a thing against leftovers.

Hey, I know people who don’t like to mix food. These are adults, too. By “mix food,” I mean they don’t like stews or soups, for example. But it’s more extreme than that. Everything has to be simple and unitary. A piece of meat, next to (but not touching) a pile of mashed potatoes, next to (but not touching) a mound of green beans. That sort of thing.

And I know other people who eat that way, only minus the veggies. And yes, these are fully-grown adults.

As our present POTUS would say: sad.

[NOTE: Then again, Trump’s actual diet has been said to be horrendous (fast food, mainly), but it’s also been reported that a few months ago after his medical checkup he reformed and now is into soups and salads.]

The ups and downs of the fight against blog spam

Posted on April 19, 2018 by neoApril 19, 2018

I’m always interested in the spam cycles on the blog—which I assume merely reflect the spam cycles on WordPress and its anti-spam plugins. By “spam-cycles” I don’t mean anything to do with email, I’m taking about the bots (or whatever they’re called) that plague the comments sections of blogs. They’re programmed into being by people, I assume, but then they’re automatically generated in enormous numbers and come with enormous frequency. They will completely take over comments if there are no defenses in place against them.

Their purpose is to increase the rankings of the sites that send them, in line with the Google algorithms that determine these things. They probably have other purposes too, but I forget what they are and I don’t feel like investing the time to look it up right now. There was a period when this blog got many thousands per day that were captured in the spam filter—and I mean something like ten thousand or so per day, which I would need to delete two or three times a day or they would start to gum up the works.

Then quite suddenly the volume went down to hundreds per day. Apparently, WordPress and the plugins (sounds like a 50s rock group) was making headway against them. That lasted for quite some time, maybe a year.

Then it got even better. Maybe twenty a day, and I could go for ages without even needing to clear the spam file.

And then, just as suddenly, about two days ago the number zoomed up to close to a thousand a day. This is still very manageable—after all, the vast majority never see the light of day, and it’s easy and only takes a moment to get rid of the whole folder each day. But I noticed that the spam is almost all coming from one particular site that specializes in proxy IP numbers.

It seems that this one site—like a rogue virus—has managed to find a way to elude whatever defenses WordPress and the WordPress plugins have set up so far, defenses that are adequate to almost all the other viruses. I look forward to seeing how long it takes WordPress to marshal its defenses again and defeat (temporarily) the spambot.

Southwest Flight 1380

Posted on April 18, 2018 by neoApril 18, 2018

Heroic passengers, heroic pilot. Unfortunately, one woman died.

“There’s a ring around the engine that’s meant to contain the engine pieces when this happens,” said John Goglia, a former NTSB member. “In this case it didn’t. That’s going to be a big focal point for the NTSB ”” why didn’t (the ring) do its job?”

UPDATE: For more on the pilot, and for interviews with passengers, go here.

More on the Cohen investigation from Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted on April 18, 2018 by neoApril 18, 2018

I previously linked to Andrew McCarthy’s take on the Cohen searches, and I added this:

For 20 years McCarthy worked as a prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, which is the office involved here, and so he’s inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume there probably was a serious crime they were investigating that would justify the search. I’m not at all convinced, but I respect McCarthy enough to point out his article.

Now McCarthy has written another article on what might be going on with the Cohen case, and as usual he has a very interesting and somewhat unique perspective. The gist of what he says is that the seizure of Cohen’s attorney-client communications was in connection with an already-ongoing investigation into his business dealings that apparently had little to do with his connection to Trump. Therefore, McCarthy continues to believe there’s a “there” there, but that the “there” may not involve Trump at all:

…[P]rosecutors say Cohen has been under investigation for months. The probe involves a range of crimes, “many of which have nothing to do with his work as an attorney, but rather relate to Cohen’s own business dealings,” the government explained.

Consequently, even before the raids, the court authorized the FBI and prosecutors to search various email accounts maintained by Cohen. While the government reports that “zero emails were exchanged [by Cohen] with President Trump,” the existence of this monitoring means prosecutors long ago had to implement procedures to safeguard the A-C privilege.

However, (and this is me talking, not McCarthy) does anyone actually think that the investigation of Cohen is some sort of coincidence unrelated to Trump? Of course not. One of the main messages of his prosecution appears to be that it’s dangerous to work for Trump, and I believe this message is very intentional in nature. An investigation of Cohen is meant to have what in the law biz is called “a chilling effect” on the desire to associate with or assist Trump, and whether or not Cohen is ever found guilty of a crime is secondary to that goal, in my opinion.

McCarthy has also said he believes that the SDNY (the office involved in the prosecution, for which McCarthy previously worked for many years) is on the up and up and would not prosecute Cohen for political reasons. As I wrote earlier, I’m not at all convinced of that. But now McCarthy himself has pointed out a problem with his earlier theory:

The worst aspect of yesterday’s hearing was the revelation that Cohen claims Sean Hannity as one of his clients. I say this as a proud SDNY alum who has assured people that the Cohen investigation is surely not political, and as a longtime admirer of Kimba Wood, who is a very solid federal judge…

When, for whatever reason, these matters become relevant to a criminal investigation, the common practice is for prosecutors to issue a grand-jury subpoena, directing the lawyer to identify clients or fee arrangements. Grand-jury proceedings are secret. In this manner, the government can proceed with its investigation but the lawyer’s clients are not publicly embarrassed or slimed with innuendo. Moreover, the client can be given notice and an opportunity to be heard by the court, in order to make any argument he may have against being identified, particularly to the public…

Moreover, the A-C privilege belongs to the client, not the attorney. The law is supposed to protect the client, not indulge the lawyer. While the press has made this seem nefarious, lawyers ”” and especially lawyers who’ve gotten crosswise with the law ”” never want to reveal the identities of their clients…

…[I]t is difficult to see what happened in court as anything other than a gratuitous shot at Hannity, which Trump partisans will naturally take as a sign that the investigation is political. The unnecessary disclosure put Hannity in the position of having to explain himself publicly, to assure people that he is not involved in embarrassing or criminal episodes for which he needed to retain a “fixer.” (In fact, he explains that he and Cohen may have had informal legal discussions but never a formal A-C relationship.)

I don’t think the idea that this is “a sign that the investigation is political” is limited to “Trump partisans.” I think it’s obvious that it is political.

As for Kimba Wood, I can’t say I’ve followed her judicial career since the 90s when she was nominated for AG by Bill Clinton and had to withdraw because of repercussions from what was known as Nannygate, even though Wood herself had done nothing illegal. It could be argued that her nomination by Clinton constitutes a conflict of interest, but I think it’s a very weak argument. If that were the case, all federal judges would be unable to rule on any case that affected the person who nominated them, or that person’s rivals. That would bring the system to a grinding halt, and although that’s what some people would like, it ain’t gonna happen.

Sweden has a problem

Posted on April 18, 2018 by neoApril 18, 2018

Actually, two problems.

One is a violence problem, and one is denial about that problem:

In response, the Swedish government has launched an international campaign for “the image of Sweden” playing down the rise in crime, both in its media strategy and through tax-funded PR campaigns. During a visit to the White House in March, Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lé¶fven admitted that his country has problems with crime and specifically shootings, but denied the existence of no-go zones. Sweden’s education minister, Gustav Fridolin, traveled to Hungary last week with the same message.

But the reality is different for those on the ground: The head of the paramedics’ union Ambulansfé¶rbundet, Gordon Grattidge, and his predecessor Henrik Johansson recently told me in an interview that some neighborhoods are definitely no-go for ambulance drivers ”” at least without police protection.

Since crime is intimately linked to the country’s failure to integrate its immigrants, the rise in violence is a sensitive subject. When the Swedish government and opposition refer to the country as a “humanitarian superpower” because it opened its doors to more immigrants per capita during the migrant crisis than any other EU country, they mean it. This has resulted in some impressive contortions.

The Swedes have become somewhat desensitized to stories of shootings in that country, although such incidents used to be very rare. There’s a general election coming up in September, and it will be interesting to see if there is a voter backlash against the status quo, as there has been in other portions of Europe.

The computer gremlins have a sense of humor

Posted on April 17, 2018 by neoApril 17, 2018

In the post telling you about my TurboTax woes, I mentioned that I ended up doing my taxes as I always have so far—by hand.

And today I mailed them off, with hours to spare. Way ahead of time, by my definition.

Now I see this story:

And they say procrastination isn’t good. A tax reprieve till 9999 sounds pretty darn good, though, doesn’t it? And that’s just in the heading, the part in red. In the body of the message, we see that we also get to time travel to the past.

The online filers stymied by the problem got an extra day’s grace. Everything is in the best of hands.

A top I.R.S. official warned Congress in October that a “catastrophic” system failure was just a matter of time.

More people are filing online than ever before, even though I’m not one of them.

Barbara Bush dies at 92

Posted on April 17, 2018 by neoApril 17, 2018

I remember her as a forthright, no-nonsense woman who felt like a breath of fresh air as First Lady—and I was a Democrat back then.

And what a life!

Married at 19 to George Bush, she’d met him at 16 and he was the first man she ever kissed. “When I tell my children that, they just about throw up.”

That’s what I mean by “forthright.”

A stable marriage for 73 years, five surviving children (a sixth died as a child), 17 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, wife to one president and mother to another.

Not a bad run.

RIP, Barbara Bush.

Did the Neil Gorsuch vote on an immigration case constitute a betrayal of the right?

Posted on April 17, 2018 by neoApril 17, 2018

The short answer is no:

It’s a pretty defensible vote.

The law says you can be deported for any “aggravated felony.” One category of “aggravated felony” is “a crime of violence.”

The man the government sought to deport was convicted for burglary, twice.

Is burglary a “crime of violence”?

There is some argument one could make, if one wanted, that burglary is a “crime of violence.” Historically, it was defined as breaking into a home at night, and treated more severely than other breaking and entry crimes, such as robbing a business or warehouse. That’s because when you’re breaking into a home at night, the odds that there will be law-abiding people present is high, and therefore the chance of violent conflict similarly high.

But I don’t think most burglary statutes now require the dwelling in question to be a “home,” and I don’t think the “night” part is required often, either…

Gorsuch voted in favor of the notion that the law should be reasonably clear and specific enough to alert the reasonably-intelligent average citizen what the law is and what the consequences of breaking it are…

Though that applies to citizens, generally such principles apply to non-citizens too.

AllahPundit points out that the decision relies heavily on a previous ruling striking down a similarly-vague criminal statute (this one, regarding deportation, is civil in nature), a decision written by Antonin Scalia.

I guess people can argue about this either way, but I don’t think anyone should take this as a sign that Gorsuch is secretly one of them. Antonin Scalia would often write surprisingly (surprisingly, for the unschooled) decisions favoring criminals, because he was a stickler about laws saying what they mean and meaning what they say, without lots of room for imagineering by ambitious prosecutors. (He was also pretty adamant on the Constitution similarly meaning what it said, you may have heard.)

I believe that this vote by Gorsuch is in that vein, and I can see how a conservative could vote the way he voted.

But certain NeverTrumpers have taken this as a way to point out what folly it was to elect Trump. It goes like this:

But Gorsuch!

heheheheheh

— John Podhoretz (@jpodhoretz) April 17, 2018

That tweet is still another example of my contention that Twitter tends to bring out the worst in people. There are many things wrong with that tweet, even if you ignore its puerile nature.

The first is the aforementioned point: the vote by Gorsuch is not necessarily a going-over to the liberal side, although he ended up voting with them. People from different camps can agree on a particular point without being joined at the hip ideologically, or even in agreement ideologically.

The second is that one vote does not tell you whether a person was a good pick or a bad pick for SCOTUS justice. I doubt there’s a justice—even the most reliably conservative ones over time—who has not on some occasion, for idiosyncratic reasons, voted differently than the conservative block. Justices on each side (even the liberal one) are not a joined-at-the-hip phalanx in all instances, although it sometimes seems that way (and although some people would like it to be that way).

The third is that even if Gorsuch ends up somewhat more liberal than originally thought (and I don’t think he will, actually), it would not mean that Hillary Clinton’s pick would have been the same or better rather than worse. Her pick would almost certainly have been far far worse.

The fourth is similar to the third—but it posits that, instead of a Hillary Clinton win, another one of the Republican candidates had won the nomination instead of Trump and had then gone on to beat Hillary. If we had a President Rubio, for example, and he got to appoint a SCOTUS justice, would that person have been a better justice than Gorsuch? I see no reason whatsoever to think so.