Today’s tempest: Sessions and the Russians

The New Neo Posted on by

In their continuing quest to find a nefarious connection between Trump and Russia, the latest report has to do with Jeff Sessions talking to the Russian ambassador during the campaign and then not disclosing it to Congress.

You can read all about it here if you care to. The left keeps thinking it’s found a smoking gun (or many successive smoking guns); the right finds there’s no there there:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before the presidential election last year, his spokeswoman confirmed, raising questions about whether he misled senators who inquired about the Trump campaign’s ties to Moscow.

Sarah Isgur Flores told NBC News that Sessions did have a conversation with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak last year. The meeting was first reported by The Washington Post.

But she said “there was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer” because Sessions was asked during the hearing about “communications between Russia and the Trump campaign” and not about meetings he took as a member of the Armed Services Committee.

According to his spokeswoman, Sessions’ meeting with Kislyak was just one of 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors in his role on the committee.

“Recuse yourself!” Democrats and much of the MSM shrieks. Or better yet, “Resign!”

I really wonder what the average not-so-very-politically-involved reader thinks on reading about this story and the way it’s being presented in the MSM.

I do know that the WaPo and the left have been busy as beavers in their unrelenting effort to find further angles on the “Trump is Russia’s puppet” meme. I also know that they will dredge up any fact, however small, and blow it up as much as possible, framing even the ordinary as something extraordinary, and that a substantial number of people won’t question that framing.

Of course, this Sessions story fits into the prior narrative about Flynn, and shows why Flynn’s resignation (supposedly because he failed to disclose to Pence, not because of anything he actually did) only encouraged the left and gave them the template for the present brouhaha:

Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, resigned last month after it was disclosed he misled Vice President Mike Pence and other senior officials about his communications with Kislyak.

Same ambassador. Same idea of non-disclosure, although the details are different.

Here’s Sessions:

In a statement Wednesday night, Sessions said: “I have never met with any Russian officials to discuss issues of the campaign. I have no idea what this allegation is about. It is false.”

Sessions obviously did not think that the questions he was being asked in his hearings—which had to do with whether the campaign, or people affiliated with the campaign, met with Russian officials—applied to his more ordinary contacts with the Russian ambassador in the course of his position in the Senate. I wish he had interpreted the questions even more broadly and said that yes, as a member of the Senate and as a member of the Armed Services Committee, he had talks with many foreign officials including the Russian ambassador. But in the hearings he was focused on the issue of campaign contacts, and it’s possible those two meetings didn’t even cross his mind.

It’s very clear that the Democrats and their allies in the MSM are going to continue with this sort of thing—the drip drip drip of stories that really don’t have much content but that are loaded with innuendo. If they seek, they will find. For Obama, they did the opposite and played cover-up.

[ADDENDUM: There’s much much more detail here about what Sessions was actually asked during his hearing, and what he answered. See also this, as well as this on what certainly appears to be an actual, bona fide lie by Sen. Claire McCaskill about the subject.]

Van Jones feels the wrath of Twitter

The New Neo Posted on by

In a NOTE at the end of this post from yesterday, I mentioned that Van Jones (a leftist attorney who had served in the Obama administration) had praised Trump’s SOTU speech, saying of Trump, “If he finds a way to do that over and over again, he’s going to be there for eight years.”

Actually, Jones said a great deal more than that about Trump’s speech:

Asked by Anderson Cooper for his reaction to the standing ovation for the widow of a Navy Seal killed in action during Tuesday’s address to Congress, Jones said: “He became President of the United States in that moment, period.”

Jones went on to add that Trump “did something extraordinary,” and that people who wanted POTUS to remain a “divisive cartoon” should be worried after the speech.

“There are a lot of people who have a lot of reasons to be frustrated with him, to be fearful of him, to be mad ”” but that was one of the most extraordinary moments you have ever seen in American politics,” Jones said of Trump honoring Carryn Owens, whose husband Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens was killed in a recent Yemen raid.

Those statements from Jones seem to be descriptive of what happened, as well as containing a warning to people who want Trump to remain a “divisive cartoon” that they shouldn’t keep barking up that particular tree because Trump’s behavior might discredit them. Jones’ remarks do not signal approval of Trump or his policies; they just state what Jones observed happening in that SOTU speech and in the mainstream reaction to it.

And yet—if you read the tweets listed in that article—you’ll see how very angry people on the left have gotten at Jones. Also, quite a few of the tweets use the word “normalize,” which seems to be the new way to express the idea that since we all know that Trump is really an inhuman monster of depravity, any statement that indicates that he might be a relatively normal human being or a somewhat normal president is anathema to us, and if you utter a single word that could lead a person to those conclusions you are the enemy as well.

Jones strayed from that party line, which is not allowed, even to utter an unwelcome truth. Perhaps especially if uttering an unwelcome truth.

Research on virtue-signaling

The New Neo Posted on by

The researchers don’t call it that, but that’s what it appears to be. And they found something very interesting:

Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test the counter-intuitive possibility that moral outrage at third-party transgressions is sometimes a means of reducing guilt over one’s own moral failings and restoring a moral identity. We tested this guilt-driven account of outrage in five studies examining outrage at corporate labor exploitation and environmental destruction. Study 1 showed that personal guilt uniquely predicted moral outrage at corporate harm-doing and support for retributive punishment. Ingroup (vs. outgroup) wrongdoing elicited outrage at corporations through increased guilt, while the opportunity to express outrage reduced guilt (Study 2) and restored perceived personal morality (Study 3).

SOTU: the Democrats’ dilemma

The New Neo Posted on by

At last night’s SOTU speech the Democrats faced a difficult dilemma: to sit on their hands or not to sit on their hands, and if so when?

Only Joe Manchin found it easy to applaud, although a couple of others managed a clap or two:

Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (WV), Joe Donnelly (IN), and Heidi Heitkamp (ND) stood and applauded multiple times during President Trump’s speech to Congress Tuesday night, breaking with the bulk of the Democratic Party.

The majority of congressional Democrats were visibly critical of Trump’s address. Two House Democrats even sat during a two-minute standing ovation for the widow of a slain soldier. Others laughed, groaned, or even skipped the speech altogether.

But Manchin, Donnelly, and Heitkamp are all moderate swing-state Democrats facing reelection campaigns in 2018…

Manchin, for his part, was the only Democrat to applaud Trump calling to “make America great again.” Heitkamp was seen enthusiastically clapping a Trump line about pipelines. Donnelly rose in support after Trump mentioned coal miners.

I know it’s common to have the opposition party sit stony-faced and relatively motionless while the party of the president claps and yells in wild approval. But is it usually quite this extreme, even when a president is talking about subjects that are clearly meant to have bipartisan appeal? I’m not sure, because I watch these speeches so seldom.

That said, I recognize that as SOTU addresses go, Trump really hit that one out of the park, particularly considering the low expectations so many people had for him. One can almost (almost!) feel sorry for the Democrats, sitting there and expecting the guy to fall flat on his face or to do something icky-gross, and instead he acquits himself quite nicely and even presidentially.

The left is left to squawk about how Carryn Owens, the widow of the slain SEAL, was exploited by the speech. But Mrs. Owens is a grown woman, fully able to make her own decisions, and she obviously was there of her own volition.

Last night most of the Democrats looked like terrible grumps. They are now obstructionists, exactly what they accused the GOP of being during the Obama administration. Their idea, of course, is to portray Trump as Hitlerian, so that although resistance to Obama was racism, resistance to Trump is heroism. But the more Trump “normalizes” himself as he did last night, the less the Hitler charge will stick and the worse the Democrats will look.

[NOTE: One of the things I haven’t yet mentioned about Trump’s delivery of the speech is that he seemed not just sincere, but natural. This seems to me to be one of the hardest things to do in a prepared speech: to appear as though the speaker is talking in an unmannered way and as though he/she actually means what he/she says. If Trump didn’t actually mean what he said last night, then he deserves an Oscar.

Some on the left seem to realize this—for example, Van Jones:

Noting that he still often disagrees with the President, Jones admitted that Trump’s powerful moment [with Carryn Owens] shows he may be settling into the role.

“If he finds a way to do that over and over again, he’s going to be there for eight years,” Jones said.

That’s quite a statement, coming from Jones.]

One of these things is not like the other

The New Neo Posted on by

All four are examples of that terrible offense: furniture abuse. It’s time we stamped it out.

Two of them are in black-and-white, two in color. Three of them feature a male protagonist, one a female. Three of them illustrate desk abuse, and in one the victim is a couch. In terms of seriousness of the offense, I would argue that the desk in the Oval Office is a greater and more important symbol than the couch, and that therefore the terrible crime of feet-on-furniture is even worse when the victim is the desk, as in the first three photos.

I find this entire topic absurd beyond words.

Open thread: State of the Union

The New Neo Posted on by

You can talk about it here.

UPDATE 10:15 PM

I’m purposely listening to CNN post-speech, because I’m curious what they’re saying and how critical they will be.

The content of Trump’s speech was about what I expected, but I thought that Trump’s delivery was surprisingly good. Trump is great at the casual, funny, ad-lib (or seeming-ad-lib) speech. It’s not easy to switch from that mode to giving a speech off a teleprompter to a joint session of Congress, but he had a measured tone, an ideal pace, and some very emotional and compassionate moments.

The real surprise is that the panel on CNN agrees.

Anyone who thought Trump would implode tonight was sadly mistaken.

UPDATE 10:25 PM

Is this the guy who’s the new face of the Democratic Party? Steve Beshear??

UPDATE 11:25 PM

I think the Democrats are going to have trouble with this one. One of the problems with continually saying a person is a fool or Hitler or a clown is that if that person sounds pretty good and also like a decent human being—both of which Trump did tonight—it’s the criticizers who end up sounding like fools.

They can pick apart details of what he said—how can he pay for it? why did he say “Islamic terrorism”?—but I don’t think that will resonate with most people at all. Trump did something in the speech that has often been the province of Democrats: used the human interest story in a powerful way to illustrate and underline policy proposals he’s making.

The town hall meetings takeover

The New Neo Posted on by

You may have noticed that the brave Resistance has begun to dominate town hall meetings held by Republicans, in order to create “news” for the MSM to then report.

Marco Rubio has certainly noticed:

“They are not town halls anymore,” the Florida Republican told CBS4-Miami’s Jim DeFede on Sunday. “What these groups really want is for me to schedule a public forum, they then organize three, four, five, six hundred liberal activists in the two counties or wherever I am in the state.”

Citing protesting tips published by the new Indivisible movement, Rubio told the station that activists are instructed to go to town halls early and “take up all the front seats. They spread themselves out. They ask questions. They all cheer when the questions are asked. They are instructed to boo no matter what answer I give. They are instructed to interrupt me if I go too long and start chanting things. Then, at the end, they are also told not to give up their microphone when they ask questions. It’s all in writing in this Indivisible document.”…

Asked whether he thinks today’s town hall crowds do not consist of “real people,” Rubio was quick to dispel the notion.

“These are real people. They are real liberal activists, and I respect their right to do it. But it is not a productive exercise,” Rubio replied in the interview. “It’s all designed to have news coverage at night ”” look at all these angry people screaming at your senator.”

The article then goes on to explain that in 2009, “when [Rubio] ran against Gov. Charlie Crist for Senate. Back then, Democrats were complaining that the forums were being hijacked by conservative activists.”

I don’t know whether that’s a false equivalence or a true equivalence. In other words, I’ve been to quite a few public political meetings of the question-and-answer type, and there are always people from the other side—political activists—insistently asking questions. That happens on right and left, and politicians expected it. If that’s what was happening in 2009, no biggee.

But was it? I wasn’t following the 2009 Florida race that closely, so I don’t know. But I tend to think the situation was nothing like what’s going on today, when hundreds of leftist activists show up to hijack the proceedings by much more extreme disruption. That’s a lot different than a small number of activists asking a few questions that are hostile, or even some jeers.

What is the remedy? It’s a true dilemma. We want to have free assembly, free speech, dissent. But this is disruption of that give-and-take in the name of free speech. Why should a senator or any other public office holder hold a forum that doesn’t give him a chance to answer questions and merely affords a large group of activists a platform from which to heckle and stifle him? Is the remedy to hold the forum anyway? Chris Christie seems to think so:

“Welcome to the real world of responsibility,” he said to Republicans who don’t want to hold town halls. Christie said he himself had held more than 160 town halls during his two terms.

Christie was famously pugnacious during his town halls, but I wonder when the last one was held (couldn’t find that information when I briefly Googled it just now). Has he ever faced this particular type of protest? I watched some of his town halls on video when he was a rising Republican star, and I know he faced a lot of hostility particularly from teacher’s unions, but it seems to me that that was different in scope and kind than what’s been happening now. But I’m not sure.

When does free speech become the stifling of speech you don’t like? Is yelling and heckling in order to disrupt a public meeting protected speech, and when does it cease being protected speech? Here’s an article by Jonathan Levin on that very subject, published about a year ago at Legal Insurrection:

First, although there is some First Amendment protection for “speech” in the form of physical action, it is inapplicable for this conversation. Storming the stage is not protected speech; it is likely assault. If a protester crosses the line and lays hands on a candidate or somebody attending an event, that would be battery, at a minimum.

Second, the First Amendment does not grant an absolute right to speak or protest. There are a variety of limitations depending on the context. It is ironclad law that reasonable “time, place and manner” limitations on speech are permitted under the Constitution.

Levin cites a piece by Eugene Volokh on the subject, in which Volokh writes:

Many states outlaw “disturbing lawful assemblies,” which would include campaign rallies, whether on public property or private. . .

Attempts to shut down an event, for instance by shouting down a speaker, blowing whistles so that the speaker can’t be heard, rushing onto the stage and the like would thus be illegal. This is important both because the police can then arrest the disrupters, and because security guards and ordinary rally attendees could then legally use reasonable, non-deadly force to stop the disruption.

Levin further explains:

The “substantially impaired” piece means that it has to be more than a passing interference. Blowing an air-horn in a conference hall during a speech would interfere, certainly, but blowing it once then stopping probably would not be “substantial” enough to warrant arrest; blowing it continuously and drowning out the speaker probably would be. The interruption also has to be more than what everybody knows is acceptable. Booing a candidate no matter how vigorously will probably not support a conviction, because it is within the realm of normal responses at a campaign event.

I suggest you read both the Levin article and the Volokh article. It’s not an easy question with easy answers, and it’s a topic that will come up more and more often during the Trump presidency. At the extremes—a few boos, versus rushing the stage or podium—the answers are easy. It’s that vast middle ground that present the biggest problem.

Levin had this to say about the situation that had just occurred when he was writing the piece a year ago, when protestors ended up causing Trump to cancel a speech:

The problem, of course, is that Trump didn’t get to speak, and the audience didn’t get to hear him. This is known as the “Heckler’s Veto.” Protesters are so unruly and the situation so out of control that event organizers or police deem it too dangerous to proceed and shut it down. The protesters thereby obtain a de facto veto over speech they dislike.

That is exactly the problem with canceling the town halls.

Levin continued:

This sort of self-censorship raises its own issues. In giving up the podium, organizers signal protesters that they will cancel again if the atmosphere is adequately dangerous, creating an incentive for protesters to be ever more extreme. If the campaign then resists the next time, it becomes a game of chicken with protesters growing more volatile and organizers refusing to cave.

There is no great answer. Ideally, of course, we would conduct ourselves as members of a democracy and protest rather than intimidate, threaten or riot. More realistically, campaigns and police need to be vigilant for signs of concerted plans to disrupt events and who might participate, and to be prepared to quickly prevent that from happening. There is no constitutional right to attend a rally, and to the extent there is indication that somebody intends to disrupt an event, that person need not be allowed in.

This can easily escalate. In a sense, the protestors/agitators are in a win/win/win situation. They either force the person to stop having meetings (the Rubio solution), or they are allowed to stay and disrupt the meeting as well as getting themselves in the news and embarrassing the Republicans who held the meetings, or they are made into martyrs and seeming champions of free speech by being escorted out by police and perhaps even arrested. All three outcomes encourage more of their behavior.

The Times again, truth again, and Trump again

The New Neo Posted on by

“Put independent journalism first. 50% off savings won’t last.”

That’s the subject of an email I got today from the NY Times asking me to subscribe. I seem to have gotten on their emailing list long ago, back in the days when you registered and got to the site for free. The dears have never given up on me and send me emails regularly.

This one was of interest for obvious reasons; yesterday I’d written on the subject of the irony of the Times’ new Orwellian ad campaign, selling itself as the brave and stalwart purveyor of Truth against a web of lies. And here it is right on schedule, in my inbox:

Independent journalism. Truth. The “it has no alternative” line is, of course, a dig at Kellyanne Conway’s widely-excoriated “alternative facts” remark—which merely pointed out that there is often disagreement on the facts and that, yes, “truth is hard to find” (and often the Times is not the place to find it). I’ve been paying close attention to the Times for well over a decade and I can say that they are among the best and most subtle of the many purveyors of alternative facts (otherwise known as propaganda) in the political arena.

The email continues:

Our stories don’t just present themselves. Times reporters must go after them. It’s their daily task, whether it’s Washington, D.C., or an Arctic base camp. Once these facts are verified, a story takes shape and we bring it to you.

And here is your intrepid NY Times reporter/explorer pictured in the email:

Meanwhile, back at the actual Times, we have this Times Truth (title of the post: “Why Did the New York Times Deliberately Misquote Donald Trump’s CPAC Speech?”). The whole article is worth reading, but the gist of it is that this is what Trump said in his speech to CPAC:

We are also going to save countless American lives. As we speak today, immigration offers are finding the gang members, the drug dealers and the criminal aliens and throwing them the hell out of our country.

And here’s how the Times described it (there was much much more, but this is the part about the misquote):

[Trump’s] speech also included a promise to throw undocumented immigrants “the hell out of the country” and a recitation of his law-and-order campaign promises.

The article says:

This is not a faithful and honest rendering of the speech either in words or in concept…

Now, admittedly, the people Trump was talking about was a subset of “undocumented immigrants” but it is subset that virtually everyone except some Democrat ward heeler would be in favor of booting.

This is not a mistake. This is agitprop. This is simply fiction designed to hurt Trump. And by doing so, the New York Times forfeits its right to claim that it is owed any respect as part of an independent media and reveals itself as simply the house organ for the Democrat party.

I would add only that it is beautifully done by the Times, because they are masters at their trade. It’s not actually a misquote, because the words in quotes “the hell out of the country” are definitely the words Trump used. It is a mischaracterization, though, of what he said, and a fairly subtle one at that because it has a built-in deniability. The Times can say “but these people are ‘undocumented,'” although that’s really irrelevant; they are also “human beings,” but both the “undocumented” and the “human beings” category are of course way too broad. They are a particular group of human beings, and a very particular group of “undocumented immigrants”—gang members, drug dealers, and criminals. And then the Times adds that Trump gave a “recitation of his law-and-order campaign promises,” which they can say is a reference to the “criminals,” part, but it’s a reference that no one who didn’t actually read or hear the speech could understand as a limitation on the categories of “undocumented immigrants” he is interested in deporting.

It’s really a thing of beauty how the Times threads that needle. The Times knows exactly what it’s doing.

And there’s a further level of protection for them among their readers. Churchill once said (in one of my favorite quotations):

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.

Indeed they do. If readers of the Times happen to read Trump’s speech and “stumble across” the truth of what he said (despite the Times‘ misdirection), they can always use the Greater Truth argument, which is that Trump’s actual intent is to deport all “undocumented immigrants,” and that his focus on deporting immigrants who are criminals is just a screen for his real intentions. And indeed, at various times in his campaign speeches he seemed to be saying just that. He seemed to be saying a lot of things, some of them contradictory.

That’s one of the problems with Trump. During the campaign it helped him, because it allowed him to be different things to different people who wanted to believe in him. But his more extreme and contradictory statements have allowed MSM outlets such as the Times to twist the words he says now, as president, and present them in ways that are false but that strike its readers as very plausible.

For all you computer experts out there

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night my computer suddenly refused to go to a huge number of sites, including this blog, memeorandum, RealClearPolitics, and StatCounter. But none of those sites were down, because I could get them easily on my cell phone. What’s more, my computer had no problem going to a bunch of other sites, and Google worked perfectly.

I did what I do whenever my computer’s acting temperamental: I rebooted. The problem persisted. I re-rebooted. No improvement. Then I went to bed, and this morning things were fine. But I don’t trust the situation, and am concerned that it will happen again. I also don’t understand what happened. Usually I either have a problem getting to a site or sites because the site or sites are down, or I have trouble with connectivity in general and can’t surf around at all. This was very very different.

And no, I had not recently loaded anything onto my computer, nor had I clicked on a suspicious site. Nothing unusual had happened that I’m aware of except the problem, which began very suddenly.

Anyone got any theories on it? Thanks.

The Times and the pursuit of truth

The New Neo Posted on by

This ad aired last night during the Oscars, sponsored by the NY Times:

I’ve been blogging for over twelve years, and a great many of my posts have been devoted to uncovering the misstatements, twistings and shadings of the truth, and/or downright lies published in the Times. I doubt there’s been a day when I couldn’t find something of the sort there, but I don’t pursue it because I don’t want that to become my full-time occupation.

However, their propagandist tendencies are only exceeded by their chutzpah (hubris? arrogance? balls?) in running an ad like that.

To people on the right, there’s something almost comical about that ad, although it’s a serious subject. It’s certainly a subject I take very seriously, for the simple reason that the Times’s propaganda continues to be effective. Maybe it doesn’t work quite as well as it used to, but it still shapes the opinions of many millions of people in this country. And the Times is well aware of that.

Taking a closer look at the message of the ad. It has different people making a bunch of assertions from left and right, in order to set up the idea that people disagree on things. I have no quarrel with that; they certainly do. Then, in bolder type, we have the sentence, “The truth is hard to find.” And then, “The truth is hard to know.” Then, “The truth is more important now than ever.” That third one is especially curious. After all, the truth has always been very very important; I don’t see why it should be more important now than ever.

Unless it’s because Donald Trump, the “archenemy of truth” (headline of a column by Charles Blow in today’s Times) is now president, rather than Barack Obama? Could that be it?

After that sentence about the truth being more important now than ever, all we see is the logo: the words The New York Times in its familiar gothic script. The implication is that the Times is the place to come to find the truth. Or, at the very least, that the Times has the utmost dedication to the truth, to ferreting out the truth, to uncovering and then pursuing this extremely hard-to-find but absolutely more-important-than-ever truth.

More important than in Soviet times when Walter Duranty was their reporter, or in the late 50s and early 60s when Herbert Matthews told us what a great guy Castro was? Or during most of the Times’ reportage of the Second Intifada and other Israeli/Palestinian news for the last couple of decades? And certainly more important than during their Obama coverup years?

Truth is indeed difficult to find. That is, if you’re looking for absolute truth. But relative truth isn’t all that hard to find, to the best of your ability. For starters, don’t twist quotes. Try to apply the same standards to all sides. Don’t mix opinion journalism with factual reporting. Use the older more rigid rules about unnamed sources. And don’t lie.

Now, that’s hard. Because journalists these days have a Calling, and the Calling is to a Higher Truth than mere truth in reporting. They want to change the world to match their vision, because they know best and because their vision is the vision of the anointed.

And reports of her death were greatly exaggerated

The New Neo Posted on by

This Oscar error wasn’t noticed by so many people. But to Jan Chapman, it was a bit of a shock:

Janet Patterson, an Australian costume designer and four-time Oscar nominee (“The Piano,” “Portrait of a Lady,” “Oscar and Lucinda” and “Bright Star”) passed away in October 2016.

Her name and occupation were correct in the montage, but the photo used was of Jan Chapman, a still-living Australian film producer…

The Academy has yet to comment on the mistake.

And by the way, just to clarify this previous post on the far more prominent Oscar Best Picture gaffe, I want to add that I don’t actually blame either Beatty or Dunaway. The error was apparently made by the person giving them the card. If Emma Stone had been acting in some more obscure film that wasn’t even nominated for Best Picture rather than “La La Land,” Beauty and Dunaway would have almost certainly realized they’d been given the incorrect card. Problem was, the card they were given (for Stone’s award) also said “La La Land,” the film in which she starred. That’s what misled them.

Beatty immediately realized that something was off. But instead of being a brave liberal and Questioning Authority, he passed the buck (and the card) to Dunaway, who thought he was just being funny and read it as “La La Land,” perhaps because she was becoming embarrassed by the length of the delay.

Movie stars get nervous, too, especially when doing something live.

And now, back to our regular programming…