…casts itself as victim.
To liberty: Happy Fourth of July weekend!
[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post. It was written in the springtime quite few years ago, during a visit to New York.]
I’ve been visiting New York City, the place where I grew up. I decide to take a walk to the Promenade in Brooklyn Heights, never having been there before.
When you approach the Promenade you can’t really see what’s in store. You walk down a normal-looking street, spot a bit of blue at the end of the block, make a right turn–and, then, suddenly, there is New York:
And so it is for me. I take a turn, and catch my breath: downtown Manhattan rises to my left, seemingly close enough to touch, across the narrow East River. I see skyscrapers, piers, the orange-gold Staten Island ferry. In front of me, there are the graceful gothic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge. To my right, the back of some brownstones, and a well-tended and charming garden that goes on for a third of a mile.
I walk down the promenade looking first left and then right, not knowing which vista I prefer, but liking them both, especially in combination, because they complement each other so well.
All around me are people, relaxing. Lovers walking hand in hand, mothers pushing babies in strollers, fathers pushing babies in strollers, nannies pushing babies in strollers. People walking their dogs (a preponderance of pugs, for some reason), pigeons strutting and courting, tourists taking photos of themselves with the skyline as background, every other person speaking a foreign language.
The garden is more advanced in time than gardens where I live, reminding me that New York is really a southern city compared to New England. Daffodils, the startling blue of grape hyacinths, tulips in a rainbow of soft colors, those light-purple azaleas that are always the first of their kind, flowering pink magnolia and airy white dogwood and other blooming trees I don’t know the names of.
In the view to my left, of course, there’s something missing. Something very large. Two things, actually: the World Trade Center towers. Just the day before, we had driven past that sprawling wound, with its mostly-unfilled acreage where the WTC had once stood, now surrounded by fencing. Driving by it is like passing a war memorial and graveyard combined; the urge is to bow one’s head.
As I look at the skyline from the Promenade, I know that those towers are missing, but I don’t really register the loss visually. I left New York in the Sixties, never to live there again, returning thereafter only as occasional visitor. The World Trade Center was built in the early seventies, so I never managed to incorporate it into that personal New York skyline of memory that I hold in my mind’s eye, even though I saw the towers on subsequent visits. So what I now see resembles nothing more than the skyline of my youth restored, a fact which seems paradoxical to me. But I feel the loss, even though I don’t see it. Viewing the skyline always has a tinge of sadness now, which it never had before 9/11.
I come to the end of the walkway and turn myself around to set off on the return trip. And, suddenly, the view changes. Now, of course, the garden is to my left and the city to my right; and the Brooklyn Bridge, which was ahead of me, is now behind me and out of sight. But now I can see for the first time, ahead of me and to the right, something that was behind me before. In the middle of the harbor, the pale-green Statue of Liberty stands firmly on its concrete foundation, arm raised high, torch in hand.
The sight is intensely familiar to me—I used to see it frequently when I was growing up. But I’ve never seen it from this angle before. She seems both small and gigantic at the same time: dwarfed by the skyscrapers near me that threaten to overwhelm her, but towering over the water that surrounds her on all sides. The eye is drawn to her distant, heroic figure. She’s been holding that torch up for so long, she must be tired. But still she stands, resolute, her arm extended.
Kids got talent
I am often amazed at the singing skills demonstrated by youngsters on those talent reality shows. They seem to be genuinely nice kids, too, full of energy and drive. After all, think how much work it takes—and how much confidence—to sing like this at these ages, and to perform with such elan:
You may think I’m overdoing it here, but I think that their focused and possibly obsessive pursuit of excellence demonstrates something great about the human spirit.
And I love the proud and tearful parents, too.
Life imitates art
Remember the movie “Delivery Man,” about a sperm donor who is put in touch with the many children he’s fathered?
Well, here’s a real-life story like that.
Andrew C. McCarthy on the absurdity of the Trump obstructionism charges
McCarthy writes:
What [Trump] told Comey, in substance, was that Flynn had been through enough. A combat veteran who had served the country with distinction for over 30 years, and who had not done anything wrong by speaking with the Russian ambassador as part of the Trump transition, Flynn had just been cashiered in humiliating fashion. The one who had done the cashiering was Trump, and he was still upset about it.
That, obviously, is why he lobbied Comey on Flynn’s behalf. And as I have pointed out before, it was an exercise in weighing the merits of further investigation and prosecution that FBI agents and federal prosecutors do hundreds of times a day, throughout the country. That matters because, as their superior and as the constitutional official whose power these subordinates exercise, Trump has as much authority to do this weighing as did Comey ”” who worked for Trump, not the other way around.
…This appears to be the one and only time that Trump advocated on Flynn’s behalf. If Trump was obstructing an investigation, he was awfully passive about it.
…Moreover, at the time these events actually happened, Comey took no action consistent with someone who understood himself to be under a directive by the president of the United States. He and the FBI continued the investigation. Trump not only did not stop them from doing that. He never asked about the matter again…
You cannot act corruptly ”“ as the obstruction statute requires the government to prove beyond a reasonable doubt ”“ if you do not believe what you are doing is against the law. Since Trump had as much authority as any prosecutor or FBI agent to weigh the merits of prosecuting Flynn, he cannot have acted corruptly in doing so.
Please read the whole thing. It’s written with McCarthy’s usual clarity and ability to cut to the chase. The sad thing, though, is that nearly the only people who will ever read it are people on the right, and that its simple truths would be ignored by those who wish to believe that Trump did whatever awful things he’s accused of.
It probably does not need repeating, but I never was a Trump fan prior to the election, and I still have plenty of reservations about him and consider some of his actions and words intemperate, obnoxious, and offensive. Nevertheless, he’s been a better president than I expected, and has kept his word on some important subjects such as judicial appointments. But the way the left and the press have distorted his actions in this matter is inclined to make me more sympathetic to him than before, not less. I cannot be alone in this.
[ADDENDUM: And here’s McCarthy on the latest collusion story.]
Caroline Glick on Trump, Israel, and America’s secular Jews
Caroline Glick has some good news about the Trump administration, and some sobering news about the leaching away of America’s Jews from any sort of meaningful Judaism:
Earlier this month Norway, Denmark and Switzerland did something surprising.
Norway announced that it was demanding the return of its money from the Palestinian Human Rights and Humanitarian Law Secretariat, for the latter’s funding of a Palestinian women’s group that built a youth center near Nablus named for PLO mass murderer Dalal Mughrabi.
Denmark followed, announcing it was cutting off all funding to the group.
And last week, the Swiss parliament passed a resolution directing the government to amend Swiss law to block funding of NGOs “involved in racist, antisemitic or hate incitement actions.”
For years, the Israeli government has been urging these and other European governments to stop funding such groups, to no avail. What explains their abrupt change of heart? In two words: Donald Trump.
For years, the Obama administration quietly encouraged the Europeans to fund these groups and to ratchet up their anti-Israel positions. Doing so, the former administration believed, would coerce Israel to make concessions to the PLO.
But now, Trump and his advisers are delivering the opposite message. And, as the actions by Denmark, Norway and Switzerland show, the new message is beginning to be received.
I’m not sure of the exact details of that “message”—does it involve persuasion, rewards, or threats, or just leading by example?—but I think an utterly different tone is being set now regarding Israel.
But here’s what Glick has to say about the position of the American secular Jewish population on the subject of the anti-Israeli BDS campaign:
When Israelis think about the BDS movement, they tend to think that the American Jewish community is the place to turn for assistance.
This is not merely incorrect.
As two studies published in the last few weeks show, the notion that Israel can look to the American Jewish community for help with anything is becoming increasingly dubious.
To be sure, there are several American Jewish groups that devote massive resources to combating BDS on campuses. But their actions are tactical…
On a strategic level, the effective moves made to date against BDS have been initiated by Republicans.
Alan Clemmons, the South Carolina lawmaker who initiated the anti-BDS bill in his statehouse and has since gone on to spearhead the state government anti-BDS drive nationally, is a Christian Zionist.
Glick goes on to say that, although there are certainly Jewish organizations fighting BDS, the main political thrust against the movement is at the hands of the Republican Party. Also, most secular Jews (that’s the majority of younger Jews in the US) are far more leftist than they are Jewish.
That latter point is one I’ve made many time on the blog: when people talk about “Jews” in this country, they often lump together the religious Jews and the vast number of Jews who are JINOs or cultural Jews only. It’s the religious Jews who are far more likely to support the Republican Party than the secular Jews are, although interestingly enough Donald Trump received the votes of about a quarter of self-identified Jewish voters in 2016 (24%)—somehwat more than Bush’s 19% in 2000 and McCain’s 21% in 2008, similar to Bush’s 25% in 2004, and significantly less than Romney’s recent high of 30% in 2012. These statistics certainly don’t indicate an increased turning away from the GOP for Jews in recent years (that is, if you believe polls these days); on the contrary, there’s been a slight increase during the past two elections as compared to 2000 and 2008.
I can’t find recent polls on the subject of Jewish approval of Trump, but this article from March indicates that at least at that point Jewish approval of Trump was at 31%. That’s low, but it’s higher than the number who voted for him, and indicates increased approval rather than decreased. What’s more, that lowish figure of 30% represents the fact that so many Jews are Democrats rather than anything else that’s special about Jews, because Jews who are Democrats approve of Trump in figures very very similar to Trump=approval among Democrats as a whole, and Jews who are Republicans have Trump approval rates that are very very similar to those of Republicans as a whole.
But back to Glick’s article [emphasis mine]:
Young American Jews aren’t turning against Israel because their values are different from Israeli values. By and large, they have the same values as Israeli society. And if they know anything about Israel, they know that their values aren’t in conflict with Israeli values.
Young American Jews are turning on Israel for two reasons. First, they don’t care that they are Jewish and as a consequence, see no reason to stick their necks out on Israel’s behalf.
And second, due in large part to the political BDS campaign on college campuses, supporting Israel requires them to endanger or relinquish their ideological home on the Left. Since their leftist identities are far stronger than their Jewish identities, young American Jews are joining the BDS mob in increasing numbers.
Anyone interested in the question of why so many Jews are Democrats should read this 2009 book by Norman Podhoretz.
Ruth Madoff today
Here’s a story about Ruth Madoff’s life these days. My question is: why the story, and in particular why the need to reveal where she lives? So people can harass her even more than they already do?
I’ve written about the Madoff relatives and my opinion about their guilt or innocence. I’m not going to rehash that argument again, except to say I have never wavered from the idea that they had no idea what was going on. I’ve seen zero credible evidence to dissuade me from that viewpoint. I see the sons as having been among Madoff’s most heartbreaking victims, since he betrayed them both in the fiduciary sense and as a father and as a person. The same for his wife Ruth, only substitute “husband” for the word “father.”
But people continue to want to blame. I think they’re really saying some form of “I would have known. I would be smart enough to know. No one can put anything over on me.” But my belief in the (now-deceased) sons’ innocence and my belief in Ruth Madoff’s innocence is not naivete on my part. It’s actually the opposite: a profound appreciation for how secretive and successfully psychopathic some people can be.
You know what’s naive? Statements such as this, found in the article:
“How do you sleep with a man for all those years and don’t know what he is up to?” asked an Old Greenwich shop owner who did not want to be identified because Ruth frequents her store. “I just don’t buy the story that she knew nothing, and that she’s had a hard time. She hasn’t been through what half the people went through. People committed suicide because of the Madoffs. Please!”
One of those people happened to have been the older of Ruth Madoff’s two sons.
What’s more, thinking that if you sleep with someone for decades you must know all there is to know about them is naive. Some people have huge secrets, and even a completely secret life. It’s a combination of arrogance and stupidity to think otherwise. As though sleeping with someone tells you their business secrets!
Try sleeping with a sociopath, or a spy. See how much you find out.
I see Ruth Madoff as a tragic figure. She married her high school sweetheart when neither had any money to speak of. He did well—very well—and she had a good ride for quite a while. By all accounts, she was the “people person” in the marriage, the warm one as opposed to Madoff’s coldness. Their two sons gave them plenty of nachas, too.
And then it all fell through, suddenly and spectacularly and publicly. Ruth Madoff is no heroine—far from it. She actually seems rather ordinary as a person, at least that’s what I’ve observed. But her tale has all the marks of tragedy: a rise to spectacular heights and then a huge fall, betrayal by the man she had trusted and loved her entire adult life, the death of both her sons, disgrace, and the hatred of much of the world.
It’s a lot. No wonder she compulsively walks the streets of the suburban town where she lives.
See you later, alligator
I spend a lot of time on computers and I’ve developed many pet peeves about them.
One concerns a phenomenon that’s grown more and more frequent over time: the stupendously annoying coercive forced-choice. It is presented by the pop-up window that offers you something you don’t want and didn’t ask for—be it an update or a service or a product or a website link—and then gives you a choice of responses. But the responses aren’t a simple “yes” or “no.” And definitely you never get to choose “go away and leave me alone forever.”
Instead, you get a variant of something snide and sarcastic, where the supposed “no” response reads something like “I don’t want this wonderful free service because I’m a moron.” Or you get a response that isn’t “no” at all but “later.” Sometimes it’s literally the word “later.” Sometimes it’s “remind me later.” But the idea is that this screen will come back to haunt you until you go where they want you to go and do what they want you to do.
I hate, hate, hate it.
Trump tweets again
I don’t watch TV news or opinion shows these days, and haven’t for well over a year. And I’ve never watched Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzenzski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
But if you read the news it’s virtually impossible to ignore the enormous brouhaha about Trump’s nasty tweets about Mrzenzski “bleeding from a facelift.” Trump seems to have a special interest in newswomen’s facial bleeding, if you recall his remarks early in the 2016 campaign about Megyn Kelly having “blood coming out of her eyes.”
I said I don’t watch Joe and Mika’s show and never have, but it’s covered regularly on Legal Insurrection and so I am aware that they are heavy and pretty vicious Trump criticizers. That’s their prerogative. But anyone who knows anything about Trump knows he’s going to fight back in just this way. His tweets are personal, often about appearance, often (although most definitely not always) directed at women, and in my opinion extremely offensive. It’s one of many things about Trump that I dislike and of which I disapprove. And yes, I know that sometimes he does it strategically, either to deflect attention from something else or with the general aim of defending himself. But there are other ways to defend yourself, and I very much wish he’d eliminate this one.
But you know what? If you elect Donald Trump president, you’re going to get this sort of thing. Over and over and over. It’s his nature and his modus operandi. And at this point it’s a big yawn to me, although it’s red meat (blood-red meat?) to the MSM:
Collectively, the Big Three Networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) dedicated a total of 12 minutes and 14 seconds to Trump’s attack against the MSNBC personality. ABC’s World News Tonight gave the tweet three minutes 45 seconds, CBS Evening News a whopping five minutes 29 seconds over two different segments, and NBC Nightly News set aside three minutes. All of them led their evening news program with Trump’s tweets.
The more important development of the day was a pair of laws passed by Congress that were designed to protect American citizens. Anchor Lester Holt was the only one to mention the passage of the laws, but only in this mere 26-second news brief…
That’s the way it is, folks.
Then there was this more serious accusation towards Trump from Scarborough:
According to Scarborough, White House staff called him and said the National Enquirer had a story about Joe and Mika they were going to run and that President Trump would have them spike it if Joe called the President and apologized for their coverage of the president.
There’s more at the link, but I find the accusation suspicious. First of all, the calls were supposedly made in April and May, so they would appear to have nothing to do with the current Trump tweet story. Secondly, was the Enquirer story ever published, and what was it about (it’s not clear, according to this article)? No Trump apology was ever issued, so if the threat had occurred you would think the story would have been published by now. Thirdly, is it blackmail to refuse to honor a request that a story already in the works be spiked? Fourthly, why is this only coming out now? The charges are explosive, and why would Joe and Mika have sat on this since April and May?
For what it’s worth, here is a statement on the subject from the Enquirer:
At the beginning of June we accurately reported a story that recounted the relationship between Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, the truth of which is not in dispute. At no time did we threaten either Joe or Mika or their children in connection with our reporting on the story. We have no knowledge of any discussions between the White House and Joe and Mika about our story, and absolutely no involvement in those discussions,” Dylan Howard, chief content officer and vice president for American Media, said in a statement Friday morning.
the National Enquirer is a tabloid. But news in general has become tabloid-like. And President Trump’s tweets fit right into the general atmosphere.
I’m with Sharyl Attkisson on this
I thought I’d make today mostly a Trump-free day on the blog. But not a media-free day. And where there’s media, there’s Trump, at least by implication. You can’t get away!
So I’m quoting Sharyl Attkisson from a recent interview:
…[W]hen you [criticize politicians and other people in power] in such a way that the public no longer believes what they’re getting is the whole truth or sometimes the truth at all, you’ve undercut yourself because we’re getting to an era where people hardly believe anything they hear at first blush, at least that’s how I am. No matter who reports it, I feel like I have to do my own independent work to know whether it’s true or not, because there have been so many, so many, serious mistakes, even by formerly very well-respected news outlets.
Remember, this is a fellow journalist speaking. If it has come to that for her, what about the rest of us? For me, this feeling started way back during my political change over 15 years ago, and was one of the things that drove it. And one of the things that drove me to blogging was the need to “do my own independent work” to know whether things I read are true or not.
Nor are these actually “mistakes” by the press—not in the usual sense, anyway. And Attkisson is well aware of that, as you’ll see if you listen to the whole clip. Her new book The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote
Unscheduled stops
For the last decade or more, when I fly cross-country I’ve flown Jet Blue almost exclusively. I’ve nearly always had an excellent experience with it: comfortable seats, efficient service, and a tremendous on-time record.
But on a recent trip to California, for my return flight to Boston from the San Francisco area I got to the airport for a redeye and was told that the plane wouldn’t be taking off for 6 more hours. The reason given was that the plane itself—which was coming in from Boston—had to make an unscheduled stop.
That was troubling, and I wanted more information. “Oh, it happens all the time this time of year because of weather” said the man at the Jet Blue counter.
Happens all the time? I’d never heard of it before, except for when there are thunderstorms, and there were no thunderstorms that day. What’s more, I’ve been told that usually in that situation the weather is known beforehand and the takeoff is delayed rather than an unscheduled stop being made.
So I probed a little further. This time the counter guy said that when planes go from east to west in the US they meet with headwinds, and tailwinds going in the other direction. I already knew that; flights are uniformly longer for that reason when going east to west as compared to west to east.
But surely that was taken into account in the schedule? He explained that, when the headwinds were very strong, the planes use up more fuel and sometimes have to stop to refuel, often in Salt Lake City for this particular run.
I didn’t want to wait in that airport for six hours, so I asked him to switch me to the same flight on the next night. But sure enough, the next night the same thing happened—only this time the delay wasn’t as long, and I made sure to check for updates before I left for the airport (for some reason, even though I’d signed up for text messages, they weren’t coming through).
On this second night, however, Jet Blue was sending me emails with a split personality. One email would say that the flight takeoff had been delayed two hours, and then four minutes later I’d get another email saying that the flight was going to leave at the original departure time, no delay at all. This happened several times as I prepared to leave for the airport, wondering whether I ought to leave or whether I still had two hours before I needed to get a ride there.
As it turned out, the flight left about an hour and a quarter late, splitting the difference between the sets of paired emails. I talked to several people in the waiting area who said they’d gotten the same talking-out-of-both-sides-of-the-mouth emails that I’d received, and been puzzled by them.
So here’s my question: what gives? Has anyone else had this experience? Why would it be commonplace at this time of year? Is Jet Blue the only airline with the problem? Does it have something to do with the size of the planes? I couldn’t find a thing about it when I Googled, and I would have thought delays of this magnitude and unscheduled stops being “commonplace” would have gotten some sort of media attention. I did find this WSJ article from five years ago about a similar problem with transatlantic flights during the winter, but it was a different airline and a different type of airplane:
Dozens of Continental Airlines flights to the East Coast from Europe have been forced to make unexpected stops in Canada and elsewhere to take on fuel after running into unusually strong headwinds over the Atlantic Ocean….
United’s Continental unit””which relies on 757s to link its Newark, N.J., hub to numerous European destinations””has been most adversely affected. And recently, Continental began deploying some of its 757s on two traditional United routes out of Dulles””to Paris and Amsterdam””that used to be served by larger planes, exposing some westbound fliers to the same diversions that have played havoc with its schedule and reputation…
The workhorse 757, which entered airline service in 1983 and was produced until 2004, can carry more than 220 passengers in one class. In the U.S., it was initially used for domestic flights, including coast-to-coast trips, and for trips to nearby overseas destinations. But once the FAA in the early 1990s granted airline operators permission to use it on over-water routes, carriers including American, Northwest, US Airways and Continental found the 757 a fuel-effective way to serve cities in Western Europe that had previously been reached with larger, more costly wide-body planes that consume more fuel but have greater range.
Sounds like something very similar is going on now with Jet Blue transcontinental flights. And—at least from my personal experience—it’s something new. The plane involved in my trip was an Airbus A320, but Jet Blue has been using them since 2000, so they’re not new in that sense. But when I looked up the on-time record of my particular flight, I saw that delays of many hours have been happening at least once a week, and several cancellations as well in just the last couple of weeks.
I got home safely, slightly the worse for wear and a day later. Getting home safely is by far the most important thing, of course. But I’m asking all you airplane and airline experts (and I know you’re out there; you know who you are!) if you can explain what’s really going on here.
This TSA employee…
The lobster’s revenge.