Burn of the Day

Let’s say that all of social media is magically “fixed”, presumably by ceasing to exist. It wouldn’t matter. The same people claiming that Twitter “fixed” the election would just claim that any election that did not go their way was “fixed” by NPR, or CNBC, or SNL. That’s one thing both Left and Right agree on: “The only fair elections are the ones I win.”

“Vox Populi, Vox Dei” may be Latin, but it is not Catholic. God makes no mistakes, but the American people certainly do.

The idea seems to be that the American people were willing to vote in Biden in spite of his widely advertised enthusiasm for abortion and the LGBTQ+ agenda, but that a little petty corruption would be too much for them, and they surely would have voted him down for that! Not only is that doubtful, but if it is true — if the priorities of the electorate are that ridiculous — then America deserves the consequences. That, after all, is a sounder defence of democracy: you might not get the BEST government, but you get the government you DESERVE.

You have to wonder about David French. He attended a common and garden college in Tennessee and comes from a social and cultural segment to which the Ivy League is hostile, but landed a berth at Harvard Law School; he does not come from money, but somehow this was financed. About three years after being admitted to the bar, he leaves ordinary law practice on the east coast to work for a public interest outfit (the Alliance Defending Freedom, IIRC). After seven years there, he quits practicing completely (bar one year as an Army JAG in the Baghdad Green Zone). He’s still listed as a member of the Kentucky Bar in good standing, with an annotation that he’s not accepting any cases. (He lives 100 miles from any population center in Kentucky). He lives very well in an exurb of Columbia, Tennessee, even though his only visible means of support is occasional journalism.

but that a little petty corruption would be too much for them

“Petty” does not describe the operation Hunter has been running. Petty corruption was Daniel Rostenkowski converting $21,000 in campaign donations to personal use (for which he did time). Petty corruption was Richard V. Allen intercepting an unauthorized gratuity for a federal official from a Japanese delegation, throwing it in his office safe and forgetting about it, for which he lost his job. Petty was Mr. Clinton’s Secretary of Agriculture accepting gratuities from a friend (for which he was acquitted, but the process is the punishment). Petty was Eisenhower’s chief of staff accepting gratuities like a Vicuna coat. Sweetheart c & i loans Neil Bush received when his father was VP were the subject of congressional investigations, even though it was obvious that Neil Bush was not a wealthy man. Billy Carter’s amusing scam played on frontmen for Muammar Qadafi was also the subject of a congressional inquiry. Gerald Ford was the subject of an investigation by the residue of the Watergate special prosecutor’s office because he’d gone on golf holidays with a personal friend who was employed as a lobbyist for the steel industry’s trade association.

There’s actually no historical analogue to Hunter’s operation. It would have been an absolute Krakatoa of a scandal in any administration prior to 2009 (and in any Republican administration since 2009).

Art, I meant “petty” in comparison to much more serious wrongdoings. There’s a lot of “millstone around the neck”-level sin coming from Washington, and Hunter’s dad has been up to his neck in it for decades. What’s more, this kind of sin is what Hunter’s dad ADVERTISED in the last election.

Let me compare this with the “Vatican financial scandal”. I really know nothing about it. I really care nothing about it, other than fearing for the souls of those involved. I wish to high Heaven, though, that that were anything like the most serious scandal affecting the Church — that there were no sexual abuse scandal, no “women priests” nonsense being flirted with by some bishops, no embrace of the LGBTQ rubbish, no Pachamama, no war on traditional Catholics. I’d gladly let the Vatican curia bathe daily in champagne to get rid of THOSE problems.

David French’s livelihood depends on him not getting it straight.

I agree, he is bought. It’s everything else about his life between 1990 and the present that’s puzzling.

“Why you are attempting to downplay what Musk has revealed is beyond me.” I am likewise mystified at your position. Democracy is not safe unless voters can let Twitter do their thinking for them? Of course, to single out Twitter, rather than other media, you have to admit that it was covered elsewhere … in which case it was hardly being kept secret. Which it certainly was not, because probably everyone reading this blog had heard the story long before Musk bought Twitter. It’s not like WWII, when there were serious concerns when OVERLORD appeared in a crossword puzzle just before the invasion; it was a secret known only to a few hundred million people.

Somehow the whole situation reminds me of the old joke. “A Russian was convicted by a Soviet court of having called the Minister of Culture a fool. He got a 20-year sentence: five years for slander and 15 for revealing a state secret.”

Art, are you telling me that you did not know any of this until Musk made his revelation?

Yeah, I get it that it’s a problem for the FBI to have any role in this at all; it may be pointless and ineffective, but it stinks to high heaven. That, however, is par for the course with career bureaucrats.

“It’s their own fault for getting their information from twitter.

It’s their own fault for getting their seafood from a guy on the pier

It’s their own fault for getting their insulin online …