An “orgy of rage and spite”

The New Neo Posted on by

Camille Paglia has this to say:

“In an abject failure of leadership that may be one of the most disgraceful episodes in the history of the modern Democratic party, Chuck Schumer, who had risen to become the Senate Democratic leader after the retirement of Harry Reid, asserted absolutely no moral authority as the party spun out of control in a nationwide orgy of rage and spite,” she said in the interview published Thursday. “Nor were there statesmanlike words of caution and restraint from two seasoned politicians whom I have admired for decades and believe should have run for president long ago ”” Senator Dianne Feinstein and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi.

“How do Democrats imagine they can ever expand their electoral support if they go on and on in this self-destructive way, impugning half the nation as vile racists and homophobes?” she said.

The answer is simple. They think the charges will stick.

And if most of my friends are any indication, they have succeeded. It is accepted as a tautology that half the nation—not their half, and present company excepted (despite my unfortunate politics)—bears just that description of vile racists and homophobes.

I agree somewhat with Paglia about the rage and spite of elected officials such as Schumer, but Paglia makes it sound as though their accusations are hot-blooded. There is some of that hot rage and spite, because they fully expected to be in the driver’s seat after the 2016 election, and they are not. But their calculations are also quite cold-blooded and strategic; what they are doing is akin to the Two Minutes Hate described by Orwell:

The Two Minutes Hate, from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, is a daily period in which Party members of the society of Oceania must watch a film depicting the Party’s enemies (notably Emmanuel Goldstein and his followers) and express their hatred for them for exactly two minutes.

The difference here is that there is no two minute time limit.

Also, I believe that many garden-variety liberals (not elected officials) now feel tremendous fear as well as rage and spite. At least, quite a few of my friends seem to feel fear. They truly believe that Trump is a Hitler-like maniac who is bent on destroying the country and everything they hold dear.

Security for members of Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

When Representative Scalise was shot, the only reason many more people weren’t hurt and perhaps killed was that there were armed guards around who killed the would-be assassin. And the only reason there were armed guards around was that Scalise is House Majority Whip:

The only members of Congress who have security are those in leadership in both houses, which amounts to a handful of members. Surely, this type of security is expensive. It is, at some level, unnecessary. Most members of Congress have never had a serious, credible threat issued against them.

But many of us remember the assassination attempt on former Rep. Gabby Giffords in Tucson in January 2011. The Arizona Democrat survived being shot in the head in that attack, when six people were killed.

A 2011 Congressional Research Service report lists nine members of Congress who have been shot and 24 members of Congress who have been attacked since 1789.

I can think of three of those shootings without even looking it up. One is Gabby Giffords, who was nearly killed by Jared Loughner (as part of a massacre in which others were killed, but she was the target) and still is brain-damaged as a result. One was Leo Ryan, murdered in 1978 by members of the Jim Jones cult shortly before the mass murder/suicide. And one was the 1954 Capitol incident:

The United States Capitol shooting incident of 1954 was an attack on March 1, 1954, by four Puerto Rican nationalists; they shot 30 rounds from semi-automatic pistols from the Ladies’ Gallery (a balcony for visitors) of the House of Representatives chamber in the United States Capitol. They wanted to highlight their desire for Puerto Rican independence from US rule.

The nationalists, identified as Lolita Lebré³n, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero, and Irvin Flores Rodré­guez, unfurled a Puerto Rican flag and began shooting at Representatives in the 83rd Congress, who were debating an immigration bill. Five Representatives were wounded, one seriously, but all recovered. The assailants were arrested, tried and convicted in federal court, and given long sentences, effectively life imprisonment.

How many people today are aware of that little piece of history?

I was. But I had forgotten this addendum:

In 1978 and 1979, they were pardoned by President Jimmy Carter; all four returned to Puerto Rico.

That seems unconscionable to me.

You can read about their happy homecoming here:

Thousands of screaming Puerto Ricans tore down fences and surged against police lines today to greet four terrorist heroes of the nationalist movement returning to Puerto Rico after a quarter century in U.S. prisons.

The four, who were freed on Monday, wept as they embraced relatives and friends on arrival at San Juan Airport. Supporters, estimated at about 6,000 strong, madly waved a sea of flags and banners near a makeshift speakers’ platform, shouting, “Viva Puerto Rico libre” and “Jibaros si, Yanquis no.” Jibaros are native Puerto Ricans.

Their loudest cries were “Lolita! Lolita,” for the still-fiery Lolita Lebron, 59, the leader of a group that shot up the House of Representatives in 1954, wounding five congressmen. “You must know the facts,” she shouted at the crowd, her voice hoarse from two days of speeches. “The United States will repress anyone that tries to assert their birthright on nationhood.” The crowd roared its agreement.

Oscar Collazo, 67, who tried to assassinate President Truman in 1950, told the people to ignore the tears on his face. “I am so happy to be in a place where I am not afraid to express my emotions,” he said.

Why did Carter pardon the perpetrators? He did it against the wishes of Puerto Rico’s governor, by the way, who “stat[ed] that it would encourage terrorism and undermine public safety.” Well, yes. The reasons Carter gave for ordering the release was that they had served more time already than people who had committed similar offenses. Really? How does one define “similar”? I would say that an ordinary shooting is different from assassination attempts on public officials, committed by opening fire in the Capitol itself.

Carter also cited that “release of these four prisoners would be a significant humanitarian gesture and would be viewed as such by much of the international community.”

About that, I could not give a rat’s ass.

How now brown cow

The New Neo Posted on by

Seven percent of American adults believe chocolate milk comes from brown cows, according to an online survey commissioned by the Innovation Center of U.S. Dairy.

I’m not sure whether I’m more surprised that the number is so low, that it is so high, or that there’s something called “the Innovation Center of US Dairy.”

Then again, that 7% may just be people funnin’ with the pollsters. However, surveys of almost anything always seem to uncover a certain percentage of abysmally ignorant people, so none of this is any surprise:

When one team of researchers interviewed fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders at an urban California school, they found that more than half of them didn’t know pickles were cucumbers, or that onions and lettuce were plants. Four in 10 didn’t know that hamburgers came from cows. And 3 in 10 didn’t know that cheese is made from milk.

Even as a kid, I knew full well that chocolate milk came from adding chocolate to milk, because we made it regularly by adding Hershey’s syrup to milk and stirring. There was no ready-made chocolate milk when I was young; we had to work hard for our chocolate milk!

Actually, I stopped drinking milk altogether when I was very very young. Nasty stuff.

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.