Open marriage and happiness

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the subject matter of this lengthy article that appeared recently in the Sunday magazine section of the NY Times. The author interviewed many couples who are in open marriages, and tried to describe what motivates them and how the arrangements are going for them. And although no open marriage is exactly the same as any other open marriage (the couples make up their own rules, such as whether the extra lovers will ever meet the other spouse), there are certain commonalities you might notice if, as I did, you manage to wade through the whole thing.

Open marriage has always seemed to me to be to be a recipe for marital disaster, but this article chronicles open marriages that profess to be successful. I believe the people interviewed are among the very few people who can compartmentalize and wall off feelings as primal as jealousy, and feel motivated to make the effort to wall off those feelings.

It’s not for me at all, and not for most people.

Open marriage also seems to require an unusual amount of intense talking about the relationship, and nearly continual verbal processing of feelings. It sounds like a great deal of work, much more so than a conventional marriage. Why would people want to take on that task? The author Susan Dominus doesn’t really tell us what might be the thing that’s different about these people that drives them towards it—she never mentions their religious beliefs or lack thereof, for example, although my guess would be that they would be markedly non-religious. They also seem strangely selfish, wanting what they want when they want it (and what they usually want is more variety, particularly sexually, to spice up their lives). But they also seem somewhat unselfish, at least in one way: they are willing to allow their spouses to be shared with another person.

The entire practice is a minefield. But the people featured in the article seem remarkably cool with it. What runs through their veins? And of course there is no dearth of couples therapists willing to work with such couples, not on ending the openness of the marriage, but on making the openness work, and smoothing over the psychological rough spots.

There’s also almost a complete ignoring of the issue of the effect on children, at least in the article. In it, children tend to be mentioned almost as an afterthought, and to be described as uniformly taking it all in stride. The question of what effect this arrangement will have on the psyches of the children of the couples doesn’t seem to be taken seriously, either by the open marriage practitioners in the article themselves or by author Dominus. And yet it’s my guess that the effect is profound, whether the children are talking about it or not.

This practice is described as “the new monogamy.” It’s many things—and I suppose, technically, it is “monogamy” in that its practitioners often remain married to only one person. But that’s quite a stretch for the definition of the word—something like calling atheism “the new religion.”

The fossil that looked like a statue

The New Neo Posted on by

Wow. Just wow:

At first glance the reassembled gray blocks look like a nine-foot-long sculpture of a dinosaur. A bony mosaic of armor coats its neck and back, and gray circles outline individual scales. Its neck gracefully curves to the left, as if reaching toward some tasty plant. But this is no lifelike sculpture. It’s an actual dinosaur, petrified from the snout to the hips.

Reforming Obamacare through the reconciliation process

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a primer on how the GOP could approach passing the AHCA through reconciliation.

If you think the process is complex, think again. It’s mega-complex.

I find it amusing, however, that part of the procedure involves something known as a “Byrd bath”:

Later in the process, as the reconciliation bill makes its way to the Senate floor, majority and minority leadership staff will gather for more formal discussions to assess which provisions qualify as “extraneous” under the “Byrd rule.” This process, informally known as the “Byrd bath,” allows for all sides to put their cases before the parliamentarian, who will normally provide more definitive guidance on how she would advise the chair to rule.

The following is completely parenthetical, but this post conjured up a long-buried memory from my youth. In our yard we had a bird bath. But no matter how much I wanted to, and no matter how hard I tried, I never saw a bird take a bath in it.

Just now, for the first time in my life, I wondered what we might have been doing wrong.

Ah, the internet! Google! Sure enough, in no time at all I found these 10 tips on how to attract birds to your birdbath. And sure enough, we were committing a host of errors. Ours was probably too high, didn’t have good footing for the birds, and in general didn’t follow most of the rules.

Trump and the tapes

The New Neo Posted on by

Chris Wallace is shocked, shocked:

Speaking with Shepard Smith Friday, the Fox News Sunday anchor offered his stunning take on the developments of the past week ”” from James Comey”˜s firing as Director of the FBI on Tuesday to Friday afternoon’s White House press briefing; a briefing in which, when asked by Jeff Mason of Reuters, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer did not deny the presence of recording devices in the Oval Office.

“When I heard that exchange today between Jeff Mason, White House reporter, and Sean Spicer speaking from the podium in the briefing room for the President of the United States, it took my breath away,” Wallace said.

Wallace continued:

“That was what in Watergate they called a non-denial denial. He was asked specifically, is there a recording device in the Oval Office of the President of the United States? He said, ”˜I have nothing for you on that.’ He could have said no. He could have said yes. He said I have nothing for you on that. That is a non-denial denial.”

When Shepard Smith asked Wallace the question about Oval Office tapings, he had phrased it this way:

This [Oval Office taping] was common practice, I guess, it seems, from all I can find out, Chris, the last time was really during Nixon’s administration—recording conversations.

Let me just pause for a moment and say how sick and tired I am of the news these days. I’m tired of having to remind people of how I’m not a Trump fan or a reflexive Trump-defender. I’m tired of having my energy be distracted and time wasted by things I consider unimportant and that the world seems to consider exceptionally important. And I’m especially tired of people like Shep Smith and Chris Wallace, journalists of long-standing who are supposed to be professionals, saying things without properly researching them.

If I wanted to hear two people gossiping about something, and saying how shocked they are by something that really isn’t especially shocking, I could go to any corner coffee shop and eavesdrop.

But enough about me.

We have no idea whether Trump did in fact tape this conversation with Comey, or whether it was an empty threat. If he did tape it, we also have no idea whether it is his “common practice” to do so. And I suppose it also depends what is meant by “common practice.” But White House tapings have been going on since before Nixon and after Nixon. You can find a number of articles about the phenomenon if you care to, such as for example this one at WGBH:

“Almost as soon as we had the technology to allow recorded conversations, FDR signed on in 1940,” Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia, told NPR’s All Things Considered Friday. The Miller Center houses the recordings of six different presidents. The recordings can be heard in the Miller Center’s feature, “The Secret White House Tapes.”…

There are very few recordings from the Truman era, and only about 75 from Eisenhower…

But Truman and Eisenhower were from a different generation as Kennedy. He began recordings in earnest after he felt he received bad advice in the run up to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. Kennedy was savvy about what was available to him and “so careful about how his image was portrayed,” Perry said.

Kennedy kept his recordings secret, appearing not to want even advisers or those on the phone to know…

Johnson ratcheted up the use of secret tapes and made it a staple of his White House. He added more technology; the technology got better; and he wanted to record as many meetings and phone calls as possible…

There is no law preventing secret White House recordings, and some kept it up ”” most notably Reagan.

“Reagan was presented with the option of continuing or not continuing the phone tapings in the Oval Office for national security purposes,” Politifact quotes Doyle referencing Michael Deaver, Reagan’s chief of staff. “And obviously tapings were a very controversial subject ever since the Nixon days. But Reagan could see the value of it, not so much for history but for accuracy … and readily agreed to continue the tapings.”…

There’s some evidence that George W. Bush recorded at least some video conferences…

[An author interviewing Obama relates] “As I was walking out of the Oval Office with Ben Rhodes [a foreign policy adviser to Obama],” Bowden said, “I said, Ben, you’re not going to believe this, but my recorder died in the middle of that somewhere.

” ‘Ah, don’t worry about it,’ he says, ‘we record everything in here. We’ll get you a transcript before you leave.’ And he did.”…

But Rhodes told NPR that while it was true the Obama White House recorded interviews with the media ”” a common practice among campaigns, too ”” it was out in the open…

“We obviously didn’t record private meetings.”

Now, put it all together and what do you get? Recordings of interviews with President Trump may have been made. This would be nowhere near as unprecedented or controversial as Smith and Wallace made it sound. The problematic aspect of it, to my way of thinking, was Trump’s use of the possible existence of the tape as a Twitter threat to challenge the veracity of Comey’s account of things. This is not “shocking,” however, in the sense that anyone who has observed Trump should know that’s the sort of thing he would do. His public posturing and threats feed into the worst fears of people who are genuinely disturbed by his tendencies towards impulsiveness, bullying, and perhaps even potentially to abuse of power. And all to what purpose?

Of course, it’s probably better to do it openly than clandestinely, if you’re going to do it at all. And Trump certainly seems to display it out in the open.

So what was it Chris Wallace was so all-fired stunned about? What was it that took his breath away? If it was that Trump might have recorded the conversations, that shouldn’t have surprised him. If it was that Spicer was not outright denying the existence of such a tape, that shouldn’t have surprised him, either, and yet it seems to have done so.

If Wallace’s surprise had been at Trump’s threatening Comey on Twitter with releasing such a recording (whether or not it exists), that shouldn’t have surprised him, either. Disturbed him, yes. Surprised him, no.

On the other hand, let’s say just for the sake of argument that the reports from the Comey camp about what transpired between Trump and Comey are lies to make Trump’s behavior look much worse than it was. How could those lies be countered? In other words, what recourse does a president have if he/she is being lied about? I’m not saying that’s what’s happening here; I’m just wondering.

Feminist scholars eat their own

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: Ann Althouse.]

Feminism in academia has spiraled out of control, as evidenced by the brouhaha described in this piece by Vanderbilt professor Kelly Oliver, who found herself in the middle of a storm of rage for attempting a fairly mild defense of another feminist professor who had raised the ire of the pack.

Everyone on all sides of this issue is a woman. Everyone on all sides of this issue is a feminist. And everyone on all sides of this issue is a leftist. But the viciousness—and the number—of the attacks are as bad as anything the left lobs at the right. Perhaps worse. There’s no war like a civil war.

Its hard to summarize what the issues were, but I’ll try. The anger was sparked by an academic piece written by philosophy professor Rebecca Tuvel. Her crime? To claim that if transgender identities are valid (which she believes is the case), then to be philosophically consistent one would have to say that transracial identities (such as that of Rachel Dolezal) are also valid.

If you thought that this would be a fairly non-controversial position on the left—well, think again. Apparently it’s not okay to appropriate a different racial identity, even if you’re sincere and well-meaning. Duvel was the object of a torrent of abuse on social media as a result of what she had written about Dolezal’s racial identity. And Professor Oliver, who sought only to put the discussion on a more academic and civil footing, became a target as well for her pains.

You have to read the article to understand the extremity of the attacks. No summary does justice to the details.

But what interested me the most was that many of these feminist professors wrote to either Tuvel or Oliver saying that they privately supported them but were afraid to say so in public for fear of becoming targets themselves. Some of them even apologized for having joined in the abuse just for show.

Oliver writes:

Through every medium imaginable, senior feminist scholars were pressuring, even threatening, Tuvel that she wouldn’t get tenure and her career would be ruined if she didn’t retract her article.

Oliver seems shocked and surprised at all of this. She shouldn’t be. Has she never noticed what happened during the Soviet show trials? Is she unaware of the history of the Red Guards? Those historical events were of course much more serious and more violent than the incident Oliver describes, but the attack on Tuvel is a similar phenomenon in embryo, and that sort of thing is the left’s specialty. It also is a far less physical/lethal version of the Shirley Jackson story “The Lottery“—a group stoning of the designated sacrificial victim, who until recently had been a member of the group in good standing.

Chilling. Chilling. Chilling.

Trump continues to be Trump on Twitter

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump tweets:

“James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press,” Trump tweeted. The remark is an extraordinary development in the ongoing feud between the President and the agencies investigating alleged ties between his campaign and Russia.

It would be “extraordinary” if it was anyone but Trump. With Trump, it’s business as usual, as we’ve come to expect it.

I’ve tired of reacting to everything Trump does as though it’s the end of the republic. This sort of tweet is Trump’s specialty, and will probably be a feature of his entire presidency. Whether such tweets are example of emotional impulsiveness, an abuse of power, a clever ploy to toy with the media, a valid complaint, or something else—feel free to talk amongst yourselves.

Drudge/Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

I confess that I don’t read the Drudge Report all that often, although sometimes I do scan it for stories to write about. But I go there often enough to have become aware of the fact that, during the 2016 campaign, Drudge chose his headlines in a way that definitely leaned pro-Trump. In fact, he was one of the big internet sites that was in no small extent responsible for helping to popularize, nominate, and elect the man.

But in the last month or so when I’ve gone to Drudge I’ve noticed the links there trend more anti-Trump. What’s going on?

I Googled the topic and nearly all I got was this from February:

…[I]n the midst of the 2016 campaign, Drudge was freshly energized by Trump’s anti-establishment, populist candidacy; when the Washington establishment scoffed and snickered, Drudge was an early and eager adopter of Trumpism. And he has managed to maintain and even enhance his relevance, especially in the power precincts of Trumpworld…

[An unnamed person supposedly in the know] added: “Drudge is really very good at seeing trends and seeing where things are going much earlier than most people. A lot of other people got on top of the Trump phenomenon later, but Drudge was early in recognizing that ”˜Damn! This Trump message is really resonating across America!’”

The article then describes Drudge as having become somewhat critical of Trump, and very critical of the GOP in Congress, for not fulfilling populist campaign promises. That’s about it for any light shed on the subject. And this from early May describes Drudge expressing concern about Trump’s low poll numbers.

Anyone know what happened?

Caol Ila

The New Neo Posted on by

Last night, someone told me to have a sip of Caol Ila single-malt Scotch whisky. A tiny sip, because that person knew I’m not a drinker.

It was the single worst-tasting thing I’ve ever ingested into my wee body.

At first I thought it tasted like an old shoe.

But no; it tasted like an old tire.

No again. What it really tasted like was a barbecued old tire soaked in petroleum sauce.

Ever had it? Here’s a description at a website specializing in Scotch whisky:

Nose: Wet bog, a dominant peatiness that seems more like wet leaves, humus, and decaying fallen trees than smoke or sea. Very light oakiness underneath, with only a thin layer of malt serving as a vehicle for the peat…

The nose is a little off-putting for me, even though I enjoy peat. The muddiness and earthy quality of the peat seems “lower quality” to me than the peat of other Islay distilleries. However, that all changes on the tongue, where the peat gives way to a very tasty chocolate note. This continues through the finish, which has the strangest merging of boggy peat, strawberry jam, and chocolate fudge. Weird, but very satisfying. I would score this higher if the nose were either more clear and refined, or less peaty.

And that’s from someone who liked it.

I didn’t, to say the least. And I completely and utterly missed the entire strawberry jam and chocolate fudge part. It took me about an hour to totally shake that vile barbecued tire taste from my buds.

Never again.

Since no one can stop talking about Trump and Comey, I’ll add this

The New Neo Posted on by

I try to apply logic to the situation, and this is what I come up with.

Comey was until recently the head of the FBI, appointed by Obama to universal praise as an honest and fair broker. But beginning last summer, with his press conference re the Hillary Clinton emails, and continuing right up to the day he was fired, Comey was criticized heavily by both parties for a series of decisions that showed a lack of competence and an amount of rule- and protocol- and precedent-breaking that was unacceptable.

Sometimes his decisions seemed to favor one side and sometimes the other, but there were major criticism from both sides. So even now, with all the brouhaha following the firing, no one (or very few people) seems to be saying there weren’t plenty of valid reasons for Trump to have fired Comey. Nor is anyone seeming to say that Trump didn’t have the legal right, the executive power, to fire Comey.

What is being questioned are his motives for the firing, and whether he is being truthful about those motives. Legally, however, he had the cause (as both sides agree, if they’re being honest about it) and he had the power (as both sides agree, if they’re being honest about it).

So, does it matter that he also may have been angry at Comey for a host of reasons other than those stated for the firing? Would it even matter whether Trump—as the left maintains—dearly wished to impede the Russian-connection investigation by Comey’s firing, if in fact Comey’s firing doesn’t impede that investigation at all?

It would certainly matter in political terms if that was Trump’s intent. Whether it would matter legally I’m not sure, although it would definitely matter if enough members of Congress felt it did, and therefore decided to impeach and convict him.

But Trump’s motives, and whether there was an intent to impede the Russian-connection investigation, are purely speculative at this point. The left, Democrats, and the MSM are acting as though these things are a given, but they are not. What we do know is that—as Trump now admits—it wasn’t Rosenstein who sparked Comey’s firing, it was Trump himself:

Trump on Comey: “He’s a grandstander, a showboat” it was my decision

So now Trump is owning up to the fact that he was the impetus for the decision to fire Comey. As Ace writes:

Rosenstein’s role, I’m thinking, was to write a memo informing Trump whether he had justification or cause for termination of Comey. He did this, I would guess, at Trump’s direction, or at Sessions’ request (who, if involved at all, probably was just relaying Trump’s order).

So Rosenstein researched it and rendered an opinion that yes, Trump could fire Comey, and did have cause to do so.

If he wanted to fire him, that is — if he wanted to fire him, he had cause.

But that’s not the same as Rosenstein himself initiating this or directing it or “recommending” it.

So I’m glad that this shabby, poorly-thought-out decision to suggest that Rosenstein Did It is behind us.

Well, it’s not behind us. It will be Maddow’s Top Story for three months.

But at least no one will feel compelled to try to support a claim that seemed pretty implausible almost from the beginning.

If this can be called a lie — I’m not sure it’s a “lie,” straight-up, but more of a manipulation or insinuation/implication by careful wording — it’s a dumb one.

However, I doubt the firing will impede any investigations at all. It might even rev them up. As several people have pointed out, Andrew McCabe (I’ve read somewhere that he’s a Democrat, although I can’t seem to find any information on that at the moment) is now in charge of the FBI as Acting Director. Trump will need to choose a new director, and we can be quite sure that his choice will be greatly scrutinized for objectivity and rectitude before it is approved.

Here’s another question, a more general one: if an FBI director opens an investigation that involves a sitting president or advisors or aides to that president (the latter was true about the Russian investigation so far), does that FBI director then become immune from firing, no matter how egregious his/her errors have been? That would not be a good idea, either. So, although Comey was doing things that deserved firing, how and when could he have been fired by Trump without its provoking a maelstrom of criticism?

On Trump’s perceived honesty

The New Neo Posted on by

This morning commenter “Yankee” wrote: “Mr. Trump is both smarter and more honest than his critics think he is.”

And commenter “Bill” responded:

More honest?

He’s one of the most transparently dishonest politicians I’ve ever been exposed to.

It doesn’t matter the issue. For example, the story of why he fired Comey and why now continues to morph ”“ first they pinned it on the assistant AG, who (rightly) pushed back.

You may love Trump because he’s a “fighter”, or he “gets things done” or (as someone upthread said) ”“ he “has no guilt” (sociopath).

But don’t pretend like he’s honest.

But it occurs to me that both things can be essentially true. That is, Trump can be more honest than his critics think he is (or than they say he is), and yet still be one of the most transparently dishonest politicians we’ve ever seen.

That sounds like a joke, but it’s not a joke. That’s how dishonest Trump’s critics think he is—the sort of dishonesty Mary McCarthy was talking about when she said of Lillian Hellman: “every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”

During the Trump campaign, I pointed out many of Trump’s lies. There’s very little question that he lies often, and he lies strategically. But also, as Bill says, he lies transparently—meaning that it’s relatively easy to see through at least some of his lies (perhaps all of his lies?).

Contrast that to the previous president, Barack Obama. His admirers would probably deny it, but he also was a habitual liar. This is true to a certain extent of most presidents, but I noticed that Obama was a bolder and more habitual liar, but in particular a more clever, smoother, and less transparent liar.

If you going to compare the lying of two presidents, it seems to me that the transparent liar is less dangerous than the subtle liar, because the public would find it easier to detect the lies of the former than the latter. What’s more, in the case of Obama, we had a president whose lies were covered up and defended by the press, and in Trump we have the opposite—a president towards whom the press stands in a similar relationship as McCarthy did towards Hellman: his hyperbolic accuser.

[NOTE: McCarthy was essentially correct about Hellman, by the way—she was a habitual liar, although of course not every word.

And there’s little question that Trump lied—or, at the very least, misled—the public about whether he was the main impetus for the Comey firing. He was:

People are tired of being lied to. I know I am. And we actually like getting a dash of unvarnished, unscripted, un-focus-grouped truth every now and again.

Trump is a shitty, obvious, unconvincing liar and he needs to know that about himself.

That’s Ace writing, by the way. Not known for Trump-hate.]

Comey firing roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

A few random articles of special interest—

Take a look at the headline of this article by Matthew Yglesias at Vox: “By firing James Comey, Trump has put impeachment on the table.” Ha! That’s pretty funny. Impeachment has never been off the left’s table. Impeachment has been on the table—in fact, it’s been the main course—for the entire Trump presidency.

On the timing of the firing, from Byron York:

The structure was this: The FBI director reported to the deputy attorney general, who reported to the attorney general, who reported to the president. When Trump fired Comey Tuesday afternoon, that chain of command had been in place for all of 14 days.

First, it took a long time to get an attorney general in office. Facing Democratic opposition, Jeff Sessions, one of the president’s first nominees, was not confirmed by the Senate until Feb. 8. Then, it took a long time to get a deputy attorney general in place. Rod Rosenstein, the deputy ”” and the man who wrote the rationale for axing Comey ”” faced similar Democratic delays and was not sworn in until April 26.

Only after Rosenstein was in place did the Trump team move ahead. That was true not only for chain-of-command reasons but also ”” probably more importantly ”” because Rosenstein had the bipartisan street cred to be able to be the point man in firing Comey.

Alan Dershowitz continues in his tendency to drift away from the liberal reservation:

Harvard Law School professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz told CNN’s Don Lemon on Tuesday night that President Donald Trump was well within his rights to fire former FBI director James Comey, and that there was no need for a special prosecutor in the investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Dershowitz questioned the timing of Comey’s firing, however, and urged a new, independent investigation into the Russia case…

[CNN legal analyst] Jeffrey Toobin had also told CNN’s Anderson Cooper earlier that Trump would likely name a “campaign stooge” as Comey’s replacement at the FBI.

But Dershowitz disagreed.

“Should Comey be the director of the FBI? The answer to that is no,” he said, noting that he had called earlier for Comey to resign. “He lost his credibility. ”¦ A lot of this is his fault.”

A personal observation—

One of the articles on the left about the Comey firing used the word “brazen” to describe it in the headline. Trump is brazen—and generally so, not just in regard to the Comey incident. That’s part of the reason that his behavior so riles up the left (and warms the cockles of the hearts of a large segment on the right) and simultaneously makes the left think their efforts to destroy him will succeed, although so far they have not.

Obama had a very different style, but his word “audacity” meant something quite similar. He wasn’t afraid of making the bold and risky moves, and despite their differences in temperament, presentation, and of course politics, they share that quality.