It’s not the perp, it’s the “climate”

The New Neo Posted on by

Once it emerged that the Scalise shooter was a rabid leftist, the left shifted to blaming the right (see this and this) for the “climate of hate” it had created, ignoring the fact that most political shooters in recent years have been firmly on the left.

This is an old, old story. I recall it from the Kennedy assassination, and it still goes on in connection with that event. When Oswald turned out to be a dyed-in-the-wool leftist, the culprit became the right’s “climate of hate” in Dallas.

So when someone on the left does something bad, that person is only responding to the hate-signals from the right, wafting through the air.

At this point, why would anyone believe the Wapo’s anonymous sources?

The New Neo Posted on by

Why believe them, when they’ve proven to be wrong (or lying, my preferred explanation at this point) at so many turns?

For example, and most recently, almost every MSM news outlet reported that anonymous but reliable sources had told them that Trump’s assertion that James Comey had assured him he wasn’t under investigation was wrong, wrong, wrong, . They also said that in Comey’s congressional testimony he was going to say something to that effect.

Well, he said the exact opposite. Trump was right; the anonymous sources and the MSM were wrong, wrong, wrong.

Which brings up the old “fool or knave?” question. As I wrote in the first paragraph of this post, my explanation for their behavior is that they are lying, or at least acting with reckless disregard for the truth. It’s been said many times before, but it bears repeating, that the MSM is now a propaganda machine. How do they justify to themselves what they are doing? It’s probably easy. Partisans often can justify nearly anything if they think they’re doing noble work. And in the MSM’s opinion, destroying Trump is the most noble work they can find right now.

So yesterday we had more anonymous sources assuring us that now Trump really is under investigation by Special Counsel Mueller, this time for obstruction of justice:

Trump had received private assurances from then-FBI Director James B. Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing.

Five people briefed on the interview requests, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said that Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, and Rogers’s recently departed deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed by Mueller’s investigators as early as this week. The investigation has been cloaked in secrecy, and it is unclear how many others have been questioned by the FBI…

The obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president began days after Comey was fired on May 9, according to people familiar with the matter.

Hey, we were wrong then, but we’re right now, says the MSM. And maybe it’s even true. I wouldn’t doubt it, since “Trump obstruction of justice” talk is all the rage. What a Special Counsel to do? He almost has to investigate:

…[T]hanks to Comey’s public testimony about his meetings with Trump and his firing, [Duke law professor] Buell said the Mueller probe seems destined to cover this ground. “It is almost certain,” he said, “that any conclusion of that investigation will include, at the least, a statement from the special counsel to the Justice Department about whether the president committed a federal crime.”

Well, according to Andrew C. McCarthy, the proper route would be this:

…[I]t should be made clear that the special-counsel appointment is not a fishing expedition on the pretext of a sprawling counterintelligence probe. If criminal conduct has been discovered, it should be spelled out. “Trump campaign collusion with Russia,” aside from being unsupported by any public evidence, is not a crime. If there is to be a special counsel, the public, the Congress, the president, the Justice Department, and the special counsel himself must all know what crimes are being investigated. This would not bar Mueller from good-faith pursuit of investigative leads that are within this narrower mandate. In the superseding order, the DAG should provide that Mueller may seek an expansion of his jurisdiction if he finds evidence of other potential crimes ”” i.e., real violations of federal law that are grist for prosecution, not intriguing relationships that can be spun into conspiracy theories.

Rosenstein should make clear, though, that a) Mueller must explain (in writing, to Rosenstein) what additional crimes he wishes to investigate, and b) such an investigation may not go forward unless and until Rosenstein issues a new written directive, exactingly describing Mueller’s expanded jurisdiction ”” and explaining why the Justice Department is so conflicted that Mueller, rather than DOJ, should conduct the investigation.

The following is a comment I found at this article:

They can’t find any evidence of Trump involvement with Russia so now they’re trying to get him for supposedly blocking their attempts to find the evidence that doesn’t exist.

And after I found that, I saw that Trump himself had tweeted:

They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story. Nice

But isn’t that the way it so often works with these special prosecutors? Ask Scooter Libby:

[Associate Professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston] Blackman also stated, “Once appointed the special counsel has extremely broad autonomy to investigate as he sees fits. Under the relevant regulations he can only be fired for doing something improper. Once appointed he will keep investigating till he decides to stop.”

In all this manure, there has to be a pony somewhere, right?

It would be extremely interesting if Trump really possesses tapes of some of these exchanges with Comey and others. I don’t think he does, but I also think that, if he did, those tapes would become the most studied audios in history. They would end up being scrutinized for every hint, however, distant, that there was some sort of wrongdoing. Trump’s enemies are legion and powerful, and they will not rest until they find what they’re looking for. And if they can’t find it, they will twist Trump’s words and interpret them in an attempt to make the accusations stick.

The towering inferno: foreshadowed

The New Neo Posted on by

Horrific:

The residents of Grenfell House in west London had warned of the potentially devastating effects of a fire before last night’s blaze which caused at least 12 deaths and scores of injuries

The 24-storey building in north Kensington, which had only recently undergone an £8.6 million refurbishment overseen by Studio E Architects, was reported to be on fire just before 1am this morning.

Around 200 firefighters and 45 fire engines attended the ”˜major incident’ at the 120-flat concrete block – originally built in 1974 but given new windows and aluminium composite cladding with thermal insulation less than two years ago.

However residents under the banner Grenfell Action Group had raised numerous concerns about fire safety. A blog posted earlier today by the group reads: ’Regular readers of this blog will know that we have posted numerous warnings in recent years about the very poor fire safety standards at Grenfell Tower and elsewhere in [the borough].’

’All our warnings fell on deaf ears and we predicted that a catastrophe like this was inevitable and just a matter of time.’

Among other things, fire alarms within the building don’t seem to have functioned properly, and the fire spread extremely rapidly, as well. The death toll is expected to go higher, and there is speculation about the fire’s cause, which at the moment includes the possibility of a gas explosion, a faulty refrigerator, faulty wiring, the building’s outer cladding, and lack of adequate sprinklers and/or exits.

Jeff Sessions’ Congressional testimony

The New Neo Posted on by

Much ado about nothing:

It was said of the Seinfeld show that it was a TV program about nothing. It occurred to me, reading the transcript of Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee this afternoon, that the “Russia investigation””“this part of it, anyway”“is also about nothing. Sessions must have wondered, at times, why in the world he was there. He testified that he knew nothing about the alleged Russian spear phishing of the RNC’s and DNC’s email accounts. That being the case, what questions did the Democratic senators have for him?

None of any significance, it turned out.

But it wasn’t really about “nothing.” Propaganda is not “nothing.” And the point of the Sessions session was to cement in the minds of people who don’t pay close attention to the actual content (which would be most people) the idea that he’s guilty of something.

For example, as legend has it, the inimitable LBJ once said:

The race was close and Johnson was getting worried. Finally he told his campaign manager to start a massive rumour campaign about his opponent’s life-long habit of enjoying carnal knowledge of his barnyard sows.

“Christ, we can’t get away with calling him a pig-f****r,” the campaign manager protested. “Nobody’s going to believe a thing like that.”

“I know,” Johnson replied. “But let’s make the sonofab****h deny it.”

And that’s essentially what the Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were doing.

Sessions is a smart man, and he acquitted himself well. But they made the sonofab****h deny the charges, didn’t they? If that’s not “mission accomplished,” it’s certainly “mission half accomplished.”

Groundhog Day: the musical

The New Neo Posted on by

Until a reader alerted me, I hadn’t realized that one of my favorite movies of all time—one I’ve written quite a few posts about—had been turned into a musical.

My gut reaction was that it must be a bad idea. Deja vu all over again—although that would be apropos, of course, for Groundhog Day. But the reader wrote:

I can’t recommend it enough…How deep Phil’s journey was portrayed and just what a joy the whole thing was. The longer runtime gives them a chance to flesh out more of the characters. We get to see what a non-vapid female lead can do to the story…It is a truly great production, the music, the sets, the humor and the imagination that went into it all.

Now, that sounds like something worth seeing—although at Broadway’s prices, I won’t be expecting to go again and again and again.

It turns out that the book for the musical was written by the same man who wrote the original script for the movie, Danny Rubin. That’s certainly a good sign. Here Rubin describes how the movie and the musical came to be:

Over those 20-plus years I’ve received sacks of mail from all over the globe ”“ letters and articles and sermons and dissertations ”“ from psychologists who prescribe the film to their patients, from philosophers and religious leaders, as well as friends and fans of all stripes.

The movie was never intended, by me or by Harold, to be anything more than a good, heartfelt, entertaining story. He and I had terrific conversations about Buddhism and reincarnation, about Superman and the ethics of not saving everybody constantly, and other philosophical ideas stimulated by the story. Still, we never anticipated the impact the film would have. I did, however, feel from the very beginning that I’d stumbled upon a story with all the makings of a classic, so simple and true that it could be retold many different ways by many different storytellers.

When the British theatre director Matthew Warchus called one day about four years ago to ask whether I’d ever considered Groundhog Day as a musical I had to smile. By that point I already had an outline, a rough draft of the book, about 30 song ideas I had winnowed down to 12, and a ream of scenes, themes, bits, gags, progressions, dialogue snippets and even some melodies. Yes, I had considered Groundhog Day as a musical…

This is one I’d like to see.

A Resister turns violent: the Scalise shooter

The New Neo Posted on by

Shooter James Hodgkinson of Belleville, Illinois targeted Republican members of Congress and their aides in a shooting spree at a practice for a Congressional baseball game in which Republican House Whip Steve Scalise and an aide, as well as two members of the congressional police force, were injured:

At least five people including Scalise were hospitalized. Scalise, the third ranking member of House Republican leadership as the majority whip, appeared to have been shot in the hip, Rep. Mo Brooks told CNN. A congressional staffer, Zach Barth, was also injured. Matt Mika, a lobbyist for Tyson Foods who sometimes practices with the team, was also identified as one of the victims, and Sen. Jeff Flake said Mika was the most seriously injured. House Speaker Paul Ryan also identified two members of the Capitol Police who were injured, Krystal Griner and David Bailey.

As of 9:45 a.m. ET, Scalise was in stable condition but undergoing surgery, according to a statement from his office.

A much much worse result was narrowly averted. The shooter was killed by police, but his intent was clear:

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul told CNN “it would have been a massacre” without the Capitol Hill Police officers present.

“Nobody would have survived without the Capitol Hill police,” Paul said on CNN. “It would have been a massacre without them.”

We had nothing but baseball bats to fight back against a rifle with,” Brooks said.
Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake added that he saw a member of Scalise’s security detail return fire on the gunman for what felt like 10 minutes, even though the police officer was wounded in the leg.

In this case, police brought guns to a gunfight.

As for the deceased Hodgkinson, there is no question whatsoever of his political affiliation or motivations: it was hatred of Republicans and a desire to kill Republican politicians. He came to the right place for that, but fortunately he didn’t accomplish his aim.

When a shooting like this happens, Democrats and the press usually look to find a right-wing motivation. In this case and so many others, they find that it’s the opposite. However, often the political motivation seems secondary to the basic craziness (to use a non-technical term) of the shooter. In this case, however, the shooter’s political motivations appear—at least as best we can tell at this point—to have been paramount. Anti-Trump and anti-GOP political rhetoric has become so violent and practically mainstream that Hodgkinson only acted out the violence that so many talk about.

To be more specific, Hodgkinson was a Sanders supporter and worked on the Sanders campaign, as even Sanders has admitted in the course of his own condemnation of the attack. More importantly, I think, Hodgkinson was member of groups such as one entitled “Terminate the Republican Party” and “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans.”

Of course, plenty of people talk that way and don’t decide to make the “termination” literal. But it was apparently Hodgkinson’s fervent desire, and he decided to do something about it—which seems to have been his last act on earth.

Settlement in the suit by UVA fraternity against Rolling Stone

The New Neo Posted on by

So far, the “Jackie” UVA rape story has cost Rolling Stone a pretty penny:

A University of Virginia fraternity chapter has agreed to settle its lawsuit against Rolling Stone magazine over a debunked story about a rape on campus.

The Virginia Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity said in a statement on Tuesday that it is “pleased to be able to close the book” on the “ordeal” stemming from the 2014 article “A Rape on Campus.”

Fraternity spokesman Brian Ellis said it has agreed to settle the case for $1.65 million.

I chronicled the case in great detail when it occurred, and also described a previous lawsuit connected with the case here.

In my judgment, Rolling Stone got off too easy.

Release of American student from North Korea

The New Neo Posted on by

I hadn’t followed this story, but it sounds horrendous:

University of Virginia student Otto Warmbier has been medically evacuated from North Korea in a coma after being detained for 17 months, his parents told The Washington Post on Tuesday.

Warmbier, 22, is due to arrive home in Cincinnati on Tuesday evening, after a stop at a U.S. military facility near Sapporo, Japan.

The family said they were informed that North Korean officials had told American envoys that Warmbier became ill with botulism sometime after his March, 2016, trial in North Korea, where he was serving a 15-year-sentence for “hostile acts against the state.”

The North Korean account, the family said, claimed Warmbier then fell into a coma after being given a sleeping pill. The Warmbiers said they were told their son has remained in a coma since then.

You can read the whole story at the link, including the Trump administration’s recent efforts on Warmbier’s behalf.

I sincerely hope he makes a full recovery.

The next step for the Resistance

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wondered what the next step for the Resistance would be.

First there was the idea that Trump had colluded with the Russians. When that fell through, we had the charge of obstruction, which is current.

That almost certainly won’t end up going anywhere. But if Trump does fire Special Counsel Mueller, the progression will be to impeachment for that:

…[I]t is unnerving to see Trump loyalists not simply question Mueller’s independence for partisan purposes, but lay the groundwork for Trump to engineer his firing as well.

That’s according to Brian Beutler, writing in The New Republic. He makes a great many assumptions in his article, and feels little need to explain or justify them, but the gist of it is that of course the firing of Comey was not for cause (despite all the causes that have been elaborated), and of course the firing of Mueller would be likewise not for cause but merely “for partisan purposes.”

Yesterday I wrote “there’ll always be a sion or a tion” for the Resistance, and when I read the Beutler piece I wondered what the “sion/tion” of firing Mueller would be. Beutler provides it:

Democrats could also forestall Trump’s interference by stating that such extraordinary corruption would merit impeachment.

So it’s “corruption”—although in the legal sense, I don’t see how that charge would apply. In the legal sense, “corruption” ordinarily (although not always) refers to financial gain, which is not at issue here. Beutler doesn’t see fit to explain his claim, of course; he thinks the corruption is self-evident and/or an explanation unnecessary because after all it’s Trump, and he’s corrupt by definition.

Beutler adds:

[Democratic] Party leaders have been generally and unnecessarily sheepish about calling for Trump’s impeachment, but this would be a perfectly defensible place for them to draw a bright line.

That makes me chuckle. Oh, those sheepish Democrats, so tactful and reluctant to talk about Trump’s impeachment!

[NOTE: I don’t predict that Trump will actually fire Mueller, by the way.

However, here’s a discussion and analysis of the legal issues that would be involved were that to happen. The word “corruption” is not mentioned.]

Meanwhile, the Obamacare replacement efforts march on

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s getting real: Obamacare boosters, who have counted on the disarray of the GOP to continue indefinitely (not ordinarily a bad bet), are running scared because the repeal/replace effort may actually succeed.

In what form, isn’t exactly clear.

The article I just linked is a bit unintentionally humorous, though, with sentences such as this one:

Meanwhile, across the nation, health insurance plans are beginning to flee the Obamacare marketplace. They’ve cited the uncertainty around the health care law’s future, sown by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration.

Anyone who’s been following this for the nearly four years that Obamacare has actually been in operation realizes that the insurance companies aren’t just beginning to flee the Obamacare marketplace, and it’s not because of the big bad Republicans. No doubt the departures have increased (or will begin to increase) as it becomes more clear that a repeal/replace is imminent, but the flight has been going on for years, documented in countless reports and articles.

One interesting sideline is the role the famously contentious Ted Cruz appears to be playing in all of this:

The first-term senator from Texas is seeking to unite warring wings of the Republican Party around an effort to kill Obamacare and is showing a new willingness to compromise with colleagues to devise a replacement plan…

Cruz, 46, said Trump’s election and Republican control of the government prompted him to change his approach. These days, he’s negotiating regularly with McConnell and other senators. “The entire world changed on election day,” Cruz said in one of several recent interviews. “My focus today is on delivering results and not wasting this historic opportunity.”

In other words, the role of a senator in a majority party with a president belonging to the same party is different than when that senator’s party affiliation is in opposition to the majority in the Senate and/or the party affiliation of the president.

The details of the final plan—and its success or failure—have yet to be revealed. What’s that phrase again? We’ll see.