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About the AG Barr Ricochet Podcast
The most recent Ricochet podcast featured Attorney General Bill Barr. I was looking forward to it, because I’ve generally thought highly of AG Barr, considering him a stable and thoughtful presence in an often tumultuous administration. I haven’t read his book — and probably won’t — but I did listen to the show.
I didn’t hear anything from Mr. Barr with which I’d take exception. I think his comments about the challenges ahead were spot-on: it’s going to take significant and sustained Republican majorities to bring about lasting change, and we have an opportunity right now to knock the Democratic Party back on its heels.
I appreciated that Barr acknowledged the successes of the Trump presidency, and that he agreed with Peter that Trump, for all his sometimes problematic behavior, was more the recipient of poor treatment than its author.
I think Bill Barr is a man who understands both the challenges and the opportunities ahead, and I appreciate his candor.
I think the world of James, think him a thoroughly sensible and decent man and a wizard with words — all very good things. I rarely find myself disagreeing with him, and it’s always an occasion to check my own thoughts on a subject when we don’t see eye to eye. (Unless the topic is Star Trek, a television series that began and ended, utterly, in the 1960s.)
Nonetheless, I’m going to put in a word in defense of the term “groomer” as it’s being used to describe opponents of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill. I do object to what I think are pointless and ugly monikers like “Rethuglicans” and “Libtards,” two that James mentioned as examples. They are, in my opinion, vulgar and overly broad and stupid, not defensible because they’re so sweeping and vague, and generally counter-productive.
“Groomer,” on the other hand, is not (yet) overly broad, and it’s quite defensible. A very plausible argument can be made that those who feel an urge or duty to introduce other people’s young children to abnormal sexual practices are, whatever their intentions, engaging in something very much like grooming both in practice and outcome.
So long as the phrase is reserved for those who advocate the indoctrination (and that’s what it is) of other people’s young children with sexual ideas parents are likely to find objectionable, and especially if there’s a general understanding that parents do find it objectionable, I think the term is both appropriate and effective.
Incidentally, has anyone, anywhere, heard any proponent of such classroom sexual indoctrination say anything to the effect of “Goodness, I didn’t know how much parents objected to this, but now that I do I’ll certainly be careful not to bring up these subjects with their children?” I haven’t. Let me know if you ever do.
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Based on the reaction of the Left, it seems like a very powerful word. Perhaps the most powerful word in existence.
It is a pooling of financial risk and therefore qualifies as insurance.
Medical insuring humans is a challenge, since humans have agency and maladies that can last a lifetime. The fix is to separate the insurance from employers and tied the insurance to humans. There also needs to be some kind of re-insurance for hard-luck cases in order for there to be a functional marketplace.
Granted that the type of sexual indoctrination practiced in public schools is ideological, rather than directly sexual, making it distinct from the grooming practiced by pedophiles. It remains seriously evil, and that evil is compounded by encouraging children to maintain secrecy against “old-fashioned” parents. One problem with concealing sexual instruction from parents is that the same secrecy will carry over to other situations, -including the concealment of sexual talk initiated by predators.
This is an interesting and important aspect: can anyone here think of any other type of indoctrination that the schools specifically caution teachers not to communicate to parents? This is a huge flag that should immediately draw critical attention: it’s one thing — and a bad thing — to be presumptuous about education and dismissive of parental wisdom and input, but quite another to explicitly work to shape children in secrecy, knowing that the parents would revolt if they found out what was being done.
It’s the difference between arrogance and sinister complicity.
I mean otherwise than it’s not and undocumented connotation. I mean grooming in its definitive meaning, or even up until recently its only meanings, not in its new formulation. Grooming is a lot like gender, a word that has been repurposed to mean something that it never did.
One off the cuff question I’ve asked on R> about grooming is (and I know it happens but I don’t know the prevalence) is does grooming involve pictures? And does it involve role play and role reversal? Or gestures when describing the sexual parts or the sex act? Does it involve show and tell?
This might sound crazy to ask, but seriously, some teachers seem to be vehemently willing to disregard all boundaries, and we’ve already seen books on display in Loudon, VA libraries with drawings and descriptions of people engaging in a variety of sex acts, which were frankly visually pr0nographic, that I wouldn’t be surprised at anything anymore.
And I understand from discussions in past years that at least for the male mind, sexual pictures immediately imprint into male brains and apparently last for life. So the ideological is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to sexually instructing or training the young.
Birth control and abortion. Abortion jurisprudence created the precedents for cutting parents out of their children’s “private” lives.
Similar to @flicker, I’ve seen news of grooming reported in the UK for several years. This NR article by Douglas Murray includes the word in the title and describes public officials who seem unwilling to take much action to stop it. I wonder if things are going to go the same direction here.
UK and most of Europe really has the biggest single problem that seems to bring in child predators, and that is muslim immigration.
Where I find the groomer label effective is in the pushing of Transgender ideology. I don’t believe the people engaged in this behavior are necessarily grooming the children for sexual activity. I do believe they are grooming children to participate in a set of largely dangerous, irreversible, and self destructive life style choices. In the end the goal of the grooming is the same to separate the child from their parents and families so they will be more likely to engage in the desired behavior of the groomer. It is decidedly not in the best interest of the child and advances the desire of the outside adult. It is hard to see how this isn’t some type of grooming.
Very well put. I think others have tried to make the same point, but they weren’t as concise.
I don’t think they are deliberately trying to induce gender dysphoria into kids, but gender dysphoria is likely to be the result of their “good intentions”. If you plant the idea that gender identity is different from their actual sex, and then ask kids whether they “feel” more like a boy or a girl, you are bound to stimulate terrible results.
What they are trying to do, indisputably trying to do, is to teach a radical conception of human sexuality to children who are too young to understand how unnatural it is, and to do so explicitly without the knowledge of the parents.
They may believe that they’re doing the right thing; I’m sure most of them do believe that. But the vast majority of parents would never consider teaching such things to their young children, and I’m also sure that this is the reason schools feel a need to be secretive about it.
I’m less interested in the motives — which we might debate — than in the action itself.
And yes, I agree with you that increased sexual confusion, and the bad choices that too readily stem from that, is a likely result.
I don’t think they believe in gender dysphoria, per se. I am not exactly sure how they see the Transgender identity; however, it is certainly not as a mental disorder. They seem to see it as a positive identity choice. In some ways I think they are more comfortable with transgendered kids than with normal boys.
Yes, sexual confusion is the tip of the iceberg. Sexual perversion is below that. And the bottom tier is promiscuity.
They’re teaching children how to masturbate.
The history of increasing medical care costs above inflation began with the advent of third party health insurance (Blue Cross) in 1929(set up by surgeons and a hospital for their own benefit). Ever since medical cost inflation was triple general inflation.
The “golden age of medical income” began with Medicare. Originally, there were no controls on medical pricing in Medicare. Whatever bill a physician or hospital submitted was paid, no questions asked. Medical cost inflation went quickly to 30% a year. It didn’t abate until the Reagan administration started to put what proved to be extreme controls with prices dictated by the federal government, not just for Medicare, but all of medical costs. Nevertheless, the structure of federal controls resulted in ongoing medical inflation. Part D, for example, produced a financial heyday for Pharmacy Benefit Managers (middle men who played both ends from the middle and profited from price differentials between retail drug costs and prices insurers paid for patient medications–which incentivized rapid retail price increases that have made such ordinary type of medication like insulin unaffordable). This now is leading to Democrats trying to take over pricing and distribution of all medications–not just vaccines and monoclonal antibodies and oral covid meds, but all medications–that will create shortages and unavailability of drugs, as well as absolutely control how and which medications doctors will be allowed to use. Government will directly dictate your medical care. So government keeps creating problems that it pretends to “solve” by methods that amass ever more power to government and create ever more problems that will have to be in turn “solved” by government. And so on, ad infinitum, until we are under utter and complete government control of our lives. Kind of like all those Shanghaians in lockdown. Screaming. Edvard Munch completely vindicated. Republicans highly complicit.
As with Henry Racette, I don’t find myself disagreeing with Barr about what he says here so much as with what he doesn’t say.
He, like Christy, seems very sanguine about the 2020 election. In my view, there were vastly more election irregularities in 2020 than any other election in my lifetime. From concealment of information by the press (which Barr has excoriated far too late to be relevant–why didn’t he immediately call out those intelligence officials as political whores when the letter came out, rather than wait until long after when his comments are irrelevant?) to violation of election laws in a wholesale fashion, to extensive issues of ballot harvesting, custody and ballot processing that gave vast opportunities for fraud that could never be ferreted out in any circumstance. All those futile and unsuccessful court efforts were hardly due to lack of illegality of vote casting and processing, rather to procedural issues and standing and timeliness and lack of access.
Barr talks tough now when he wants to sell books. But hardly when he was in a position to do anything.
He knew from the get go that there was no predicate for the Mueller investigation. That was clear to everyone from the outset. To pretend otherwise is sheer nonsense. So the first thing he should have done as AG would have been to halt the Mueller investigation, do an immediate analysis and review of what material was accumulated, and end the charade. A competent AG would have done exactly that. Barr utterly failed the moment. Too obsequious to the powers that be. Almost to the point that one suspects he was part of the interest group, that appeared to include the Bushes, to whom he seemed most loyal–and they were never Trumpers–that opposed Trump. Barr seems to be telling it fairly straight, from the content of this interview, but too little too late to ever have my confidence again.
He to me represents the failure of the Republican party to stand up for truth and justice and election integrity. He would rather fight the partisan fight now, it seems to me, than uncover truth and pursue justice when he was in a position to do so. He failed the moment. Who could have succeeded? Who knows. I don’t. Barr clearly didn’t have Tump’s full confidence. He certainly doesn’t have mine at this point.
It’s also a continuing disappointment that the Ricochetti (the founders, nice guys that they are), are oblivious to or seem to willfully have moved past election irregularities and illegalities. That won’t really fly in the long run, but only contribute to the downward slide of the nation and the continuing loss of confidence in our elections, which is very bad for the Republican Party and the nation. A massive effort to improve election integrity is desperately needed. Barr for one, doesn’t appear to believe that. He seems content with the current mess
One word sums up this interview for me: Cant.
Certainly I thought it was clear from the outset. I also thought that it would have been political suicide to stop the investigation, and remember being glad, at the time, that Barr allowed it to continue. Mueller, in his clumsy and generally incompetent way, effectively put an end to any plausible case for Russian collusion, leaving the braying mobs of the left and the media (but I repeat myself, as they say) with nothing on which to base their rabid conspiracies.
Absent the final Mueller report, I suspect we would still be hearing about Russian collusion; shoot, it would probably be implicated as part of the notorious January 6th conspiracy to take over the United States….
I would have appreciated it if Barr had lit a fire under Durham.
I do agree that Barr is too quick to dismiss claims of widespread fraud. I am agnostic about the true popular vote in 2020, about which candidate actually won a majority, though if I had to make a bet I’d go with Biden: I think the election was stolen in plain sight by four years of press fraud and social media manipulation, and then at the last minute under the false claim of “dealing with COVID.” I think Barr probably agrees, but doesn’t see compelling evidence of actionable fraud given the legal chaos surrounding the election. Nor, unfortunately, do I.
Absent that, it’s probably prudent to act locally (i.e., at the state level) to secure future elections, and not go on about the 2020 fiasco. And I think Barr is a generally prudent man.
Maybe so. But I was a kid in the 1950s and the role of medical insurance was really insurance.
Nobody I knew subsidized the doctor visit or prescription medicine. You paid your doctor and you paid for your prescription.
Blue Cross was coverage for hospital costs. Blue Shield was coverage for doctor bills in the hospital setting.
It seems to me that that 1950s arrangement was fairly rational. You paid your own normal medical costs as they arose. If you had to be in a hospital, your insurance covered (most of) the hospital’s bill for your stay and the doctor’s fees for surgery, etc.
Seems to me that it was a proper use of insurance, to cover extraordinary expenses that you might not be able to pay out of current cash.
What did Barr know about that FBI false flag operation regarding Gov. Whitmer?
But now due to increased regulation and probably insurance too, even a regular doctor’s office visit is not an affordable routine event.
Yes. The same is true of car insurance: best (in my opinion) is insurance that covers major losses, but not small and routine costs.
If he were really competent, he would have known every detail. The assumption of competence, which I would grant, indicts him.
Yes, and that was the general perception at the time. Only the existence of health insurance, paid by a third party (employer), did result in inflation in medical costs that outstripped general inflation by a factor of 3, and contributed to the impoverishment of the unemployed, the retired and elderly, who were essentially priced out of the healthcare market, and led to the GreatSociety advent of Medicare/Medicaid, which now effectively dictate medical prices and practices, a de facto centralized medical care pricing and practice control scheme, that is getting Progressively worse.
Consider that Dems are impressed by the Federal purchase of vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, giving the Administration control over the distribution and use of these agents, so that they are now trying to do the same for all medications. So if you want the Federal government to control ALL of your medical options, you have the system in place to do that. A system that was born under control of physicians and hospitals, then large employers, and has evolved in to a system ripe for centralization. We are a step or two away from a single payor system, which will be not so much controlled by government as by political activists. You will have to vote a certain way to get your insurance card. Imagine the political power of such a system. The Dems are deliriously dreaming of obtaining such power, and they are on the verge of acquiring it.
Too prudent for the moment. He evinces a profound lack of imagination. The 2020 election suffered from massive irregularities, by far the most in my lifetime, not least of which were Zuckerbucks used by public campaign officials. I live in Georgia. Georgia can’t run a clean election. It is inherently impossible for the State to do so. Corruption is built in, both Democrat and Republican. Republican campaign officials were literally bribed by Zuckerberg to agree to illegal consent decrees on signature verification. From media censorship to State election officials ignoring the law to COVID changes with (in Georgia, never before used) drop boxes that were unmanned, unsecured, and for which video surveillance tapes have been destroyed, and drop box custody undocumented, and dropped ballots opened illegally (and possibly culled) before election day–vast irregularities. Some States (Florida) have effectively addressed the problems. most have not, including Georgia and R States. We will see an encore attempt in 2022. Elections are changed forever.
A couple of additional points on this podcast:
Barr vividly describes the violent tactics of Antifa. Chilling. They are using Brown Shirt tactics, with the blessing of Democrats, and are effectively destroying the rule of law, intentionally so. Progressives are using violence and the threat of violence for political purposes. This is part of the Progressive attack on America intended to destroy the rule of law and our representative republic and civil liberties. Barr seems to just barely grasp this, and has no effective counter for it. He can describe how the nation is being destroyed but has not answer. One might have hoped for better. He has nothing to offer. Hence it appears that we will continue to sink in the quagmire of politicized violence until the Republic collapses into a totalitarian state.
The situation he describes called for mass arrests and vigorous prosecution. He acts as if identifying individual perpetrators who actually threw the brick, as they are different from the masked participants manning the umbrellas, is necessary for “justice”. Insane. It’s one whole riot and everyone is participating. Certainly the Jan 6 participants have not been distinguished in such nuanced fashionIt’s like blaming only the soldier firing the missile at the train station for civilian casualties of war and totally exculpating the soldiers who drove the trucks delivering the ammunition or the leader issuing the orders or the person who labelled the missile “for the children”. Can’t target those participants as they weren’t the ones firing the missile? Yes, civil unrest is not war, but still. Effective law enforcement must be effective, not emasculated, whatever the strategies used to avoid responsibility. Just like Iran erecting front companies to manage oil tankers to avoid sanctions . But Barr blames Portland, when attacks were on the federal facilities. There is federal jurisdiction. Barr is blame shifting like there is not tomorrow. Not a pretty sight.
Then there was the jaw dropping statement by Rob, regarding the pristine and iconic stature of the Justice Department and the FBI.He seems to be mistaking Hollywood for Washington. There has hardly been a decade since the FBI came in to existence that it was not deeply involved in scandal and illegality. It was, after all, by its own admission, a “bastard” agency that was created solely by the Executive branch without Congressional authorization by a descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte (TR’s AG at the time) when Congress acted to prevent such a national law enforcement body. Out of the box, almost, the “Bureau of Investigation” committed extensive illegalities by spying on Congress, specifically the ones objecting to and trying to investigate the Teapot Dome scandal, and obstructing justice. J Edgar himself was involved in those efforts, but at a low enough profile that the resignation of the head of the Bureau led to his becoming the director. So we had a psycho-sociopath running the agency for most of the 20th Century spying on politicians the entire time. TBC.
Part II
Then came the Osage murders. Hoover put a good law man (whom he despised), a former Texas Ranger, in charge, who produced several high profile convictions, whereupon Hoover had his good publicity and abandoned the effort.
In my lifetime one can point to the FBI problems investigating the American Indian Movement of the 1970s (Leonard Peltier is still a poster child for egregious FBI activities), or the Whitey Bulgar travesty (the FBI’s website simply touts the endurance of the agency in finally getting their man, with nary a word about the horrendous “management” of the “informer” by the FBI for years).
There is good evidence that the FBI knew a lot about the Oklahoma City bombing before it occurred, and may have even had planted individuals inciting that event(Andreas Strassmeir). The ATF did have an informant in Elohim City, Carol Howe, who testified in Terry Nichols’ trial. The limited evidence that was allowed in court during the penalty phase of Terry Nichols’ trial was sufficient to convince the jury that it should not give the death sentence, due to the withholding of evidence by the government. Who oversaw the McVeigh and Nichols trials from the Justice Department? You guessed it: That marvelous moderate Merrick Garland.
One could go on and on. But to the Justice Department. Ramsey Clark. John Mitchell. Janet Reno. Eric Holder. Jim Comey. Loretta Lynch. Ashcroft. Alberto Gonzalez. Merrick Garland, siccing the FBI on parents making objections at school board meetings. The only really decent AG I can think of in my lifetime, arguably, was Ed Meese. Special prosecutors, Independent Counsels, Withholding exculpatory evidence (Brady materials–standard procedure in the so-called “Justice” Department–particularly during Barr’s first tenure as AG and never changed, even by Meese). Political prosecutions (Scooter Libby). Faux FISA warrants. Leaked memos. The FBI and CIA used to attempt to fraudulently bring down a President. More evidence that the Justice Department was corrupt in its efforts to get Nixon (Leon Jaworski was illegally sharing grand jury testimony with Sirica and Congress), and the FBI was involved on both sides, screw heads like G Gordon Liddy for the Administration, and Mark Felt, aka Deep Throat for the prosecution, illegally leaking like a sieve.
The Whitmer fiasco is just the latest. As they say, the FBI seems only to be able to interdict plots that it itself instigates. Even then it seems to be touch and go.
Who can forget (everybody already has of course) the Cliven Bundy fiasco, in which FBI behavior was so egregious that the judge threw out his conviction with prejudice (eg, no more prosecution, or should I say persecution, of Cliven Bundy). The FBI has committed no civil liberties violations that National Review didn’t like.
The view of the Justice Department as a paragon of Justice, and the FBI as a premier and pristine law enforcement agency, wins Rob the Dr. Pangloss award of the Century. Congratulations, Rob!!
Yes, that was one of my arguments too, on a different thread. Even if everyone is wearing ID signs as they loot and burn etc, you don’t just write those down and arrest them later. The violence should be stopped while it’s happening! It’s easier to identify them once they’re locked up.
There are people who feel strongly that people should not buy everything and that everything should be provided by the government. Insurance that isn’t really insurance is a step in that direction.