The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

James Baker’s Amnesia Problem

Posted on | February 11, 2023 | 1 Comment

James Baker testifies on Tuesday

My podcast partner John Hoge calls attention to the Nixonian quality of the FBI-turned-Twitter-lawyer’s testimony this week:

Rep. Jim Jordan asked James Baker, the former FBI general counsel who moved to work at Twitter, whether he communicated with the FBI about the Hunter Biden laptop story before the New York Post was censored on Twitter for reporting about it.
“To the best of my recollection, I did not talk to the FBI about the Hunter Biden story before that day,” Baker said.
Jordan followed up: “Did you talk to them after? Your response was real specific… I assume ‘that day’ is October 14. I want to know if you talked to them on the 13th or before, or the 15th and after.”
“I don’t recall speaking to the FBI, sitting here today, I don’t recall speaking to the FBI at all about the Hunter Biden matter,” Baker replied. “The laptop.”

Something about being required to testify under oath seems to induce a strange type of amnesia among big-shot lawyers. The things they “cannot recall” are very specific, and they never deny anything without preceding their denial with the qualifying phrase “to the best of my recollection.”



 

 

Category: Congress

Don’t Bet on the Super Bowl

Posted on | February 11, 2023 | 1 Comment

Gambling is a bad habit, and I hate to see TV advertisements for gambling apps like Draft Kings, which portray this habit as harmless. And frankly, I’ve started to suspect that pro football is as rigged as pro wrestling. If you don’t believe me, ask any fan of the Cincinnati Bengals about the AFC championship game. The Kansas City Chiefs “won” that game about as convincingly as Joe Biden “won” the 2020 election, and Bengals fans are convinced the refs were in the tank for the Chiefs.

On paper, the Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles are almost exactly even. Both of them finished the regular season 14-3, both were No. 1 seeds in the playoffs, and their team statistics on offense and defense are so close to being identical that it’s difficult to say that either team has an advantage. Probably the only reason the Eagles are 1.5-point favorites is because Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes is still recovering from an ankle injury, and may be less mobile than usual.

My brother Kirby thinks the Chiefs are going to win the Super Bowl, probably because Kirby is a big Joe Burrow fan, and figures that if Mahomes and the Chiefs could beat Burrow and the Bengals, then they’re good enough to beat anybody. And you’ve got to admit, Mahomes is a wizard. There is no such thing as a “broken play” so broken that Mahomes can’t find a way to rescue it with a mad scramble and an off-balance sidearm pass with two tacklers hanging off him. Also, the Chiefs have a fearsome defense that sacked Burrow five times.

However, Philadelphia is not a bad team, and if Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts doesn’t perform the kind of wizardry that has made Mahomes famous, he’s still pretty doggone spectacular. Hurts completed nearly 67% of his passes for 3,701 yards and 22 touchdowns this season, and added 760 yards rushing on 165 carries with 13 TDs. If there’s any knock on Hurts, it’s that perhaps he’s a bit of a ball-hog, so that on run-pass option (RPO) plays, he runs the ball himself too often. But this is nitpicking, really — how can you criticize the way he plays, when the results are so successful? And the Eagles also have a very tough defense that shut down the New York Giants in the divisional playoffs, then in the NFC championship knocked both San Francisco QBs out of the game.

All things considered, Super Bowl LVII should be a close game, and relatively high-scoring. The over/under is 50 and, if there were such a thing as a safe bet, I’d put my money on over, because I could see this game turning into a back-and-forth shootout, with a final score somewhere around 31-28 — a real down-to-the-wire thriller, decided by a last-minute field goal. But let me quote Sky Masterson:

“One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you’re going to wind up with an ear full of cider.”

Indeed, and as sure as you bet the “over” in the Super Bowl, I guarantee you it will be a defensive struggle, with both teams fumbling away scoring chances and getting flagged for false-start penalties. There is no such thing as a safe bet, and if you bet on the Super Bowl, chances are you’ll regret your wager. I’ve just got a hunch about this game.



 

 

Category: Football

In The Mailbox: 02.10.23

Posted on | February 11, 2023 | Comments Off on In The Mailbox: 02.10.23

— compiled by Wombat-socho

Usual weekend deadlines for the usual weekend posts. Sure enough, after I whined publicly about being sick, I started feeling better. Still not 100%, but at least I can string links together after work.
Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley esse delendam.

Real and spectacular.

OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Happy Valentine’s Day: Julie Banderas is back on the market, Turkey and Syria Earthquake Death Toll Could Greatly Exceed 20,000, Did Biden Blow Up Nord Stream?, and We Need More American Lithium
Twitchy: Microsoft-Owned Ad Group Blacklists Conservative Media Including Twitchy, also, After Months Of Lying, Corporate Media Admits Fettermonster’s Health Is “Horror Show”* 
Louder With Crowder: ‘When you know your purpose…’, also, UPDATE: Project Veritas Board Might Be Breaking the Law By Ousting James O’Keefe
Vox Popoli: Japan Signs Up for Suicide, Russia’s New Red Lines, The USA Attacked Germany, Suicide UK, An Unnatural Disaster, and When Rhetoric Becomes Reality
According To Hoyt: Doing the Arithmetic, Them Over There, and Finding Ways
Monster Hunter Nation: MarsCon- David Weber Weighs In, The MarsCon matter is settled, and Larry is a marketing genius

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: It’s Time for a Spiritual Battle based upon 100% Truth, Good Times, Bad Times, and Pissing into the Wind of Doom
American Conservative: A Cog in the Gates Machine, Viktor Orban: The West’s Lone Anti-War Prophet, Trans Kids Medical Malpractice Shocker, and Madonna Faces Old Age, Flinches
American Greatness: Report: Joe Biden Ordered Covert CIA Operation to Blow Up Nord Stream Pipelines, Biden Administration to End Title 42 in May, and MTG Goes Nuclear Against Former Twitter Exec For Banning Conservatives While Allowing Child Porn
American Power: Insurrection: Trans Extremists Break Into Oklahoma State House With Intent of Stopping Democratic Vote on Law, also, The Highest Principle
American Thinker: If Reparations Are Owed … the Democratic Party Should Pay Them, also, Those Abandoning Blue States Should Abandon Democrats, Too
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News, Animal’s Daily State of the Union News, and Rule Five Constitutional News
Babalu Blog: Cuban political prisoner asks Biden to keep the Castro dictatorship on sponsors of terror list, Reports from Cuba: The costs of the Cuban state’s monopoly on foreign trade, and Scam alert! Cuba begins privatizing medical care, bills to be paid by Cubans abroad
BattleSwarm: Two Videos About Velma, 24,000 Austin Area Residents Still Without Power, American Business And Chinese Money, and LinkSwarm for February 10
Behind The Black: Progress freighter launched to ISS, SpaceX completes 33-engine static fire test today of Superheavy prototype #7, India successfully launches its SSLV rocket on 2nd attempt, NASA awards launch contract to Blue Origin’s unlaunched New Glenn rocket, and Pushback: Civil rights complaint filed against California school district for running segregated program
Cafe Hayek: Or Maybe the Woke Are Full-On Comatose, A Tendentiously Alleged Connection Between Trump and the Kochs, and The Great Ken Elzinga Speaks at GMU Econ
CDR Salamander: American Realism in the Russo-Ukrainian War with Rebeccah Heinrichs, The Old Ways are the Same as the “New Ways” – Except for One, Our Navy at its Best: “Yeah, we can do that.”, The Democratic Party’s Strange Internal Struggles on the Russo-Ukraine War, and Fullbore Friday
Chicago Boyz: Lighter than Air: Balloons and Dirigibles in Warfare, Back to Google’s (Alleged) Beginnings, and The Last Straw of US
Da Tech Guy: The Key Words in Stacy McCain’s Piece on Zachary Teytlebaum, Lori Lightfoot proves targeting opponents over Samuel Bankman-Fried contributions is effective, Williams vs Musial in Left as Trump vs DeSantis as the Nominee, Yes to the FBI at Latin Mass, and Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address proves Progressives abhor reality
Don Surber: Rules For RINOs, also, Biden’s Sanctions Backfired
First Street Journal: The left tell us that they support racial integration, but they really do not, Killadelphia, You in a heap o’ trouble, boy!, and We wicked Catholics and our Assault Rosaries!
Gates Of Vienna: Greater Idaho Moves a Step Closer, The Flag is Still Flying, Terror Threats? What Terror Threats?, Islam Bans Freedom of Speech for All Human Beings, and The Economics of Greater Idaho
The Geller Report: Biden Moves Towards World War With Russia To Cover Up His Criminality in Ukraine, Democrat Bill To Vaccinate of Children Without Parental Consent, and ‘When Will He Resign and Go To Hell?’
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post of the Day, Spokes in Saturn’s Rings, Now v. Then, and A Special Thank You
Hollywood In Toto: Here’s the Bravest Part of Bill Maher’s Latest Anti-Woke Attack, David Gilmour Calls Roger Waters ‘Antisemitic to the Core’, Grammys Cower Behind Anonymous Votes to Blast Woke Overreach, and Megyn Kelly Calls Disney’s Proud Family CRT Push ‘Absolute Filth’
The Lid: Mark Levin To Congress: You Have More Power To Stop Biden’s Rogue Admin Than You Think, also, Biden Lied About Debt Ceiling, Social Security, And Medicare In SOTU Address
Legal Insurrection: Eastern Washington University Reportedly Expects Janitors to Have a Position on Diversity, Palestinian Terrorist Drove Car Into Commuters – Kills Two Israelis Including 6-Year-Old Boy, John Fetterman Struggling in Senate, Air Force Shoots Down China’s Plans for Giant Corn Mill Close to North Dakota Base, and Tony Dungy Won’t Apologize or Stay Quiet About His Christianity and Pro-Life Views
Nebraska Energy Observer: That Was the Week That Was, A Republic, if You Can Keep It, and Think it through
Outkick: CNN Reportedly Attempting To Hire Charles Barkley, Bills’ Trainer Who Performed CPR On Damar Hamlin Receives NFL MVP Vote, You Have To Respect Anthony Davis’ Reasoning For ‘Ignoring’ LeBron James’ Record-Breaking Shot, Arizona State Angry With Pac-12 Conference, Open To Leaving, and Tiger Woods Announces He’ll Be Playing In The Genesis Invitational, Golf Twitter Reacts Accordingly
Power Line: A Day with DeSantis, Special Counsel Crosses the Rubicon?, Thoughts from the ammo line, and Burt Bacharach dies at 94
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Angertainment & Adam Frisch
Shark Tank: Salazar & McCaul Welcome Nicaraguan Political Prisoners, also, Gaetz Demands Answers About Lobbying “Revolving Door”
Shot In The Dark: Drip, Ma’Donn, I’m Old Enough To Remember, and Also Ran
STUMP: Was COVID a top cause of death for children?, also, Public Pension Concept: Plan Long-Term for Long-Term Promises, and Don’t Give Contribution Holidays
The Political Hat: Florida vs. Woke Indoctrination In Higher Education, The Death Agenda Of Euthanasia: Scheduling Death; Advertising Death; Partial Victory Against Death, and Firing Line Friday: What Now for the Ghetto?
This Ain’t Hell: Booted from Board of Education for defending the Constitution, Unauthorized access at Joint Base Andrews results in shot being fired, Valor Friday, American forces and their Asian allies are ready for battle, and High Toxin Levels at Okinawa Marine Base
Transterrestrial Musings: What Russia Got Wrong, Impressionism, What Future For The SLS?, An Angry Astronaut, and The Static Fire
Victory Girls: Manchin Is Mad But Democrats Aren’t Listening, Democrats Desperately Declare Hunter’s Laptop Trivial And Half-Fake, Abortion Is The Top Democrat Value, and Gender Affirming Care For Trans Kids Is Appalling
Volokh Conspiracy: What’s With the Pseudonymity in the National Air & Space Museum / “Rosary Pro-Life” Hat Lawsuit?, GWU Law Student Gov’t Directs People to Stop Saying/Writing “Illegal,” “Alien,” and “Assimilation” re: Immigration, and Another Judge on the Acela Corridor Takes The Thirteenth Amendment Seriously
Watts Up With That: The Nation Flounders on Miami Sea-Level Rise Story, A Reliable Electricity Supply – Six Months and Half a Dozen Years, and Net Zero or Good Enough?
Weasel Zippers: Biden’s Economics Advisor – Job Creation Is “Not The Standard For How We Measure Jobs Created”, Idris Elba Says He No Longer Describes Himself As A “Black Actor”, James Carville Declares Republicans “White Trash” After State Of The Union, Former Twitter Exec Claims Censorship Actually Creates More Free Speech, and Hakeem Jeffries Absurdly Claims Dem Policies Have Lowered Costs And The Deficit
The Federalist: House Republicans Block DC Law That Would Allow Illegal Residents To Vote, Exposé Reveals Shadowy Left-Wing Network Works To Censor, Deplatform Conservatives, ‘Anonymous Sources’ Are How Corporate Media Launder Smear Operations As News, How More HSAs Could Help Dig Us Out Of The Hole Of Disastrous Medicaid Expansion, and ‘Detransitioners’ Are Being Abandoned By Medical Professionals Who Devastated Their Bodies And Minds
Mark Steyn: Tal Bachman: New Year’s Day part four, Has OfCom Popped Steyn’s Balloon?, An EIB Reunion!, and The Mark Steyn Show is back!

*Pretty sure the Twitchy crew isn’t using nadsat here. 

Valentines Day Gifts
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Category: Linkagery

Everything Is White Supremacy: Inside America’s New Maoist ‘Struggle Sessions’

Posted on | February 10, 2023 | Comments Off on Everything Is White Supremacy: Inside America’s New Maoist ‘Struggle Sessions’

Professor Vincent Lloyd

You’re probably looking at Vincent Lloyd and thinking, “No way this guy could be an advocate of white supremacy,” but welcome to 2023, when everything is white supremacy. Lloyd is a professor at Villanova University and a leftist who, last summer, taught a seminar called “Race and the Limits of Law” in a six-week course at Cornell University for high-school seniors sponsored by the Telluride Association.

In an amazing article for Compact magazine, “A Black Professor Trapped in Anti-Racist Hell,” Lloyd describes how his seminar was wrecked and ended prematurely after his teenage students became radicalized in an “anti-racism workshop” held during the same Telluride-sponsored summer program for high-schoolers. One of the leaders of the anti-racist workshop, whom Lloyd calls “Keisha,” he describes thus: “A recent graduate of an Ivy League university, mentored by a television-celebrity black intellectual, Keisha . . . was planning to devote her life to transforming the academy in the direction of black justice.”

What Lloyd discovered was that, in the hands of such ideologues, “anti-racism” is a cult, and he offers this example of its operation:

In their “transformative-justice” workshop, my students learned to name “harms.” This language, and the framework it expresses, come out of the prison-abolition movement. Instead of matching crimes with punishments, abolitionists encourage us to think about harms and how they can be made right, often through inviting a broader community to discern the impact of harms, the reasons they came about, and paths forward. In the language of the anti-racism workshop, a harm becomes anything that makes you feel not quite right. For a 17-year-old at a highly selective, all-expenses-paid summer program, newly empowered with the language of harm, there are relatively few sites at which to use this framework. My seminar became the site at which to try out—and weaponize—this language.
During our discussion of incarceration, an Asian-American student cited federal inmate demographics: About 60 percent of those incarcerated are white. The black students said they were harmed. They had learned, in one of their workshops, that objective facts are a tool of white supremacy. Outside of the seminar, I was told, the black students had to devote a great deal of time to making right the harm that was inflicted on them by hearing prison statistics that were not about blacks. A few days later, the Asian-American student was expelled from the program.

Get me that student’s name, so I can recruit him to become a Republican Party operative! There is nothing that aids GOP youth recruitment quite as much as the nightmare experience of students coming face-to-face with the campus Left. That’s how Trump advisor Stephen Miller became such a dangerous right-winger, you know. He was at Duke University when the infamous 2006 lacrosse team gang-rape hoax went down, and it forever altered his worldview. The more the Left increases its ironclad grip on academic, the crazier the campus climate becomes, and the only way to protect your sanity is to join the Republican Party.

From the account of his experiences at this Telluride summer program, Professor Lloyd may be considering a shift to the GOP. If “objective facts are a tool of white supremacy,” then every rational person must become a white supremacist. It doesn’t seem to occur to the Left that, by embracing such radical nonsense, they’re creating their own enemies.

The type of radicalism that took hold during this Telluride program bears a close resemblance to the Maoist “Cultural Revolution” of the 1960s, when those suspected of insufficient Communist zeal were forced to denounce themselves in public “struggle sessions”:

The most violent aspects of the campaign included incidents of torture, murder, and public humiliation. Many people who were indicted as counter-revolutionaries died by suicide. During the Red August 1966, in Beijing alone 1,772 people were murdered, many of the victims were teachers who were attacked and even killed by their own students. In Shanghai, there were 704 suicides and 534 deaths related to the Cultural Revolution in September. In Wuhan, there were 62 suicides and 32 murders during the same period.

Things haven’t become this bad on U.S. campuses — yet. But clearly many campuses have been drifting toward Maoism for years, and Professor Lloyd tells how the radical “Keisha” acted as Maoist commissar:

Keisha and I were supposed to meet weekly, but she told me she couldn’t schedule in advance, and she would let me know when she had availability. She never did. But Keisha did find time to intervene when a student was “harmed.” During one class, when we discussed Brown v. Board of Education, my co-instructor explained what the “doll test” was that provided a psychological basis for the Supreme Court’s decision: It involved showing children black and white dolls and asking what language they would use to describe them, “colored,” “white,” or “negro.” During the seminar break, a student had reported this to Keisha, and she rushed in to tell us that a student had been harmed by hearing the word “negro.”

Oh, grow up! The idea that merely hearing archaic terminology can “harm” someone reflects a hypersensitivity that is incompatible with education. How can you study the history of racism if you can’t read anything written before 1970 because it might contain the word “negro”?

As might be expected, Professor Lloyd’s experience at the Telluride program ended with a Maoist “struggle session” led by Keisha:

Late Sunday night, I was informed the students were too exhausted to have class on Monday. Tuesday morning, no one was in the seminar room. I waited 10 minutes, and Keisha entered. She said the students had something to say to me. Ten more minutes of waiting in silence. Then all nine remaining students entered, each carrying a piece of paper. One by one they read a paragraph. Out of their mouths came everything Keisha had said to me during the “urgent” meetings she had with me after classes when students had allegedly been harmed. The students had all of the dogma of anti-racism, but no actual racism to call out in their world, and Keisha had channeled all of the students’ desire to combat racism at me.

Bingo! A cult requires a Devil — a sinister enemy, a bogeyman that the cult can use to frighten its members into obedience. And in the absence of any “actual racism” at this Telluride program — with no Trump-style demon figure available as the hated enemy — Keisha had somehow decided that Professor Lloyd would suit her purposes.

Welcome to the “white supremacist” clubhouse, professor. We’ll alert the SPLC, so you can get your own personal dot on the annual “Hate Map.”



 

Category: Education, Racism

In The Mailbox: 02.09.23 (Punditocalpyse Edition)

Posted on | February 10, 2023 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

A select compilation of Substackery and other things that hit my inbox in these past few days.
Silicon Valley delenda est.

Operator-chan assists the Ukrainians

357 Magnum: Don’t Bring A Knife To A Gunfight, also, An Alternative To The World Economic Forum
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box Episode #1987
Twitchy: Tulsi Gabbard Unloads On Mitt Romney For Treason Accusation, Ph.D. Discovers Conservatives Are Saying Anything They Want On Podcasts And REEEEE!, and The Perfect Response To Woman Who Now Regrets Her Harry Potter Tattoos
Louder With Crowder: Tim Allen Is Back As Buzz Lightyear, also, “He Has To Deny It”
Vox Popoli: Another New Platform, Where Did Their Money Go?, We’re Not Obsessed, No Reason to Vote Republican, and Shakeups in Publishing
Dana Loesch: Fighting Tyranny With…More Tyranny, 
Don Surber: Saturday Morning Cartoons DC Style, Hollywood Rewrites Hunter Biden As A Victim, and The Real State Of The Union
Glenn Reynolds: Live Long And Prosper – If They Will Let You, 
Stoic Observations: Paris While Black
Gab News: The Collapse Of The Technological Age
Protein Wisdom Reborn: Another “Another Hump Day Shrapnel Post” Post

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Category: Uncategorized

Brain-Damaged Democrats in the News

Posted on | February 9, 2023 | 1 Comment

Some readers may have forgotten that, when Donald Trump was president, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had a habit of ranting about the importance of impeaching him for — wait for it — alleged obstruction of justice in regard to the investigation of “Russian collusion.” As everyone with a functional brain has long since realized, there never was any such “collusion” (i.e., there was no crime committed by Trump regarding Russia) so that whatever he did as president in regard to the two-year-long investigation of the (non-existent) “collusion,” his actions could not plausibly be construed as obstruction of justice. After all, if there was no crime, how was justice obstructed? Insofar as there was any genuine wrongdoing in regard to Russia, it was perpetrated by Hillary Clinton’s campaign (and their allies in the FBI) in turning the Steele dossier into the pretext of a bogus smear against Trump.

“Failure to impeach now is neglect of due process,” AOC declared on Twitter in May 2019, after the Mueller Report had cleared Trump of wrongdoing in the “Russian collusion” hoax. Now that the investigative shoe is on the other foot, so to speak, AOC is singing a new tune:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., slammed the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on Twitter’s decision to repress the Hunter Biden laptop story in the fall of 2020 and called the story “half-fake.”
“We could be talking about the cost of prescription drugs, abortion rights, civil rights, voting rights, but instead we’re talking about Hunter Biden’s half fake laptop story. I mean, this is an embarrassment, but I’ll go into it,” she said during the hearing.
The Democratic congresswoman also said the hearing was a waste of time and public resources. . . .
“The newspaper wasn’t sharing what it obtained. New York Post had this alleged information and was trying to publish it without any corroboration, without any backup information, they were trying to publish it to Twitter. Twitter did not let them, and now they were upset. . . .”
She said GOP political operatives wanted the ability to “do it again.”
“They want the ability to do it again. They want the ability to inject this again. So they’ve dragged a social media platform here in Congress, their weaponizing the use of this committee so that they can do it again. A whole hearing about a 24-hour hiccup in a right-wing political operation,” Ocasio-Cortez continued.

At any point during the Trump administration, did she call the “Russian collusion” narrative “fake”? Did she call it “a left-wing political operation”? Because that’s what it was, you know. But of course, AOC believed all that buncombe, whereas the Hunter Biden laptop — which is very real — she calls “half-fake.” And at a time when we are on the brink of war over Ukraine, isn’t it kind of relevant that contents of Hunter’s laptop shed light on the Biden family’s corrupt influence-peddling in Ukraine? Isn’t it possible that, at some point, Joe Biden has done something in regard to this that could be construed as “obstruction of justice,” and thus grounds for impeachment? But this possibility never seems to have occurred to the feeble-minded congresswoman known to her old friends in Westchester County as Sandy Cortez.

Oh, and speaking of brain-damaged Democrats:

John Fetterman is probably still smarter than AOC, despite the fact that a stroke has destroyed most of his cognitive capacity.

(Hat-tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)



 

 

Category: Democrats

Goering’s on the phone from Freiburg

Posted on | February 9, 2023 | Comments Off on Goering’s on the phone from Freiburg

— by Wombat-socho


Silicon Valley delenda est.

“There’s no reward for failure (but death)…



It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…on the one hand, I am being paid a higher hourly wage than I have ever made in my life, being put up in a comfortable hotel not far from my office, and being reimbursed for my meals, but on the other hand, I am working seven hours a day for six days a week and six hours on Sundays, so I am tired as hell when I get off work. That was before I caught this cold/flu/pneumonic plague/whatever that has had me sneezing my nose off, trying to drink even more fluids than I normally do -which as a diabetic in the desert I can assure you is quite a lot- gobbling generic Dayquils & Nyquils, and sleeping as much as possible when I’m not actually in the office.

Which is why there have been no In The Mailbox posts this week. I consider it only fair to warn you I may not be well enough to post any for the rest of the week either. In fact, when I’m done with this I’m taking a couple of blue pills and calling it a night. Amuse yourself in the comments.


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Category: Uncategorized, Zeitgeist

Joe Biden Versus an Army of Straw Men

Posted on | February 8, 2023 | Comments Off on Joe Biden Versus an Army of Straw Men

As previously explained, I did not watch Joe Biden’s State of the Union address because I cannot stand to listen to him for more than a few seconds at a time, and then only as necessary — from a professional perspective — in order to describe and analyze the preposterous bullshit that he habitually spews. My friend Stephen Green, a/k/a Vodkapundit, may be able to consume enough alcohol to enable him to withstand a full hour of Biden’s bullshit, but my liver simply can’t handle that much liquor anymore. So I stayed sober and went to bed early, trusting that this morning Fox News would play plenty enough clips of Biden’s speech to make my blood boil. The part that most enraged me was this, and here I’ll quote the text of Biden’s prepared remarks:

Some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what their plans are.
Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years.
That means if Congress doesn’t vote to keep them, those programs will go away.
Other Republicans say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history.
I won’t let that happen.
Social Security and Medicare are a lifeline for millions of seniors.
Americans have been paying into them with every single paycheck since they started working.
So tonight, let’s all agree to stand up for seniors. Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare.
Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned them.
If anyone tries to cut Social Security, I will stop them. And if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I will stop them.
I will not allow them to be taken away.

Is anyone actually proposing to “take away” these benefits? No, and it certainly is not part of the Republican congressional agenda, which is why they began booing and heckling him during this part of the speech, so that what Biden actually said was transcribed this way:

So my — many of — some of my Republican friends want to take the economy hostage — I get it — unless I agree to their economic plans. All of you at home should know what those plans are.
Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share, some Republicans — some Republicans want Medicare and Social Security to sunset. I’m not saying it’s a majority —
AUDIENCE: Booo —
THE PRESIDENT: Let me give you —
AUDIENCE: No!
THE PRESIDENT: Anybody who doubts it, contact my office. I’ll give you a copy. I’ll give you a copy of the proposal.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Liar!
THE PRESIDENT: That means Congress doesn’t vote —
Well, I’m glad to see — no, I tell you, I enjoy conversion. (Laughter.)
You know, it means if Congress doesn’t keep the programs the way they are, they’d go away.
Other Republicans say — I’m not saying it’s a majority of you. I don’t even think it’s a significant —
AUDIENCE MEMBER: (Inaudible.)
THE PRESIDENT: — but it’s being proposed by individuals.
I’m not — politely not naming them, but it’s being proposed by some of you.
(Cross-talk in the audience.)
THE PRESIDENT: Look, folks, the idea is that we’re not going to be — we’re not going to be moved into being threatened to default on the debt if we don’t respond. (Applause.)
Folks — (applause) — so, folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the — off the books now, right? (Applause.) They’re not to be touched? (Applause.)
All right. All right. We got unanimity! (Applause.)
Social Security and Medicare are a lifeline for millions of seniors. Americans have to pay into them from the very first paycheck they’ve started.
So, tonight, let’s all agree — and we apparently are — let’s stand up for seniors. (Applause.) Stand up and show them we will not cut Social Security. We will not cut Medicare.
Those benefits belong to the American people. They earned it. And if anyone tries to cut Social Security — which apparently no one is going to do — (laughter and applause) — and if anyone tries to cut Medicare, I’ll stop them. I’ll veto it. (Applause.)
And, look, I’m not going to allow them to take away — be taken away. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.
But apparently, it’s not going to be a problem. (Laughter and applause.)

Now, this back-and-forth between Biden and the GOP hecklers — it was apparently Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene who shouted “liar!” — makes for entertaining TV, which is why this clip was replayed endlessly on the cable news channels today, but the real point is the dishonesty of Biden’s rhetoric. Notice how he frames the alternatives: “Instead of making the wealthy pay their fair share” — i.e., Biden’s proposal — what he accuses Republicans of doing is a scheme to “take the economy hostage” and “default on the debt” unless Medicare and Social Security are eliminated.

NO REPUBLICAN IS PROPOSING ANY SUCH THING!

Furthermore, and this is important, Biden’s demand that “the wealthy pay their fair share” will do nothing to stabilize Medicare and Social Security, both of which programs are headed toward bankruptcy. As more and more Baby Boomers retire, there simply will not be enough workers still paying taxes to maintain benefits for the elderly at their current levels. Something must be done to fix this problem, and making “the wealthy pay their fair share” ain’t gonna cut it. Even if the government were to seize every penny of the wealth of every billionaire in America, it would’t be enough to fix the multi-trillion-dollar actuarial gap at the heart of the Medicare/Social Security budget problem.

Students of rhetoric would, first of all, notice how Biden is setting up a false dilemma, as if the only possible choices are either (a) to do exactly as Biden wishes, in terms of “making the wealthy pay their fair share,” or (b) having Republicans “take the economy hostage” with dire consequences. This ignores entirely the possibility of (c) finding a compromise in negotiations over the debt ceiling, which is what Biden’s melodramatic language is ultimately about. Biden’s actual position is that no federal program should ever be denied a cent of what Democrats propose to spend on it, so that the size of the federal budget must continue to grow infinitely, without any reference to the ability of taxpayers to keep up the ever-increasing cost. When this Democratic Party agenda of perpetually expanding the federal government encounters any pushback at all from Republicans, Biden automatically resorts to accusing them of wanting to starve Grandma to death.

Notice that Biden’s use of this false dilemma rhetoric wasn’t just something he ad-libbed, but rather that it was written in the prepared text of his speech, so that this logical fallacy would seem to be the official policy stance of the White House. Sic semper hoc.

Democrats have been playing this rhetorical trick forever, certainly as far back as LBJ’s slanderous campaign against Goldwater, and the reason they keep doing it is because (a) Democratic voters are stupid enough to believe it and (b) the media will never call them out for it.

“A straw man fallacy . . . is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one.”

Obama was the all-time King of Straw Man Arguments, forever accusing Republicans of supporting things they did not support in order to dismiss their opposition to his own policy agenda or their criticism of his actions. Scott Johnson pointed this out in 2016:

Obama is impassioned as he responds to his critics. Message: he cares. He cares to reiterate that he has it right and isn’t going to let events make him rethink his ways. . . . He is sarcastic and angry. He is condescending. He wags his finger as he lectures his critics. The straw man is the essential tool of his oratory.

Ted Cruz noted the same tendency in 2015:

“[Obama] has exacerbated racial misunderstandings, racial tensions . . . And, part of the problem is the way he advocates for any given plan, is to build a straw man of the opposition and then to vilify their position. So that, in the president’s telling, anyone who opposes Obamacare wants people to be denied healthcare and to get sick and pass away. That’s the only reason someone could oppose Obamacare, is because you malevolently want people to suffer. When you come to the Iran deal, anyone that opposes this terrible Iran deal, must be because they want war.”

This is why policy debate has become impossible, because Democrats simply won’t engage in honest debate about real alternatives, but instead resort to slandering their opponents, falsely accusing them of malign motives and mischaracterizing their policy proposals, in order to promote a narrative of heroic Democrats battling against evil Republicans.

So, no, I didn’t watch the State of the Union Address, because listening to Biden only makes me angry and, having expended 1,500 words venting my spleen about this one small segment of his speech, I’ll go back to my habitual policy of ignoring that dishonest son of a bitch.



 

 

Category: Joe Biden
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