I recently wrote a column discussing how Democratic leaders, including Vice President Joe Biden, have argued against continuing the investigation by U.S. Attorney John Durham despite growing evidence of misconduct by Justice Department officials and now the first guilty plea by former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith. Now, Andrew Weissmann, one of the top prosecutors with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has derided the Clinesmith plea while actually calling on Justice Department attorneys to refuse to help on ongoing investigations that could implicate aspects of his own prior work. [Update: I have include a longer quote from the column by the two authors and I have written another posting to address objections raised by Professor Goodman.]
I was among those who expressed concern when Mueller selected Weissmann due to his history of controversial prosecutorial decisions, including a pattern of prosecutorial overreach in the Enron litigation.
Weissmann’s recent statements (made before the release of his new book on the Russian investigation) have only served to reaffirm those concerns.
Recently, Weissmann wrote an extraordinary and disturbing New York Times op-ed (with former Defense Department special counsel Ryan Goodman). In the column, he appeared to call on Justice Department lawyers to undermine the Durham investigation as well as the investigation by U.S. Attorney John Bash’s investigation into the “unmasking” requests by Obama administration officials. They wrote “Justice Department employees in meeting their ethical and legal obligations, should be well advised not to participate in any such effort.” The two authors appear to dismiss not just the timing but the underlying investigations as political.
“Today, Wednesday, marks 90 days before the presidential election, a date in the calendar that is supposed to be of special note to the Justice Department. That’s because of two department guidelines, one a written policy that no action be influenced in any way by politics. Another, unwritten norm urges officials to defer publicly charging or taking any other overt investigative steps or disclosures that could affect a coming election.”
Consider that line for a moment. Weissmann is openly calling on attorneys to refuse to help on investigations that could raise questions about his own decisions. Durham is looking at a pattern errors, false statements, bias, and now criminal conduct in the Russian investigation. There is obviously overlap with the Mueller investigation which discussed many of the same underlying documents and relied on work by some of the same individuals. The failure to address misconduct, bias, or criminal conduct by such individuals would be embarrassing to both Weissmann and Mueller. Despite that obvious conflict of interest, Weissmann is calling on attorneys to stand down.
It is the same troubling position that was once taken by Sally Yates, who told an entire federal agency not to assist the President in his travel ban.
After Weissmann called on Justice Department attorneys not to assist investigations by the Justice Department, Durham disclosed that the first guilty plea would be entered by Clinesmith. That would ordinarily cause embarrassment for someone who was calling for DOJ lawyers to effectively hinder the investigation. Not Weissmann. He has now attacked the criminal plea.
Weissmann mocked Attorney General Bill Barr to explain the difference between the Flynn plea and the Clinesmith plea.
Weissmann tweeted:
“Question for Barr: how are Flynn’s confessed lies to the FBI (repeated to the VP) not a crime, but Clinesmith changing an email (the full version of which he also sent to DOJ) is?
Clinesmith is charged with adding the words ‘not a source’ to an email about Carter Page, but no where does the charge say that is false, i.e. that Page was a source for the CIA. Without that, how is the addition ‘materially’ false?”
Here is Durham theory: even though Clinesmith gave the complete and accurate email to DOJ to use in the Page FISA, when asked by an FBI agent if the CIA had represented IN WRITING that Page was not a source, Clinesmith said yes, when CIA had not said so explicitly in writing. no where is it alleged that Page was in fact a CIA source or, if so, that Clinesmith knew that. How is any of this false or material to the Page FISA, using Barr’s new Flynn materiality standard. It’s not. Two systems of justice at play.”
“Clear from Durham charge that the FBI supervisor wanted to know if CIA confirmed “in writing” that Page was not a source because of distrust of CIA — but whether in writing or not, no allegation that Clinesmith lied about the fact Page was not a source. That’s a federal crime?”
The tweets reveal more about Weissmann than Clinesmith or this guilty plea.
First, Weissmann is completely distorting both the law and the facts to disregard the significance of this guilty plea. The fact that Page was a source for the CIA is not disputed. The Horowitz investigation and various congressional investigations have confirmed that the CIA made clear to Clinesmith that Page was working for United States intelligence, a fact that critically undermined the basis for the original application for secret surveillance. The statement that “no where does the charge say that is false, i.e. that Page was a source for the CIA” is bizarre. The charge is that Clinesmith made this false statement to the court and there is a wealth of evidence to support that charge. It was clearly enough to prompt Clinesmith to take a plea and enter into what appears a cooperative agreement with prosecutors.
Second, the claim that “Clinesmith gave the complete and accurate email to DOJ” would not negate the charge. It was the false information that he gave to the court that mattered. Prosecutorial misconduct often involves telling courts something different from what is known or discussed by prosecutors. Moreover, the implications of such a contrast adds to the need for the investigation that Weissmann has sought to hinder. If other DOJ attorneys and investigators knew that the court was being given false material information, the concerns are magnified not reduced for the Durham investigation. Indeed, it means that this investigation dragged on for many months despite other attorneys knowing that the original claims of Page being a Russian assets were directly contradicted by American intelligence and never disclosed to the Court.
What is astonishing is that the FISA court itself as well as Horowitz have flagged this as a serious matter of false or misleading information. Weissmann however is actively seeking to convince Justice Department lawyers to refuse to help on the investigation.
Weissmann also misrepresents the law and the position of the Justice Department in Flynn. I have been one of the most vocal critics of the plea. It is true that Flynn gave false answers to the investigators. However, he fought the allegations until the Mueller team drained him of his savings and threatened to prosecute his son.
Keep in mind that Flynn was the incoming National Security Adviser and held entirely lawful discussions with Russian diplomats. Even James Comey told President Obama that the discussions were “legit.” Moreover, in December 2016, investigators had found no evidence of any crime by Flynn. They wanted to shut down the investigation; they were overruled by superiors, including FBI special agent Peter Strzok, Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and Director James Comey. Strzok told the investigators to keep the case alive, and McCabe is described as “cutting off” another high-ranking official who questioned the basis for continuing to investigate Flynn. All three officials were later fired, and all three were later found by career officials to have engaged in serious misconduct as part of the Russia investigation. Recently disclosed material indicate that Obama, Biden, and other discussed the use of the Logan Act as a pretense for a criminal charge. The Logan Act criminalizes private negotiations with foreign governments. The Logan Act is widely viewed as unconstitutional and has never been used successfully against any U.S. citizen since the earliest days of the Republic.
Then, in February 2017, Comey circumvented long-standing protocols and ordered an interview with Flynn. Comey later bragged that he “probably wouldn’t have … gotten away with it” in other administrations, but he sent “a couple guys over” to question Flynn, who was settling into his new office as national security adviser. Indeed, Yates recently agreed that Comey “went rogue” on the Flynn matter.
This history is what was detailed to the court in the Flynn motion to dismiss the charge. The materiality point reflected the governing law that indictments require more than mere “relevance” or relatedness but rather a statement that is “reasonably likely to influence the tribunal in making a determination required to be made.” United States v. Weinstock, 231 F.2d 699, 701 (D.C. Cir. 1956) (emphasis added). The distinction with Clinesmith is obvious. Clinesmith lied to the Court in an investigation to influence a “determination required to be made” by the court.
Imagine if this were not the rule. It would mean that any prosecutor could intentionally lie to a court to secure warrants or other actions without the risk of a criminal charge. Yet, Weissmann is mocking the very notion that Clinesmith could be charged while insisting that his office was correct in prosecuting Flynn despite the absence of an ongoing federal case and the fact that the agents themselves did not believe Flynn intentionally lied. There is no question the Clinesmith lied and that the lie was critical to the court’s consideration of the FISA application.
Weissmann’s public effort to derail the Durham investigation and his distortion of the Clinesmith guilty plea only reinforces the view of many of us that the Durham investigation must be completed and made public. Despite saying that I did not believe that Mueller would find crimes of collusion or conspiracy with the Russians, I supported the Special Counsel investigation. I also supported the Horowitz investigation and the Durham investigation. The reason is the same. I believe that the public needs to have a full and transparent account of what happened in the Russian investigation on both sides. Like many, Weissmann would like transparency on only one side and to shutdown the Durham investigation despite Horowitz referring matters for criminal investigation and finding a host of false statements, errs, and professional misconduct. Even the addition of a criminal plea has not stopped Weissmann from denouncing this investigation.
For years, I have criticized Weissmann’s record of dubious prosecutorial judgment, bias, and overreach. However, that case against Weissmann is not nearly as powerful as the case he is making against himself.
Andy has Hell Hounds on his trail…The Fear and Panic is real..He will take the cowards path.
OT: Fabulous disclosure. A must read for anyone. Look carefully at those graphs and see what BS is being thrown our way.
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COVID CONFUSION IS LARGELY INTENTIONAL
I noted here that most Americans have an absurdly inflated idea of the damage that has been done by the Wuhan virus, with the median American apparently believing the virus has killed 9 percent of our population–around 30 million people. How can the public be so grossly misinformed?
It hasn’t been easy. It has taken a concerted effort by our governments, aided and abetted by the press, to sow misinformation about COVID. Examples could be multiplied endlessly. For the moment let’s describe three.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/covid-confusion-is-largely-intentional.php
‘How can the public be so grossly misinformed?’
Persuasion and propaganda working on the emotions of inattentive minds. That’s not even the worst of it, considering all the data they have on us and our preferences and perceptions, tracked by clicks and goodness knows what else. Even those who try to be rational, try to be attentive can be manipulated. Trust and truth can be mangled by those who seem to hold too many of the cards.
Who or whom are our Goebbels?
Prairie, just look at members of the blog like btb and CHTD. They are not interested in truth or justice. There are a lot of people like that. Then listen to this video at MSNBC where a Georgia Democrat supports Trump and the MSNBC host tries to stop him from talking and then insults him.
https://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/-i-traffic-in-truths-craig-melvin-fires-back-at-georgia-democrat-who-supports-trump-88554053608
Allan
I agree that ideological possession plays a role. Such a thing can be developed, fed, and harnessed, too, not just self-inflicted by people themselves via confirmation bias but by masters of propaganda and persuasion.
Prairie Rose — Good expression: “possession”. It seems on this subject they all suddenly turn into Linda Blair in her worst scenes.
Allan,
The persuasion and propaganda element seems to have a bipartisan bent.
Prairie, Individuals seek different things. Some seek knowledge, some seek beauty, some seek religion and some seek money. There is no problem until man seeks power.
Prairie…………we’ve got a gaggle of Goebbels! 😣
Allan…Thank you!! Unbelievable.
Cindy, this is the problem with the left that we face today. Lies from people trying to seek power without one iota of concern for humanity.
“Allan the Stupid” speaks.
Cindy, I should have added that along with lies from the left come a lot of Stupid people just like Anonymous the Stupid.
Allan…..LOL……….no explanation necessary!
And Allan’s pal “Braggy the Brainless” sweeps with another meaningless comment.
Another yahoo heard from…
A new word from Anonymous the Stupid. Bravo.
We call him Allan the Stupid. His comments clearly demonstrate his lack of capacity.
You have a mouse in your pocket ?
Aside from yourself who do you have permission to speak for ?
I’m not going to spell it out for you.
You’re clearly not the brightest bulb, either, John.
I am not pretending to speak for anyone but myself.
Nor do I care in the slightest of your opinion of my intellect.
“Michelle Obama’s happy place seems to be the place where she tells America how disappointed she is in us. But even by the standards of political convention speeches, hers was really dishonest.
Blaming Trump for her husband’s policy on housing children who enter country illegally was really low, for example. Even corporate media had to acknowledge that.
And resuscitating her “they go low, we go high” rhetoric at a time when her party’s base is violently rioting, canceling people over speech, and terrorizing the country generally didn’t quite work.
Particularly given her threat that only way to stop her party’s rioters was to vote GOP out of office. “Nice country you have there, shame if anything happened to it” is straight up mob tactics. But others liked it, so it goes to show that there’s an audience for every message.”
@MZHemingway
August 18, 2020 at 5:16 PM
I am not pretending to speak for anyone but myself. -John Say
Go blow, buddy.
There’s no “pretending” on this end.
Yes it is clear – you and the left not merely claim to speak for everyone else.
You claim to be entitle to impose your views on all by force.
I do not care so much about your poorly considered views, as the fact that you are prepared to silence those who disagree and force them on all of us.
It is not moral for you to impose your wished by force on your neighbor.
It is not moral for you and 50 others to impose your views by force on 49 neighbors.
You are totally ignorant of the fact that there are only few circumstances under which you may morally use force to get your way.
Not to worry.
Joe Biden’s going to win.
Joe “Jim Crow” Biden will declare “The China Flu” over and call off the MSM on November 4, 2020.
“C’mon, maaaaaan, it’s only the flu, for cryin’ out loud. Kamella will get y’all some shots, right, Kam?” President Joe “Jim Crow” Biden.
Gotta Build Back Better that economy, ya know.
George, in the end I think Trump will prevail. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps there are more stupid people around than I imagine.
“Perhaps there are more stupid people around than I imagine.” (Allan)
Said by the guy known as “Allan the Stupid.”
Anonymous the Stupid is back to demonstrate that even on this blog people like him exist and demonstrate their Stupidity whenever they open their mouths.
Yep, it’s Allan the Stupid. He just can’t help himself.
Allan looks at his own ugly mug in the mirror and says, “I see stupid people.”
LOL, really!
Why don’t you make a credible argument refuting him.
If he is so stupid, that should be easy.
Allan,
The American Founders understood you and established a restricted-vote republic, distinctly not an ultimately self-destructive, one man, one vote democrazy.
The American Founders required Americans to be “…free white person(s)…” and, generally, voters to be: Male, European, 21 with 50 lbs. Sterling or 50 acres.
The turnout was 11.6%, by design, in the 1788 election of George Washington.
Control is the essence of mankind on this planet.
Savagery and chaos is untenable.
The vote has been diluted, corrupted and is out of control.
America is on the verge of financial collapse (having been physically invaded and conquered) from the weight of the “largesse” of its unintended and antithetical one man, one vote democrazy.
C19 is roughly as dangerous as the 1967 Flu that occured during woodstock.
Or arguably less as C19 has a really lopsided mortality curve. I do not think we have ever seen anything this clearly exponential with age.
It is not ever close to the 1918 Flu
John, the point of my comment was to demonstrate how devious people can be when they try to push positions. They alter known facts to make it appear that what they say is true. The graph using two different X’s for linear representations of mask vs without mask was pure diabolical genius. I will bet that without being told the vast majority of people would never recognize what was being done.
What lie?
the General told NO lie, we have the transcript.
true there was no Federal case, and no pretext to investigate or question him, but let’s follow this through awayways, the General DID not lie, the FBI changed the 301 to make it seem like he lied, but now that the transcript is out and the original 301 is still missing, we see it was all a charade ,a hoax right from the very beginning.
We spent the past 4 years with Weisman making law up from thin air.
Trump breathing was “obstruction of Justice”.
I think Durham should indict Weisman for Obstruction of justice using this Op Ed as the obstructive act.
Let Wiesman argue why the same things he as claimed were Obstruction for the past 4 years are actually not when he does them.
Weisman is an obvious hypocrit.
He should hope to god that Durham does not behave as dirty in this investigation as he did.
I agree but would like to see Wiesman arrested and held incommunicado in a supermax “for his own safety” while awaiting trial for official tyranny.
Some of those cases can take years to come to trial.
Wow, Philly, you sound like a tough guy!
You’re going to charge Wiesman with some vague, bogus rap. Then hold him in Super Max before he’s even tried. That’ll teach Deep State! Never mind thatTrump and Barr will be gone in 5 months.
“You’re going to charge Wiesman with some vague, bogus rap. Then hold him in Super Max before he’s even tried. That’ll teach Deep State!”
Absolutely, Wiesman should reap what he sews.
“Never mind that Trump and Barr will be gone in 5 months.”
If that is not the case – do you promise to behave yourself for the next 4 years rather than ranting and raving like loons.
Absolutely,
Galatians 6:7 Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.
Wouldn’t want to expose the shadow government of private contractors run by ex generals such as James Jones and his son Tim Jones and ex Directors of the CIA lik eBrennan and Clapper and heads of other foreign intelligence seervices exploiting endless wars, Ukrainian corruption, and American riots instigated and coordinated, formulated by AI data collection and social media operations. America is being run like a sub plot from 1984.
Commit and Allan
Commit has a very good ability to ferret out quotations or facts that reminded both Allan and me of one who has seasoned secretarial skills. In fact that is not far off because she does research in word registers (?) something to do with analyzing vocabularies for different roles and professions and that is likely a similar skill.
What Allan and I have noticed that even when she does get something very clear her ability to reason from it is circumscribed.
For example, at 10:34 below she says “Clinesmith is being charged with the wrong crime. He’s being charged with a count of false statements instead of being charged with the crime of altering a document. That is partially right. It seems not to have occurred to her that by submitting an altered document one is making a false statement. Lawyers see it immediately; word counters not so much.
Another example in this thread of losing her way in the words can be seen at 10:00 am where she disputes a statement:
“The fact that Page was a source for the CIA is not disputed.”
Actually, it is. I’ve since learned that for the CIA, a source is someone who CAN be tasked with gathering info. So the CIA didn’t consider Page a “source,” only an “operational contact.”
And there’s a straightforward way to resolve this: Clinesmith’s lawyer should raise this issue in front of the judge the case is assigned to.”
She is absorbed with the definition of ‘source’ and how it applies to Page and wants Clinesmith’s lawyer to raise the issue to the judge. Bet he doesn’t.
It makes no difference whether Page is named as a ‘source’, ‘spy’, ‘informer’ or ‘court jester’. The label is not what counts. Whatever anyone wanted to call him, the relationship Page had with the CIA needed to be disclosed. I wouldn’t stand in front of a judge and say, “No, your honor, I didn’t mention the relationship because you wanted to know if he was a ‘source’ and the strict definition of ‘source’ doesn’t apply to him.” I would be risking contempt of court. When a court expects candor from an attorney it expects that attorney to disclose all of the relevant facts the court is requesting. Commit would risk being committed for contempt.
Similar examples of her evasion in discussions can be seen in our previous thread where we touched on race and subspecies. Traveling prevented me from responding earlier.
She is adamant in saying that the definition of a subspecies cannot be applied to what are commonly identified as human races. In fact, I suggested that it not be even if accurate in this environment of inflamed rhetoric.
Here is the definition:
“A subspecies is an aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of that species and differing taxonomically from other populations of that species.”
Commit’s first line of defense was that races don’t have a geographic subdivision and therefore can’t be subspecies. Surely she should understand that when the definition refers to a geographic subdivision it refers to the geographic subdivision within which the various racial characteristics evolved in response to local evolutionary pressures. For Asians that would generally be Asia. For Europeans that would generally be the West. For Africans [yes, Commit, I know not all Africans are black] that would be Africa. These are the environments that gave rise to characteristics generally associated with those locales.
I don’t know whether Commit is being dishonest in refusing to see this [I don’t think she is] or just revealing her difficulty relying more on words than underlying reality.
Her other difficulty is that she seems constitutionally unable to see that that definition of subspecies [which she originally provided] can be logically applied to what we think of as human races. She allows that Neandetals can be a subspecies for no living person of any race can be. I suspect that a Neandertal properly dressed and groomed would attract less notice in New York City than a living Pygmy or, for that matter, Antifa thug.
Even Wikipedia allows that subspecies can be used for ‘race’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subspecies
“In biological terms, rather than in relation to nomenclature, a polytypic species has two or more genetically and phenotypically divergent subspecies, races or more generally speaking, populations that differ from each other so that a separate description is warranted. These distinct groups do not interbreed as they are isolated from another, but they can interbreed and have fertile offspring, e.g. in captivity. These subspecies, races, or populations, are usually described and named by zoologists, botanists and microbiologists”
Humans are undoubtedly polytypic species in many ways due to geographical isolation, environmental influence and natural selection in time and space. … People are also polytypic in terms of eye colour (more than 12 colours); skin colour (nearly 40 shades) and hair colour (more than a dozen shades).
One needs to be careful with Commit’s arguments. Her citations are frequently very good; her reasoning, not so much.
Separating the fly shite from the pepper I see. You people irritate the hell out of people like me who want to see results based on the obvious.
Allano– It is obvious. But there are efforts to confuse the issue. Holder and others call for an honest and frank discussion or race [notice it exists again] but as soon as a truly honest discussion is begun they tell us [as Commit has done here] that race isn’t real, only a ‘social construct’ with no basis in reality. It’s a jack-in-the-box. Race pops up when it promotes an agenda and disappears into the box again when someone attempts to address it honestly.
What I have done in part is put forth clearly that race is a genuine way of sorting different biological varieties of people and that the concept of race is cognate with the more precise term ‘sub-species’. Race isn’t just a matter of words or social constructs. It is rooted in biological characteristics that go right down to the DNA in our cells.
Very superficially one can venture a good guess as to someone’s race [or predominant race in mixed people] by skin color, hair, bone density, skull size and shape, and so forth. Forensic pathologists do it all of the time with skeletal remains.
A much more precise identification can be done with DNA. Private people do it all the time now with things like the Ancestry DNA test.
From the description of sub-species or its cognates what is evident that what sorts races into different groups is their biological differences, and particularly their genetic differences.
As the already massive amount of science supporting that thesis accumulates it is likely to have legal consequences.
For example, it is automatically assumed that a disproportionate percentage of an identified race in any field is a ‘disparate outcome’ due to racism. As overt racism has become almost impossible to identify we are now told that occult ‘systemic’ racism is responsible.
However, it may well be that disparate outcomes are not due to any version of racism but are due to deeply ingrained talents that are not equally shared between different ethnic groups. We already accept that idea when it comes to some professional sports and some Olympic competitions. We pretend not to notice; but everyone notices. It is real and very obvious.
Nicholas Wade’s book, ‘A Troublesome Inheritance’ touches on this issue. He admits that he probably does not have everything exactly right in his book, but in broad measure he presents a very good argument back up by a lot of information. Research since then only lends greater weight to his original position.
At some point some company and some lawyer are going to find the courage to fight charges of disparate outcome due to racism using this newly growing mountain of information. I think that there was one such challenge and the government agency involved backed out before it could come to an actual trial in court that might lead to a loss of this intimidation tool.
For the most part, there is no need for a discussion of race outside the academic realm. ‘Discussion of race’ is employed as a means of political warfare, invariably dishonestly.
I am not being dishonest and, as I said below, there are legal consequences associated with the issue. Moreover, pure scientific interest compels an examination of the issue.
Absurd– Addendum: With what is happening on the left you will not be permitted to avoid a discussion of race. Take that white bread oppressor and fork over your reparations.
“they tell us [as Commit has done here] that race isn’t real, only a ‘social construct’ with no basis in reality.”
Wow. So **you** don’t understand what “social construct” means, and you project **your** misunderstanding onto me. It’s not the first time you’ve done this. I didn’t say / didn’t imply / don’t believe that social constructs have “no basis in reality.” So why on earth are you pretending that I said that? It’s dishonest and counterproductive.
Money is a social construct. That doesn’t imply that money “has no basis in reality.”
Laws are social constructs. That doesn’t imply that laws “have no basis in reality.”
Languages are social constructs. That doesn’t imply that languages “have no basis in reality.”
Professions are social constructs. That doesn’t imply that professions “have no basis in reality.”
… [the list of social constructs is very long]
“the concept of race is cognate with the more precise term ‘sub-species’”
“Subspecies” isn’t a “more precise term” for races. Which is why you’re unable to list all of the human races you keep referring to, whereas biologists can list all of the subspecies of a given species (unless there’s a subspecies that we’re not yet aware of — but there are no people we’re unaware of, so that clearly doesn’t apply). Biologists agree that there’s only 1 extant (i.e., still-surviving) human subspecies: H. sapiens sapiens. Why on earth do you think you understand this biological question better than biologists do? And — given that you *do* believe that there are multiple human subspecies currently living — why do you keep running away from listing them all? You rejected that there are 4 races. So how many are there, and what are they?
Whenever you hear someone on the left put the word “social” in front of anything – you know that deception is coming.
There is no “social justice” only individual justice. Whenever people pretend “social justice” exists the guilotines come out.
Saying something is a “social construction” means that it is a word with a commonly accepted definition. Nothing more – and likely less as there is often disagreement on the definition.
Don’t forget “reproductive justice”. They have a long list of “justices” they stand for. I think “postal justice” is on their list too. They are “going postal” in the Democrat party.
Just sell (or give) the damn post office to Beezos. He already pretty much owns it anyway.
By law – you hate those John – the Post Office must make a profit on packages, and it does.
“By law – you hate those John – the Post Office must make a profit on packages, and it does.”
If by law the post office must make profit on every package then based on Amazon’s increasing use of the post office, the post office’s profits should have been climbing and the post office should be making a lot of money. That means the post office doesn’t need any further funding and by now is rich.
“Thousands take to the streets to march in protest and demand mail-in voting because they feel too unsafe to vote in person on Election Day!”
“By law – you hate those John – the Post Office must make a profit on packages, and it does.”
And yet is looses several billion a year. Sure following that law.
Regardless, just GIVE the post office free and clear to Bezos – get it out of the federal government.
Then the problem is gone.
“she does research in word registers (?) something to do with analyzing vocabularies for different roles and professions ”
Nope. My research has nothing to do with “word registers” (whatever you meant by that, perhaps you were misremembering the term “linguistic registers,” which also isn’t an area I research) or with “analyzing vocabularies for different roles and professions.” You apparently misunderstood the little I said about my research. It’s actually kind of funny that that’s what you took away from my brief description.
“It seems not to have occurred to her that by submitting an altered document one is making a false statement.”
LOL that you think you can read my mind. Of course I considered that. But “not a ‘source” wasn’t knowingly and willfully false on Clinesmith’s end, as he believed it to be true, and per Horowitz, it *is* true: Page was an operational contact but not a source (the CIA doesn’t use those terms as synonyms). Moreover, it not only has to be false, but materially false.
In fact I was wrong, as (a) I hadn’t looked at the correct part of the false statements law, and (b) I thought they were saying “not a ‘source'” was false, when they’re actually saying that presenting it as if it came from the OGA Liaison was materially false, despite the fact that Clinesmith also forwarded the unaltered email. So the question is: why is that a materially false addition on Clinesmith’s part, if he also included the unaltered email? How is the addition material when the SSA2 could see the original?
Thankfully, Marcy Wheeler cares about details and explained this in her subsequent column about it; the link to her column is in my 3:50pm comment.
“It makes no difference whether Page is named as a ‘source’, ‘spy’, ‘informer’ or ‘court jester’.”
You’re wrong about that. It’s absolutely relevant to the FISA application how his relationship is described. That *you* don’t care about the difference between an “operational contact” and a “source” doesn’t mean that the people involved in writing and assessing these FISA warrant applications don’t care about it. They clearly do care, based on the many quotes about it in the Horowitz Report and also in the charging document.
“the relationship Page had with the CIA needed to be disclosed”
You seem to be assuming that it wasn’t. I’d be happy to be convinced with evidence that they never disclosed that he’d been an operational contact or “[digraph].” Do you have evidence that that wasn’t disclosed? (Feel free to cite a page number in Horowitz’s report if he said that; I haven’t read his entire report.)
As for the rest …
“Even Wikipedia allows that subspecies can be used for ‘race’”
LOL. I’ve edited Wikipedia, and Wikipedia itself is very explicit that “Wikipedia is not a reliable source” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source — if you haven’t ever edited Wikipedia, the pages whose URLs start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: are background pages that specify the editing policies, etc.). More to the point, if you’d bothered to click on the word “race” on the page you linked to, you’d have seen that it referred to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(biology) NOT to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(human_categorization). Words often have more than one meaning. Sometimes the meanings are specific to a technical field, like biology or law. This is part of what’s annoying in trying to discuss things with you: you’re sloppy. You could easily have discovered your mistake before repeating it to me, but you simply didn’t bother.
I’m amazed that you think you understand better than biologists do whether there’s only one extant subspecies of H. sapiens (namely, H. sapiens sapiens, with an additional subspecies being extinct, and with there being a debate about whether the Neanderthals being a separate species or instead a subspecies). Biologists say that there’s a single extent human subspecies. Why on earth would you presume to know better?
You claim “Humans are undoubtedly [a] polytypic species” (and we are: H. sapiens idaltu was also a subspecies, but they’re extinct, not extant, as are Neanderthals). But you can’t even name the subspecies that you presume currently exist.
Go ahead: name all of the human subspecies. And explain why you think you’re so brilliant that you understand this while professional biologists disagree with you.
“Humans are undoubtedly polytypic species in many ways …”
A “polytypic species” is simply a species with more than one subspecies. If there’s only one subspecies, it’s a monotypic species. Similarly, a “polytypic genus” has at least two species; if a genus has only one species, it’s a monotypic genus.
LOL at “Her citations are frequently very good; her reasoning, not so much.” You think that because (a) you misunderstand things and project your own misunderstanding onto me, and (b) you pretend to read my mind instead of honestly accepting that you cannot.
Needs to be Committed seems to be saying a lot but travels the globe NOT to say ‘Clinesmith lied by altering a document’.
CTHD is a diligent troll, but a poorly equipped deceiver. She is pumping out a lot of fog. But as you observe, Allan, piercing through the miasma, of course she approves of Clinesmith lying by altering evidence , because it was to get Trump
I tell you, one day, we will have the same kind of remorseless vigor at attacking our foes. And when we do, it will be a whole other ball game.
“CTHD … approves of Clinesmith lying by altering evidence.”
Bullsh*t.
In fact, my very first comment on the plea deal was “Good. People who make material false statements to the government should be held legally accountable for it. …” (https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/14/fbi-lawyer-in-russian-investigation-to-plead-guilty-for-false-statement/comment-page-1/#comment-1989971)
But apparently it’s too hard for you to deal honestly with my actual views, so you invent nonsense that’s more comfortable for you.
The Needs to be Committed comment sounded more like a plea on the behalf of Clinesmith. CTDHD wanted to make sure everyone understood how benign Clinesmith’s crime was. She even skipped mentioning his name. Instead of focusing on what she considers a ‘benign crime’ she wanted others to focus in on the innocent and put them in jail.
Klinesmith changed the email sent by CIA.
You are trying to defend that.
You may have said that there is a problem with alter evidence int he past.
But you do not have a problem with Klinesmith altering evidence.
Your past words condemn your present ones.
CTHD’s side in action, BLM in Portland, shanhai’ed a driver, knocked him cold, and looted his car
https://twitter.com/DailyCaller/status/1295386993745068032?s=20
that’s BLM in action, suspect named Marquise “Keese” Lee Love. Kinda looks like that Crapperneck fellow
In the last 3 months now it’s proven that every DNC politician positively absolutely knew the entire Russia probe was all based on DNC lies including the Russia dossier they purchased.
When the press cornered Rep. Swalwell on this point, he admitted it and said it was good they did it. It’s good to spend 4 years lying on the record about the POTUS.
Altering a document is “willful and knowing”.
There is no credible defense for Klinesmith.
He did not independently on his own assert a misunderstanding.
He received a document from the CIA and added a word to it and added it to the Fisa application.
That is tampering with evidence. It is WILLFUL, it is KNOWING.
“You’re wrong about that. It’s absolutely relevant to the FISA application how his relationship is described.”
Correct – it MUST be described as the CIA described it. the FBI is NOT entitled to represent the relationship differently than the CIA did.
This is no different from a police office lying in court about what a witness told him.
“That *you* don’t care about the difference between an “operational contact” and a “source” doesn’t mean that the people involved in writing and assessing these FISA warrant applications don’t care about it. They clearly do care, based on the many quotes about it in the Horowitz Report and also in the charging document.”
It is NOT their business to spin the evidence. The CIA sent an email to FBI as a result of an inquiry.
That email is evidence and specifies the relationshop between CIA and Page.
The FBI is NOT the CIA, they are NOT a witness, it is their job to gather evidence. It is NOT their job to lie about it or misrepresent it.
Several people signed the page Warrant SWEARING that what was said was true. It was not. This is a crime.
The observations that your citations are often good but your reasoning is not – is excellent.
Though I would suggest a more fundimental error – reading comprehension.
You are completely unable to separate the facts in a an article from the oppinions of whoever wrote it.
You like to claim we must kowtow to scientists – which is false. But even so often what you seek is not obedience to scientists or “experts” but obedience to the oppinion of reporters or politicians that spin science .
And you are unable to tell the difference. ‘
And no one is reading your mind – we are reading your sources and noting the dissonance between them and your own exposition.
“Commit has a very good ability to ferret out quotations or facts that reminded both Allan and me of one who has seasoned secretarial skills. ”
I had more than one secretary. One was there to place things accurately on a piece of paper or digitally while checking the citations. The other could do that as well but had common sense and the ability to reason. Those last two skills are not the ones our Secretariat has possession of. She is a bit lame.
Young, all your comments are quite instuctive. When did you have time to practice law?
Allan– I read a lot. I often have a book with me when I am line at the drive-through at Wendy’s and read until I sense the car in front move forward and then ease forward just a bit myself and return to my book. When I was in my early teens my step-father asked if there were something wrong with me because I read so much. Maybe so. I sympathized with the character in the old Outer LImits show [or maybe Twilight Zone] in which a chronic reader was stuck in a bank vault during a nuclear war and emerged thinking at last nobody will bother me while I read. Then he stepped on his glasses.
Young, you have one of the most important gifts. Another is an open logical mind something you also seem to possess along with a love of science and hopefully math.
Young, there’s a lot to read in your assessment of Commit. But it’s not exactly riveting. I’m not thinking, as I read it, “Boy Commit screwed up”.
Instead I keep wondering what hand Young is playing here. It ain’t ‘three kings’ or ‘two aces’. Or even a ‘pair of Jokers’.
Seth– I’m not sure what you mean but I understand that you are not impressed. At one time I would not have been either. It is very hard to overcome years of accepting a notion only to have it overturned. I did add a following explanation that also touched on possible legal consequences of the changing understanding of who we are as a species.
Very early on I subscribed sincerely to the idea of pushing race aside and treating everyone alike and having ‘a level playing field’ as it was once called. A post-racial world is an exciting prospect and I very much liked Obama’s early speech in which he seemed to be aspiring to that. It was a good speech and reflected what I felt and what I wanted to believe.
Since then we have gotten nothing but greater tilt to the playing field and one race controversy after another. Do you imagine it is going to accomplish much race healing or promotion of a post-racial world to constantly attack whites for one thing or another? I can assure that is not the way to do it.
So, if we are not going to have a post-racial world, let us open the books of nature and find out what is really in them in regards to race. You will not like the answers.
You’re hoping it will be resolved through reason. I suspect it will be resolved through politics, and the current administration is guaranteeing it will be resolved through violence.
The truth will be resolved through scientific inquiry. The politics will be solved with politics. That is why everyone wants us to shut up when we get into actual details.
TIA,
Why is it you think this will be ‘resolved through politics’ when you also note that the ‘current administration is guaranteeing it will be resolved through violence’.
What do you see shifting the course from the current trajectory?
Prairie Rose — Thank you!
Young
Um, you’re welcome. But, I’m not sure why I’m being thanked.
Thanked for saying something I should have said.
“Current establishment” not ‘current administration’. Trump’s not at fault here.
TIA,
That’s a big difference. Some might wonder whether that was a Freudian slip. 😉
Thank you for the clarification.
I am curious, though, TIA.
“TIA,
Why is it you think this will be ‘resolved through politics’ when you also note that the ‘current establishment is guaranteeing it will be resolved through violence’.
What do you see shifting the course from the current trajectory?”
Prairie, many of the right wingers on this board have convinced themselves we are on the edge of a civil war and some of those have itchy trigger fingers and hope that is true. The “civil war” is a drummed up fantasy by those who have bought the “culture war” sold 24/7 on cable “news” and right wing talk radio to a country not far apart on anything of major signifigance and at least until the virus, pretty fat and happy. In such soils, civil wars do not grow, nor do they spread from a small mixture of college kids and a very few hardened gangsters with nothing else to do on summer nights with no school and no job. Promoting it like the Panzer tanks are just south of Richmond is what people like Kurtz like to sell as he mounts the ramparts of his fevered imagination.
It ain’t happening.
Bythebook,
I do see the propaganda. It is bipartisan. Cui bono?
Prairie it is bipartisan, but the extreme of wishing for a civil war is right wing. Those selling advertising on cable news and talk radio and those who sell division – racial and cultural – to gain office benefit. We now have a president who regularly singles out for attack American cities and states and everyone is so used to him being a jerk, it barely registers.
“Prairie it is bipartisan, but the extreme of wishing for a civil war is right wing. ”
I’m looking at all those “right wing” hoodlums in the streets of Portland, Chicago and elsewhere. I don’t see right wing folk occupying the streets looting and burning. That type of violence is left up to you and your friends.
“Prairie it is bipartisan,”
Propoganda is in the eye of the beholder.
You think actual facts are propganda.
The growing divide in this country did not start with Trump – it starting with Obama, Pew has excellent data and graphics on it.
The Right DID NOT CHANGE much under Obama – what occured is a hollowing out of the center left, as well as increased influence to the far left.
“but the extreme of wishing for a civil war is right wing.”
Not at all. There is no “wishing” for it, Go to our cities – the civil war has already begun.
The right is not going to initiate the violence – but it will end it.
“Those selling advertising on cable news and talk radio and those who sell division”
I would suggest you actually LISTEN to those you are ranting about.
You paint “division” as a failure to support your stupid policies.
The country itself is not nearly as divided as YOU are.
Trump is no hero – but most of his policies – the ones you oppose violently have majority support, many have super majority support.
Even those he is wrong on have public support.
Most americans want the country OUT of stupid foreign wars and entanglements.
They voted FOR Bush because he promised that.
They voted FOR Obama because he promised that.
The voted FOR Trump because he promised that.
Trump has come far closer than any of his predecessors to delivering.
Absolutely he has failed – there will be 5000 americans in Afghanistan in Nov 2020 – not zero.
But there will be far less accross the mideast.
Barack Obama got the nobel peace prize for what ? More mideast war and violence ?
What peacefull thing has Obama accomplished ?
Trump pissed off the left by living up to US promises to Israel – this was supposed to make things worse.
Yet we are seeing the possibility of real peace in the mideast.
What is Obama’s nobel Peace prize for ? Droning civilians int he mideast ?
You continue to spray this nonsense that Putin is pro Trump.
Only if Putin is far stupider than he appears.
Trump has behaved as if he does not give a $h!t about Russia.
His policies have been what is best for the US – not Russia.
Sometimes that favors Russia. Mostly it screws Russia.
You are blind to that Putin is not.
Regardless, US policy should not be determined by what is good or bad for Russia, or China, or Europe, but what is good for the US.
But interestingly that often proves to be good for much of the rest of the world.
Both the US and countries throughout Asia are benefiting from Trump’s confrontations with China.
Further right or wrong MOST americans support that.
You complain about Trump’s tax cuts – and yet – working class americans are better off.
Job growth continued way past were it should have stopped.
You complain about deregulation – WHO Died.
PPACA has not been repealed but it is fairly well gutted – yet no one is dying as a result.
You can rant about “the wall” Good idea, bad idea, does not matter much, it is being built and it is rounding error on the stimulus that was just passed.
A highly respected legal VLOGGER I follow commented on the inside picture we are getting of our courts.
He said that the american people are having a clear teaching experience with respect to the obvious political bias and lawlessness of democrat appointed judges. They are hypocritical and inconsistent and do not follow the law.
And it is increasingly obvious. They LOOK Bad, they SOUND bad and they are alienating people.
You are doing this to yourself.
“racial and cultural”
I have not heard a single person on the right sewing racial or cultural division. That is entirely on the left.
Most americans want to go about their lives without humourless woke scolds monitoring everything the do.
Absolutely americans are still racist, sexist, ….
But we are less so than every before in our history,
and we are less so than every other country in the world.
China is actually enslaving Uigher’s by the million.
But if you listen to the left – the US is milimeters from returning to slavery.
Absolutely the left won the “Culture wars”. Myriads of social conflicts that were institutionalized in our system are rightly gone.
When I was in college – you could be expelled if you were gay. today there is nothing that a gay person can not do that a straight person can. There are more women in college and increasing numbers of women in power.
Working out some complexities of transgender are going to prove complex – parents are just not letting their 14 year old daughter shower with a pre surgery MTF teen. We still do not know how to deal with women’s sports. We do not know how to resolve issues of gender preferences in children – we do not know how to tell whether preferences as a child will turn into issues as an adult. These and many other complex issues have not yet been resolved.
But the basic principle that any adult that wants to change their gender ought to be free to do so, is broadly accepted – even by conservatives.
In many ways the nation is more libertarian than ever. We do not need to agree with your choices, we still support your freedom to do things we beleive will F’up your life.
It is the left today that is illiberal, that is trying to impose a new puritanism.
“We now have a president who regularly singles out for attack American cities”
Those cities are F’d up.
All the conflict over the past year has been about failure in the parts of the country controlled by the left – our cities.
Are the police systemically racist ? I think the evidence is that they are not.
But if I am wrong that is a failure of democratic cities. George Floyd did not die in Atwood Kansas. We are not seeing Rioting in Centrailia PA, CHOP did not happen in Richwood West Virginia.
Even C19 is wreaking havoc on our democrat controlled cities. Almost all the cases and almost all the deaths are occuring in our cities – not in rural America.
Whatever the problems you are demanding solutions to – those are problems of democrat controled urban regions.
Clean your own house.
If you can not run the Cities of the US – why should you be trusted with the country ?
“everyone is so used to him being a jerk, it barely registers.”
Wrong, What you call being a jerk does not move the needle in most of the country – because Trump is saying what an enormous number of americans are afraid to say.
You do not understand that you have not converted someone because you have silenced them.
Allan, as far as I know, the only death to come out of the Floyd engendered protests and riots was a federal guard in Oakland assassinated by a right winger and sidekick. Beyond that we have El Paso, Pittsburgh, other lone wolf assassins and the FBI warning on right wing extremists as the most dangerous facing America right now.
“ Allan, as far as I know, the only death to come out of the Floyd engendered protests and riots was a federal guard in Oakland assassinated by a right winger and sidekick. “
Btb, The answer to your ignorance is in your statement… as far as you know. You don’t know much but shortly after the death of Floyd the rioting and shootings ended up killing about 14 other people attributed to the Floyd incident.
We are seeing a tremendous spread of violence in democrat run cities that now refuse to support law and order with murder rates rising at horrendous rates.
The way Floyd died was criticized by virtually all. The left used this incident involving a criminal who was drugged up to create instability causing violence thoughout the democrat American cities where such activity was possible. The violence was permitted by democrat leaders.
Carrillo was anti-cop – not right wing.
“Go to the riots and support our own cause. Show them the real targets”
“Use their anger to fuel our fire. Think outside the box. We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.”
The attack took place several blocks from a protest at Oakland City Hall.
A former friend of Carrillo’s told interviewers,
“Excessive use of force on unarmed civilians — that was a huge thing for him… It was a mental tipping point for him.”
As is typical of those on the left you fixate on anything to avoid the obvious.
Steven Carrilo was at the oakland rights to kill cops in support of BLM and in protest of what happened to George Floyd
All of this by his own words.
Are you saying that all the rioting and BLM and antifa and defund the police are all “right wing” ?
It is probably more now.
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/30/24-people-killed-george-floyd-riots-protests/
https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/30/24-people-killed-george-floyd-riots-protests/
From the el paso shooters manifesto”
In short, America is rotting from the inside out, and peaceful means to stop this seem to be nearly impossible. The inconvenient truth is that our leaders, both Democrat AND Republican, have been failing us for decades. They are either complacent or involved in one of the biggest betrayals of the American public in our history. The takeover of the United States government by unchecked corporations.
Recently, the senate under a REPUBLICAN administration has greatly increased the number of foreign workers that will take American jobs. Remember that both Democrats and Republicans support immigration and work visas. Corporations need to keep replenishing the labor pool for both skilled and unskilled jobs to keep wages down.
The American lifestyle affords our citizens an incredible quality of life. However, our lifestyle is destroying the environment of our country. The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations. Corporations are heading the destruction of our environment by shamelessly overharvesting resources. This has been a problem for decades. For example, this phenomenon is brilliantly portrayed in the decades old classic “The Lorax”. Water sheds around the country, especially in agricultural areas, are being depleted. Fresh water is being polluted from farming and oil drilling operations. Consumer culture is creating thousands of tons of unnecessary plastic waste and electronic waste, and recycling to help slow this down is almost non-existent. Urban sprawl creates inefficient cities which unnecessarily destroys millions of acres of land. We even use god knows how many trees worth of paper towels just wipe water off our hands. Everything I have seen and heard in my short life has led me to believe that the average American isn’t willing to change their lifestyle, even if the changes only cause a slight inconvenience. The government is unwilling to tackle these issues beyond empty promises since they are owned by corporations.
So the next logical step is to decrease the number of people in America using resources. If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can become more sustainable.
I putting this here because some people will blame the President or certain presidential candidates for the attack. This is not the case. I know that the media will probably call me a white supremacist anyway and blame Trump’s rhetoric. The media is infamous for fake news. Their reaction to this attack will likely just confirm that.
Real right winger here
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2019/05/one-colorado-school-shooters-transgender-boy/
another lone wold republican shooter in the age of Trump
https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/06/politics/congressional-shooter-70-rounds/index.html
Unmentioned is that he is a bernie bro who went out to kill white guys.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/california-man-convicted-racially-motivated-killings-likely-faces-life-prison-n1197356
https://dailycaller.com/2017/05/28/portland-killer-is-an-anti-circumcision-bernie-sanders-supporter/
Bythebook,
That’s not the ‘who benefits’ I was thinking of, though the money-making element is a nice side benefit for some players. We plebians are being steered with a great deal of nasty persuasion.
Starting wars has a long and glorious tradition, to paraphrase The Princess Bride. The left/right angles are useful concepts to manipulate.
Dan Carlin has a great piece on concerns surrounding all this upheaval:
https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5mZWVkYnVybmVyLmNvbS9kYW5jYXJsaW4vY29tbW9uc2Vuc2U_Zm9ybWF0PXhtbA/episode/aHR0cDovL3RyYWZmaWMubGlic3luLmNvbS9kYW5jYXJsaW4vY3N3ZGNkMTkubXAz
Both sides can devolve into authoritarianism. I see it.
John,
Facts are facts. Propaganda is sideways from facts.
Propaganda:
“information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.”
Wikipedia’s notes:
“Propaganda is communication that is used primarily to influence an audience and further an agenda, which may not be objective and may be presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information that is presented.”
Prairie, no offense, but I’m not going to listen to podcast over an hour long to get the point, Can you summarize it?
I think you may be giving too little weight of the effect of media designed to heighten tensions between us, rather than inform. Right wing talk radio has many millions of listeners everyday and is pretty much non-stop “liberals are our enemies”. I know because as a builder I am in my truck for a significant amount of time and hear it then and when I go to job sites, it is not uncommon for it be playing there. Guys older than 35 get tired of listening to rock all the time and any talk is better. Fox hosts in prime time follow much the same formula of demonizing domestic “enemies”. MSNBC and CNN preach to their choirs as well, though I don’t believe the demonization of other citizens is there, though of political leaders, the same.
There are no liberals on the left today.
The left is full of illiberals.
If you think that CNN and MSNBC less frequently demonize people – you are clueless.
YOU demonize people.
Every single time you push the ludicrously stupid “collusion delusion”.
You are claiming that millions of Americans were so stupid that they were deceives by bad Russian FB adds.
But then again you are overall incredibly poor (or deliberately deceptive or both) with language.
When you say the Russians “helped” Trump win the election.
You fail to grasp there are only two possible ways.
Either the altered the actual tally of votes. But the left would not dream of going there, because god forbid we should get serious about protecting the intergrity of elections – which is not all that hard, but pretty much does NOT involve massive mail in voting. Something that is not securable.
Or – and this is what most people grasp when you rant about Russians helping Trump win the election, you mean that the russians somehow deluded stupid people into voting for Trump.
Voters are not nearly so stupid as you think.
Trump voters NEVER bought the “collusion delusion” – because they all knew they did not vote for Trump because russians deceived them, and they did not know anyone who voter for Trump because of russian deception.
Pretty much everything those of you on the left say does not hold up to serious examination.
It does not matter whether it is “collusion delusion” nonsense – or mushy and meaningless statements on what people purportedly agree on.
“many of the right wingers on this board have convinced themselves we are on the edge of a civil war”
That sense originated with the left, not the right.
You are deliberately tearing the country apart because you are unwilling to accept that everyone does not share your policies.
Look at what is happening in cities accross the country – cities run for decades by democrats.
While the levels of violence are actually lower than during the summer of rage in the 60’s, and the LA riots, one thing is distinctly different.
These riots are organized and political.
This is the consequence of the beleif that you can accomplish your wishes by ANY MEANS NECESCARY.
This is also a consequence of the lefts orwellian destruction of language. By equating everything you do not like with violence, you can falsely justify violence of your own.
Regardless, this is simple. Order can be restored to our cities quite easily. Mayor’s and governors merely need to call in the national guard.
Those who wish to “protest” can do so – they can march to the institutions of government – to the statehouses and cityhalls and petition government
The violence in our cities continues – because YOU allow it, because YOU want it. It is pretty trivial to stop, and it can be stopped without any infringement on actual protest.
But you are clueless about the difference between free speech, free assembly and a violent mob.
The social contract exchanges our right to initiate violence against others for the protection of all our other rights by govenrment.
When government fails to prevent arson, looting and violence it breaches that social contract.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,”
When government fails “to secure these rights” – including protecting our property, and ending violence that government is destructive of its foundation, and “it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government,”
There will be an election in November.
If that election is conducted WITHOUT FRAUD – we are all obligated to accept the results – without the escalating violence we have seen from the left over the past 4 years.
If the left engages in massive fraud – which is likely -they destroy the foundations of govenrment.
We already know that mail in voting is rife with fraud. We have known that from long ago. We have known that from the 2018 election -where even the left was ranting about mail in fraud – because some georgia republican did what was massively done in CA.
We know that mail in voting is rife for fraud from studies done by MIT.
We know that the non-fraudulent error rates is well over 3% just as a result of studies done by newspapers.
We know that it is rife with either fraud or serious problems as a consequence of every election mail in election we have had since april.
You have already rigged the game such that absent a decisive victory by either Biden or Trump the results of this election will be under a cloud.
Whoever wins this election – if it is not decisive, the other party will have legitimate reason to question the outcome.
Something the left is clueless to understand.
By any means necescary DOES NOT confer the consent of the governed. It does not confer legitimacy.
The likelyhood is that the violence will continue past the 2020 election – and that is YOUR FAULT.
If Biden wins – those out burning and looting will continue or worsen – as those burning and looting will see those methods as effective.
And Biden does not have the ability to stand up to his own violent left wing.
If Trump is elected – why should any of us expect that YOU will behave any better than you have for the last 4 years ?
There is excellent reason to expect that even a Trump landslide will result in MORE not less violence from the left.
Further your violence is pissing of an enormous portion of the people – and not purported right wing loons.
We are seeing growing numbers of counter protests.
But ordinary people should not have to do the job we expect of our police, govenrment, national guard if necescary.
It is not protest – if you are looting, It is not protest if you are burning. It is not protest if you are destroying property. It is not protest if you are hurling rocks or molatov cocktails, or using lasers to blind people.
I do not give a $h!t if you are nazi’s marching to demand the extermination of jews – do so peacefully and you are free to protest.
Conversely if you are mother theresa protesting the squalid conditions in Calcuta and you engage in looting and burning – you are no protestors, you are criminal thugs.
We are not far apart ?
Really ?
Are you paying the slightest attention ?
You do not agree with anyone in the center or the right on pretty much anything.
And you tolerate violence.
And you are fully prepared to use force to get your way.
We are VERY FAR APART.
You do not grasp that because once you decide that you can use force to get your way, you no longer have to listen, you no longer have to persuade.
Unlike many parts of the world now, but especially in the past when civil wars occurred, there are no communist, fascist, or racial supremacist parties.
Americans almost all agree and live their lives in quiet assent to::
Major issues:
1. There are and should be equal protection of citizens of different races.
2. There are and should be equal protection of citizens of different sexes and sexual orientation
3. The rights of all individuals are and should be protected constitutionally.
4. The primary means of production and economic activity is and will be privately owned and operated.
Secondary issues but flashpoints today
5. Our borders should be secured and regulated with an organized and fair means of immigration. Those who have come here illegally but have worked hard and stayed clean should have an organized path to citizenship
6. All Americans have a right to own guns, with stipulations for the safety of others.
7. There should be a safety net for those who are too old or otherwise unable to maintain secure economic status. These include Medicare, Social Security, and various fallback health and economic supports
8. Universal education should be available for all kids.
I do not tolerate violence or encourage it, as many here do who are on John’s side.
John should state what issues he views as consequential enough to send Americans to the ramparts Kurtz is trying to build.
Hint:
There aren’t any
The left is Communist, Fascist and Supremist.
There should be equal protection with respect to THE LAW for all.
Government is required to treat us all equally
NO ONE ELSE IS.
Regardless of claims to the contrary – NO ONE actually beleives in equality beyond the law.
None of us expect to be obligated to treat strangers the same as our children or spouses.
The LEFT – even YOU do NOT agree that the rights of individuals should be protected.
First you do not know what is and is not a right.
Second your idea of protected is incredibly weak.
ALL means of production must be completely private – and there is not agreement on that.
M4A is littlerally socializing about 1/5 of the economy.
Listen to the “peaceful protesters” talking about abolishing private property.
You are clueless to the fact that the intellectual foundations of the modern left are MARXIST
Sanders is a massive influence and force within the democratic party – and he is openly socialist.
“Our borders should be secured and regulated with an organized and fair means of immigration.”
If there was agreement on that there would have been a deal that democrats lived up to decades ago.
Whether you like it or not – the democratic party DOES NOT agree with this.
Both those out protesting and many prominent leaders shout “abolish ICE” – and they mean much more than just that department.
They mean abolish all border enforcement.
“Those who have come here illegally but have worked hard and stayed clean should have an organized path to citizenship”
Why ? I strongly support legalization for Dreamers.
But there is no consequential underlying principle here.
There is no reason that Dreamers should be allowed to stay in the US, but Uighers as an example should not be allowed into the US
or those from Hong Kong.
I have emotional sympathy for “Dreamers” – but who gets to stay in the US is fundimentally NOT a question of principle.
It is not a question of “fairness” – there is no fair answer.
And thus far I am discussion Residence – not citizenship.
Many on the right wish to abolish birth right citizenship – I vigorously oppose that. Europeans do not have birth right citizenship and the consequences have proven really bad.
But that said – there is again no underlying principle moral or otherwise regarding who should be allowed to be a US citizen.
I can give you a list of my personal views on what should qualify a resident for citizenship,
I think that anyone who serves in the US military should be entitled to citizenship, as an example.
But these are still arbitrary choices – prefernces. They are not rooted in principles or morals.
Who gets to be a US citizen is the most perfect example of the fact that life is NOT fair.
Most US Citizens were born here – essentially a cosmic accident. We are not better by virtue of our place of birth.
But we are inarguably blessed with a better chance of success than those born elsewhere in the world.
Of the 8B people in the world – nearly a Billion would immigrate to the US immediately if given the oportunity.
Nearly all of those are decent hardworking people who would make excellent residents even citizens.
But we are NOT going to take in 1B new residents of citizens tomorow.
Given that reality – all other decisions are arbitrary.
“6. All Americans have a right to own guns”
The 2nd amendment has unfortunately proven necescary – but the reality is all americans have the right to own whatever they please.
as to
“with stipulations for the safety of others.”
We have a tort law system to deal with the unintentional harm one person causes another and a criminal law system for intentional harm.
Those systems apply to guns, knives spoons, clorox,
“7. There should be a safety net for those who are too old or otherwise unable to maintain secure economic status. These include Medicare, Social Security, and various fallback health and economic supports”
There is less agreement than you think and less agreement that it should be provided by government.
The overwhelmining majority probably atleast 95% of us are able to handle our own retirement, our own healthcare throughout our lives.
Those who can not have severe phsyical, psychologoical, or intellectual imparements.
“8. Universal education should be available for all kids.”
Why ? Public education has proven a disasterous failure.
The only working education in the US is private or Quasi private.
There are many countries in the world where government pays for education – but the education is entirely private.
Further if you want quality from anything – particularly if you want quality for the least well off, the only scheme that actually succeeds at that is private. Government services are inherently expensive and of poor quality.
We have pumped enormous amounts of money into education today and the quality has declined.
The federal govenrment has pumped money into colleges – they have become far more expensive and poorer quality.
Europe used to have an unequalled system of colleges and universities – they made them free and they went completely to he!!.
Get government out of education and you will end up with good affordable education for all.
There are very few people who could not afford a private catholic school education for their kids for the cost of their school taxes.
But school taxes are forever, and educating your kids is not. The state is ripping you off and providing a crappy product.
Eliminate school taxes and let people choose to educate their children as they please.
“I do not tolerate violence or encourage it, as many here do who are on John’s side.”
Of course you do – almost everyone does.
Would you kill someone who tried to rape your wife or child ?
We all accept violence – the question is When is violence moral.
Those burning and looting are not engaged in justifiable violence.
Those – whether as part of government or as private individuals thwarting that burning and looting are justified in responding to violence with violence.
“John’s side” is the “non-agression principle” – which nearly everyone supports – that you may not initiate violence against others. ‘
But you may respond to violence – lawlessness with violence as necescary.
It is preferable that justified violence is accomplished by government – police, national guard, the military.
But that is not always possible – sometimes government is not there when needed.
Other times government fails to perform its responsibilities according to the social contract.
Read the declaration of independence – there are many claims that are FAILURES of King George to enforce the rule of law.
The left and democrats are ranting about defunding or even abolishing to police.
Do you think if that occurs people will just sit back and allow themselves to be victims ?
The right to bear arms exists as a backstop for a variety of government failures – it is not about hunting and sport.
If the LEFT continues the violence and government continues to do nothing – there will be a backlash, and that backlash could become violent. We are already seeing counterprotests, We are seeing FORCEFUL counter protests, As counter protests clear rioters, when the police will not.
Regardless the right is not going to initiate violence.
But if no one else does – they will end it.
“John should state what issues he views as consequential enough to send Americans to the ramparts Kurtz is trying to build.”
Why must I do anything you demand ?
Why are you asking me to defend Kurtz – we are at odds on several things.
The difference is that Kurtz makes arguments defending his views and responds to my arguments intelligently.
He is still wrong, but he is not some emotion soaked left wing nut incapable of independent thought.
Regardless, I am not obligated to defend him – he is capable of doing so himself.
“Hint:”
It is fallacious to pretend you can read minds.
Every purported claim in which you think people agree is fallacious – it is a spun distortion of something that people may agree on.
And/or it is something that people thoughtlessly agree on without grasping that in the real world it is both impractical and impossible”
John proves my point exactly.
Thanks for participating John.
Carry on.
John responds without following the discussion, which is not about how much of a crackpot and out of sync with most Americans he is – we know that – but what differences there are between most Americans which would somehow trigger a civil war. He challenged my assertion that there aren’t any earlier, but here makes no attempt to make his case why. We know he disagrees with most Americans but he won’t even say what issues he’d go to war on. let alone what he thinks will trigger most Americans to. As always it’s just another excuse for him to type a long screed no one will read.
By the way, the comprehensive immigration bill of 2013, which passed the Senate with a bi-partisan vote, but which Boehner would not allow to come to vote in the House based on the Hastert Rule, even though there were the votes there to pass it, was supported by almost all Democrats. It included DReamers protection and more funds for border security, so his statement about Democrats and immigration is just ignorant nonsense.
You decide what you you think is important about what you say.
I get to decide what i think is important about what you say.
You have no control over how others respond to your arguments or lack thereof.
I do not care whether I am out of sync with americans.
I care whether what I speak is true.
You do care – and you are clearly out of sync.
Further you confuse bland agreement on not well examined and poorly written platitudes with peoples actual values.
If you want to know what people really think, what the value – find out what they are willing to pay for, fight for, sacrifice for.
You confuse badly written heavily spun emotional mush with actual values.
When you can persuade me that a person would pick a stranger over their daughter or son in order to meet your platitudes – then we will know that is an actual common VALUE.
Otherwise it is typical leftist mush – sounds good if you do not look closely – but it does not work in practice.
I would also note that if you have to qualify some claimed value, and you can not do so in a clear way – then what you have said is meaningless.
“americans support the right to arms with reasonable restrictions”.
Is a meaningless statement – a right is something that can not be restricted.
And a reasonable restriction has no shared meaning.
To me it might mean – no WMD’s to you it might mean no firing pin.
The fact that we can agree on your meaningless words does not mean there is meaningful agreement.
If you can not reach agreement without expressing everything ambiguously – you do not have agreement.
Boehner responded, “In our conversation last week, I told the president what I have been telling him for months: the American people and their elected officials don’t trust him to enforce the law as written. Until that changes, it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue.”
Idiot.
1st number is total deportations, 2nd is deportations per year. Numbers are as of Sept 2019
George W. Bush 2,012,539 251,567 Republican
Barack Obama 3,066,457 383,307 Democrat
Donald J. Trump 551,449 275,725 Republican
Source: Department of Homeland Security and author’s calculations.
“President Obama removed more people from the United States, no matter how you dice the numbers than any other president. ”
https://www.cato.org/blog/deportation-rates-historical-perspective
????
Why are you responding to me regarding the # of deportations ?
I said nothing about who deported more people.
You numbers say Obama deported more people – and more people per year.
I do not disagree with that.
Trump has been working HARD to stop people from getting into the country – then you do not need to deport them.
Illegal crossings are WAY down, many immigrants for south and central america are being stopped in Mexico or countries in Central america.
Regardless, what is it you think we are arguing about ?
BytheBook,
>”Prairie, no offense, but I’m not going to listen to podcast over an hour long to get the point, Can you summarize it?”
You do not have to listen to it if you do not have time, and, I am happy to summarize it. That said, I highly recommend Dan Carlin’s Common Sense podcast, as well as his history podcasts. He is a centrist, as far as I can tell. His history podcasts are excellent. He does a great job bringing history to life with superb discussion and interesting contemporary allusions (the podcasts are thoroughly researched, to boot). He also has a great voice.
The long and the short of it is–if we get divided and fight each other, it’ll be like Athens and Sparta ending in the rise of Philip and then Alexander, or, the infighting of Rome that led to the rise of Julius Caesar.
>”I think you may be giving too little weight of the effect of media designed to heighten tensions between us, rather than inform.”
Perhaps I have not adequately conveyed how deeply it disturbs me, as well as the breadth and depth of the problem.
Perhaps the example of the derecho in Iowa serves as a strange example. A derecho is, effectively, an inland hurricane, and this one spanned 750 miles across Iowa, Illinois, and portions of several other states. It was a CAT 3 in places, I hear, with up to 130 mph winds clocked. People are still without power a week later. About 13 million acres of corn and soybeans are essentially destroyed in Iowa alone. Yet, if corn falls in a cornfield because of a derecho, does it make a sound? Apparently not, if the media chooses to practically pretend like it didn’t happen. Why ignore something so catastrophic? Catastrophic not just for the homes and businesses damaged and the lives lost, but for the consequences of losing most of the corn and soybeans in the number one prime production center of the nation. Corn and soybeans touch a huge part of the food supply and beyond. Why be mum?
And that’s just this one issue, not to mention the hysteria-creating, fact and truth-undermining circus of the past 8 months surrounding coronavirus. Death counts, breathless reporting of tragic outliers, outright falsehoods by major medical journals resulting in paper retraction (where’s the investigation into Surgisphere?), endless fear-mongering. Or, the Russians-behind-every-rock 1950s-esque reporting when China has been rising and probably doing its share of interference. Geez, there is plenty of fodder and more. I know yellow journalism has been around forever, even before “Remember the Maine!” but it has gotten to a point that it is seriously interfering with our collective ability to have a thoughtful discussion of the state of the nation and important points of policy, nevermind we the people might want to actually try to manage, solve, or rectify even one of the numerous problems in the nation (without undue steering towards some predetermined outcome).
It’s in the selections of news to highlight, the word choices of the journalists, the framing of situations or even allowing important news to slide by with barely a whisper or a glance. But it isn’t just ‘the media’ or ‘the government’ or ‘big pharma’ or ‘big tech’ etc. Some elements are aligned one direction and others seem to be aligned against the other, but I sometimes wonder whether that, too, might be an illusion and it’s all actually ‘competing’ forces in a narrative to achieve some other end. I try to step back myself to guard against being steered and manipulated myself. Sometimes I see it and participate anyway. I try not to be blind, but it is impossible to see all things.
““There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
― Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
This is short, only about 12 minutes long on Edward Bernays and Group Psychology:
https: //youtu.be/lOUcXK_7d_c
This, too, examines elements of public relations, group psychology and persuasion (‘The Century of the Self’ by the BBC), though it is about an hour (my entertainment doing laundry): https: //youtu.be/DnPmg0R1M04
>”Right wing talk radio has many millions of listeners everyday and is pretty much non-stop “liberals are our enemies”. I know because as a builder I am in my truck for a significant amount of time and hear it then”
I am rather surprised to hear that you listen to right wing talk radio in your truck. Pundits, no matter what side of the ‘divide’, are not my cup of tea. Too often they try tell you what to think, rather than by asking hard questions trying to get you to think; there’s very little good conversation but a boatload of pontificating. It’s somewhat the nature of radio and time limits and heading to commercial (actually, Dan Carlin discusses this very problem to an extent). I have listened to pundits, too, and quite often found it off-putting. It sounds like you drive around in your truck quite a bit, moving from site to site. Perhaps consider listening to Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History or Common Sense instead.
“MSNBC and CNN preach to their choirs as well, though I don’t believe the demonization of other citizens is there”
I’ve had experiences with people where they say horrible things but it’s as if they don’t *hear* what just came out of their mouths.
I’m sure I’ve done it, but I do try to *hear* myself, to catch myself before I say something horrid or apologize because I just realized how I sounded. I think that happens more often than you’d think on the left.
The Covington Catholic boys and how they were treated would be an example; calling people in the Tea Party ‘tea-b@ggers’ is another. I get to hear all kinds of mean-spirited stereotyping and bashing of Republicans and conservatives by liberal friends and family members. Considering some of the cliched comments being thrown about in the conversation, I’m pretty sure they got it from watching tv or reading the news with ideological blinders on. It’s sure hard to knock someone off their beaten path when they’re wearing blinders…
Ad hominem as a fallacious form of argument is ancient.
But Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” elevates it to an art form and a tool for policital power.
Trump is hated so much by the left for much the same reason Bill Clinton was hated by the right.
Because each of them coopted the tools and techniques of their opponents.
Clinton focused on the economy, and adopted numerous republican goals. He was a serious threat to the republican base – or atleast republican leaning centrists.
Trump uses the same alinsky tactics as the left. The left has been used to calling republicans sexist, racist, hateful hating haters. The worst they expected was to be called socialists in return – which they currently revel in. Trump is very good at attaching offensive labels to leftists.
It infuriates them.
Further Trump has appealed to and stolen a large body of voters that democrats thought they owned – Blue Color labor. AND he is threatening to make serious inroads into minorities.
Trump is not some extreme right wing radical – if he was he would not be a threat. if he was a milquetoast like Romney or Kasich he would not be a threat.
Trump must be destroyed because he is an existential threat to the left.
The building chaos and conflict are very dangerous. We do not have to go back so far as Athens.
In Spain conflict and chaos brought Franco.
In Germany Hitler.
In China Mao.
Numerous students of history, several intellectuals right and left has noted that Trump is a pussycat. The real danger is if Trump fails.
The rise of Trump is a reflection of a real significant and strong undercurrent. It is a warning that the left went too far.
If that warning is not headed – which it clearly was not, if Trump is successfully destroyed, then Trump II will have to be the actual strong man, the tyrant the totalitarian that Trump is accused of being.
The upcoming election will either be the battle of Coral Sea or Midway.
The Japanese – the left arguably won the Battle of Coral Sea – but Midway followed and the war was effectively over though lots of fighting and many many many deaths followed.
It does not matter if Biden win’s or loses. The tide is against the left right now.
It is preferable if Trump win’s – because the successor to Trump will be worse.
And there will be a successor.
Eric Weinstein did an interesting VLOG recently.
He noted that there two things that tie humans together socially.
That the 2nd, emerged with the advent of agriculture only 10,000 years ago.
And it is those ties of cooperation that the left as actively seeking to destroy.
And they are succeeding.
If the do we revert to the first – and that is genetic ties – Race. And that is ancient, older than humans.
We are in the least racist moment in the least racist country in all of human history.
At the same time it is not that hard to destroy bonding that only has 10,000 years of history and revert to more ancient.
That the danger of flipping rather quickly to race or race like grouping is enormous and the left is actively pushing in that direction.
I am not that worried about the MSM – they are destroying themselves.
The internet era is amazing – yes I can be fed predigested pablum by MSNBC or Fox, but I can also go out and find the best and the brightest in the world on any subject.
I can visit the economics blogs of nobel prize winners. In any subject I can go directly to primary sources or the most capable analysts.
That was not possible at any prior time in my life, or any prior time in history.
The MSM is dying.
They are burning their own intergrity and credibility and that is something they can not recover from.
John Say,
“That the 2nd, emerged with the advent of agriculture only 10,000 years ago.
And it is those ties of cooperation that the left as actively seeking to destroy.
And they are succeeding.”
I’m not convinced they are succeeding.
Iowans are demonstrating the ties of cooperation are still strong right now with neighbor helping neighbor. Period. Some Amish even were able to get up to Cedar Rapids to help fix roofs damaged by the storm–and they wouldn’t take any pay. Heck, it isn’t just Iowans, people from surrounding states are going in to help get the electricity back on and remove trees.
I hope you are right.
Regardless, the left is actively seeking to destroy the social bonds that bring us together.
There is a youtube short woke vs racist.
It compares the views of “two brothers” one woke and one racist.
And they agree on nearly everything.
Humor with a point.
John Say,
“I am not that worried about the MSM – they are destroying themselves.”
That’s not the part I’m worried about. It’s what they do with the news that troubles me. It’s like watching a crowd of people egging on a few people to fight because of some minor dispute–but worse, actually, because there is an agenda behind it larger than ‘I wanna see people fight’.
“The internet era is amazing – yes I can be fed predigested pablum by MSNBC or Fox, but I can also go out and find the best and the brightest in the world on any subject.”
From your lips to the world’s ears. I wish more people were hungry for knowledge.
Liberty is critical.
If people are happy with NYT and WaPo – that is a free choice. If you want drek if you choose freely to live in Orwell’s Oceania that is your choice.
But you can not drag the rest of us into your dystopia by force.
It is not 1968 – we do not have 3 near identical sources for news.
Nor do i think there is much time left for the left leaning MSM – lying to people is a lousy business model.
Bythebook,
I’ve thought a bit more about “”I think you may be giving too little weight of the effect of media designed to heighten tensions between us, rather than inform.””
I brought up the lack of coverage of the derecho in Iowa and Illinois as an form of media manipulation since it has effectively ignored the situation. It causes us the wonder why about the media’s choices to emphasize or de-emphasize certain stories.
Regarding the stories that divide us, here are several to contrast: Ahmaud Arbery and the George Floyd.
Ahmaud Arbery was shot on February 23–before the coronavirus hysteria was at a high point and also before everything shut down. Yet, it didn’t really get much national attention until like April or May–why wait? The Central Park incident between Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper was highlighted nearly the same day it happened. Same with George Floyd.
Did the media decide to hold the Arbery story because tensions with China and fears about coronavirus needed to be stoked? Did they choose to hold it after the shutdown until people were probably good and mad about losing their jobs, worried about money, mad about being cooped up, and told repeatedly by the media to make sure you distance yourself from other people? Now that we’re good and mad and feeling separated from one another, let’s highlight a story that will definitely start fueling divisions.
And that’s just one area in which tensions are heightened–there’s the liberal/conservative, men/women, standers/kneelers…pro-this/anti-that. Observing it is fascinating, albeit scary in its potential implications. At the same time, it is boring since there isn’t any exploration just all sound and fury. Cliches and tired slogans and worn-out fallacies are thrown about between people in a caricature of what would constitute a good conversation.
“too little weight of the effect of media designed to heighten tensions between us, rather than inform.”
There’s this cute Craig of the Creek cartoon in which Craig has too many ‘treasures’ in his explorers bag. He gets into a situation in which he and another boy are sitting on a rowboat precariously perched atop a junk pile. The rowboat will crash and they will get hurt unless Craig lightens their end of the boat by letting go of some of his ‘treasures’. He tosses them overboard, causing the boat to tip back to safety long enough the boys can get out onto solid ground.
Let’s get back on solid ground ourselves.
Prairie, you hint at conspiracies you suspect trying to control us, and I don’t subscribe to them in many human endeavors. Not that they don’t exist, but that rarely do forces align at a high enough level to not be anything but competing forces rather than controlling ones. If the “media” – however you want to define that – is controlled by a single conspiracy there is no evidence of that as you can get any focus you want. More likely, the “media” are numerous businesses trying to make money, or in the case of print journalism, just staying alive. That means selling a product to buyers – us, not having the freedom to be mouthpieces for their owners, though Murdoch and Bezos could.. Do we want information or do we want bias confirmation? You can get both. I prefer the traditional news sources who’s product is a reputation for coverage – they have desks and reporters around the world or the area they specialize in if local – and accuracy. The people who buy them – and leaders around the world include them in their daily briefings and opinion writers of all stripes get their hard news from them – primarily want and need information, not opinions, though they can get them on the opinion pages.They include the NYTs, WSJ, WaPo, Bllomberg, AP, Reuters, and many local papers, now suffering, like the Miami Herald and LA Times. I think you’ll find the Iowa disaster was covered.
I don’t get your accusation of fear mongering on covid-19. To date 170k are dead from it and those who live and have symptoms – I know some of both – suffer for 4-5 weeks and may have permanent damage to lungs, heart, and brain – if you don’t monger fear over that, when do you?
As citizens of a democracy with a free and varied press and universal education, we are responsible for what presses prosper and for the leaders and laws we live with and under. No one is doing this to us, of if they are, we’re letting them.
PS I don’t “listen” to right wing talk radio in my truck, but I sample it enough to know what it’s about. I can also vouch for it’s coverage among men of a certain age – it’s ubiquitous. Nothing on the left approaches it in coverage or divisiveness.
“Prairie, you hint at conspiracies”
How so ? If you are going to defame someone – your are obligated to prove your claim.
PR beleives the media tilts the news – I think that is prtty well established.
She did not say that Schultzburg and Bezos are plotting coverage over chateau Briane
At the same time it is pretty well established that as our media has shifted farther and farther left they have been more likely to pick stories to feature based on politics and to more heavily feature the politics of those they pick.
Is there an organized conspiracy in the traditional sense ? Probably not.
Is there a common effort at mostly in a single direction from what has essentially become a religion ? Absolutely.
PR is not offering conspiracy theories – she is offering the reality that the left has taken over most of the means of communicating news, and that most of the news is spun heavily in a single direction.
What she is noting is precise;y WHY voices outside the left are so absolutely critical
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
J.S. Mill
As to C19 – yes we are facing a massive Covid Porn Fear industry.
7800 people in the US die EVERY DAY – 2.8M/year. As best as I can tell overall US deaths thus far this year are within the margin of error for a normal US year. Most C19 deatsh are people who would die in the next 6 months regardless.
My father officially died of Pneumonia – but he was terminal 3 years earlier. Pneumonia just came in and ended his suffering from a list of other fatal problems.
AS to feared future problems – PLEASE. Can when end this leftist garbage that we have to be afraid of everything in life.
Absolutely some people who live through C19 will have life long disabilities. Just as some people who survive automobile accidents.
But the vast majority of people with C19 are LESS sick than if they had the flu.
The 1968 Flu that occured during woodstock was overall about as bad as C19 – it had about the same fatality rate.
It had half as many deaths – our population was half as large.
Regardless, there is SELF EVIDENTLY not a damn thing we can do about C19 that works. Though you keep denying that.
Certainly each of us is free to take the measures we want to hope for a better outcome. And maybe we will get lucky.
But there is nothing that you can do that is known to work. And certainly absolutely nothing that justifies the use of force.
You just featured Andrew Cuomo at the DNC convention – engaged in massive self agrandizement for the wonderful job he has done against C19.
Of course if every US governor had doe as well as Cuomo – there would be over 1M deaths in the US.
No one trusts YOU – the left. Because you lie constantly.
You sold the “collusion delusion” over and over.
You are pretending that there is something that govenrment can do about C19 and then pretending that the worst outcome in the entire US was magically the best.
And you expect anyone to see you as credible ?
I would not say there is much evidence of a left wing conspiracy.
More a disease like C19 that has infected 25% of the country and left them all with permaent brain damage and a shared delusion that progressive nonsense works.
We are not a democracy.
Our founders considered democracy the most evil form of government in existance.
“PS I don’t “listen” to right wing talk radio in my truck, but I sample it enough to know what it’s about.”
Ah – then clearly you are an expert.
“I can also vouch for it’s coverage among men of a certain age – it’s ubiquitous.”
So you can vouch for people that you barely know. As well as the content of something you sample occasionally.
“Nothing on the left approaches it in coverage or divisiveness.”
I listen to NPR ALL THE TIME – I do not Sample it.
It is full of clueless drek. They run a couple of economics programs by hosts that have been doing this for years and know nothing – not even about left wing economics.
It is amazing – because nearly everything said on NPR is laced with idiocy and bias – yet those offering it are so deep in the bubble they do not know.
Goebel’s could only dream of something like NPR.
Regardless, there is not a single person on the right that is seeking to silence or censure anyone on the left.
Yet the majority of the left thinks it is fine to censure those whose speach they do not like.
Short of physically assaulting and killing people, the left could not be more divisive.
You are constantly calling those that you do not agree with racist, sexist, homophobic, hateful hating haters.
You are clueless to your own bitter divisiveness.
1984 was supposed to be a warning – not a blue print.
Prairie, your recollections of the Arbery story are not mine. It was covered pretty thoroughly in real time, including before charges.
Does the press engage in herd mentality on stories? Sure, they are selling a product and we buy what’s hot and controversial. Is that different from the past? No. Does that mean the “media” is a useless appendage from bygone days who’s demise some foolishly cheer? F… no! Who’s going to report from Timbuktu on the coup which will affect world events and thus us? Powerline Blog? Media Matters? They have stringers nearby? Give me a break.
BTB if you do not grasp that the media is biased in its coverage you are clueless.
I recall watching as a CNN reporter talked about the ‘mostly peaceful protests” while a police station and several cars burned in the background and people were basing in police cars with baseball bats.
We are not dealing with the LA riots or the 1968 summer of rage.
But we are not dealing with peaceful protests either.
I have participated in many protests in my life. I have protested marches by actual nazi’s, by the actual KKK.
No one threw stones or bricks, there was no looting or arson, no windows were broken.
We carried candles not sheilds and helmets.
Just a few months ago – actually peaceful protestors went to state houses accross the country demanding saner rules if not just opening the country up. Many carried guns. No one even sprained an ankle – those were peaceful protests.
And yes – Nazi’s symbols abounded – the protestors were calling YOU Nazi’s – because you are.
Prairie, PS on the Covington Kids, yes they were railroaded early and even today many still have not gotten that as was shown on this board recently, but as noted in the ruling, The WaPo, which was the local coverage, showed the supposedly incriminating evidence on the 1st day, but quickly on the 2nd showed the other different angle stuff which was exonerating. If you recall, the 1st person talking – and loudly – was the lying Indian who instigated the “confrontation” – the kids got on the bus and went home. It took days for the straight story to get out, and even then, most had moved on with their distorted story locked in. It proved the adage about a lie making it “half way around the world before……..”. But the actual news coverage – as opposed to opinion pieces which should be taken for what they are and separated from news reporting – was accurate and timely. First day “Old Indian says”. Next day “Observers say Indian full of sh…t”.
You do not seem to grasp that there never was anything regarding Covington that was ever a news story.
While I think your timeline is WAAAY off, the more important point has nothing to do with the indian, it is that WaPo and others CREATED the story, they took a non-event, they painted it to defame some kids and then ran it nationally. ‘
It does not matter if they subsequently corrected themselves.
This was not a house file, a car crash a political speach
It was school kids waiting for a bus after visiting the smithsonian trying not to get provoked by a bunch of left wing nuts in front of the lincoln memorial.
And WaPo CREATED a story out of this.
You are making PR’s argument. This was not news it was manufactured – and wrong.
It was a deliberate effort to distort and they got caught.
This is not about what they choose to run and what they do not.
WaPo did not correct a bad story. They CREATED the story.
Bythebook,
>”Not that they don’t exist, but that rarely do forces align at a high enough level to not be anything but competing forces rather than controlling ones.”
Why not? Most media organizations are under a larger umbrella–there’s like 5 larger companies that control all the others beneath them. And, there is precedent with information steering the perceptions of Americans for other incidents–namely that of the Guatamalan overthrow in the 1950s. “News” was made up to a fit a narrative and then disseminated to newspapers all over the nation–Americans thought the Guatamalan people were rising up against their president, yet the whole thing was orchestrated by Edward Bernays and the CIA.
“Century of the Self: Part 2: ‘The Engineering of Consent’
https://youtu.be/fEsPOt8MG7E
Watch from about 30:37 – 37:36
>”I prefer the traditional news sources who’s product is a reputation for coverage – they have desks and reporters around the world or the area they specialize in if local – and accuracy. The people who buy them – and leaders around the world include them in their daily briefings and opinion writers of all stripes get their hard news from them – primarily want and need information, not opinions, though they can get them on the opinion pages.”
“Facts” can be manipulated or invented. See the BBC video above.
>”I think you’ll find the Iowa disaster was covered.”
Barely. I checked several PA news sources for local coverage–including NPR coverage. One source had 2 articles and another 4. I even checked Drudge and Zerohedge and neither had any information until nearly a week post-occurrence. Quite a few people out here hadn’t heard about it at all. Pretty sure hurricanes on the coast and on the Gulf have gotten quite a bit more press. Have a CAT 3 storm blow through several inland states is enough of an anomoly to give it more than a glance days later.
“I don’t get your accusation of fear mongering on covid-19. To date 170k are dead from it and those who live and have symptoms – I know some of both – suffer for 4-5 weeks and may have permanent damage to lungs, heart, and brain – if you don’t monger fear over that, when do you?”
When information is presented as affecting people equally, emphasizing outliers and scary pictures, when upwards of 85% of people didn’t even bother getting tested because their symptoms were sufficiently mild, when Cuomo and other governors are so unconcerned about it as to return Covid patients to nursing homes, when effective treatments are ridiculed or scorned or derided (especially using horrendous ‘studies’), that sure sounds like fear-mongering. I have family members who are healthy and younger than me afraid to go out because they’re afraid they’ll catch it and be put on a ventilator. They aren’t obese, they aren’t hypertensive, they don’t have Type II diabetes, they don’t have kidney problems, and they aren’t over 50–yet they’re terrified they are going to die. If you’re unhealthy or overweight, this might be a great time to get some sunshine and eat lots of real food and take a bit a zinc if you feel sniffles coming on. How many people have died or have had residual symptoms because of crappy policies and poor treatment protocols?
“As citizens of a democracy with a free and varied press and universal education, we are responsible for what presses prosper and for the leaders and laws we live with and under. No one is doing this to us, of if they are, we’re letting them.”
It’s pretty hard to hold the press and government accountable if they are lying to us and hold the cards. There may be elements of ‘we’re letting them’, but I also see how we’re being manipulated through our fears, emotions, and ideological biases. So many things have already devolved into tribalism with stupid critical theory post-modern crap that divides people as a matter of course. Hand over real critical thinking! You are one of the Borg and the group is of one mind only! How easy it is to steer and manipulate group against group.
“Nothing on the left approaches it in coverage or divisiveness.”
Isn’t that kind of divisive right there? ‘My team” is better than “the other team”? They both kind of stink.
The problem with most media today is not top down censorship – it is bottom up.
The NYT could not have journalistic integrity today – that would require a single NYT reporter to not be a left win loon.
NYT has repeatedly recently driven out – not conservatives, but leftists who were not pushing the full leftist dogma.
This was driven by the rank and file reporters not the upper management.
Bythebook,
>”Prairie, your recollections of the Arbery story are not mine. It was covered pretty thoroughly in real time, including before charges.”
Perhaps recheck the time-stamps for when stories were published. I looked at 3 national news sources as well as a regional news source. The earliest article I found was from April 30, 2020. Most articles appeared around May 5-8.
>”Does that mean the “media” is a useless appendage from bygone days who’s demise some foolishly cheer? F… no! Who’s going to report from Timbuktu on the coup which will affect world events and thus us?”
I agree with you. I do not want the papers or news programs to go away; I want them to be honest and trustworthy. The importance of delivering the facts of reality should weight heavy on their consciences such that they would not want to betray either their own integrity or the trust of those who depend on them for accuracy in reporting. I think they have forgotten the ideals of their calling.
“Powerline Blog? Media Matters? They have stringers nearby? Give me a break.”
I do not read either one of those.
Prairie –
Conspiracies – Why not? Because those at the top typically – and specifically in the Media – are not one, but competing forces. In the case of the media, they are also struggling to stay in business or make money. The product of the best is not opinions, but information. Virtually no one has a subscription to the NYTs or the WSJ for the opinion pages or because they have their biases confirmed on the front page. That may be why people watch Fox News or MSNBC – in fact it is. The base readership of the NYTs and WSJ are powerful people in business and government and most are probably centrist Dems or Republicans. The remaining locals buy AP and Reuters feeds are not looking for opinions either, but news. Do subjective judgements decide what gets the big headline? Yes. Can we expect something different? No. Has it ever been otherwise? No.
Facts can be manipulated, but you need motive overriding producing a reliable product. Media today is generally less cozy with political leaders than in the past, and if someone tries to print the President’s line on a foreign event, someone else will question it. Our press is both more competent and diverse than in the past.
Iowa:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/15/us/midwest-storm-farms.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/08/12/iowa-derecho-corn-damage/
Covid – Sorry, the lack of information on this crisis is directly attributable to the lack of a unified and coherent government policy, which can only be accomplished by the feds. Of course the press is going to go nuts and they should. I repeat: 170k dead and counting, a disease that will f..k you up good for 4-5 weeks and possibly leave you permanently damaged. If you have relatives afraid to leave the house, that’s too bad, but not the greatest of our concerns. Too bad we don’t have a clear and unified message and plan including how to actually restart things smartly. The rest of the world gets this, it’s not a hard message, and we are both the pity and laughing stock of a world we used to lead on things like this. Instead, we have a president saying “it will just go away”, acting like that, and actually sabotaging international efforts.
Nothing you have advanced relieves us, as citizens in a democracy, from being responsible for the press – we buy the product – or leaders – we elect them – or laws – we elect those who write them – we have. The press has been and will always be guilty of something, but it is not the problem. We are.
On talk radio. Yes, my accurately pointing out that right wing talk radio, which is incredibly divisive and hateful – listen to Savage, Levin, or Limbaugh sometime – has no left wing equivalent could be counted as taking “my side”, but that misses the point, doesn’t it?
I paid a fair amount of attention to Arberry (sp?) when it happened because it’s not all that far from where I live (hundred plus miles) and I’ve been to that small city. It was thoroughly covered nationally and in real time.
Whether you read Powerline or Media Matters or not – I don’t either – is not the point, but we seem to agree on the point that those cheering the demise of the “media” – if they mean those who actually collect hard news – are wishing to cut their own throat.
“The product of the best is not opinions, but information.”
And yet that is not so – the readers of NYT increasing expet confirmation of their oppinions in every story no matter how tangentially related to anything. We se the most egregious example of this with CAGW – you cited winds in IA – what are the odds the story blames them on CAGW ? That is bad editorializing.
“Virtually no one has a subscription to the NYTs or the WSJ for the opinion pages or because they have their biases confirmed on the front page.”
If course they do, NYT has readers all over the country – they do not care much about what is playing at the MET.
“That may be why people watch Fox News or MSNBC – in fact it is”
And NYT and WaPo and WSJ.
“The base readership of the NYTs and WSJ are powerful people in business and government and most are probably centrist Dems or Republicans.”
Because you say so ?
” The remaining locals buy AP and Reuters feeds are not looking for opinions either, but news. Do subjective judgements decide what gets the big headline? Yes. Can we expect something different? No. Has it ever been otherwise? No.”
I have no problem with the news as it is. I expect that the problems the right finds with NYT. WaPo and MSNBC will self correct.
If you want a national audience you probably should not rule out 70% of people.
But just because I am not looking to censor NYT or MSNBC does not meant that I am going to pretend their very real problems do not exist.
“Facts can be manipulated, but you need motive overriding producing a reliable product. Media today is generally less cozy with political leaders than in the past,”
Absolutely and it is more marinated in ideology.
John makes ignorant claims he’s too lazy to even verify.
No the NYTs article on the Iowa storms does not mention Climate Change.
People across the country do follow the Met now because of Met Live in HD, a wildly popular – before covid – means to see live opera anywhere in the country. People across the country who want want thorough news coverage subscribe or pick up the NYTs. Not being one of them, John hasn’t noticed.
Corporate and government organizations across the country put the NYTs or WSJ or both on the desks or screens of their employees for the same reason.
He doesn’t tell us who is going to have desks and stringers in Timbuktu if his hoped for demise of the “media” occurs. Maybe he thinks the Daily Caller and Mark Levin have those resources.
“John makes ignorant claims he’s too lazy to even verify.”
I rarely verify ANYTHING from you.
You are not a credible source. You have made too many false claims in the past.
Particularly false moral claims.
“No the NYTs article on the Iowa storms does not mention Climate Change.”
If so Kudos – a reporter with integrity at NYT a rarity.
“People across the country do follow the Met now because of Met Live in HD, a wildly popular – before covid – means to see live opera anywhere in the country. People across the country who want want thorough news coverage subscribe or pick up the NYTs. Not being one of them, John hasn’t noticed”
So what I have to use a different section of the NYT ? My point is that NYT is not a local paper, and its oppinion section ONCE was world famous.
BTW I do subscribe to NYT.
“Corporate and government organizations across the country put the NYTs or WSJ or both on the desks or screens of their employees for the same reason.”
And NYT is in decline because they increasing speak only for left wing nuts.
“He doesn’t tell us who is going to have desks and stringers in Timbuktu if his hoped for demise of the “media” occurs. Maybe he thinks the Daily Caller and Mark Levin have those resources.”
Apparently you can not read. I do not wish for the demis of NYT or WaPo – I hope they get their act together.
But I do not expect that.
Regardless, I do not expect or want them to return to their former prominence.
What Do I want to replace them ? NOTHING. I am not looking to dictate the news of the future.
I am happy to let the market resolve that.
What do I expect ? Daily Caller and Levin are not might preference – but I do not want one or two sources like NYT.
I want and we are seeing hundreds, thousands.
I do not want the AP – I do not need them. Today I can follow the actual facts of a story in timbuktu from the local news from timbuktu.
I do not give a $h!t what NYT says about Iowa. Why should I ? When I can find a journalist from Iowa who will not spin the story.
I can get information on Economics from Robert Barro, John B Taylor. John Cochrane. Paul Romer, Bryan Caplan, …..
Pick any subject – the best and the brightest in the world are readily available online.
Why do I need some fresh out of Journalism school left wing nut to explain science, economics, politics, pretty much anything to me, when I can find the smartest people in the world on the subject – and usually far better writers.
Young, racial discussions, as you know, are frequently torpedoed by preconceptions. For every Bernie Bro labeling fellow Whites ‘racist’, there’s a Republican advocating policies punitive to the poor.
By overusing the term ‘racist’, Left Wingers cheapen that label. But there’s no shortage of Republicans pushing for cutbacks to food stamps, Right to Work laws, Voter I D Laws, restrictions on women’s rights, attacks on Affirmative Action, drug testing for Unemployment, opposition to gun regulations, opposition to legal marijuana, hostility towards environmental laws, hostility to medicaid expansion–
‘All’ these policies are ominous for low income folks; especially those of color.
So by advocating these policies Republicans come across as tone deaf on racial issues. Which poisons racial discussions. Centrists trying to steer a middle course are forced to admit that too many Whites are tone deaf indeed.
“Young, racial discussions, as you know, are frequently torpedoed by preconceptions. For every Bernie Bro labeling fellow Whites ‘racist’, there’s a Republican advocating policies punitive to the poor.”
You create a false comparison. Actual racism is reasonably well defined – or it was until the left mangled the words.
“policies punative to the poor” – is meaningless nonsense.
First as is common with the left it embedds a presumption that there are nebulous obligations of all of us enforced by Government to “the poor” or any other group.
The rule of law is the enforcement of ACTUAL obligations of ALL OF US to each other that can only be accomplished through FORCE.
Your “policies punative to the poor” is nebulous – and deliberately so, but it is certain to greatly exceed any duties we owe to “the poor” or any other group that can be legitimately imposed by force.
This is the problem with the left’s nebulous use of words.
As a simple example – what do you mean by “the poor” ?
I adopted my daughter from an orphanage in China. As a consequence I learned in a very intimate way that “the poor” in the US are the 1% of the world. I care about those in the US who are less fortunate than most of us. But I care far less about them than children born throughout the world in conditions that make those of US poor seem oppulent.
I accept that I have a personal obligation to those less blessed than I am. I give of my time and my wealth to help others.
Some of that time and wealth go to the homeless in the US. But some of it goes to those far worse off in the rest of the world.
I do not FORCE you through government to support policies that favor my personal preferences for those I beleive should be aided.
Why are you entitled to use government FORCE to support policies that favor YOUR personal favorite disadvantaged group ?
Quite often – possibly always YOUR preferences are inherently RACIST, Most of the least well off in the world today are yellow or Brown – and they are far less well of than US Blacks.
I would further note that looking agt the world and history – your efforts to “help the poor”, mine, Mother Theresa’s and those of governments of have accomplished little and often resulted in significant harm.
The greatest force in human existance that has improved the human condition – especially for those you claim to care the most about has been free exchange.
In the west in the 18th and 19th century, free exchanged raised those white men to world the most proseperous and successful in the world. In the lat 20th and 21st century that same free exchange has improved Billions across the planet.
Today there are more than twice as many people as when I was in elementary school and the nun hit us with rulers to get us to put nickels into milk cartons for the staving children in india. Paul Ehrlich warned us of global famines to come that would starve hundreds of millions of people.
Today twice as many people are fed twice as well on half as much land, and countries like China and india are at or approaching the bottom of the first world, not the third world.
And no one anywhere in the world starves to death but for government interferance.
Nor is there a nation on earth that can not feed its own people absent political corruption and war.
No charity has done that, no government has done that.
At the very moment in which free exchange has demonstrated its unequivocal superiority over every alternative.
You want to rant because someone is interfering in the failed efforts of government to do something that is obviously ourside of the ability fo govenrment to do.
If you care about poor americans – start a business, Grow it, and hire people.
Those in business succeed for themselves by providing the rest of us what we want and need,
To benefit themselves they MUST benefit others – with things they want and need and will jobs.
PaintChips, LBJ created all sorts of welfare for those in need and we have spent trillions to end up in a spot (relative to time, place and technology) worse off than we were before.
Maimonides was a brilliant thinker from the twelfth century. He dealt with the same concerns we deal with today. LBJ tried to satisfy a similar need just like Maimonides but he interjected politics into charity and forgot what we learned over the ages.
Maimonides was a Jew and he created Eight Levels of Charity or Tzedakah, the Jewish word for charity. The lowest level of charity was giving unwillingly. Incrementally charity became more about the person on the receiving end than on the giving end. Level seven is where no one knows who is providing the charity and the donor cannot even get the satisfaction by seeing what his donation does. The eigth or highest level is a level, though written 800 years ago, you are unable to understand. That highest level in its simplest form is to provide a job so that the person receiving charity never has to ask for it again.
You have replaced Tzedakah and religion with leftism that is empty. You believe in power and force mistaking that for generosity. You have failed to evolve.
from 1963 when Lyndon Johnson took office until 1970 as the impact of his Great Society programs were felt, the portion of Americans living below the poverty line dropped from 22.2 percent to 12.6 percent, the most dramatic decline over such a brief period in this century.”[38]
In the long run, statistical analysis shows that the Official Poverty Rate fell from 19.5 percent in 1963 to 12.3 percent in 2017. However, using a broader definition that includes cash income, taxes, and major in-kind transfers and inflation rates, the “Full-income Poverty Rate” based on President Johnson’s standards fell from 19.5 percent to 2.3 percent over that period.[54][55]
The percentage of African Americans below the poverty line dropped from 55 percent in 1960 to 27 percent in 1968.[56]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Society#:~:text=Historian%20Alan%20Brinkley%20has%20suggested,two%20years%20of%20Johnson%27s%20presidency.
I guess LBJ did the same for China and the rest of Asia as well because they too have seen a rise out of poverty not experienced before.
Many metrics demonstrate that the overall improvement of blacks slowed after LBJ’s great society, but you have been provided the numbers over and over again. The reality of the number you provide is dubious and likely contrived as are poverty lines.
Suffice it to say that based on the trajectory of your numbers blacks should all be wealthy today.
However you do demonstrate that your evolvement is backwards and that you know less than Maimonides from 800 years ago.
Even at the time no one saw the actual improvements LBJ was claiming.
Moynihan – a leading liberal of the time did not choose to rethink the great society because it was succeeding.
But because it was OBVIOUSLY failing.
My Guess is Wikipedia is dealing with nominal not real money.
“My Guess is Wikipedia is dealing with nominal not real money.”
Good thought, John.
There are so many ways of looking at what btb said and realizing the dubious nature of btb’s number but btb has not demonstrated critical thinking abilities which would lead him to accept whatever he sees whether it makes sense or not.
Take note that he predicted a NY type of Covid catastrophe in Florida and now we see the number of cases falling but NY has more than 3X the deaths and probably no where near the number of seniors and Nursing home patients. He was unable to look at a simple set of numbers available almost everywhere and figure out that the trend meant Florida would not suffer the same as NY.
The great society was an absymal failure.
Wikipedia is not a credible source.
Try this
https://www.amazon.com/Great-Society-History-1960s-America/dp/0061706426
Go read “the Moynihan report” 1965 by Liberal Lion Danial Patrick Moniyhan who participated in the Great Society only to become one of its greatest critics.
He watched as the Great society DESTROYED poor and minority families.
Your source claims great gains from 1960-1970.
Yet the worst race riots in US history – the Summer of Rage in 1968 took place near the end of that – do you think the people rioting in 1968 thought that poverty had massively improved ?
Nor is this Unique to the US – your “great society” type programs have failed accross the world.
Event the purportedly socialist nordic social democracies backed away from massive government social intervention in the 80’s as costs exploded and their economies died.
Even Social Secutiry and medicare are a failure.
Medicare is the single largest driver of increases in the cost of healthcare and delivered no demonstrable health benefit to seniours.
SS is the worst retirement program ever. Almost no one ends up with a net positive result, and absolutely no one does as well as they would had they invested their SS money at an abysmal interest rate.
The entire purpose of SS is to allow government to confiscate the savings of the poor.
BTB – we KNOW this crap DOES NOT WORK.
Historical revisionism in Wikipedia aside.
LBJ using inflation to make the great society and the war in vietnam possible. The consequences created growing misery through the 70’s.
Which was only ended by the deliberate recession caused By Carter Fed Chair Paul Volker. Reagan wise wise enough to keep Volker and continue to allow Volker to purge inflation from the system eventually triggering the strongest growth in US history.
Subsequently the Welfare Reform by Clinton and Republicans was successful far beyond expectations.
Why ? Because the Great Society was so absymally stupid that winding it down greatly improved the conditions for those it was supposed to help.
But the greatest benefit to those at the bottom was the decline in the real cost of goods.
In 1981 i paid 1200 wholesale for a top of the line Amana Refridgerator.
The fridge requite approx. 10 weeks of Minimum Wage labor to pay for.
Today a far better Fridge costs about 900 and requires 3 weeks labor to pay for.
I bought a 13″ Sony Color TV at the same time for $465, Today I can buy a 55″ Flat Screen for $295
And The newer better TV costs 1/3 as much in hours of low or median wage labor.
These patterns are true for most everything – real food costs is about 1/3 what it was in 1980.
Yet, from 1960 to 1980 – the period of time you claim poverty was radically reducecd the cost fo living for the poor INCREASED dramatically.
Walmart alone saves the average working class family 2200/year.
You are absolutely correct that real poverty in the US has diminished radically since the 60’s.
But the Great Society made it WORSE not better,
A US 4th Quintile family has a standard of living equal to that of a middle class family in Germany.
I own an apartment building. My tenants are working class or lower. Most of them own cars.
BMW’s and Mercedes – older models – but not as old as mine, that work well.
They all own computers, most of them several they all own a wide assortment of appliances.
They all own ipads and smart phones. They own things that my “upper middle class” family from the 60’s could not afford.
LBJ did $h!t to end poverty – if anything he made it worse.
Actually read the Moynihan report – the negative consequences of “the great society” on poor and minority families remains through today.
The destruction of families, the culture of dependence, are all a terrible legacy of “the great society”.
https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/air-conditioning-cable-tv-and-xbox-what-poverty-the-united-states
The typical poor household, as defined by the government, has a car and air conditioning, two color televisions, cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, and a VCR.
By its own report, the typical poor family was not hungry, was able to obtain medical care when needed.
The typical average poor American has more living space in his home than the average (non-poor) European has.
“By overusing the term ‘racist’, Left Wingers cheapen that label. ”
They do not just over use it, they misuse it.
“But there’s no shortage of Republicans pushing for cutbacks to food stamps,”
Good – there is no right to food stamps, they are a bad idea.
“Right to Work laws,”
There should be no laws at all, Government should stay out of distorting the relationship between employers and employees.
The courts should adjudicate contract disputes – including employment contracts.
If some workers wish to unionize – that is their business, if others do not – that is their business.
If employers do not wish to have unions – that is their business. So long as neither employers no employees use force it is not governments business to step it.
“Voter I D Laws”
Proof that you are who you say you are and that you are eligable to vote must be a requirement for voting.
If you do not have they you will either have fraud or the appearance of fraud. Either undermines elections.
While the left behaved bat $h!t after 2016 – and manufactured nonsense that did not occur there is one key point that they raised.
The rules for an election must be clear (limited) and followed – eotherwise people do not trust the outcome.
And that is a very dangerous circumstance.
I would further note that while the left fixates on the money in politics – which is ludicrous we spend more each year on potatochips than on presidential elections and more on snack food than all elections, There is still a very very important aspect.
Elections are about a great deal of money – they should not be, but they are.
We just doled out Trillions in C19 stimulus control of where that goes WITHOUT obvious corruption is still worth a small fortune.
We can not stop money in politics and we can not reduce the money in politics without reducing the power of government.
But we should be well aware that if election fraud is possible – SOMEONE will do it. The money involved is far far far to large.
It is idiocy to rant that there is no evidence of Fraud – first there is plenty, and next that is not the standard. The requirement is that should be no appearance of fraud. The lax voting standards we have today make fraud both easy and untraceable.
I fought against Computerized voting machines – I am opposed to vote by mail for the same reasons, it is FAR FAR FAR to easy to engage in fraud and far to hard to catch that fraud.
I would further note that VOTING NEEDS TO BE HARD. If I could I would require that all elections be held in huricanes.
Nations with large portions of people voting are unstable. People should choose not to vote because government is limited and it does not matter who is elected.
“restrictions on women’s rights”
And what would those be ? Women in this country have all the same freedoms with respect to government that men do.
And no group is entitled to more than equal treatment under the law.
None of us are entitled to anything from our neighbors beyond that they will not use force.
None of us are entitled to more from our employers than what they agreed to when they hired us.
The majority of college students today are women – and that is growing, in myriads of professions women are paid the same of more than men and have more oportunities.
Further those countries like sweden that have implimented the nonsense the left wants has found that income disparities increase.
Today all income disparities between men and women are a consequence of different choices, Where women actually have the same jobs as men they are paid the same or more.
“attacks on Affirmative Action”
Affirmative action is a polite name for racism. It has proven disasterous.
“drug testing for Unemployment”
We should legalize drugs – ALL drugs – heroin, as well as HCQ, we should entirely eliminate the governments involvement in Drugs – get rid of the FDA there is probably no other agency responsible for as much death and harm by delaying the development of drugs and limiting the development of drugs to companies that can afford the $2B it takes to bring a drug through approvals.
“opposition to gun regulations”
The government has no legitimate power to regulate guns AT ALL.
The 2nd and 14th amendments should not have been necescary for this.
Our founders never intended govenrment to intrude in our lives this deeply.
Further those selling gun laws are completely blind to the facts. Gun regulaltions are more left wing nut feel good laws that have ZERO effect. There is plenty of data on this. In scottland there are no guns. But the murder rate for whites is the same as the US.
Generally murder and violent crime rates accross the world correlate to RACE, and class. NOT laws.
“opposition to legal marijuana,”
Why is Marijuana defferent from Heroin ? From Zythromyacine ? from any other drug – all should be outside the scope of government.
Did we learn nothing from prohibition ?
“hostility towards environmental laws”
There is no need for environental laws. The Government is the worst polluter in the country.
Regardless torts and normal human preferences address all of this fine.
No government regualtion – environmental or otherwise corresponds to a change in any long term trend on the issue they reguated. ‘
More simply – regulations have accomplished nothing except increase costs – as standard of living rises, values like environmental prefernces increase and humans on their own accomplish what you pretend you need laws for.
“hostility to medicaid expansion”
There is no right to healthcare.
If you wish to help poor people pay for healthcare – contribute to church or charity.
Government is not charity. It has no business in charity.
Government may not play faux robin hood stealing from some to give to others.
“All these policies are ominous for low income folks; especially those of color.”
Actually all the policies of the left harm the poor – especially those of color.
And we know that. Incentives matter a great deal. When you pass laws that encourage people to be poor – more people choose to be poor.
Regardless, you may not use force to engage in charity.
If you hold a gun to someones head to force them to help another – there is no moral merit in what you do at gun point.
There is no moral merit for the person holding the gun.
You do not accomplish good by doing evil
“So by advocating these policies Republicans come across as tone deaf on racial issues.”
I am not republican.
I am criticising your IDIOTIC and IMMORAL policy posisition.
Worse still you are making the nonsensical argument that people are evil because they disagree with you.
You are evil for actiing immorally. You are evil for actively harming others either recklesslhy or with malice.
You are not evil because you disagree with the nonsensical policies of those on the left that not only do not work,
but actually harm those who you intend to help.
“Which poisons racial discussions.”
We do not need racial discussions. While the US is not perfect with respect to race – and no nation ever will.
Race is one of the least significant issues this country has to deal with.
This is not 1860, it is not 1920, it is not 1950. It is 2020 today, and there is little difference in outcome between similarly situated people regardless of race. All outcome differences correlate to life choices.
If you are white and you fail to complete high school, if you choose to commit crimes rather than get a job,
if you choose to have kids before you marry, and/or choose to marry before you are ready to have a family – then you will be poor.
You race does not matter.
“Centrists trying to steer a middle course”
If you beleive the things you have spouted – you are neither a centrist nor very well aquainted with reality.
The 20th century is over our experitments in stagtism have FAILED.
We know what improves standard of living
‘Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. All governments which thwart this natural course, which force things into another channel, or which endeavour to arrest the progress of society at a particular point, are unnatural, and to support themselves are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical.‘
Adam Smith.
250 years of statist failure and you are STILL clueless as to what works and what does not.
there’s a Republican advocating policies punitive to the poor.
Such people are non-existent outside the imaginations of partisan Democrats. The closest you come to such a viewpoint would be Ayn Rand’s Objectivism. How partisan Democrats come by these fantasies is by defining ‘punitive to the poor’ any social policy that takes incentives into account and makes for fewer jobs for social workers and school administrators.
Young, I am enjoying your discussion and your call to science along with a lot of information that one forgets with time. I was going to discuss some of those things a bit but read ahead, something I don’t usually do. I strongly believe in your call to science.
You wrote: “Very early on I subscribed sincerely to the idea of pushing race aside and treating everyone alike and having ‘a level playing field’ as it was once called.” IMO there is nothing wrong with pushing race aside and having a level playing field. That doesn’t mean that all people are identical. We know that we are all different no matter our race.
The most contested characteristic is IQ and mention of it can cause racial animosity. If there are differences they aren’t very great between the races so that all the other characteristics count in the final production of who we are. People will yell and scream when IQ is mentioned and calculated based on race but if we meet a person on the street with essentially the same genetic background as our own where one is smart and the other dull that doesn’t lead to such acrimony. Why not? All men are created equal where the outcomes will differ. Why is that not acceptable?
A whole host of things impact on who we are starting with the two sets of genes that meet despite a myriad of possibilities. What is happening during the embryo’s development surely has an effect as do the first years of life but that doesn’t excuse the individual from ruling his life rather than letting life rule the individual. Racism and all the hype around it is one of those man made obstacles that we would be better off without. On with science.
I would be careful about “a call to science” – the left plays word games.
They have transformed science into religion and facts are decided by concensus or appeals to chosen experts.
That is not science.
We do not accept newtons laws because Newton was a great scientist, or because his peers blessed those laws.
We accept them because the work.
More recently Newton has been replaced by Einstein – because at extremes that we were unable to consider in Newton’s time – Newton’s Laws no longer work.
And that is real science – something it true because it accurately describes reality, and predicts future behavior accurately.
When it fails to validate – it is no longer accepted science.
We are not equal, life is not fair.
We are not ants. Humans are not social creatures, we are unique free individuals.
We have myriads of differences and myriads of preferences that are not the same.
A failure common human preference is a social preference. That is a value, it is a choice. It is not shared equally by all humans – just as we do not equally value good food, or even agree on what food is good.
Our american system of government is founded not on absolute equality – our founders were not stupid, it is blatantly obvious we are NOT created equal, that we can not be equal, and in fact that because humans are not ants human society would fail disasterously if we were equal or if we tried to be equal. Humans – individually and as a society thrive because we are NOT equal. I benefit from YoYo Ma’s tremendous skill with a Cello, and he benefits from my skills with computers – even if neither of us ever meet.
Our system is founded on equality before the law. Equal rights with respect to government.
And the law must be limited because we are NOT equal. I have no right to dictate to YoYo Ma how he should play his cello and the results would be disaster if I tried. My right is to cease to support his work if I choose.
Government – the law is NOT about the choices we make together. If we are not each individually free to choose differently – those are not choices. If we are each free to chose differently than those social choices are not government. They are the consequence of free association for common purposes – our churches, our civic groups, even labor unions and corporations are “the things we choose to do together” and they are not govenrment.
Government is about FORCE. Government is not about what we choose, it is about what we accomplish through Force.
Is there an argument in there somewhere ?
(We are not collections of individuals, but thoroughly social animals, incapable of and unwanting to live outside of our social groups. Our laws require equal treatment of individuals unequal in each endeavor, as well as those not in the majority, and it requires respecting individual rights which are not without limits.
Social organization – which we cannot escape – of any kind has a component of force impacting relations within and without it’s boundaries. Only libertarian would think this is only a characteristic of government. The better ones – like ours – provide rights protecting individuals and minorities.
“We are not equal”
John, don’t get so hung up on a word especially one that can mean so many different things. A bag of salt can be equal to a bag of sugar in weight, volume, temperature, etc. just like men of different aptitudes can be equal under the law or equally good ball players no matter their race or color.
We are equal under the law, equal before govenrment.
But our actual inequality itself creates a barrier to government.
Government involvment in education or sports creates a contradiction – because government is reequired to see us as equal, and when government enters a domain where we are not an iressolvable contradiction arrises.
Government can only treat us as equal so long as it confines itself to the domains in which we actually are equal.
BTW all bags of sugar and bags of salt are not the same weights etc.
While you are making a catagory error in your analogy – it still does not work.
It is possible that two humans are equal in a few ways.
That does not alter the fat that ALL humans are not equal in MOST ways.
John, you misunderstood the analogy. I was pointing out that the word “equal” can have many different meanings and that your intense focus on your personal ideological meanings for the word focus didn’t add anything to the discussion I was having with Young. My statement was “All men are created equal where the outcomes will differ.”
If you have a complaint about that 5 word phrase send your complaints to Tom….Thomas Jefferson.
Equality do not mean different things.
It has different domains.
Some close approximation of equal liberty can exist is the domain of legitimate government.
It can not in talents.
Two bags can be vastly different but have equal weight – your analogy
But ALL bags are not of equal weight.
And humans are about the least equal thing in the tree of life.
We are created equal, but we are not born into equal circumstances.
We are not created equal.
We are not equal.
Atleast two people on the forbes 400 were homeless at one point in their lives.
Nearly all are self made – nearly all their wealth was created by them.
Nearly all sports super hero’s were born to very poor families.
The entirety of the Beatless was poor kids from liverpool.
“ Two bags can be vastly different but have equal weight – your analogy But ALL bags are not of equal weight.”
John, my analogy was from a weight standpoint. A bag of salt and a bag of sugar might be equal but that doesn’t make them the same. Equality is not the same as identical. Equality has to do with the topic under discussion.
The sentence that seems to upset you was: “ All men are created equal where the outcomes will differ. “
You are not getting my point.
You are making an analogy specific attributes of two bags.
But the analogy is to a generalization accross millions of people.
“You are not getting my point.”
The analogy was my point not yours. The word equal requires definers except where the context is known. On this blog I think it fair to use the 5 word statement assuming the context to be that of the DOI or something complimentary. I wrote two thoughts in one sentence. [All men are created equal] [ where the outcomes will differ] That sentence was explanatory dealing with a specific subject matter. You wanted to place your own spin on the subject to promote the ideology you believe in and said “We are not equal” There was nothing wrong with that but that was mostly meaningless as far as my discussion went with Young.
When talking about how much things weigh:
A one pound bag of sugar equals the same as a one pound bag of salt but they are not identical. Equality is not the same as identical.
“The analogy was my point not yours.”
Correct, and the point I was refering to was that the analogy is a major catagory error.
I am not criticising the brevity of your statement as the fact that it is not even close to congruent.
Comparisons between two bags are NOT catagorically the same as entire populations.
Comparisons between a small collection of attributes is not catagorically the same as comparisons between the whole.
Innarguably there is two humans that are different yet equal on several attributes.
Innarguably no two humans are equal.
Your bag of salt and bad of sugar – are not equal – they are merely equal in size and weight.
One is salt, the other is sugar. They are not equal.
“Correct, and the point I was refering to was that the analogy is a major catagory error.”
If you are concerned about a catagorical error be concerned. That was not the point of my statement and my point had to do with what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the DOI. It was consistent with the point and the thinking of a lot of great minds. You should be relating what I said to what I said to Young not what you would have liked to be said so it could be linked to something you wanted to say.
“Your bag of salt and bad of sugar – are not equal – they are merely equal in size and weight.”
Isn’t that what I said when I said definers were needed? But in my case I was referring to a famous five word statement by TJ. I don’t like to argue with TJ because likely I would come out on the losing end.
If you make a catagoty error in an analogy – the analogy is inapplicable.
I barely know what you are talking about because it doesn’t relate to what I was talking about and you entered my discussion, I didn’t enter yours. Go back to the original statement and look.
My use of the salt and sugar bags were not really analogies. They demonstrated that the word “equal” requires definers and I have said this several times. When I wrote those 5 words they were in a specific context. Try dealing with what the other person was conveying to a third person, not to you. To repeat the same words doesn’t clarify your point of view so don’t expect a change in answers from me.
Equality is an incredibly dangerous word.
Except in very narrow use equalifty is the enemy of and the opposite of liberty.
We can not be both free and equal.
I would have prefered if Jefferson has used better language in DOI.
We are not equal, we were not created equal.
Equality before the law is not something that comes from our creator. It is a man made construct – or more accurately it is a narrow construct of logic and philosophy.
Many smart people understand that. Understand that the equality Jefferson refers to is neither god given nor particularly broad.
But the left does not understand that at all.
BTB is offering a list of things that purportedly we all agree on. Inherent in some elements on that list is equality.
But BTB does not mean the very narrow (yet critically important) equality before the law. He means equality in a much broader way.
Very narrow equality, with broad liberty – is libertarian, and pretty close to what our founders intended.
But expanding equality comes at the expense of liberty.
And there is a system of govenrment that pretends we are actually equal – those some more equal that others – and that is socialism.
And that does not work.
BTB might actually be right – we all broadly agree on several things that are inherently socialism.
But when confronted with the actual cost – to our liberty to our wealth – few of us actually want the equality we thought sounded apealing.
Put another way – the overwhelmining majority of us would prefer socialism – if it worked. But it doesnt’
“Equality is an incredibly dangerous word.Except in very narrow use equalifty is the enemy of and the opposite of liberty.
We can not be both free and equal.”
The first half of the sentence was “All men are created equal”. Are you suggesting that Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence are wrong?
Is there an argument in there somewhere ?
Well, Young, I replied, but just realized that I mistakenly included 3 links, so it hasn’t posted. Before I spend time recomposing my reply, I’m going to wait a while to see if Darren salvages it by breaking one of the links. If not, I’ll reply again later.
Commit — Skip the appeals to authority. In the past your authorities have not always supported your positions. It would be much more interesting and appealing to see your reasoning on the issues. This is the problem Allan and I have mentioned. You lay out the timber and materials to build a mansion and always put together an unstable shack. I have no doubt that you are more than able to make strong arguments but you don’t think through your own evidence. Either that or you in the grip of an idee fixe so powerful that even your own evidence can make no impression on you.
Young………I need a new, interesting book to read (seriously)………Any ideas? 🤓
In science you could try First Farmers of Europe or Who We Are and How We Got Here.
In History I like Napoleon by Andrew Roberts and Citizens by Simon Schama (French Revolution)
Also in the French Revolution read Thomas Carlyle but only after reading Schama’s book. Keep a tablet handy to look up names. Carlyle wrote a wonderful book that uses prose with a poetic imagination that is remarkable. Schama tells you about the Revolution; Carlyle gets you in it. It is a powerful book. I have read it several times and will again.
Adrian Goldsworthy has written the best biography of Caesar I have read.
Bryan-Ward Perkins has “The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization” that is an excellent description of the process that, I think, dispels the recent nonsense that Rome didn’t actually fall. It fell, and in Britain if fell deeper than it was before the arrival of Roman civilization.
“The Horse, The Wheel and Language” by Anthony is a great book. He and his wife have done original research that enabled them to recognize when horses were domesticated and he also discusses how linguists are able to recover words and sounds from lost languages like Proto-Indo European. He is wrong in one matter but he was not alone in the error and it was likely driven by a kinder view of humanity than history warrants. He believed that the massive spread of Indo-European languages was cultural rather than demic. That is, people encountered it and imitated it rather than having it forced on them. That is sometimes characterized as ‘Pots not People’. The same notion was adopted to explain the spread of agriculture. Turns out it was people after all. In the case of agriculture it was invented in Anatolia, probably from Natufian settlements, and then the kit of skills spread as the Anatolians moved to new locations, west along the Mediterranean and north, probably along the Danube and through the Iron Gates and into the Carpathian basin. There genes remained separate from the existing hunter/gatherer populations for ages. Eventually, after about 1,000 years, the two prongs of Anatolian farmers encountered each other around Paris.
The Indo-European spread is a bit more dramatic. It can be traced by male Haplogroups R1a and R1b. It seems to have originated in the Pontic Steppes where they became herders and horse warriors. Then they went East [R1a} and West [R1b] and killed the men, raped the women and destroyed villages and spread Indo-European languages. Genetic studies of ancient remains show that in countries like Spain essentially all of the men vanished and were replaced by men who carried the R1b Haplotype. Most of modern Europe carries it as do I.
Castles in Steel by Massie might interest your husband more than you if he is interested in WW I naval warfare. It is one I have read a couple of times and will again. The title is taken from Churchill’s ‘The World Crisis’ where he describes battleships as castles of steel. Churchill’s account is also an excellent read.
That’s all off the top of my head.
Young……..You are so kind………. and such a prolific reader. Thank you so much….when can we expect an interesting new book by Young? 😊
OR, I’m actually making a good argument that relies on some facts or nuance that you don’t understand, and you blame your lack of understanding on me.
I’m still going to wait to see whether Darren breaks a couple of the links so that my comment can post. I don’t feel like rewriting it right now.
I realized that I’d actually included 4 links, not 3, all from Wikipedia, and all to point out that your misunderstanding of both Wikipedia itself and the page you linked to. You were too lazy to even click on the word “race” in the article and realize that it linked to Race_(biology) NOT Race_(human_categorization) and that “race” has a disambiguation page to sort out the different meanings of the word (which has more than 2 distinct meanings): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race
Race – biology is the only meaning of the word race. Atleast outside the world of fiction and poetry.
We deal with law and government here. Multiple meanings in the context of law and government is not moral.
In the world of facts, not fiction we seek clarity not confusion. Double entendre’s are wonderful in comedy, but you would not want to be jailed over one.
So is this Weissmann exercising his free speech rights or is it Weissmann obstructing justice?
+1
The former. Not sure what you think he’s done that constitutes obstruction of justice.
“The former. Not sure what you think he’s done that constitutes obstruction of justice.”
He is telling DOJ attorney’s not to cooperate with an investigation.
Trump did not actually do that – but you (and Weisman) accused him of doing so and claimed it was obstruction.
You are correct that Weisman is not obstructing justice – because Weisman is acting within his rights.
Which is also why all claims that Trump obstructed justice are also False.
There is no difference – except that Trump did NOT go so far as Weisman and direct others to not cooperate.
Regardless Durham should charge Weisman with Obstruction, just to force Weisman to argue in court that he was wrong in his 300 page digression on obstruction.
It is always enjoyable to ensnare zealots in their own hypocracy.