A cop-killing averted

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s how the situation began:

[Officer] Bardes and a Florida Highway Patrol trooper were at the scene of a car crash when Strother’s Toyota Camry swerved and drove along the left shoulder at what seemed to be at least 100 miles per hour, nearly striking the officers, a witness told the News-Press.

Believing the near-crash was intentional, officials said, Bardes chased the Camry southbound on I-75 until the driver stopped and got out of his car at an off-ramp.

There are witnesses to the following, as well as photos. Strother, the driver, managed to deck Officer Bardes, who fell to the ground, whereupon Strother straddled him and beat him. Strother was also reaching for the officer’s firearm. Then:

A few feet away, Ashad Russell, who had a concealed-carry permit, was also watching the attack unfold. Russell pulled his gun and approached, the review said. He told the attacker that “he would shoot Strother if he didn’t stop beating the deputy.”

On the ground, the deputy “pled for help and asked that Russell shoot Strother.”

Russell shot, and Strother died. Under Florida law, this is allowable “because [Russell] had ‘a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm’ to the deputy, the state attorney’s office concluded.”

And, as you might have expected, Strother’s brother:

…criticized the sheriff’s response to Strother’s death and questioned the details of the fight. “They are calling him a good Samaritan?” Louis Strother told the News-Press. “Was my brother armed?”

I guess trying to hit an officer with your car at high speed, and then trying to get his firearm while straddling and beating him isn’t good enough to be called “armed.”

Oh, and by the way: both Strother and Russell were black, and Bardes white.

Trump’s presser: beauty in the eye of the beholder

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t usually listen to these things (I’m not an auditory person, as I’ve said before). However, late last night I watched most of Trump’s presser, and I must say it was entertaining.

But Trump has often been entertaining. It is one of his most salient characteristics. In this case he was entertaining at the expense of the press, and if members of the MSM were hopping mad at him before (and they were), now they are shrieking mad at him. And outraged.

For example, Chuck Todd: “This not a laughing matter. I’m sorry, delegitimizing the press is unAmerican.”

Ah, but attempting to delegitimize a president—now, that’s a wonderful thing.

Todd and many others don’t understand why to so many Americans it is a laughing matter at this point. Freedom of the press is sacred. But the press has become a monster, grown very used to “speaking truth to power” without much truth as long as that “power” they’re addressing is on the right, and to protecting power when it’s on the left.

The American people aren’t dumb, any more than Donald Trump is dumb. But the MSM has underestimated both.

The MSM has also become very used to wrapping itself in a cloak of “freedom of the press” sanctity. The press is actually still very free—and we (and presidents, too) are free to judge it on its merits. America has found the press very very wanting. America believes that the press has delegitimized itself.

At that Trump presser, the press didn’t know what hit them. That’s not surprising; they’ve always been a bit slow on the uptake about Trump, although at this point they should have caught on some time ago. They expected to encounter a fallen, broken man, and to administer a few more well-placed blows to his solar plexus. Didn’t happen.

I’ll send them a little message, except I don’t think many of them read me, but here it is: Trump isn’t dumb. He’s pretty canny, and he knows how to mock people, in case you hadn’t noticed. Like him or hate him, he’s a good comedian as well, and at least half the country already likes and trusts him. That’s more people than like and trust you, and that fact is not because of anything Trump has said about you, it’s about your behavior for several decades and beyond. And the more sanctimonious you act about yourselves, the more you will be hated.

What did I think of the press conference, besides the fact that it was entertaining? I thought that, between the insults and the jokes, on the substantive issues Trump was fairly articulate and he didn’t seem at all unhinged, although sometimes he exaggerated (this is Trump, after all). He seemed shrewd and aggressive, but totally in control of his faculties and not crazy in the least.

He also made some good points, which as far as I can see the liberal press is ignoring in all its outraged victimhood—for example, that Hillary might have reported it when she was given debate questions ahead of time, but she didn’t. Another good point was that all the brouhaha about Russia, which Trump considers “fake news,” could have the consequence of making any sort of actual rapprochement with Russia more difficult.

And as with most things Trump, his supporters will love this presser and his opponents will hate it.

[ADDENDUM: Oh, and right on cue, we have some seemingly fake news from the AP.]

Tear down those walls!

The New Neo Posted on by

Mull this one over:

Other New York City elected officials used the [deportation] raids to make a broader point. “From Palestine to Mexico, all the walls have got to go!” shouted New York City Council members Rosie Mendez and Margaret Chin at a rally in Tompkins Square Park. City councilmember Carlos Menchaca posted on Facebook that the Palestine/Mexico refrain is his “fave new chant.”

Oh, those friendly Palestinians, just seeking to come to Israel looking for work and opportunity, and getting shut out by that nasty wall.

I’ve got an idea, Mendez and Chin and Menchaca. You first.

Let’s start with the locks on your doors. Oh, they’re there for protection, are they? I have news for you. So are those walls. One (Mexico) protects our borders from intruders who are not following the rules we have set up to let people into our “house”—our country, that is. The other (Israel) protects the lives of the people that live there from murderers who would kill them.

I will not always be commenting on the Trump story du jour

The New Neo Posted on by

Not every single day, anyway.

There is a repetitive pattern to it that has become extremely boring. “Boring” doesn’t mean “unimportant.” It’s important, and I will continue to cover these events and react to them and analyze them. But I will not hop to deal with every single one. I will not play continual whack-a-mole, as the pace increases.

The pattern? The stories all push the following lines about Trump: chaos/turnoil, the brave “resistance” (or “Resistance,” a la WWII) to him, innuendos of terrible wrongdoing without evidence, calls from random people for his resignation and/or impeachment, condemnation from the Times and its fellows for things that in Obama would have been ignored or praised, and the latest supposedly dumb and/or outrageous (or maybe actually dumb and/or outrageous) tweet from our Tweeter-in-Chief.

All I will say today about this is that Trump apparently gave a press conference in which he unloaded on the press. Good. That link I just gave illustrates that there was plenty of substance in the presser, too, including the fact that Trump says he will issue a new and revised immigration EO soon. Good.

Coming out as a gay conservative

The New Neo Posted on by

Since I’m always interested in political changers, I want to draw your attention to this brave soul. Chadwick Moore is a gay man of 33 who lives in Brooklyn, a “lifelong” liberal (I guess 33 years seems long when you’re 33) who recently wrote a piece for Out magazine on Milo Yiannopoulos. The article was neither pro nor con; he merely tried to be fair to him and present the facts.

Well, your can imagine the reaction. Yes, indeed: “Moore found himself pilloried by fellow Democrats and ostracized by longtime friends.” Here’s some of what Moore has to say about it:

Personal friends of mine ”” men in their 60s who had been my longtime mentors ”” were coming at me. They wrote on Facebook that the story was “irresponsible” and “dangerous.” A dozen or so people unfriended me. A petition was circulated online, condemning the magazine and my article. All I had done was write a balanced story on an outspoken Trump supporter for a liberal, gay magazine, and now I was being attacked. I felt alienated and frightened.

I laid low for a week or so. Finally, I decided to go out to my local gay bar in Williamsburg, where I’ve been a regular for 11 years. I ordered a drink but nothing felt the same; half the place ”” people with whom I’d shared many laughs ”” seemed to be giving me the cold shoulder. Upon seeing me, a friend who normally greets me with a hug and kiss pivoted and turned away…

My best friend, with whom I typically hung out multiple times per week, was suddenly perpetually unavailable. Finally, on Christmas Eve, he sent me a long text, calling me a monster, asking where my heart and soul went, and saying that all our other friends are laughing at me.

This got Moore to thinking, as well it might. He decided that maybe liberals weren’t as tolerant as he’d previously thought. And as he sought out more people on the right and spoke to them, he discovered they weren’t as intolerant as he’d previously thought. And he ended up here:

I finally had to admit to myself that I am closer to the right than where the left is today. And, yes, just three months ago, I voted for Hillary Clinton.

I’ve written before many times about political changers, both my own story and those of others (see right sidebar). All stories are different, and all are somewhat alike. Moore’s story is marked, I think, by its speed, but that sometimes happens (mine was slower). Sometimes political affiliation is a sort of house of cards, and knock one of the supporting pillars down and the whole thing collapses.

I think Moore’s experience was relatively quick because it began with the personal: his ostracization by people he had thought were his friends. This was a wake-up call—pow in the gut, where it hurts. For most changers, including me, it happens the other way around: first the political change (perhaps for reasons more abstract), then the coming out, and then the angry reaction of people once thought to be friends. For me, that angry group was neither as large as for Moore nor as vicious for the most part as what he reports, but it was still a very distressing and even shocking experience.

The sentence of Moore’s that struck home the most powerfully for me was this one, because it points out the surprise of seeing something one has never really seen (or experienced personally) before:

I realized that, for the first time in my adult life, I was outside of the liberal bubble and looking in.

Moore adds that what he saw was ugly. I don’t run in circles as extreme or as politically-oriented as Moore does, and my experience occurred around 2003-2004 in an atmosphere that was somewhat milder in general in terms of political polarization. However, it is a strange experience to be on the outside looking in, for the first time.

I kept wanting to say to my friends, “You know me! You know I’m not mean, or stupid. I’m the same person I always was!”

Sometimes I did say that. Sometimes (actually, most of the time) we remained friends. With some people I still can discuss politics without it turning into a confrontation. With some, we avoid the topic. But since I never really did discuss politics that much with people in general, it’s not that hard to avoid doing so now. Some people did stop talking to me, but it was a minority.

In that I’m more fortunate than Moore, who is a journalist in 2017, and a gay journalist at that. His friends are probably highly political and even more activist and to the left than most of my friends, and many of them are probably younger as well. That makes it harder for him. I applaud his courage. He’ll find a home on the right, I think, and realize it can for the most part be a welcoming place. Maybe he already has realized that.

And then there’s…

The New Neo Posted on by

I keep trying to cover other stories, but the media hue and cry about Trump’s possible Russian connections keeps shrieking to be heard to the exclusion of just about everything else.

But here are a few other things that caught my eye (and one related thing)—

(1) In a meeting with Netanyahu, Trump continues with one of the self-appointed tasks of his presidency, repairing relations with Israel. The article happens to mention that the two leaders have a relationship that “reaches back to the 1980s.”

That’s a long time ago. I haven’t been able to locate the exact context for their meeting and lengthy friendship, although it’s been alluded to several times. But Netanyahu’s Wiki entry contains some strong clues:

In 1976 Netanyahu graduated near the top of his class at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and was headhunted to be an economic consultant for the Boston Consulting Group in Boston, Massachusetts, working at the company between 1976 and 1978. At the Boston Consulting Group, he was a colleague of Mitt Romney [!], with whom he formed a lasting friendship. Romney remembers that Netanyahu at the time was: “[A] strong personality with a distinct point of view”, and says “[w]e can almost speak in shorthand… [w]e share common experiences and have a perspective and underpinning which is similar.” Netanyahu said that their “easy communication” was a result of “B.C.G.’s intellectually rigorous boot camp.”…

In 1978, Netanyahu returned to Israel. Between 1978 and 1980 he ran the Jonathan Netanyahu Anti-Terror Institute, a non-governmental organization devoted to the study of terrorism…From 1980 to 1982 he was director of marketing for Rim Industries in Jerusalem…[he was appointed] Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., a position he held from 1982 until 1984. Between 1984 and 1988 Netanyahu served as the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations…

It was while living in New York during the 1980s, that Netanyahu became friends with Fred Trump, the father of Donald Trump.

Interesting.

(2) You’ve heard of the deep state, right? Now we have deep earth:

A huge well of molten carbon that would spell disaster for the planet if released has been found under the US.

Scientists using the world’s largest array of seismic sensors have mapped a deep-Earth area, covering 700,000 sq miles (1.8 million sq km).

This is around the size of Mexico, and researchers say it has the potential to cause untold environmental damage.

The discovery could change our understanding of how much carbon the Earth contains, suggesting it is much more than we previously believed.

Here’s a map:

They’re not kidding, big.

But oh, never mind:

[The study’s leader]…told Mail Online: ‘The residence time of this carbon in the mantle is relatively large (nearly 1 billion years), so this reserve is not an imminent threat.’

Huh? Does he mean “long” instead of “large”?

The article keeps generating doomsday scenarios and then taking them back. But the mere existence of the thing is a good reminder of how fragile is our hold on predicting the future.

(3) From Andrew McCarthy:

So, in June 2016, the Obama Justice Department sought permission from the FISA court to conduct a national-security investigation against Trump insiders ”” and perhaps even Trump himself ”” on suspicion that they were acting as agents of a foreign power. The FISA application is said to have “named” Trump, though it is not clear whether that means the Justice Department was targeting him as a surveillance subject. Apparently, though, the application was so thin that even the FISA court, though notoriously accommodating of government surveillance requests, declined to approve a warrant.

Still the Obama Justice Department did not give up. In October, virtually on the eve of the election, it submitted a second FISA application ”” this one more narrowly tailored, avoiding mention of Trump himself. The FISA court granted this application. Indications are that the investigation is ongoing, targeting former Trump advisers Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, and Carter Page.

That, however, was before the election. It was after the election that the Democrats went into overdrive to solidify conventional wisdom that the election was not lost but stolen from them.

Not only did the IC put out its empty bag of a report. President Obama undertook to act on that report with vigor. It was thus on December 29 that Obama announced measures to punish Russia for what his administration studiously called its “interference in this fall’s presidential election.” He expelled 35 people described as Russian “intelligence operatives”; slapped sanctions on two Russian intelligence agencies (the military and civilian spy services, the GRU and FSB (which used to be the KGB) respectively), three companies said to support Russian cyber operations, and four “cyber officials”; and shuttered two Russian-owned buildings (on Long Island and Maryland’s eastern shoreline) described as intelligence facilities.

Mind you, Obama had not taken decisive action for eight years, during which Russia annexed Crimea, consolidated its de facto seizure of Eastern Ukraine, propped up Assad, armed Iran, buzzed U.S. naval vessels, and saber-rattled in the Baltics. But now, on December 29, on his way out of office and desperate to shore up an empty political “hacked the election” story, Obama moved with a fury of purpose, making the narrative seem deadly serious.

It was in this frenzied setting that General Flynn made a stupid mistake. He picked up the phone and called Russian Ambassador Kislyak.

It seems inconceivable that Flynn did not consider the likelihood, the virtual certainty, that he was calling a wiretapped line. It is hard to quantify how dumb this was. Flynn, a retired three-star Army general, is not just a long-time intelligence veteran. He was the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). How could he not have realized that, even in the best of times, Russian officials are routinely monitored under FISA ”” and this, far from the best of times, was a time of high suspicion?

Oh, just read the whole thing. Please.

(4) Melania Trump is reported to be unhappy as First Lady. This report could be bogus, and Melania denies its allegations, but I’m inclined to believe it’s at least somewhat true. If so, I really wouldn’t blame her one little bit.

Obama’s secret negotiations with Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

John Hinderaker reminds us of the following:

…in 2008, while he was running for the presidency, Barack Obama deliberately undermined American foreign policy by secretly encouraging Iran’s mullahs to hold out until he became president, because he would be easier to deal with than President George Bush. I wrote about the Obama scandal here: “HOW BARACK OBAMA UNDERCUT BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S NUCLEAR NEGOTIATIONS WITH IRAN.” Check out the original post for links. Here it is:

In 2008, the Bush administration, along with the “six powers,” was negotiating with Iran concerning that country’s nuclear arms program. The Bush administration’s objective was to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. On July 20, 2008, the New York Times headlined: “Nuclear Talks With Iran End in a Deadlock.” What caused the talks to founder? The Times explained:

“Iran responded with a written document that failed to address the main issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium. And Iranian diplomats reiterated before the talks that they considered the issue nonnegotiable.”

The Iranians held firm to their position, perhaps because they knew that help was on the way, in the form of a new president. Barack Obama had clinched the Democratic nomination on June 3. At some point either before or after that date, but prior to the election, he secretly let the Iranians know that he would be much easier to bargain with than President Bush…

So Obama secretly told the mullahs not to make a deal until he assumed the presidency, when they would be able to make a better agreement. Which is exactly what happened…

Please read the whole thing.

This is a direct parallel with the present allegations about Trump, except that it’s worse because (a) Obama wasn’t even elected yet; he was merely the nominee; and (b) Iran is a far more irrational enemy than Russia and this concerned a vital matter of policy. What’s more, of course, the press was on Obama’s side and therefore protected him to a great extent.

We also know, of course—because it was recorded by media, not by wiretap—that Obama assured Russia in 2012 that he would have more “flexibility” after the election, when he would no longer have to answer to the American voter:

Mr Medvedev, who steps down in May, said he would pass on Mr Obama’s message to his successor Vladimir Putin, according to an audio recording of comments the two leaders made during a meeting in Seoul, South Korea.

Mr Obama says: “On all these issues, but particularly missile defence, this, this can be solved but it’s important for him to give me space.”

Mr Medvedev replies: “Yeah, I understand. I understand your message about space. Space for you ”¦”

Mr Obama retorts: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

The media didn’t seem to care much about that. Of course, he was already president then, so the person he was promising to undercut was his own previous self.

Where is it all heading?

The New Neo Posted on by

A commenter here used to say quite often that the left had a lot more tricks up its sleeve than we knew, and that we were only seeing a small percentage of their power, maybe 5%. That person also said that if the left really wanted to sink a president or a person, we’d be seeing a good deal more.

I was thinking about that yesterday, and wondered what percentage we’re seeing now unleashed against Trump. In this case, of course, it’s not just the left; it’s everyone whose interests are threatened by him. I almost added “everyone who has reason to dislike him,” but that’s not true, because some of that group of people seem more alarmed by the forces arrayed against Trump right now and the extent to which they will go than they are by Trump himself and anything he or his aides have done.

John Podhoretz, who is not a Trump supporter, writes:

I can’t believe I’m writing this after the administration has been in office for 26 days, but here goes. The idea that Donald Trump is now inexorably on a path to impeachment has taken almost gleeful hold in the wake of the Michael Flynn resignation among liberal elites and anti-Trumpers generally””and everybody better stop and take a deep breath and consider what might arise from this. This isn’t fire we’re playing with, it’s a nuclear war.

Podhoretz goes on to explain the realities of impeachment of a GOP president by a Congress controlled by Republicans and concludes that it is highly unlikely. He also goes on to equally blame the anti-Trump and the Trump forces for the current situation, and predicts the possibility of real violence. I don’t agree with everything Podhoretz says about all of this, but his alarm is real (and unusual for him, I think). And I don’t think it is misplaced.

Polling continues to report the majority of people being at odds with ideas that are being promulgated by the press—for example, polls show general approval of Trump’s travel halt—and higher levels of distrust of the press than of Trump. My question is: how many people understand what the current “Trump’s aides spoke to Russia” flap is about, and how many see talking to Russia as some sort of terrible terrible outrage? I’m not at all sure the number is high, except of course among those who already hate Trump.

Trump weathered many storms during his candidacy, but I don’t think anything even remotely compared to this full court press. His ability to weather this one depends in part on whether there really is a smoking gun, and I confess I haven’t a clue. But a gun may not be necessary if enough smoke is generated, and the anti-Trump world (which is large, and composed of many disparate elements) is trying very very hard to create that smoke.

So far they are trying with propaganda and innuendo, as described by Scott Johnson here:

Here are the bullet points that Mike Allen extracts from [today’s NY Times story about Trump’s aides’ contacts with Russia] in his Axios AM summary this morning:

”¢ “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of ”¦ Trump’s ”¦ campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.”

”¢ “American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering” that Russia was hacking the DNC.

”¢ “[T]he intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president.”

Allen misses this slight qualification of the innuendo: “The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election. The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.”

And this one: “The officials would not disclose many details, including what was discussed on the calls, the identity of the Russian intelligence officials who participated, and how many of Mr. Trump’s advisers were talking to the Russians. It is also unclear whether the conversations had anything to do with Mr. Trump himself.”

Even putting the innuendo to one side, the story’s three reporters are what literary critics call unreliable narrators.

(Johnson goes on to explain a lie the reporters had previously told about something Trump said.)

So, that’s the way it goes, and that’s just one article we’re talking about. We have no idea whether the contact with Russia was innocuous or not, or whether the surveillance was legal or not, and the Times doesn’t care if we never find out, as long as we come to the proper conclusion: get rid of Trump and/or get rid of everyone who might be willing to work with him. That latter bit would have a very chilling effect, even without Trump removal—make it hard for him to function by striking fear and paralysis into him and everyone around him. Or provoke him into a really stupid explosion on Twitter or otherwise in public (or in private, and then report the leaks about that).

Lastly, stir up people into physical violence, or at least into demands that Trump go. Hey, maybe enough GOP members of Congress can be persuaded to impeach and even convict him. Of course, then you would have a lot of angry Trump voters—very angry—and even some people who didn’t vote for him but who don’t like what they’re seeing from the deep state and the MSM right now might be angry, too.

Hypothetical: would all of this still be happening with a President Cruz, for example? I don’t believe that Cruz would be making the same kind of errors as Trump and his people, so he wouldn’t be as vulnerable. But I do think there would be almost as many anti-Cruz people around. And I do think they’d be trying the same tools to bring him down, with the same tenacity. Everyone makes errors, and if you’re looking for them hard enough and ruthlessly enough, and especially if you’re willing to spin and even manufacture them, they can be used against that person.

“Interesting times” are not necessarily fun. But they are interesting.

Conspiracy of the deep state?

The New Neo Posted on by

I am always wary of conspiracy theories. Left or right, they have proliferated during my lifetime, and I don’t find the vast majority of them convincing.

I’ve written about this before (in particular here), and I haven’t changed my mind. So today, when reading article after article that posit a host of conspiracies about what’s behind the fall of Michael Flynn, I have continued to be wary.

On the other hand, there is something very fishy about the Flynn resignation story as it’s been presented to us minus the conspiracy theories. And that’s the sort of muddy soil in which conspiracy theories grow best. As I wrote at the outset:

You can read about the Flynn brouhaha here””and read about it and read about it and read about it, because it is being covered as though it’s another Watergate or worse. But I doubt you’ll get much clarity on it, although I encourage you to try.

I did. I’ve been reading about this for about two hours, and it still feels unusually murky.

That’s not my usual reaction to what I read. I may not always fully understand something, but from the start, this tale was accompanied by an unusual number of warning bells of all shapes and sizes.

So I present the following articles that set forth various conspiracy theories, and although I’m not exactly endorsing any one of them, I’m giving them somewhat more credence than usual, because I think that something is very very wrong here:

(1) Adam Kredo writes a piece with this theme:

The abrupt resignation Monday evening of White House national security adviser Michael Flynn is the culmination of a secret, months-long campaign by former Obama administration confidantes to handicap President Donald Trump’s national security apparatus and preserve the nuclear deal with Iran, according to multiple sources in and out of the White House who described to the Washington Free Beacon a behind-the-scenes effort by these officials to plant a series of damaging stories about Flynn in the national media.

(2) Eli Lake at Bloomberg writes:

But that’s all these allegations are at this point: unanswered questions. It’s possible that Flynn has more ties to Russia that he had kept from the public and his colleagues. It’s also possible that a group of national security bureaucrats and former Obama officials are selectively leaking highly sensitive law enforcement information to undermine the elected government.

Flynn was a fat target for the national security state. He has cultivated a reputation as a reformer and a fierce critic of the intelligence community leaders he once served with when he was the director the Defense Intelligence Agency under President Barack Obama. Flynn was working to reform the intelligence-industrial complex, something that threatened the bureaucratic prerogatives of his rivals.

He was also a fat target for Democrats…

(3) Here’s Allahpundit’s take on the article I linked in #1.

(4) Thomas Lifson at American Thinker points out what the CIA did:

Make no mistake: we have just witnessed an operation by members of the CIA to take out a high official of our own government. An agency widely believed to have brought down democratically elected governments overseas is now practicing the same dark arts in domestic American politics. Almost certainly, its new head, Mike Pompeo, was not consulted.

Senator Chuck Schumer, of all people, laid out on January 2 what was going to happen to the Trump administration if it dared take on the deep state ”“ the permanent bureaucracy that has contempt for the will of the voters and feels entitled to run the government for its own benefit…

Note that the law was broken by whoever leaked the transcripts to the media. Not only is the crime underlying the “scandal” being ignored, but the criminals are being hailed.

But that’s been going on for a long, long time, and as recently as Snowden. Going back to Pentagon Papers days, Daniel Ellsberg expected to be charged with a crime for going to the press rather than Congress, and was well on his way towards being prosecuted but allegations of government misconduct in his prosecution put the kibosh on that. Regarding Watergate, newspaper informant “Deep Throat” was ultimately revealed years later as having been FBI associate director Mark Felt, who was hailed as a hero but may have been settling a few petty scores instead [emphasis mine]:

Instead of seeking out prosecutors at the Justice Department, or the House Judiciary Committee charged with investigating presidential wrongdoing, [Felt] methodically leaked information to Woodward and Bernstein to guide their investigation while keeping his own identity and involvement safely concealed.

Some conservatives who worked for Nixon, such as Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy, castigated Felt and asserted their belief that Nixon was unfairly hounded from office.

…by an FBI operative, working with the WaPo and reporters who were later regarded as heroes.

Facts, judges, and lawyers

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the many strange details of the recent rulings on the Trump immigration EO was this:

[Judge James Robart] asked a Justice Department lawyer how many arrests of foreign nationals from the countries have occurred since 9/11. When the lawyer said she didn’t know, Robart answered his own question: “Let me tell, you, the answer to that is none, as best I can tell. You’re here arguing on behalf of someone that says we have to protect the United States from these individuals coming from these countries and there’s no support for that.”

But “as best I can tell” wasn’t good enough. Not good enough on the part of the judge, who should not be relying on his own ignorance in making a ruling, particularly when the facts were not the least bit difficult to come by and conflicted with his statement. And not good enough on the part of the government lawyer, whose ignorance might be considered even more shocking because the lawyer is charged with learning things that might be needed in a trial or hearing. Wouldn’t the lawyer be the person who should have realized it was her duty to have the facts on hand to provide the “support for that,” if questioned?

In the case of the Trump EO, however, the 9th Circuit (which is the federal appeals court to which the case went after Judge Robart ruled on it) had this to say on the matter of terrorists from the 7 countries:

The Government has pointed to no evidence that any alien from any of the countries named in the Order has perpetrated a terrorist attack in the United States. Rather than present evidence to explain the need for the Executive Order, the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all.

Let me try to translate that as best I can. The judges need to take into consideration evidence presented by counsel, not things they read in the newspaper. Evidence is readily available as to the danger the 7 countries represent—the widespread terrorism and terrorist-training there, the fact that they are failed states and vetting people from them is very difficult, the number of arrests of people from those countries who were plotting terrorism or acts related to it (as well as some terrorists from those countries who committed such acts but were shot and killed and therefore never arrested), the number of terrorists in Western European countries who were from the seven countries, and the number of people who had traveled to those countries recently for terrorist training and then committed or plotted such acts. But if such easily-obtainable evidence is not presented to the courts, it is as though it does not exist for the purposes of the courts. In addition, because the government’s position is that the court had no right to question the decision of the executive branch on this matter anyway (“the Government has taken the position that we must not review its decision at all”), any such evidence need not be taken into account.

What’s the remedy for the willful ignoring of the facts? Is there one? Should there be one? After all, we don’t want judges reviewing the pros and cons of each and every executive decision about immigration and security and whether the decision was justified, do we? That’s not a judicial function.

The Michael Flynn resignation

The New Neo Posted on by

Regarding attitudes towards Trump, there are three kinds of people.

And it may be that each type represents about a third of the population, although that’s just a guess of mine.

The first group is composed of the die-hards, those people Trump was referring to during the campaign when he said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and they wouldn’t much care. The second group consists of their opposites, those who believe Trump is evil incarnate, should be impeached (or worse) immediately and should have been impeached before taking office.

The third group is everybody else. That includes me. It may even include you.

The news of the day is that Michael Flynn—Trump’s National Security Advisor for 24 days—has resigned. You can read about the Flynn brouhaha here—and read about it and read about it and read about it, because it is being covered as though it’s another Watergate or worse. But I doubt you’ll get much clarity on it, although I encourage you to try.

I did. I’ve been reading about this for about two hours, and it still feels unusually murky. However, I offer the following observations—

That first group I mentioned will go on defending Trump. Members of the second group think this is the tip of one of the many icebergs that will finally sink the Trump Titanic, the sooner the better, because Trump is uniquely evil and is also in league with the nefarious Russians (about whom any concern was oh-so-80s back in 2012 when expressed by Romney, but never mind).

Many in the third group will be puzzled. Some will shrug and ignore it: who’s Michael Flynn and why should we care (and what about job creation and the economy)? Some will buy the idea being stated by the MSM that what happened is awful and a reflection of the continuing and widespread chaos (turmoil, confusion, strife) in the Trump camp. And some will distrust everything the media says and everything the Trump people say.

In other words, I don’t think this will sway the basic opinions of the vast majority of people. But I am quite sure that this is just one of a continuing train of stories that will be reported on during the Trump administration, with the intent of sinking Trump and everyone and everything associated with him.

As far as what actually happened with Flynn goes, the basic facts can be found here. For the underlying issues, this is one of the better summaries, I think:

1. This Won’t Answer Questions About The Trump Team’s Ties To Russia. This will surely reinvigorate the narrative that Vladimir Putin helped Wikileaks hack Democratic institutions in order to swing the election to Trump, with the knowledge that Trump would be far friendlier to Russia than Hillary. That’s still speculation, of course, but the speculation will ramp up far higher than it did before with Flynn resigning…

2. Trump’s Administration Is Going To Have Serious Leak Trouble. This story only broke because nine sources ”“ nine! ”“ told the Washington Post that the Flynn conversation apparently covered sanctions. Trump’s running into some serious opposition in the intelligence community, and they’re undercutting him with leak after leak…

3. At Best, There’s Some Confusion In The Trump Administration. One of two things is true: either Flynn fibbed to Pence and White House press secretary Sean Spicer and Trump himself, or Trump authorized Flynn to speak with the Russians, but didn’t authorize Flynn to tell Pence and Spicer about it. Either is possible…

4. Democrats, As Always, Aren’t Interested In Truth. Democrats are mostly interested in pillorying Trump. If this same thing had happened under Barack Obama, Democrats would have defended him with alacrity…

5. The Media Are Drooling. The media have a scalp now. They’re receiving leaks. They’re reporting. And they’re not letting up…

I see #5 as key to the significance of this story. Unless further revelations come that broaden or deepen the tale, I see the Flynn episode as one in a long line of crises—both real and manufactured—that we will be reading about as long as Trump and the GOP are in power.

And yes, that would have been true of any GOP president. But it’s even more true for Trump. That’s because there really is quite a bit of disarray and confusion in his administration, in part because of his lack of experience as an executive in government (which is different from running a real estate project), and also because of other exploitable characteristics in his personality and style. It’s also because the MSM and the left see him as uniquely vulnerable because of his slim margin of victory, and because a great many of his voters were not really all that keen on him but were voting against Clinton. These all combine to make Trump’s legions of enemies on the left very focused and very motivated in their attacks, and quite relentless.

A little Cloward-Piven action from Mexico?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember Cloward-Piven?:

The Cloward”“Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven…

The two [sociologists Cloward and Piven] stated that many Americans who were eligible for welfare were not receiving benefits, and that a welfare enrollment drive would strain local budgets, precipitating a crisis at the state and local levels that would be a wake-up call for the federal government…

Michael Reisch and Janice Andrews wrote that Cloward and Piven “proposed to create a crisis in the current welfare system ”“ by exploiting the gap between welfare law and practice ”“ that would ultimately bring about its collapse and replace it with a system of guaranteed annual income. They hoped to accomplish this end by informing the poor of their rights to welfare assistance, encouraging them to apply for benefits and, in effect, overloading an already overburdened bureaucracy.”

The term has come to mean something more general: precipitating a crisis in order to force a certain solution desired by the people doing the forcing. But in its original incarnation it was an example of Alinsky’s Rule number 4: “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” Only it wasn’t just the conventional “enemy”—the right—because in the case of Cloward and Piven they were hoping to make the Democrats live up to the rules.

It’s a situation in which a group of activists exploits the protections and benefits offered by a government in order to overwhelm that system of protections by sheer numbers and the weight of defending all the claims for more benefits. Cloward and Piven were counting on this process to shame (or frighten) the powers that be into giving even more benefits. Where the money would come from was not their problem.

Now Jose de Cordoba at the WSJ describes a possible Cloward-Piven strategy (although he does not use that term) on the part of Mexico towards the US’s treatment of the illegal immigrants here [emphasis mine]:

All but one of about 50 undocumented [sic] Mexican migrants at a meeting Saturday indicated they would rather risk detention and long court battles in the U.S. than return to Mexico voluntarily.

The majority of migrants at the meeting in Phoenix, which included Mexican officials, signaled in a show of hands that they were ready to fight deportation in U.S. courts.

“Even if that means detention for weeks?” asked former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda.

“Even if it takes months,” shouted one woman. “Even if it takes years,” another yelled. “We are here to fight.”

Mr. Castaneda and others want Mexico’s government to endorse a tough and perhaps risky strategy to battle an expected increase in deportations of their undocumented compatriots in the U.S. by underwriting the migrants’ legal struggle in the U.S. court system. By overwhelming already heavily burdened immigration courts, Mr. Castaneda hopes the legal system would break down, bringing deportations to a halt.

Pure Cloward-Piven.

Mexico’s government hasn’t endorsed the strategy, but President Enrique Peé±a Nieto recently budgeted about $50 million to the country’s 50 consulates to help pay the costs of defending migrants who are in the U.S. illegally and facing deportation.

Just about all of the articles I’ve read about the current roundup imply (or even state) that it’s an increase in the action against illegal immigrants as a result of Trump’s presidency. But guess what? Mexico says that isn’t true [emphasis mine]:

Mexico’s Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Monday there has not been a rise yet in the number of deportations of Mexicans from the United States under President Donald Trump, but that consulates were receiving more worried phone calls.

Videgaray said in a television interview that the number of deported Mexicans was following the same trends as last year, and was even slightly lower.

He said Mexican consulates in the United States have received at least three times as many daily phone calls from worried citizens there as before news of possible ramped-up deportations under Trump.

“It’s grown exponentially,” said Videgaray, adding that people were calling with questions, complaints and worries about the process rather than because of the number of raids.

So congratulations, MSM! You have been successful in your goal of frightening people half to death about Trump. No doubt you will continue on your mission.