Oh, You Were Finished? Well, Allow Me To Retort

As Jules said; 

 On April 15, the Washington Post posed this query:

"Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D) fall left many asking how someone who was dogged by persistent rumors of inappropriate behavior toward women could have risen so high and so fast in a party that says it supports women’s rights."

Answer:  Although many of his fellow Democratic politicians and many in the media knew about his behavior for years, they withheld information because of higher priorities - beating Republicans, especially Donald Trump.  It was only when running against fellow Democrats for California's gubernatorial nomination, where the D nominee will win the general election, that Swalwell became expendable.

The Post wasn't actually serious when it posed the question.  Reporters and editors already knew the answer.  We have reporters from multiple publications acknowledging they knew the stories about Swalwell as long ago as 2013, but, for some reason, never got around to investigating.  And obviously, the Democratic politicians knew, because one of his D opponents in the governor's race dropped the dime on him. 

Swalwell first came to national prominence in 2017 and 2018 when he served on the House Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.  Along with Rep. Adam Schiff he was a fixture on cable and network news promoting sensational tales of Russian interference and Trump malevolence, all of which proved false.  After wading through more than 5,000 pages of testimony taken by the committee, I made this comment about Swalwell:

The leading Democrat questioners were Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell.  Schiff was a very skillful questioner.  In contrast, Swalwell acted like he was always on the verge of asking the one question that would unravel the entire conspiracy and evidenced a very high opinion of his own abilities.  I think Schiff realized fairly quickly the Democrats were drilling a dry hole in the search for a conspiracy but understood the political advantage of continuing the charade.  Swalwell was dumb enough he may really have been a true believer. 

The congressman further elevated himself with fellow Democrats by becoming a prominent critic of Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, promoting the most outlandish (and false) accusations against the nominee.(1)

In the years since, he's continued on a path as a rising star in the Democratic constellation.  This despite his dalliance with a Chinese spy while he served on the intelligence committee. 

Like many politicians in both parties it is difficult to objectively look at Swalwell and conclude he's the kind of person you would want in high elected office, or any office, for that matter.   Nonetheless, he received glowing press coverage.  When, in September 2018, Swalwell's GOP opponent was the subject of an attempted stabbing and only saved by a malfunctioning jacknife, to the extent it was covered by the media it was limited to brief one-day stories. The next day, Swalwell was interviewed on CNN to talk about how horrible Trump was and received no questions regarding the incident, not even being asked to comment on it.  No national conversation on political violence needed here! 

The bottom line is that when the media breaks a story that, on its face, is damaging to Democrats, the question to be asked is not about the substance.  Instead, ask why is this story being published now?  Because, in almost every case, the substance was known for a long time.  It is only the timing of the disclosure that matters.

Let's take two other examples to further illustrate how the system works.

The New York Times recently "broke" a story about Cesar Chavez, alleging a long time pattern of sexual abuse, inappropriate behavior, and general disrespect towards women.  Chavez died in 1993, so why now?  Much of the story was already known with biographies and other stories floating around for many years and, as with Swalwell, since the story broke many reporters have said they heard the stories years ago but had not reported on them because no one did the investigative work.  The allegations of Dolores Huerta, now 96, are new and, indeed, terrible if true but even in her case she stated the 60 year old events had not been made public before because it would "hurt the movement".

Chavez's birthday is an official state holiday in California and celebrated in other states and cities.  He had many schools, streets, and other public institutions named after him, and statues erected in many places.  His work on behalf of farmworkers in covered in many educational textbooks. So why now?

Cesar Chavez was born in 1927.  Next year is his 100th anniversary, a time when one would expect heightened attention and celebration of his life.  However, in recent years as illegal immigration has become a fiercely debated subject, Chavez's very public and very vociferous opposition to illegal immigration has become more widely known.  The very groups that have promoted his legend for decades are now unequivocally in favor of open borders and it would have been embarrassing and counterproductive to have Chavez remain a celebrated progressive hero next year.  That's why he needed to be taken down now, so his legacy could not be used by opponents of today's progressive narrative.  It's why the states and cities that celebrated Chavez over the decades have moved so quickly to take down monuments and rename things.  It is important to erase as much as possible before the 100th anniversary.

Let's talk about Andrew Cuomo.  In August 2021, Cuomo resigned as governor of New York after ten years in office.  He'd been under constant political pressure since January of that year from the progressive wing of his party.  Looking at his record, the casual observer would consider Cuomo to be a progressive, but because of his acerbic personality and willingness to only go 90% on the full progressive belief system he was anathema to that wing and they sought a way to get him out of office.  But why 2021 after ten years in office?

The first effort to attack him was from ultra-progressive State Attorney General Letitia James.  By ultra-progressive I mean she is a follower of Stalin's favorite secret policeman Lavrentiy Beria's adage, "show me the man, and I'll show you the crime".  The lever was a report released by James on January 28, 2021 alleging that thousands of Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes were undercounted by Governor Cuomo, in an effort to support the effectiveness of the governor's actions to control Covid-19 in New York.  Adding to this is Cuomo's decision to send Covid positive nursing home residents back to the nursing homes contributed to the toll in the early part of the pandemic.

But there was a problem for Cuomo's fellow Democrats when it came to timing.  Although James and the stenographers at the New York Times pretended her report was a revelation, the undercounting and the deaths due to Cuomo's decision on sending Covid positive patients back into nursing homes was known in May and June of 2020.  I was following Covid developments at the time and aware of the discrepancies between the state and CDC death counts and of sending the sick back into the homes.  In October 2020 I wrote:

State politicians in some cases downplayed covid early on, in others sent infected patients back to nursing homes, in others delayed urging the use of masks, and in others completely overreacted in their dictates which have been kept in place well beyond reason.  And not enough bad can be said about the ghoulish Governor Andrew Cuomo. 

If you followed some knowledgeable conservative public health analysts you knew what was going in, but it was ignored by legacy media and Democrats.  

Why?  It's because Cuomo was being celebrated by Democrats and the media as the anti-Trump in 2020.  The politician who was responsible, sober, intelligent, and, later that year was celebrated, particularly by himself, as the man who defeated covid.

In contrast to Trump's erratic press conferences which gave him ample opportunity to demonstrate his ignorance, Cuomo was calm, reassuring, and able to fake empathy, unlike Donald.  For his party and the press to take down Cuomo for the nursing home massacre would have undermined the narrative they'd established.   In fact, they went out of their way to hype Cuomo's "accomplishments".

The Governor received an Emmy Award for his press conferences, to promote his book he did a victory tour of late night talk shows, where he was received with adoration, and was bestowed the Edward M Kennedy Award for Inspired Leadership for his covid response.

Now, look at the timing of AG James' report, January 28, 2021, a week after Joe Biden was inaugurated and Trump gone.  Once Trump was gone, the governor became expendable.  That's why it was not allowed to become a story before then and only permissible to write about once Trump was gone. If Trump had been reelected in 2020, there would have been no AG report.  James, the Democrats, and the press didn't give a damn about the thousands of deaths at the time they were occurring.  It was, to borrow a phrase, an inconvenient truth at the time.  But, rest assured, the Dems and the press were confident those who died and their families felt it was worth it because it allowed the Cuomo v Trump narrative to be sustained when most important politically.

However, the slaughter at the nursing home was not enough to get the job done, so the Dems and press turned to the tried and true tactic of sexual misbehavior, which was rolled out in February.(2)  Strangely, if you looked closely at the allegations, many of them went back years.  This was nothing new and, as with Swalwell, if you read closely you understood that it was common knowledge among party activists and some of the press, well before 2021. 

I have a personal take on Cuomo's troubles with women.  In the 1980s and 90s, I spent quite a bit of time in Washington DC on business.  The company I worked for had a Washington office to do lobbying and I was often there.  In the 90s, the head of the office was a guy who'd been a long time staffer on the Hill for a prominent Democratic congressman, beginning in the 1960s.  I learned a lot from him about the transformation of Congress over the prior thirty years, including the increase in partisanship and the collapse of once frequent cross-party personal friendships.(3)

One day our discussion got on the topic of President Clinton's cabinet, and my friend started walking through each of them, giving his evaluation.  Everyone was rated from excellent to okay from his perspective.  Then he got to Andrew Cuomo, who was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the second Clinton administration, and began a rant about how horrible a guy Cuomo was and his problems with women.  So, I wasn't surprised by the allegations more than two decades later.

Remember, the "revelation" story is never the story.  Ask why now to understand the real story. 

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(1)  With all these revelations about Democrats and political activists, a frequent press excuse is they weren't able to confirm allegations so withheld reporting.  But none of those rules applied when it came to Kavanaugh in 2018.  The press reported breathlessly on any rumor and allegation, regardless of the lack of confirmation.  None of the allegations reported at the time, including those of participating in gang rape, were ever confirmed in any form.  The individuals who Kavanaugh's primary accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, claimed would support her allegations both refused to do so.  One of them, a long time friend and self-described political progressive, reported that her refusal to do so led to threats of ruination from other progressives.  In fact, there is no evidence, outside Ford's allegation, that she and Kavanaugh ever met on any occasion.

That the press was using the allegations as a political weapon and simply did not care if they were true is shown by the lack of any followup investigation once Kavanaugh was confirmed.  The national press didn't even give lip service to the idea the allegations were real. Hey, at least OJ said after he was acquitted he was going to find Nicole's real killer!  

The real revelation from the Kavanaugh hearings was for moderate non-MAGA Republicans.  Kavanaugh was about as mainstream non-MAGA moderate as you'll find in the GOP, yet the Democrats and press spared nothing in their efforts to not just deny him the confirmation, but to destroy him personally.  Trump may be the flagbearer but anyone associated with the GOP today is a public enemy for the press and the institutions.

(2) The first rumblings about sexual allegations began in December 2020, after the election, but it wasn't until February that the story picked up steam, which is consistent with the Covid report not being a knock out punch.

(3)  I learned from reading Robert Caro's third volume of his LBJ biography, Master of the Senate, that in the 1950s academic political scientists were very critical of the two parties because both consisted of what seemed to be ideological incompatible coalitions - for instance, the Democrats with conservative Southerners and urban liberals from the North.  This was a bad thing in their view and the recommended remedy was a realignment along clear ideological grounds, something we have finally achieved in the 21st century.  Do you think it is an improvement?

Remembering John Parker

He was wakened around 1am on the morning of April 19, 1775 with news of British scouts in the area.  John Parker had gone to bed early that night probably already suffering from symptoms of the tuberculosis that would kill him in September.   There had been rumors the British would make an expedition into the countryside outside of Boston so the news was not a surprise.

Parker was 45 years old, married to Lydia Moore, with whom he had seven children from age 18 to 4.  The Parker family had lived in Lexington since the 17th century and John had served in the French & Indian War (1).  With his family background and military experience, he'd been elected as captain of the town's militia.

The 77 men of the Lexington militia mustered on the town green before dawn, formed into two lines. As dawn broke the 700 soldier British detachment approached.  At the same time, two men crossed through the Lexington line, carrying a large chest.  It was Paul Revere and an assistant with a chest containing important papers left behind by John Hancock in a house next to the town green. What happened next and who fired the first shot remains unknown, but the British initiated the first volley fire which shredded the Lexington ranks and Redcoats then advanced.  Eight militia were killed and ten wounded.  In a deposition given on April 25, Captain Parker wrote:

No 4. Lexington April 25th, 1775                                  

I John Parker, of lawful Age, and Commander of the Militia in Lexington, do testify & declare that on the 19th Instant, in the morning, about one of the Clock, being informed that there were a Number of Regular Officers riding up and down the Road, Stopping and insulting People as they passed the Road, and also was informed that a Number of Regular Troops were on their March from Boston, in order to take the Province Stores at Concord, ordered our Militia to meet on the Common in said Lexington, to consult what to do, and concluded not to be discovered nor meddle or make with said Regular Troops (if they should approach) unless they should insult or molest us – and upon their sudden Approach I immediately ordered our Militia to disperse and not to fire – Immediately said Troops made their Appearance and rushed furiously, fired up-on and killed eight of our Party, without receiving any Provocation therefor from us.

The population of Lexington in 1775 was between 700 and 800.  Members of the militia and their families were well known to each other and had often intermarried.  The shock of losing good friends must have been considerable.

The British marched on to Concord but Parker and the militia were not done.  At North Bridge, the Massachusetts men from several towns attacked and routed the British, who began an increasingly panicked retreat along the same road they'd taken early in the morning.  As news filtered back to Lexington, Parker mustered his men once again, determined to confront the British.  According to the recollections of Nathan Munroe of the militia:

"About the middle of the forenoon Captain Parker having collected part of his company, I being with them, determined to meet the regulars on their retreat from Concord. We met the regulars in the bounds of Lincoln. We fired on them and continued so to do until they met their reinforcement in Lexington.” 

The exact location of Parker's encounter, referred to as "Parker's Revenge" has been the source of dispute for many years but excavations in recent years have identified the precise spot.  The Lexington militia's initial volley inflicted several casualties on the British column and then continued to cause more damage as they followed the retreating British towards the Lexington green.  The National Park Service describes the search for Parker's Revenge here, noting of the militia tactics: 

Having left Lexington center before noon, Captain Parker and his militiamen had time to think about how to use the landscape to their advantage. Perhaps still questioning the decision to make a stand on the town green, Captain Parker was not going to be careless with the lives of his neighbors, relatives and friends. If the stand on the Green was meant as a show of resolve more than an invitation to battle, the fight on the town border in the afternoon was the real thing. 

 

For more on Parker and his actions that day: 

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(1) There is some uncertainty over Parker's prior military experience, though all the secondary sources claim he served in the French & Indian War, including some stating he was at the Siege of Louisbourg in 1758 and at the Battle of Quebec on the Plains of Abraham the following year.  My research was unable to confirm Parker's presence at either event.  In what capacity he served during the war I could not ascertain.

Cold Sweat - Part 1

Considered by some to be the first funk song, 1967's Cold Sweat by James Brown runs for seven minutes, with Part 1 as the A side single.  Whether it is or not, it's a penetrating groove.  You can find both parts here.  At the beginning of Part 2 you can hear James call out "Maceo", a reference to tenor saxophonist Maceo Parker.  Also featured on the track are Bernard Odum on bass and drummer Clyde Stubblefield. 

I (Don't) Know Baseball

With his performance against the Mets, Shohei Ohtani became the first major league player to have a 30+ game on base streak and 30+ scoreless innings at the same time.  No one else in history has even 20 in both categories at the same time.  

THC demonstrated his baseball knowledge and prognostication abilities back in 2018 when, after witnessing Shohei's first pitching and DH appearances in spring training, he felt confident the guy would never be a successful major league player. 

Harvest Moon

From Neil Young in 1992.  Background vocals on the recording by Linda Ronstadt.  Bringing back beautiful dreamy memories.  Think I can stay there for awhile.

Because I'm still in love with you
I want to see you dance again
Because I'm still in love with you
On this harvest moon 

 

The Friends Of Eddie Coyle

An introduction and appreciation of the gritty 1973 movie set in Boston starring Robert Mitchum from Turner Classic Movies.  Watch the clip, watch the movie.  And here's a link to NY Times critic AO Scott on the film.  Eddie Coyle was the first novel of George V Higgins to be published, and he went on to write twenty more over the following two decades before dying in 1999.  THC has read them all.

THC has written on the book and movie before in The Workingman's Eddie Coyle and Missing George V Higgins, along with his magnum opus on Higgins and his work, Eddie Coyle's Friend, which includes a description of the author's technique:

A Higgins novel relies on dialogue in which the characters converse about what had happened, or was about to happen, or about things that had nothing to do with what had or was going to happen, though sometimes it would dawn on you towards the end of the book that that thing, you know, which the guy talked about way back that didn't seem to have anything to do with the story, did.  

That technique found its most exquisite execution in Bomber's Law:

Nominally, Bomber's Law is about Detective Sergeant Brennan of the Massachusetts State Police, who is following a mob enforcer, Short Joey Mossi, in an attempt to build a case against him.  After tailing Mossi fruitlessly for years, Brennan is saddled by his boss, Brian Dennison, with a new partner, Harry Dell'Appa, an idealistic and impatient young state cop, who is puzzled why Brennan and Dennison's predecessor, the retired and now very dead Bomber Lawrence, have failed to get the goods on Short Joey after all these years.  Most of the novel, which is 95% dialogue, consists of Brennan, Dell'Appa and Dennison telling each other lengthy, and occasionally deliberately distracting, yarns in the course of which we learn a lot about Short Joey and his younger, mentally disabled brother, and eventually the secret of Bomber's Law along with embarking upon many entertaining excursions which have nothing to do with the plot, that is, if there is, in fact, a plot.  The story telling is wonderful but dazzlingly complex often requiring the reader to double back and make sure they understand just whom the speaker is referring to or who is actually speaking.