The enthusiasm gap is overrated. An enthusiastic voter's vote counts for exactly as much as a "he'll do" voter's vote. Enthusiasm matters only if it affects turnout. However meh the Dems feel about Biden, or whoever else is the eventual nominee, they are very enthusiastic about getting rid of Trump. For all the enthusiasm I see at Trump rallies, I see no evidence that this isn't just the same folks who voted for him in 2016. Unless there is a bunch of Trump enthusiasts who, for some reason, didn't come out and vote for him in 2016, enthusiasm just makes votes louder, not more numerous.
I'm not asking you to switch to my view. I'm pointing out that you made a positive declaration of fact about what was happening and what would happen that was wrong.
You can have all the suspicions you want, and there were reasons to be suspicious (not especially persuasive, but reasons) but -- unless Barr is lying -- there is video proof that no one entered Epstein's cell in the window needed to kill him. Pathologists can disagree all they want about the significance of hyloid bone fractures, but even if the type of fracture is more common in chokings than in hangings, nobody choked Epstein. As for the rest of it, yes, these things do happen all the time, sad as that is, and that is why we are never likely to get answers to why what happens all the time happened this time.
You can have all the suspicions you want, especially those that confirm your priors. I'll rest on how things actually turned out.
I remember Farrow and Weinstein. I remember that very big, highly-publicized article published in the MSM New Yorker. Lots of people read it.
I also remember a kerfuffle about whether the story he had developed for NBC was as well-sourced as the one later published in the New Yorker. I don't recall anyone coming forward with anything that would help anyone on the outside determine who was right in that pissing contest. That would be moderately interesting.
That's a different question. You were the one who set the terms of the discussion by asserting that no one was looking into Epstein's death. I asked how you knew. You didn't. You were wrong about that, as all the MSM stuff you so dutifully posted about what MSM folk were looking into and found about Epstein's death showed.
If you want to argue about whether, before we knew how things would turn out, there was some reason to believe that someone who did look into Epstein's death might get a story spiked, anyone who finds that subject interesting is welcome to discuss it. I'm content to rest on how things turned out.
There was reason to be "suspicious." But suspicions are a dime a dozen. What there wasn't reason for was the assumption that no one was looking into things. They were, and they found out a lot. They found out that Epstein didn't kill himself. Does anyone know why one of the cameras was on the fritz? Probably not. If someone tampered with it, he got away with it and there's no reasonable investigative path to finding out who did it or why. Since footage from the other camera (our plotter was clumsy, wasn't he?) was recovered that eventually showed -- unless Barr is lying -- that no one entered Epstein's cell between the last time he was seen alive and the first time he was seen dead, we now know what the cameras were put up to show us, and probably nobody cares about the other camera. Except if it's the linchpin to a theory that someone wanted Epstein killed and tried to set it up, but Epstein killed himself before the plan could be put into effect. Such a plot is by no means inconceivable, but there's no reason to believe it and no discernible route to uncovering it if it were true.
And there is, apparently, nothing that could collaborate anything fishy about anything of the above.
There's plenty that could, in theory, "collaborate" it, but after a bunch of serious reporting -- which you had confidently said wasn't going on, even while giving us a running account of it -- it hasn't surfaced, and some of it has been debunked. The "cameras on the fritz," not reported by the MSM except as a rumor, turned out not to be true, since it was footage from at least one of the cameras that showed that no one had entered Epstein's cell between the last time he was seen alive and the first time he was seen dead. Now maybe Bill Barr, who says he saw the footage, is lying. Is someone looking into that? I don't know, but I'm not going to go off half-cocked and say, positively, that nothing is being done to find out just because we don't have answers to questions it is hard to answer RIGHT NOW.
I was tempted to predict that you would employ, yet again, the Jaybird Backtrack to Banality (TM), but I figured everybody already knew it was coming.
Just for fun, though, I'll predict that the next move will be the: "I didn't backtrack; I never said anything significant in the first place," though that risks self-refuting prophecy.
No, it isn't, because that stories get "spiked" is indisputable. Nobody has ever said they don't. What matters is why they're spiked, because sometimes they ought to be. I've listened to what he had to say and don't know anything I didn't know before -- at least about anything that matters.
As I remember the usage in my own newspaper days, a story could be "spiked" either because it was embarrassing to the powers that be or that it was not solid enough to run with. These were not watertight compartments. Higher ups might demand better sourcing of a story that would embarrass the powers that be than they would in a similar story that would embarrass a nobody for obvious reasons.Who wants Harvey Weinstein's or Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers up your ass unless you've got the goods nailed down tight? It's not always clear whether a spike was a righteous spike or not, even when the basic facts are known, and pissing contests between reporters and higher-ups don't do much more than confirm whatever priors you bring to the discussion. At least until somebody does solid reporting on the reporting. But that's hard work. For the rest of us, there's an empty barstool down that way.
He should perform on a double bill with the vanity band of James Dolan, heir to the Cablevision/Madison Square Garden fortune and bane of all Knicks fans.
I think a lot depends on the type of "bad behavior" involved. Mick Jagger, for example, does (did?) not have a sex life one would set up as worthy of emulation (envy is another matter), but as far as I know -- and I haven't followed closely -- my general impression is that Mick Jagger f****d a lot of women, mostly adults, who wanted to f**k Mick Jagger. We tolerate, maybe even expect, that sort of thing. If it comes out that he knowingly took advantage of underage groupies, or used muscle power rather than star power to get laid, we'd think differently.
And why did we, as a political body, move to create that?
Because it seemed to us, collectively, to be a good idea at the time. And if we eventually come to believe that other expedients are good, we will enact them, and no theory can tell us, on the basis of some general principle, that we are wrong.
To be sure, there are often good reasons for what we adopt, but that gets us into the weeds, where generalities don't help us much. As the philosopher John Mackie once said: there is no natural law of property, but it is natural that there be some law of property. The details are negotiable.
I think Chip's point was that, whoever owns the rights to Paul McCartney's songs, no one owns the rights to Paul McCartney's songs until some government says someone does and sets up a system by which others can be forcibly prevented from using them without paying for them. (There wasn't always such a system; Shakespeare had no recourse if someone else wanted to publish or perform his plays.) Whatever lousy deals the original holder of this governmentally-approved monopoly makes afterward may be his own look-out, but there isn't anything to make good or bad deals about until the government steps in and imposes some sort of order.
I'm not sure what it means to be 10X the basketball player someone else is. Certainly if I, a slow-footed 5'7" man eligible for Social Security and having no jump shot went one-on-one against LeBron James, he would score against me at will and I would be extremely lucky to get a single basket against him. Does that make him a (near) infinitely better basketball player than I am? If I were ten times the player I now am, however one might measure that, the result would probably still be nearly the same.
The judge sentenced Stone to 40 months. She said she wasn't going to sentence him to 7-9 even before Trump shot off his mouth and DOJ shot itself in the foot. She recited some technical reasons that she thought the original recommendation was improperly calculated under the guidelines. I look forward to a written decision explaining things more thoroughly.
On “Super Tuesday Open Thread”
The enthusiasm gap is overrated. An enthusiastic voter's vote counts for exactly as much as a "he'll do" voter's vote. Enthusiasm matters only if it affects turnout. However meh the Dems feel about Biden, or whoever else is the eventual nominee, they are very enthusiastic about getting rid of Trump. For all the enthusiasm I see at Trump rallies, I see no evidence that this isn't just the same folks who voted for him in 2016. Unless there is a bunch of Trump enthusiasts who, for some reason, didn't come out and vote for him in 2016, enthusiasm just makes votes louder, not more numerous.
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True, but goofy uncle Joe would still be a relief from deranged barstool blowhard Donald.
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Like Jaybird, I thought Biden/Harris made a great deal of sense early on. It still does.
On “They Don’t Have a Clue”
At least we know, or think we know, that Mr. Boddy didn't kill himself.
On “Epstein Dead”
Reading comprehension problems still not solved?
"
I'm not asking you to switch to my view. I'm pointing out that you made a positive declaration of fact about what was happening and what would happen that was wrong.
You can have all the suspicions you want, and there were reasons to be suspicious (not especially persuasive, but reasons) but -- unless Barr is lying -- there is video proof that no one entered Epstein's cell in the window needed to kill him. Pathologists can disagree all they want about the significance of hyloid bone fractures, but even if the type of fracture is more common in chokings than in hangings, nobody choked Epstein. As for the rest of it, yes, these things do happen all the time, sad as that is, and that is why we are never likely to get answers to why what happens all the time happened this time.
You can have all the suspicions you want, especially those that confirm your priors. I'll rest on how things actually turned out.
"
I remember Farrow and Weinstein. I remember that very big, highly-publicized article published in the MSM New Yorker. Lots of people read it.
I also remember a kerfuffle about whether the story he had developed for NBC was as well-sourced as the one later published in the New Yorker. I don't recall anyone coming forward with anything that would help anyone on the outside determine who was right in that pissing contest. That would be moderately interesting.
"
That's a different question. You were the one who set the terms of the discussion by asserting that no one was looking into Epstein's death. I asked how you knew. You didn't. You were wrong about that, as all the MSM stuff you so dutifully posted about what MSM folk were looking into and found about Epstein's death showed.
If you want to argue about whether, before we knew how things would turn out, there was some reason to believe that someone who did look into Epstein's death might get a story spiked, anyone who finds that subject interesting is welcome to discuss it. I'm content to rest on how things turned out.
"
There was reason to be "suspicious." But suspicions are a dime a dozen. What there wasn't reason for was the assumption that no one was looking into things. They were, and they found out a lot. They found out that Epstein didn't kill himself. Does anyone know why one of the cameras was on the fritz? Probably not. If someone tampered with it, he got away with it and there's no reasonable investigative path to finding out who did it or why. Since footage from the other camera (our plotter was clumsy, wasn't he?) was recovered that eventually showed -- unless Barr is lying -- that no one entered Epstein's cell between the last time he was seen alive and the first time he was seen dead, we now know what the cameras were put up to show us, and probably nobody cares about the other camera. Except if it's the linchpin to a theory that someone wanted Epstein killed and tried to set it up, but Epstein killed himself before the plan could be put into effect. Such a plot is by no means inconceivable, but there's no reason to believe it and no discernible route to uncovering it if it were true.
"
And there is, apparently, nothing that could collaborate anything fishy about anything of the above.
There's plenty that could, in theory, "collaborate" it, but after a bunch of serious reporting -- which you had confidently said wasn't going on, even while giving us a running account of it -- it hasn't surfaced, and some of it has been debunked. The "cameras on the fritz," not reported by the MSM except as a rumor, turned out not to be true, since it was footage from at least one of the cameras that showed that no one had entered Epstein's cell between the last time he was seen alive and the first time he was seen dead. Now maybe Bill Barr, who says he saw the footage, is lying. Is someone looking into that? I don't know, but I'm not going to go off half-cocked and say, positively, that nothing is being done to find out just because we don't have answers to questions it is hard to answer RIGHT NOW.
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There's an empty barstool over there.
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So I will repeat my earlier question: what would constitute evidence for stories getting spiked for you?
Details. But that's hard work.
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I was tempted to predict that you would employ, yet again, the Jaybird Backtrack to Banality (TM), but I figured everybody already knew it was coming.
Just for fun, though, I'll predict that the next move will be the: "I didn't backtrack; I never said anything significant in the first place," though that risks self-refuting prophecy.
"
No, it isn't, because that stories get "spiked" is indisputable. Nobody has ever said they don't. What matters is why they're spiked, because sometimes they ought to be. I've listened to what he had to say and don't know anything I didn't know before -- at least about anything that matters.
"
It's hard to be responsible in the presence of a shiny object that confirms your priors.
"
As I remember the usage in my own newspaper days, a story could be "spiked" either because it was embarrassing to the powers that be or that it was not solid enough to run with. These were not watertight compartments. Higher ups might demand better sourcing of a story that would embarrass the powers that be than they would in a similar story that would embarrass a nobody for obvious reasons.Who wants Harvey Weinstein's or Jeffrey Epstein's lawyers up your ass unless you've got the goods nailed down tight? It's not always clear whether a spike was a righteous spike or not, even when the basic facts are known, and pissing contests between reporters and higher-ups don't do much more than confirm whatever priors you bring to the discussion. At least until somebody does solid reporting on the reporting. But that's hard work. For the rest of us, there's an empty barstool down that way.
On “Jay Sekulow’s Vanity Band”
He should perform on a double bill with the vanity band of James Dolan, heir to the Cablevision/Madison Square Garden fortune and bane of all Knicks fans.
On “Ryan Adams, Fandom, and Tolerating Bad Behavior”
I think a lot depends on the type of "bad behavior" involved. Mick Jagger, for example, does (did?) not have a sex life one would set up as worthy of emulation (envy is another matter), but as far as I know -- and I haven't followed closely -- my general impression is that Mick Jagger f****d a lot of women, mostly adults, who wanted to f**k Mick Jagger. We tolerate, maybe even expect, that sort of thing. If it comes out that he knowingly took advantage of underage groupies, or used muscle power rather than star power to get laid, we'd think differently.
On “The Market is Eating Capitalism”
And why did we, as a political body, move to create that?
Because it seemed to us, collectively, to be a good idea at the time. And if we eventually come to believe that other expedients are good, we will enact them, and no theory can tell us, on the basis of some general principle, that we are wrong.
To be sure, there are often good reasons for what we adopt, but that gets us into the weeds, where generalities don't help us much. As the philosopher John Mackie once said: there is no natural law of property, but it is natural that there be some law of property. The details are negotiable.
On “About Last Night: Democratic Debate Live From Las Vegas”
The incentive to take the 2d spot to Biden is Biden's age.
On “The Market is Eating Capitalism”
I think Chip's point was that, whoever owns the rights to Paul McCartney's songs, no one owns the rights to Paul McCartney's songs until some government says someone does and sets up a system by which others can be forcibly prevented from using them without paying for them. (There wasn't always such a system; Shakespeare had no recourse if someone else wanted to publish or perform his plays.) Whatever lousy deals the original holder of this governmentally-approved monopoly makes afterward may be his own look-out, but there isn't anything to make good or bad deals about until the government steps in and imposes some sort of order.
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I saw it, too, but it seems to be gone now.
On “Getting to Ten Times Better”
I'm not sure what it means to be 10X the basketball player someone else is. Certainly if I, a slow-footed 5'7" man eligible for Social Security and having no jump shot went one-on-one against LeBron James, he would score against me at will and I would be extremely lucky to get a single basket against him. Does that make him a (near) infinitely better basketball player than I am? If I were ten times the player I now am, however one might measure that, the result would probably still be nearly the same.
On “Roger Stone Sentencing Gets Suddenly Interesting”
The judge sentenced Stone to 40 months. She said she wasn't going to sentence him to 7-9 even before Trump shot off his mouth and DOJ shot itself in the foot. She recited some technical reasons that she thought the original recommendation was improperly calculated under the guidelines. I look forward to a written decision explaining things more thoroughly.
On “President Trump Commutes Blagojevich Sentence, Pardons Others”
When Donald Trump promised to drain the swamp, I didn't realize that the swamp he had in mind was the federal prison system.
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