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.

The uses of language in the war against Trump and the right

The New Neo Posted on by

The right geek is very, very tired. And it’s only been three weeks so far:

I was alive and politically aware during the post 9/11 W. Bush administration, and back then, I saw my fair share of leftwing nonsense. I vividly remember, for example, a young lady shrieking hysterically at me on a Boston street because I had the audacity to question the motives of an ANSWER-driven protest against the war in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, mind you. Not the legitimately controversial war in Iraq. Believe me, Bush Derangement Syndrome was a real phenomenon and a toxic one. All the same, it doesn’t hold a candle to what is happening now.

True. For me, the most tiring thing of all is scanning the news each day and seeing the coverage—wall-to-wall hysteria, designed to drum up even more hysteria. In recent years I’ve grown to distrust the MSM more and more, but it has reached the point where I discount virtually everything I read, which is not a good point to reach.

And one of the things of which I’m sickest (but perhaps I’m repeating myself here) is the constant use of the phrase “undocumented workers.” It’s a brilliant coinage, though, and I seem to recall that it’s been in use for well over a decade. I’m not sure when it began, but its two words encapsulate an astounding amount of thought-shaping in one succinct little package. “Undocumented” indicates a mere misplacement of papers, or perhaps even a sort of modesty about an accomplishment. And “workers” is absolutely a compliment: they are here to work, not to slough off or rip off or do a single bad thing—even when we’re talking about felons, as we were in a recent ICE raid. They are doing the work Americans won’t do!

That doesn’t mean that a great many illegal immigrants (some on the right prefer the even harsher word “aliens,” which is technically correct) are not here to work. Many, many are indeed here to work. So what? They are still not “undocumented,” they are here illegally.

Now, what you might want to do about that (or them) is another story, and reasonable people may differ. But that has nothing to do with the fact that they came here illegally and that other immigrants have patiently waited in line (and are still waiting) to get their documents to be allowed to come here legally.

Another euphemizing word of which I am very tired—one used by both left and right, because it is now a standard term—is “sanctuary city.” But take a look at the meaning and history of the word “sanctuary” and you can see from whence it came:

Sanctuary is a word derived from the Latin sanctuarium, which is like most words ending in -arium, a container for keeping something in””in this case holy things or perhaps holy people, sancta or sancti. The meaning was extended to places of holiness or safety. A religious sanctuary may be a sacred place (such as a church, temple, synagogue or mosque), or a consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar…

The area around the altar came to be called the “sanctuary”, and that terminology does not apply to Christian churches alone: King Solomon’s temple, built in about 950 BC, had a sanctuary (“Holy of Holies”) where the Ark of the Covenant was, and the term applies to the corresponding part of any house of worship. In most modern synagogues, the main room for prayer is known as the sanctuary, to contrast it with smaller rooms dedicated to various other services and functions.

The term evolved to mean the shelter offered for several hundred years by churches and other houses of worship to the accused. The word has deep and positive spiritual connotations; here is my very first exposure to it as a tiny tyke who had to ask what it meant because I didn’t know:

About three decades ago the term came to be applied to those who protected from deportation people here illegally from Latin America. This was the context:

Sanctuary of refugees from Central American civil wars was a movement in the 1980s. Part of a broader anti-war movement positioned against U.S. foreign policy in Central America, by 1987, 440 cities in the United States had been declared “sanctuary cities” open to migrants from these civil wars in Central America.

These sites included university campuses and cities.

It still does include those sites, although most of the illegal immigrants are not refugees from those civil wars; they are economic refugees.

Fashion at the Grammys, 2017

The New Neo Posted on by

We call it “fashion.” But at this point it seems to have morphed into a competition to see who can come up with an outfit that is either strangest and most extreme, or most revealing. Preferably both at the same time, actually. But “strangest” seems to be more important.

Here’s an example of what you can do with some items you have around the house, if you’re creative enough. Get a handy roll of electrical tape, and pull on a pair of leggings. Voila!

Guy next to her originally had Napolean’s haircut. But he let it grow for a few months and hasn’t gone back for a trim.

This next was a popular lampshade look in Victorian times:

I know that this next one has something to do with outer space. And maybe cartoons. And I also know it’s unflattering in cut, color, and material. What’s up with all this deep lavender? And the ruffled epaulettes?:

Now, if you crossed an Oscar statuette with a stegosaurus I think you might get what Beyonce’s sister Solange wore:

I did not recognize this person, although she’s actually one of the few celebrities at the Grammys who is familiar to me. Katy Perry now has lost her signature dark-hair-blue-eyes look, and seems to have gotten a bit thinner, too. She’s turned into a sort of more-slender, dark-rooted, kohl-eyed, space-age, blank-staring Catherine Deneuve wannabe (on top) and one of these gizmos on the bottom:

This outfit of Lady Gaga’s seems to illustrate a nightmare more than anything—you know, the one where you’ve gone out in public missing an important item of clothing. I am not sure how this stays put (or even if it does stay put). But I am quite sure the sunglasses add a necessary touch:

This next one is rather nice. It’s almost very nice. It’s not strange, and it’s not revealing, and Adele is probably hard to dress although she always looks well-turned-out. The problem is the hue. Now, someone with her coloring can wear green much better than a lot of other people. But no one can wear this shade of green well. No one. It is an especially unfortunate shade of olive:

Speaking of green—and we were speaking of it—this is a whole nother ballgame in terms of green. But it’s still unfortunate. Celine Dion looks like a cast member who left the Wizard of Oz set and has been wandering around for decades, during which strategic parts of her dress were ripped out or worn away:

There were many many more—some even more astounding than the ones I’ve showed you. But I’ll close with what may have been the boldest look of all, from Joy Villa. She came on looking like she was in some sort of religious pageant:

Then she dramatically whipped off her white robe to reveal…

…this dress:

Now, that’s daring. Villa got a lot of attention for it on Twitter, both positive and negative. Here’s an explanation from the designer, who is a naturalized US citizen from the Philippines. When I first saw the dress, I assumed it was an ironic statement. It wasn’t.

Why the 9th Circuit’s decision on the TRO is dangerous

The New Neo Posted on by

I think that this may be the best article I’ve read on the subject. It’s behind the WSJ paywall, but I got to it by using this link helpfully provided by RealClearPolitics.

Here’s an important summary quote at the end, but I suggest you read the whole thing to see the reasoning that leads up to that conclusion:

The Ninth Circuit’s decision represents an unprecedented judicial intrusion into the foreign-affairs authority of Congress and the president. The stakes transcend this particular executive order and even immigration issues generally. By removing restrictions on standing and other limitations on the exercise of judicial power, the Ninth Circuit would make the courts the ultimate arbiters of American foreign policy. The ruling risks creating both a constitutional and a security crisis. It must be reversed.

February

The New Neo Posted on by

In my life, I’ve had some problems with February. Perhaps you have, too.

It’s a short month, but it can be cold and gloomy. Its only holiday is Valentine’s Day, which can be a mixed bag.

As a freshman in college, my boyfriend had some sort of breakdown in February and had to precipitously leave school. I got ten minutes notice on that, and said a quick goodbye to him on the street, in the snow. I was also ill at the time, having had an allergic reaction to an antibiotic, and ended up having to drop out of school myself for the rest of the term. When I got home, my brother had just had major back surgery and was doing very poorly. It got so bad that he ended up in a hospital for a long course of inpatient physical therapy.

Two years later, in February of my junior year, my next boyfriend was inducted into the army—on Valentine’s Day, I might add—and ended up in Vietnam (story here). He was wounded in combat the next February.

And then, many years later, my marriage (to the next boyfriend, the one I was married to for three decades) broke up—in February.

There’s more, but I’ll spare you. Suffice to say I become rather wary when February rolls around.

Which makes me think of this 1996 song by Dar Williams:

Lyrics can be found here.

Trump may or may not issue a new EO on immigration

The New Neo Posted on by

Or perhaps a new series of EOs:

“On background: to clarify, we could take the TRO to Supreme Court,” the statement read, referring to the lower court’s temporary restraining order against Trump’s travel ban. “We are reviewing all our options in the court system and confident we will prevail on the merits of the case. Additionally, we are actively pursuing other executive orders that will keep our country safe from terrorism.”

Trump himself, meanwhile, said aboard Air Force One that he has “a lot of other options” other than a Supreme Court appeal, “including just filing a brand new order.” He would not confirm whether that was his plan.

“It could very well be. I’d like to surprise you,” he said.

Indeed, he does.

But my hunch is that a new EO is in the works. There wouldn’t be much reason to appeal the TRO, for the simple reason that such an appeal would almost certainly end in a tie in the Supreme Court at this point. There’s no rush, because Trump can simply issue a new, more carefully thought out and finely-tuned EO that is more in line with the restrictions mentioned by the 9th Circuit (such as making the green card exemption explicit).

Here’s an interesting observation:

Trump said Friday he felt “totally confident” that there would be “tremendous security for the people of the United States.” He offered the assurance despite also claiming he had learned alarming new information about threats facing the nation.

“I’ve learned tremendous things that you could only learn, frankly, if you were in a certain position, namely president, and there are tremendous threats to our country,” Trump said. “We will not allow that to happen. I can tell you that right now. We will not allow that to happen.”

Trump critics would no doubt say that he’s fear-mongering. But I recall that, long before Trump ever began to campaign for the presidency in June of 2015 (seems a long time ago, doesn’t it?), I had read many observations about how sobering it must be to be elected president and suddenly become privy to all the classified information about security threats. Trump is no different in this regard.