I sometimes am surprised at how impatient a fair number of people on the right can be.
I know, I know. We’ve been disappointed a thousand times. I know. Nor do I (as I’ve often said) think politicians are all just fabulous people trying their best.
But you know what? Some are. Or at least, some are pretty smart and are relatively eager to actually pass some of the things they say they want to pass. I still can get surprised when intelligent people seem to ignore the significant constraints of the Congressional process, and be so lightning-quick to blame Republicans for things they shouldn’t be blamed for (as well as the things they should be blamed for).
Sometimes I’m even one of those people doing the blaming.
So please read this post by John Hinderaker. It may reassure you, as it did me. If not “reassure,” at least it will give you greater insight into what the GOP says is the current plan for health care reform.
Of course, if you think the best plan would be to get the federal government out of the health care business altogether, then you are correct in being very heavily critical of all of the Republican plans. But I think that ship has sailed, although I would like to see less government involvement than these plans envision.
Earlier in this post I suggested you read a piece by John Hinderaker. In his post, he suggests you read the entirety of this article by Peter Nelson, from which he took a series of quotes he used. Here’s one of those Nelson quotes with which I heartily agree. It deals with a theme I’ve been harping on for years (and not just concerning health care, either):
But it’s dangerous if, to foment a public outcry to force changes to the bill, critics instill within the conservative base a sense that full repeal is possible if not for those weak-kneed Republicans elected to Congress. If conservative leaders set unattainable expectations, they will create a perception of failure in Congress that will deflate the conservative base.
That process has been aided and abetted for years by quite a few talk show hosts and/or bloggers on the right, with an assist from an MSM that likes to heighten discord on the right. The talk show hosts and bloggers do it because it’s good for ratings and traffic. The MSM does it because it wants the right to cannibalize itself.
I want to add, though, that one thing I’ve observed over and over is that the GOP is terrible at explaining to its base—at the outset—what it’s doing when it makes some move. The base often doesn’t listen anyway, but it seems to me that the GOP’s explanation often comes quite a while after the fact, when people are already mega-angry.
That’s not smart, and it’s one of many reasons the GOP in Congress is met with charges of “elitist.”
When talking about her upcoming Broadway debut with “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, Blanchett discussed how the play is relevant for audiences today.
“It’s all about as you move forward in life, what’s your moral compass, where does kindness and humanity sit in a really brutal world?” she said.
Colbert asked that same question of the actor and was in for quite the surprise.
This audience laughed—I assume mostly with Blanchett rather than at her. But let’s assume it wasn’t just some sort of throwaway joke and let’s take Blanchett seriously for a moment. What could she be meaning when she says that her vagina is her moral compass? Here are some possibilities:
(1) “Women are more moral than men. So the possession of a vagina means that by definition a person possessing one is on a higher moral plane than those without one.”
This is, unfortunately, a rather commonplace brag these days on the part of women. I’ve never seen any evidence that it is true. It’s true, however, that women are less likely to be violent criminals then men are. But that’s not what Blanchett’s referring to; she’s talking about general “kindness” and “humanity.” Let’s just say I’ve seen plenty of unkindness and inhumanity in both sexes, as well as its opposite, and I see no evidence that either is more commonplace in one sex than the other, although they do have somewhat of a tendency to take different forms.
(2) The vagina is the seat of sexual intercourse—which I can’t say usually has much of a “moral compass” at all. But it’s also the seat of childbirth. Blanchett’s got four children, and so perhaps she’s saying that motherhood informs her sense of what’s moral. I doubt that was what was she had in mind, but it’s the kindest interpretation of her statement. And the phenomenon is not limited to women, anyway; I think it not unusual that the coming of parenthood calls forth a greater desire to do what’s “right” in both men and women
I don’t really care much what Cate Blanchett says, so why am I focusing on this? It’s because I’ve noticed a similar sort of moral self-preening quite often these days, particularly from women. Whatever Blanchett really meant, she (and others) do seem to be saying that men and women don’t make moral decisions—don’t get moral guidance—in the same manner. She even may be saying they don’t come to the same ethical conclusions in the end.
In other words, the assertion seems to be that the process of making moral decisions is not a universal one. Do Blanchett et al. also think the rules of morality are not universal? Perhaps.
This brings up an old question that’s been debated for quite some time: is the moral development of the sexes somehow different? And if so, is one gender’s development somehow superior to that of the other? The Blanchetts of the world appear to be saying that women’s moral development is superior, or easier, or better in some way. The old answer used to be that the moral development of women is different—or even, according to some, at an earlier and more primitive stage than that of men:
The theory holds that moral reasoning, the basis for ethical behavior, has six identifiable developmental stages, each more adequate at responding to moral dilemmas than its predecessor. Kohlberg followed the development of moral judgment far beyond the ages studied earlier by Piaget, who also claimed that logic and morality develop through constructive stages. Expanding on Piaget’s work, Kohlberg determined that the process of moral development was principally concerned with justice, and that it continued throughout the individual’s lifetime, a notion that spawned dialogue on the philosophical implications of such research.
The six stages of moral development are grouped into three levels: pre-conventional morality, conventional morality, and post-conventional morality…
There have been critiques of the theory from several perspectives. Arguments include that it emphasizes justice to the exclusion of other moral values, such as caring…
Carol Gilligan has argued that Kohlberg’s theory is overly androcentric. Kohlberg’s theory was initially developed based on empirical research using only male participants; Gilligan argued that it did not adequately describe the concerns of women. Kohlberg stated that women tend to get stuck at level 3, focusing on details of how to maintain relationships and promote the welfare of family and friends. Men are likely to move on to the abstract principles, and thus have less concern with the particulars of who is involved. Consistent with this observation, Gilligan’s theory of moral development does not focus on the value of justice. She developed an alternative theory of moral reasoning based on the ethics of caring. Critics such as Christina Hoff Sommers, however, argued that Gilligan’s research is ill-founded, and that no evidence exists to support her conclusion.
Blanchett may not have had any of that in mind, but the related idea that women are somehow more caring, and that “caring” is the most important (perhaps even the single) pillar on which moral (and for that matter, political) decisions should be based, has permeated our culture. But mercy and justice have always been elements of morality that need to be balanced.
If you want to read more of Sommers’ critique of Gilligan, see this article of hers entitled, “The War Against Boys.” Here’s an excerpt:
Does Gilligan actually understand boys? Does she empathize with them? Is she free of the misandry that infects so many gender theorists who never stop blaming the “male culture” for all social and psychological ills? Nothing we have seen or heard offers the slightest reassurance that Gilligan and her followers are wise enough or objective enough to be trusted with devising new ways of socializing boys.
Every society confronts the problem of civilizing its young males. The traditional approach is through character education: Develop the young man’s sense of honor. Help him become a considerate, conscientious human being. Turn him into a gentleman. This approach respects boys’ masculine nature; it is time-tested, and it works. Even today, despite several decades of moral confusion, most young men understand the term “gentleman”and approve of the ideals it connotes.
What Gilligan and her followers are proposing is quite different: civilize boys by diminishing their masculinity. “Raise boys like we raise girls” is Gloria Steinem’s advice. This approach is deeply disrespectful of boys. It is meddlesome, abusive, and quite beyond what educators in a free society are mandated to do…
A boy today, through no fault of his own, finds himself implicated in the social crime of shortchanging girls. Yet the allegedly silenced and neglected girl sitting next to him is likely to be the superior student. She is probably more articulate, more mature, more engaged, and more well-balanced. The boy may be aware that she is more likely to go on to college. He may believe that teachers prefer to be around girls and pay more attention to them. At the same time, he is uncomfortably aware that he is considered to be a member of the favored and dominant gender.
Note only that, but these days the “allegedly silenced and neglected girl [or woman] sitting next to him” is sometimes very pleased indeed to smugly inform him of her innate moral superiority, bestowed on her by the possession of a vagina.
In the most recent Scientific American, there’s an article on theories related to cosmic inflation:
On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency held an international press conference to announce new results from a satellite called Planck. The spacecraft had mapped the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, light emitted more than 13 billion years ago just after the big bang, in better detail than ever before. The new map, scientists told the audience of journalists, confirms a theory that cosmologists have held dear for 35 years: that the universe began with a bang followed by a brief period of hyperaccelerated expansion known as inflation. This expansion smoothed the universe to such an extent that, billions of years later, it remains nearly uniform all over space and in every direction and “flat,” as opposed to curved like a sphere, except for tiny variations in the concentration of matter that account for the finely detailed hierarchy of stars, galaxies, and galaxy clusters around us.
That some “tiny variation”! However, on the cosmic scale (which is what we’re talking about here), I suppose galaxies are rather diminutive.
To continue:
The principle message of the press conference was that the Planck data perfectly fit the predictions of the simplest inflationary models, reinforcing the impression that the theory is firmly established. The book on cosmology seemed to be closed, the team suggested.
In other words, the team of researchers was indicating to the press and the world that the science is settled.
But the book of science is never, never closed:
Following the announcement, [the three authors of the article in Scientific American] discussed its ramifications at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics…We all remarked on the meticulously precise observations of the Planck team. We disagreed, however, with the interpretation. If anything, the Planck data disfavored the simplest inflation models and exacerbated long-standing foundational problems with the theory, providing new reasons to consider competing ideas about the origin and evolution of the universe.
That may whet your appetite for the entire article, which is behind a paywall (I happen to have a copy of the dead tree version of the magazine, from which I copied the text). But it’s not the substance of the article regarding cosmic inflation that led me to quote it—it’s the idea that disagreements over the nature and meaning of scientific data are commonplace and expected in many fields.
The area of cosmology is relatively non-political compared to climate science. At least as far as I know, there is no pressing legislative initiative depending on the findings of cosmologists. People care about cosmology, however, in part because arguments about cosmology sometimes segue into religious matters (for example, I’ve read articles on how cosmology supposedly impacts on people’s religious beliefs). And although I have no doubt that there are political issues in cosmology relating to who gets grants and what satellites are launched and what those satelllites will endeavor to study, those things are not as highly popularized, pressurized, and politicized as the ramifications of the field of climate science.
And yet, in cosmology there are apparently consensus views, press conferences promoting those consensus views, and dissenters (such as the authors of that article). And that should be no surprise.
The Scientific American authors go on to say the following [emphasis mine]:
In the years since [that initial 2013 announcement], more precise data gathered by the Planck satellite and other instruments have made the case [against the commonly accepted inflationary theory] only stronger. Yet even now the cosmology community has not taken a cold, honest look at the big bang theory or paid significant attention to critics who question whether inflation happened. Rather cosmologists appear to accept at face value the proponents’ assertion that we must believe the inflationary theory because it offers the only simple explanation of the observed features of the universe. But, as we will explain, the Planck data, added to theoretical problems, have shaken the foundations of this assertion.
Sounds pretty dramatic and pretty unsettled, as science goes.
If the Obamacare bill was passed in the Senate via reconciliation…, why cannot it be rescinded in the Senate via reconciliation? Is this more Alice In Wonderland?
The question is a reasonable one, and it highlights how very complex the legislative process often is. House and Senate (especially the Senate) have their own arcane and often puzzling rules and arcane and often puzzling strategies/tactics involving those rules. It makes the rest of us scratch our heads and doubt the motives and abilities of our legislators.
It’s not that those in Congress are such well-meaning geniuses, either. There’s plenty of room to doubt and plenty of reason to doubt. But sometimes there is a more innocuous (although complex) explanation for what they’re doing, and I submit that the GOP’s use of reconciliation to deal with Obamacare is one of those times.
For anyone who wants to try to understand the ins and outs of this, I recommend this and this, and this. From the latter [emphasis mine]:
The reconciliation process can only be used to pass bills that affect spending and revenue ”” budgetary matters, in other words. It was created in the 1970s to make it easier for Congress to keep a budget, by giving the Senate tools to more easily change laws regulating big mandatory spending programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and the like.
Last year, Republicans passed the Restoring Americans’ Healthcare Freedom Reconciliation Act, a repeal bill that uses the reconciliation process. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that all the parts of Obamacare that it repealed ”” Obamacare’s insurance subsidies, Medicaid expansion, the law’s tax increases, and its mandate to purchase coverage ”” could be dismantled through reconciliation…
There’s basically nothing that Democrats alone can do to stop this. Budget resolutions can’t be filibustered, so if Republicans vote to include reconciliation instructions for Obamacare repeal, there’s nothing the opposition can do about it. And, of course, they can’t filibuster the actual repeal bill; that’s the whole point of using reconciliation.
So if the plan doesn’t work, it’ll have to be because there are Republicans defections.
That was written in January, and of course the dissension in the Republican ranks is pretty clear right now.
If we have an Alice in Wonderland situation in terms of process (“curiouser and curiouser”), it’s because of the way the bill was passed in the first place and the way the Senate works. The GOP senators are constrained by a number of things, and not all of them have to do with the extreme difficulty of crafting a health care law that is not exorbitant, does not restrict liberty unduly, and yet doesn’t raise a furious hue and cry about gazillions of uninsured Americans. Some of the constraints have to do with the way Congress is structured and the necessity of getting around the filibuster—a filibuster that would give the Democrats the power to block any repeal that is not accomplished through reconciliation, and which prevents an outright and total repeal that doesn’t use reconciliation.
In other words, to answer Frog’s question (at least as I understand the question and the explanatory articles): full repeal cannot use the reconciliation process and would subject the bill to Democrats blocking it. The GOP is using the reconciliation process, which means the repeal is somewhat piecemeal in that it does not and cannot include all items, but it gets around the filibuster difficulty.
Now, some of you might say “Away with the filibuster entirely!” I don’t think the GOP is eager to do that, and it’s not just for lack of cojones. The filibuster, with its protection of the minority party, has stood the test of time to a large extent because each party knows it could be the minority next time. And to those who say “The Democrats would do it in a heartbeat, so the GOP must do it first!” I would answer that I sometimes think that myself, but I am given pause by the fact that the Democrats didn’t do it when sorely pressed during the time they were trying to pass Obamacare.
Why didn’t they do it then? Because (a) even they were afraid to cross that line for fear it would come back to haunt them; and (b) they felt they didn’t need to do it, because they could pretty much accomplish what they wanted through reconciliation.
I believe the Republicans are reasoning the same thing at the moment.
Donald Trump is the only president I’m aware of who was the subject of a great deal of impeachment talk even before he took office.
And I’ve noticed that nearly everything he’s done since then has been met with a significant number of cries of “impeachment.” Here’s just the most recent iteration: “Trump’s Wiretap Tweets Raise Risk of Impeachment”:
…[I]f [Trump’s] allegation is not true and is unsupported by evidence, that too should be a scandal on a major scale. This is the kind of accusation that, taken as part of a broader course of conduct, could get the current president impeached. We shouldn’t care that the allegation was made early on a Saturday morning on Twitter.
The article goes on and on attempting to explain why this is so.
I’ll make a prediction right now, which is that the drumbeat of “impeachment” cries will not let up for Trump’s entire presidency, but they will be in response to a successive and nearly-inclusive series of things that he does.
It’s more a technique for rallying the troops than for anything else. It would take something quite egregious for the GOP-majority Senate to go along with a conviction, or even for the GOP-majority House to impeach in the first place. And why would the Democrats be so eager to see Mike Pence in office? I think Pence would be a formidable opponent for them. He doesn’t have Trump’s flair for drama and for the jugular, but he’s reliably conservative and no pushover.
Impeachment has become the background noise of politics these days. It was true during the Obama years, even though (as I wrote here, for example) it was almost certainly not going to happen. It’s even more commonplace now. Its purpose is to keep people as fired up as possible against Trump, and to give them a sense of hope about the impeachment possibilities. The consequences—Mike Pence as president—are usually not even mentioned.
I will say this, however: there is more chance of the GOP turning on Trump than there ever was of the Democrats turning on Obama. I don’t think it will happen, though, barring something far more serious than anything that’s happened so far.
If you go here, you can read a whole bunch of analyses of and reactions to the newly-unveiled “repeal and replace” health care bill proposed by the GOP.
Predictably, nobody likes it. Before I get into a few of the details, I want to talk about that. Why do I say “predictably”? Because I believe that if you couple the modern-day costs and complexity of health care with the expectations—nay, the demands—of people that everyone be guaranteed a high level of care no matter what their health problems or income, you have an almost insoluble problem.
I wrote a shortish post on the subject of the difficulty of providing a system of health care insurance very early in my blogging days, years before Obamacare was even a twinkle in Obama’s eyes. Now twelve years have passed since that post, and it has come to pass (just as the Obamacare proponents said) that Obamacare has become something to which people feel entitled—its subsidies and its universal coverage. So it has become very very difficult to take those things away. So the GOP has tried to come up with a more market-based solution that preserves somewhat more liberty but provides for most of those things nevertheless.
Conservatives are hopping mad at this bill, because they want an even more market-based system with less expense (fewer government subsidies). Liberals are hopping mad at this bill, because they would be hopping mad at anything the GOP proposes.
No wonder the GOP took so long to come up with this—which I consider the opening bid in a lengthier process, by the way.
I’ve long felt that Avik Roy is one of the better health care policy analysts, so I’ll turn to him for his viewpoint rather than to some of the other people who are hyperventilating on the subject. His article is entitled “House GOP’s Obamacare Replacement Will Make Coverage Unaffordable For Millions — Otherwise, It’s Great” and it begins this way:
That’s not an ironic headline. Leading House Republicans have included a number of transformative and consequential reforms in their American Health Care Act, the full text of which was published Monday evening. But those reforms are overshadowed by the bill’s stubborn desire to make health insurance unaffordable for millions of Americans, and trap millions more in poverty. Can such a bill garner the near-universal Republican support it will need to pass Congress?
As an aside, I will add that one of the many problems with bills that deal with health care (or what used to be called health insurance, although with coverage of pre-existing conditions it gets more into the realm of a prepaid health plan than any sort of insurance as insurance is usually known) is that they are very complex. That makes them more than ordinarily susceptible to propaganda and/or misunderstandings. How many people are going to read the whole bill (I’m certainly not among them)? How many people are even going to read an article such as Roy’s?
Roy is saying there’s good news and bad news:
The AHCA takes important steps to strengthen the Medicaid program, by converting its funding into a per-capita allotment that would give states the flexibility they need to modernize the program…
Unfortunately, the AHCA’s efforts at replacing Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges are problematic. A key limitation is that Republicans have decided to repeal and replace Obamacare on a party-line vote using the Senate’s reconciliation process. But reconciliation can only repeal Obamacare’s taxes and spending; it can’t replace most of the law’s premium-hiking insurance regulations.
The AHCA does make an effort to repeal Obamacare’s two costliest regulations: its requirement that plans charge similar premiums to the young and the old (age-based community rating); and its requirement that plans contain generous financial payouts (high actuarial value). So far, so good.
But the plan, due to the reconciliation process, appears to leave the vast majority of Obamacare’s regulations in place. The February 10 leaked draft contained language that would have returned control of essential health benefits to the states. That language appears to have been deleted.
Worse still, the bill contains an arbitrary “continuous coverage” provision, in which those who sign up for coverage outside of the normal open enrollment period would pay a 30 percent surcharge to the normal insurance premium. This surcharge is an arbitrary price control. While 30 percent represents an approximate average of the additional health risk of late enrollees, the 30 percent provision incentivizes those who face much higher costs to sign up, forcing insurers to cover them at a loss. This seems like a recipe for adverse selection death spirals.
The critical mistake of the AHCA is its insistence on flat, non-means-tested tax credits. The flat credit will price many poor and vulnerable people out of the health insurance market.
I strongly suggest you read the whole thing, including the addendum that includes an interview with Rep. Kevin Brady (R., Tex.), Chairman of the House Ways & Means Committee, that took place on the Hugh Hewitt show.
To repeat: I don’t expect that this bill is in its final form. Right now, I’m just starting to digest this particular bill and its possible consequences. I assume there will be a lot more discussion and a lot more to learn.
Here’s the text of the new order. Note the title, “Executive Order Protecting The Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into The United States.”
And note passages such as this one:
Executive Order 13769 [Trump’s previous EO on the subjet] did not provide a basis for discriminating for or against members of any particular religion. While that order allowed for prioritization of refugee claims from members of persecuted religious minority groups, that priority applied to refugees from every nation, including those in which Islam is a minority religion, and it applied to minority sects within a religion. That order was not motivated by animus toward any religion, but was instead intended to protect the ability of religious minorities — whoever they are and wherever they reside — to avail themselves of the USRAP in light of their particular challenges and circumstances.
Trump’s new order also includes “brief descriptions, taken in part from the Department of State’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2015 (June 2016), of some of the conditions in six of the previously designated countries that demonstrate why their nationals continue to present heightened risks to the security of the United States.”
The order then goes on to “temporarily pause” travel from six of the countries in the previous order, “subject to categorical exceptions and case-by-case waivers.” Iraq is excepted, and an explanation is given for that, including the following caveats:
…[T]he ongoing conflict has impacted the Iraqi government’s capacity to secure its borders and to identify fraudulent travel documents. Nevertheless, the close cooperative relationship between the United States and the democratically elected Iraqi government, the strong United States diplomatic presence in Iraq, the significant presence of United States forces in Iraq, and Iraq’s commitment to combat ISIS justify different treatment for Iraq. In particular, those Iraqi government forces that have fought to regain more than half of the territory previously dominated by ISIS have shown steadfast determination and earned enduring respect as they battle an armed group that is the common enemy of Iraq and the United States. In addition, since Executive Order 13769 was issued, the Iraqi government has expressly undertaken steps to enhance travel documentation, information sharing, and the return of Iraqi nationals subject to final orders of removal. Decisions about issuance of visas or granting admission to Iraqi nationals should be subjected to additional scrutiny to determine if applicants have connections with ISIS or other terrorist organizations, or otherwise pose a risk to either national security or public safety.
There’s much much more. Some of it has to do with enhanced vetting, including the extent of the cooperation of the countries involved. Another section has to do with the scope of the EO, and T’s are crossed and I’s dotted where they were not before. For example, the EO exempts “any lawful permanent resident of the United States,” and any “national [who] has previously established significant contacts with the United States but is outside the United States on the effective date of this order for work, study, or other lawful activity.”
There are many many more exempted categories listed, and then the EO goes on after this for quite some time. It’s a far more carefully-drafted document than its predecessor, and in my opinion is similar to one that might have been issued in the first place had Trump waited for Sessions to be in charge before releasing it.
And of course, none of this carefulness matters to some Democrats:
Democrats responded by calling Trump’s order a repeat version of the first attempt.
“Here we go again…Muslim Ban 2.0 #NoBanNoWall” tweeted Rep. Andre Carson of Indiana, one of two Muslims serving in the House of Representatives.
Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, had this reaction:
“The Trump administration has conceded that its original Muslim ban was indefensible. Unfortunately, it has replaced it with a scaled-back version that shares the same fatal flaws. The only way to actually fix the Muslim ban is not to have a Muslim ban. Instead, President Trump has recommitted himself to religious discrimination, and he can expect continued disapproval from both the courts and the people.
“What’s more, the changes the Trump administration has made, and everything we’ve learned since the original ban rolled out, completely undermine the bogus national security justifications the president has tried to hide behind and only strengthen the case against his unconstitutional executive orders.”
This Boston Herald article points out that the FISA-spying accusation Trump has leveled at Obama fits in quite nicely with a pattern the Obama administration had demonstrated (although I want to emphasize that that doesn’t mean the accusations are true):
The Democrats want you to think this is a crazy conspiracy theory for an unhinged tweeting president.
But Obama has a rich legacy of using the federal government as a political weapon and it would be foolish to think he suddenly started restraining himself, when he was never held to account by either the media or Democrats in power.
Remember, Obama’s Justice Department secretly subpoenaed the private phone records of Associated Press editors and reporters. It was pure spying.
Fox News reporter James Rosen and his family were wiretapped.
Former CBS news reporter Sharyl Attkisson’s computer was hacked by the government.
Add to these incidents the harassment of conservative 501(c)(4) organizations by Obama’s IRS, and the mercenary nature of the Obama administration reveals itself.
We’re told Obama administration officials went to the FISA Court twice last year for warrants to conduct electronic surveillance on candidate Trump. Why?
The DNC leaks show that DNC staffers were formulating “Russia” attacks on Trump as far back as last April, with one email between two committee members reading “the pro-Russia stuff ties in pretty well to idea that Trump is too friendly with Putin/weak on Russia.”
Before Obama became president, he lacked the governmental means to spy on anyone. But he had some rather curious ways of dealing with political opponents even back then. They tended to involve using the law—or information obtained in court proceedings—against them, with the assistance of his friends in the press. I have discussed these incidents before, in particular when Obama was first running for the presidency in 2008. If you’ve forgotten, or are unfamiliar with the tactics involved, please read this. Pay particular attention to what happened to Blair Hull and Jack Ryan. Then add that to the behavior described in that Herald article.
So, who’s telling the truth now? Obama, who would have little hesitation to do exactly as alleged, if he thought he could get away with it? Or Trump, with his history of intemperate accusations (if you doubt me, recall the flap over his statements about Cruz’s father and Oswald)?
Darned if I know. And I think most of the people who say they know are just guessing.
…[Trump] claimed his predecessor ordered a wiretap of the phones at Trump Tower in New York, Mr Trump’s campaign headquarters.
James Comey, the FBI director, asked the Justice Department this weekend to publicly reject Mr Trump’s assertion, unnamed senior American officials told the New York Times on Sunday.
Those “unnamed officials” really get around these days. They spend so much time talking to the press, it’s a wonder they get any work done.
Comey is presently still the head of the FBI. I don’t know how long he’ll remain in that post, but why wouldn’t he issue a public disclaimer that the FBI did anything of the sort, if the FBI didn’t do anything of the sort? So what’s this business with begging a spokesperson to do it?
Then we have this:
A spokesman for the FBI and the spokeswoman for the Justice Department declined to comment, the Times reported. The department has so far not released any public statement.
Hmmm. Next:
Mr Obama has said the allegations were “simply false”. His former intelligence chief also “absolutely denied” the claims. But Mr Trump told a friend: “This will be investigated, it will all come out. I will be proven right.”
I’m not sure who I’d put my money on, but I wouldn’t bet a whole lot of dough against Trump.
Finally, we have the punchline, the part that made me laugh:
Mr Trump offered no evidence and is believed to have based the claims, made in a series of tweets on Sunday, on press reports.
And we all know how much press reports are worth.
That last point is the subject of several pieces today (see this, for example). Here’s one that features a reporter at my favorite rag, The NY Times:
On January 19th and 20th 2017, The NY Times reported that wiretaps of people on the Trump team were passed along to the Obama White House, one of the story’s authors was Michael S. Schmidt. On Saturday that same Michael S. Schmidt was one of the reporters who wrote the story, “Trump, Offering No Evidence, Says Obama Tapped His Phones.” That’s right, the same NY Times reporter who was one of the sources for the President’s claim, said that there was no evidence for the claim.
Ah, but there’s a flaw there, too. Did you catch it? Jeff Dunetz, the author of the paragraph I just quoted, is ignoring how clever the Times can be with this sort of thing. That Times headline doesn’t say there is no evidence; it says that Trump didn’t offer any. That’s the meme that all the Trump critics are using, and as far as I can see it’s absolutely correct that Trump offered no evidence.
Of course, a lot of people will read it as meaning there was is no evidence. But that’s the goal.
It’s not the only meme out there, either. Another is to focus on the word “ordered,” as Ann Althouse points out:
From what I’ve read, “ordered” is the weasel word that allows anti-Trumpsters to make flat statements portraying Trump as out of his mind. But the notorious Trump tweets do not say that Obama “ordered” a wiretapping. They ask if it is “legal for a sitting President to be ‘wire tapping’ a race for president prior to an election?” and refer to what a court had done. Though Trump didn’t precisely say this, any “order” came from the court. He then said “President Obama was tapping my phones,” which isn’t to say that he “ordered” it. I think the story Trump is relying on is that the FISA court granted a warrant (after some funny business to get around a previous denial), not that Obama just “ordered” it. Then, Trump tweeted that Obama had gone “low… to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process.” Trump portrays Obama as doing something, not “ordering” it.
Another word to pick apart is wiretap. You may note that, in his original tweets, Trump put the term in scare quotes. There may or may not have been a reason for that (with Trump it’s hard to be sure), but my guess is that he meant to do it and that his purpose was to use the word in a generic, colloquial sense of “listening to the communications of” rather than the legal sense of a literal wiretap.
If you look at all of this back-and-forth in a certain way, it becomes absurdist. That’s my mood today, anyway.
