Every Time They Do This, Trump Goes Up In The Polls

Yesterday I suggested Trump is following a Chicago Seven strategy of baiting his trial judges into overreacting, committing reversible errors, and allowing themselves to be characterized as political hacks in the public narrative. This strategy is succeeding.

A federal judge on Sunday reinstated a gag order she imposed on Donald Trump in the Washington case accusing him of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat, denying his bid for a stay pending appeal.

The order prohibited Trump from targeting the special counsel prosecuting his case or witnesses who might be called to testify about his efforts to upend his election loss.

US District Judge Tanya Chutkan imposed the gag order at the Justice Department’s request.

She temporarily lifted it on Oct. 20 after Trump’s lawyers appealed.

And she reversed that decision on Sunday evening, according to the court’s docket.

A member of the former Obama administration outlined the thinking that likely drove Judge Chutkan's change of direction:

Former Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal said Sunday on MSNBC’s “Inside” that it was likely former President Donald Trump would be jailed for violating a gag order.

Katyal said, “There are two different gag orders. One, Trump has already violated, the one in New York state, in which he has been now find twice. And then there’s a swarm that you’re talking about the federal level with Jack Smith. And that one has been put on pause.”

He continued, “I think Donald Trump has made the best case of anyone. He is witnessing for why you need the gag order in effect. Because the moment that gag order was put on pause, he started developing and attacking people left and right.”

Katyal added, “So I think that there is no doubt in my mind that there will be a gag order imposed on Donald Trump. And there also is no doubt in my mind that he is going to violate it repeatedly. Repeatedly to the point where a judge is going to have to confront the ultimate question, are we going to put the former president in jail? and i think there is only one answer to that.”

Anchor Jen Psaki said, “What is your answer?”

Katyal said, “Which is you have to. If he continues this behavior, no other litigant in this country would ever be able to do what he is doing. Judges, I don’t care what your politics are, the one thing you understand when you put out that robe is that it is about the legitimacy of the court and about the judicial process.”

But the Chicago Seven case makes it plain that there are limits to the legitimacy of the court. Judge Hoffman, if we follow Katyal's logic, had no choice but to have Bobby Seale bound and gagged in the courtroom and impose draconian sentences on the defendants and their counsel for contempt -- that is, he had no choice until the higher court reversed him. And it's likely that Judge Chutkan's order will eventually be reversed. In an amicus brief, the American Civil Liberties Union argued,

Chutkan imposed a limited gag order on Trump earlier this month that forbids him from targeting any criticism at Special Counsel Jack Smith, court staff, or witnesses on his case that involves allegations related to the Jan. 6 riots.

But the ACLU argued the term "targeting" was unconstitutionally vague.

“The First Amendment rights of the accused require any court order restraining their speech to be both clearly defined and narrowly framed,” the group argued. "The order’s prohibition on speech that “targets” certain named and unnamed individuals is neither.

"Reading the order, Defendant cannot possibly know what he is permitted to say, and what he is not," it added.

It isn't hard to surmise that Trump is almost begging either Judge Chutkan or Judge Engoron to jail him for contempt -- over the weekend, he called Judge Engoron a "nut job", “Trump hating,” and “unhinged.” Regarding Judge Chutkan's reinstatement of her order, he posted As of this morning, he added,

“I have just learned that the very Biased, Trump Hating Judge in D.C., who should have RECUSED herself due to her blatant and open loathing of your favorite President, ME, has reimposed a GAG ORDER which will put me at a disadvantage against my prosecutorial and political opponents,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Monday morning. “This order, according to many legal scholars, is unthinkable! It illegally and unconstitutionally takes away my First Amendment Right of Free Speech, in the middle of my campaign for President, where I am leading against BOTH Parties in the Polls.”

The problem for the judges is that anything that happens now is going to become news, and at that point, it's out of their control and into Trump's field of expertise -- it's generally understood that Trump is a master at leveraging media coverage into free publicity. A judge who orders Trump to jail is going to open the door to unanticipated consequences for the whole process. I don't think either Judge Engoron or Judge Chutkan is remotely up to the task here, any more than Judge Hoffman was in Chicago.

Trump's Chicago Seven Defense

I've already mentioned the 1969 Chicago Seven trial here in the context of some of the January 6 defendants. Looking back at that post, I think the comparison is mild, especially in contrast to what's beginning to look like Trump's strategy in at least two of his cases, where judges are beginning to impose gag orders on Trump's speech outside the courtroom.

On one hand, Trump's strategy is to play the legal issues straight, appealing the orders through established channels. On the other, as opportunties present themselves, he's using public statements to bait the judges into overreacting, turning them into villains in the public eye and forcing them into committing reversible errors. For instance,

All this will do is enrage Judge Engoron, who has already fined Trump twice for violating a gag order that bars him from commenting about court staff:

Justice Arthur Engoron fined Trump for the second time on Wednesday after he again appeared to violate the order by making an apparent reference to his top clerk in comments before news cameras outside the courtroom.

. . . Engoron leveled the $10,000 penalty against Trump on Wednesday after he said to reporters outside the courtroom, "this judge is a very partisan judge, with a person who's very partisan sitting alongside of him."

. . . Engoron imposed the gag order on Oct. 3 after Trump shared on social media the name and photo of the judge’s top clerk and suggested she was politically biased. He had fined Trump $5,000 on Oct. 20 after a screenshot of the since-deleted post remained visible on Trump’s campaign site for weeks.

This is just starting to be reminiscent of the Chicago Seven Trial:

In his trial account The Barnyard Epithet and Other Obscenities, J. Anthony Lukas divides the Chicago Conspiracy Trial into five "phases." The first period, which Lukas calls "The Jelly Bean Phase," lasted from September 24 to October 13. It was a relatively uneventful stage, in which the defendants took a "gently mocking" stance toward the trial. The second period, the "Gags and Shackles Phase," lasted from October 14 to November 5. This phase by the defendants seeking to emphasize political issues in the trial, perhaps because they were concerned that the trial was being seen by their sympathizers as a mere joke. Also during this phase, Black Panther defendant Bobby Seale continuously, and in increasingly angry tones, insisted upon his right either to represent himself or to have the trial continued until his own counsel of choice, Charles Garry (who was hospitalized for gall bladder surgery), could represent him. Seale hurled frequent and bitter attacks at Judge Hoffman, calling him a "fascist dog," a "pig," and a "racist," among other things. On October 29, the outraged judge ordered Seale bound and gagged. . . . The final phase of the trial, from January 23 to February 7, Lukas called the "Barnyard Epithet Phase." It was a two-week period marked by increasingly bitter outbursts by the defendants and their attorneys, and by almost irrational overreactions by Judge Hoffman. Forty-eight contempts came in this shortest of the five trial phases.

Judge Hoffman's evident anger and bias in the case served only to damage the prosecution's interests:

The jury had scarcely begun its deliberations in the Chicago Conspiracy Trial when Judge Hoffman began sentencing each of the defendants and the two defense attorneys, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, to lengthy prison terms on 159 specifications for criminal contempt. The specifications ranged from minor acts of disrespect (such as not standing for the judge) to playful acts (such as baring rib cages or blowing kisses to the jury) to insulting or questioning the integrity of the court ("liar," "hypocrite," and "fascist dog"). William Kunstler, who seemingly became a radicalized brother of his clients over the course of the trial, was sentenced by Hoffman to four years and thirteen days in jail. One specification for Kunstler concerned an incident on February 3 when he said "I am going to turn back to my seat with the realization that everything I have learned throughout my life has come to naught, that there is no meaning in this court, there is no law in this court." The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals later reversed all contempt convictions, ruling that contempt convictions resulting in more than six months in prison require jury trials.

Eventually,

The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed all convictions on November 21, 1972. The appellate court based its decision on the refusal to allow inquiry into the cultural biases of potential jurors during voir dire as well as Judge Hoffman's "deprecatory and often antagonistic attitude toward the defense." The court also noted that it was determined after appellate argument that the F. B. I, with the knowledge and complicity of Judge Hoffman and prosecutors, had bugged the offices of the Chicago defense attorneys. The Court of Appeals panel said that it had "little doubt but that the wrongdoing of F. B. I. agents would have required reversal of the convictions on the substantive charges."

. . . There is no simple "yes" or "no" answer to the question of whether the Chicago defendants intended to incite a riot in Chicago in 1968. Abbie Hoffman said, "I don't know whether I'm innocent or I'm guilty." The reason for the confusion--as Norman Mailer pointed out--was that the alleged conspirators "understood that you didn't have to attack the fortress anymore." All they had to do was "surround it, make faces at the people inside and let them have nervous breakdowns and destroy themselves."

Trump's attorneys must certainly be aware of the Chicago Seven trial, because there appear to be similar issues in all the cases against him, ranging from freedom of speech to failure to specify a crime to juror bias, and similar remedies in pulic opinion. There's also general agreement that Trump's strategy will be to win on appeal despite conviction in the trial courts, much like what took place with the Chicago Seven. And so far, Trump's strategy is pretty clerly to surround the fortress, make faces at the people inside, and let them have nervous breakdowns and destroy themselves.

Well, Trump and I are the same age. We saw the same things back in the day, and we paid attention.

Joe Gets A New Primary Opponent

I'm having a hard time getting my head around this exercise:

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) announced Thursday he is running for president against President Biden.

The congressman confirmed he would be running against Biden in the Democratic primary, after previously signaling he would not do so.

. . . The Minnesota Democrat has repeatedly called for a competitive primary instead of Biden running unopposed for the nomination.

“I think President Biden has done a spectacular job for our country. But it’s not about the past,” Phillips said. “This is an election about the future.”

According to Red State,

[W]hat makes this especially interesting is who is reportedly behind the campaign. According to another report, The Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt, infamous for his late-night online meltdowns, is advising Phillips.

. . . If Schmidt is the driving force behind Phillips' campaign, that's not a good sign for anyone involved. I wouldn't trust a co-founder of The Lincoln Project to win a race for dog catcher.

Still, Phillips' bid could cause issues for Biden because he's looking to drive a wedge through the primary process. New Hampshire Democrats lost their first-in-the-nation primary status after Biden and the DNC colluded to put South Carolina first in line, the very state that helped save Biden's then-collapsing campaign in 2020. Where is Phillips' centering his campaign? In New Hampshire.

So far, it looks to me as if the "primary process" is completely irrelevant to either party this year. Biden clearly wants to bypass New Hampshire, simply because he didn't do well there in 2020 and had to rely on South Carolina to save his campaign -- so naturally, he's going to take any suspense out of the 2024 race by putting South Carolina first. I don't see how a no-name guy running against Joe in New Hampshire will change anything.

It's also significant that Robert Kennedy Jr gave up on the idea of challenging Joe in primaries as a Democrat pretty early in the process.

On September 29, 2023, Mediaite reported that Kennedy was reorienting his campaign to run as an independent rather than as a Democrat. On October 9, 2023, he confirmed these reports by formally announcing that he will be continuing his presidential bid as an independent candidate.

. . . Prior to the switch Kennedy and his campaign manager had expressed dissatisfaction with the Democratic primary election process.

Acccusations that the Democrat National Committee rigs the primary process are nothing new; Bernie Sanders supporters made the same claim in 2016.

There’s always a learning curve, and my experience during the 2016 Democratic Primary educated me on the down-and-dirty politics behind an election.

People seem to be under the impression that high-level political corruption is only something you see in a movie or show like House of Cards. Perhaps the idea that the most powerful people in the country would cheat us out of our sacred practice of democracy strikes fear in the hearts of those of us who’ve trusted in this system for so long. But I can tell you from first-hand experience that not only does the DNC rig its primaries against independent-minded outsider candidates like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Andrew Yang & others, but that process is much more intricate and complex than one might imagine.

I think we can take it as given that the Democrat establishment doesn't want a primary process in 2024. Even if Joe drops out, which I think may be more likely than some believe, he'll delay the announcement until sometime in late spring or even summer to bypass any serious primary opposition. I think this is the real reason for Gavin Newsom's quasi-non-campaign: he avoids any imputation of disloyalty while also forestalling any serious primary electoral challenge to his implicit front-runner status, which he's actively cultivating with Nancy Pelosi's tacit approval.

After all, this has been Trump's 2024 primary strategy as well: avoid giving any potential opponent the opportunity to place himself on an equal platform by allowing debate. But for the Democrats, this strategy allows a late spring or summer bait-and-switch whereby Biden withdraws in favor of the preselected Newsom. And as I said the other day, this will also allow them to keep Kamala as the vice president while removing the risk of an octogenarian at the head of the ticket.

This still leaves me with the question of why Rep Phillips is undertaking this exercise, which Bernie veterans and other Democrat insiders must recognize is foreordained to failure.

Jews Are Being Expelled From The New Deal Coalition, Or Maybe They're Walking Out

Tolerance of anti-Semitic and even pro-genocide demonstrations on campuses in particular since October 7 has provoked a certain amount of recalibration among Jews over where their political alliances should lie. Some of it goes directly to the established Democrat party alignment that's persisted in many ways since Reconstruction. The playwright David Mamet wrote this past Monday,

We New York Jews have always voted for the Democrats, as their policies appealed to the immigrants and the first generation (my parents). A Fair Shake, a safety net, and unionism were manna to the newly arrived — in spite of (in both their and my lifetime) quotas and antisemitic discrimination. The immigrant Jews did well here, and voted for Franklin Roosevelt. And we are voting for him still.

His Advisor on Jewish Affairs (jude-suss, or “house-Jew”) was Rabbi Stephen Wise, the “dean” of the American Rabbinate. He referred to FDR as “Boss”, and brought home to his community Roosevelt’s assurance of aid to the dying Jews of Europe. Yet Roosevelt’s aid stopped with his assurances, and tens of thousands of Jews died because of his restrictive immigration policies, and millions in Europe because of his refusal to interdict the Holocaust.

Well, Roosevelt was an upper-class, prep school and Ivy League Episcopalian to the core. As someone pointed out, were it not for polio, all he'd be would be George H W Bush. He said privately in 1942 that the United States was “a Protestant country”, “and the Catholics and Jews are here under sufferance.”

Mamet continues,

Why do Jews vote Democratic? Partly from tradition — conservatives have heard a Liberal Jew, when asked to defend or explain various absurd or inconsistent Democratic positions, shrug and joke: “I’m a Congenital Democrat.” I understand, for I was one, too.

But there is no more cosy mystery in the antisemitism of the Democratic Party; Representatives are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists and pro-Palestinians, calling for the end of the state of Israel — that is, for the death of the Jews. And Democrat Representatives repeat and refuse to retract the libel that Israel bombed a hospital, in spite of absolute proof to the contrary, and will not call out the unutterable atrocities of Hamas. The writing is on the wall. In blood.

Moses was instructed to have the Jews smear blood on their doorposts to identify themselves, and, so, avert the wrath of the Angel of Death. Mythologically, the blood can be said to be their own: the message, that if they chose to stay in Egypt, their blood would not mark the doorpost, but would wash the floor.

It's worth noting that the Ku Klux Klan wasn't just anti-black; its secondary focus was anti-Catholic, it was anti-Semitic, and it was aligned with white segregationist Democrat politics in the South.

The lynching of Leo Frank, a prominent Jewish businessman in Atlanta, alarmed Jewish Americans in 1915. He was falsely accused and convicted of killing a worker, Mary Phagan, in the pencil factory that he managed. After Georgia Governor John M. Slaton stayed Frank's execution because of a lack of evidence, a mob dragged him from the jail and lynched him.

. . . The Leo Frank incident also led to a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). By the mid-1920s, the KKK claimed to have four million members, more than all the Jews in the United States.

Another question is why the collegiate Diversity Equity and Inclusion mechanisms have failed to protect Jews. Armin Rosen writes in The Tablet,

If the DEI offices’ hearts aren’t in it—Jews being rich white people whose near ancestors just happened to have been the Nazis’ chief targets—they could at least feign a strategic interest in Jews, thus protecting themselves from future accusations of willful neglect.

. . . The nation’s army of campus DEI staff presumably exists for moments like this one, where an already unpopular minority group confronts an unanticipated surge of stress and potential danger. Yet DEI offices haven’t even bothered with pro forma expressions of fake concern.

He concludes,

For the past two weeks, DEI offices have had a chance to show they can be responsive to the real-life needs of young people facing a scary and unfamiliar crisis. But these offices clearly do not exist to serve Jews, or wish to recognize Jews might be capable of feeling pain, even when their friends and co-religionists have been slaughtered en masse. That’s because DEI bureaucracies don’t exist to serve actually existing people of any background. The purpose they serve is a theological one, and dogma enforcement is a big part of what universities do these days.

. . . An equity office’s job is to engineer the values of the rising elite so that DEI and the wider ideological edifice it serves will remain powerful, protected, and even feared. These bureaucracies are not burning through institutional capital in order to salve the anxieties of Jewish students, because helping students was never the point. Their ambitions are of a different order: DEI embodies the moral authority of a larger system for distributing status and power. It doesn’t care about actual human beings—and as we’ve learned since the massacre of October 7, it especially doesn’t care about Jews.

So the emerging moral consensus is moving toward excluding Jews, and Jews are somewhat belatedly coming to understand this. Mamet concludes,

Unprotected, we appealed to Power for decent consideration as Human Beings; and Power in America, the Democratic Party, was always happy to take our money and our votes, and ask us to wait in the Outer Office. As it does today.

We'll have to see where this takes us, but it's intriguing that current Jewish thought is leading in the direction that it's never been wise to trust the Democrats. Certainly Catholics and Labor, who have also been more or less reliable members of the New Deal coalition, have gradually been moving in the same direction. Franklin Roosevelt, after all, was never a man of the people.

What Does Nancy Pelosi Know?

Over the past week, Gavin Newsom has been on a trip to Israel and China:

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) joked about his presidential ambitions following a wartime trip to Israel, explaining the limits of his visit.

“I wish I was president of the United States,” he told reporters when asked about meeting with Israeli leaders, particularly to discuss a potential ceasefire with Hamas. He added afterward that he was joking. “I could start doing all those things."

According to Newsom, the brief and impromptu trip to Israel was “limited in scope.”

. . . Newsom is the second governor to travel to Israel amid the war with Iran-backed terrorist group Hamas, following Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY). New York has the largest population of Jewish people in America, as well as the largest population outside of Israel itself. California has the second-largest population in the U.S.

The California governor has answered as to whether he supports a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, something growing in popularity among the most progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Newsom, though, has reiterated that he "stands with Israel."

His joking remark about being president comes as speculation continues over a potential 2024 presidential bid. Newsom has consistently rejected the notion that he is considering a primary challenge to President Joe Biden, even serving as one of the most high-profile surrogates for his reelection campaign.

Moving on to China on Monday, by Wednesday, Newsom had a surprise high-profile meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The topics of his visit were carefully spun to limit them to issues like California-Chinese cooperation in climate change, but the Chinese were also eager to portray Newsom as a refreshing new figure:

A new editorial published Monday by the Global Times, a nationalistic English-language tabloid published by the propaganda department of the ruling Communist Party, states that Newsom is one of the most esteemed U.S. officials to make the journey overseas—citing the governor's first trip there as one of pragmatism as the U.S.-China relationship overall has been one of angst and vitriol in recent years.

"To be honest, Chinese people currently lack faith in Washington as a whole and have distrust toward some U.S. politicians. However, the welcome for Governor Newsom's visit is sincere and warm, as 'it is always a pleasure to greet a friend from afar,'" the editorial states.

I have two reactions. First, Newsom, 56, terms out as California governor in January 2027, when he'll be only 60. He's got to be looking toward a political future, especially one outside California, where the Democrat legislative supermajority has put the state on a disastrous course. That has got to involve running for president. Second, Nancy Pelosi, nominally "emerita" as House speaker, still runs things behind the scenes there and in California. Newsom will make no move without Pelosi's specific approval.

Newsom is also scheduled to debate Florida Gov DeSantis on Fox November 30. There's no question that Newsom is angling to become the only white Democrat (which is to say the only credible Democrat) in line behind Joe, definitely for 2028, but as a contingency for next year as well.

My guess is that Pelosi, although she's moving very carefully, is aware that Biden has vulnerabilities that make a 2024 run more iffy than has been generally portrayed. I suspect that she and a close circle of insiders are aware of the same thing I've suspected here, that Joe's various gaffes, microaggressions, stumbles, mumbles, and other infelicities are symptoms not of senility but long-term alcohol abuse.

I ran into a strange confirmation of this rereading Tom Hines's biography of Raymond Chandler, a well-known Hollywood drunk who had a period of sobriety in the 1930s and early 1940s until roughly the time Billy Wilder hired him to clean up James M Cain's Double Indemnity for the screen. Chandler at this point fell visibly off the wagon while vigorously insisting he was still sober -- and Hines cites sources who knew Chandler as well as typical alcoholic dodges to say that this was nothing unusual -- drunks lie to themselves and everyone else that they're sober, and indeed, like Joe Biden, that they've never had a drink, ever.

I suspect Pelosi and other insiders are fuily aware that Joe has multiple skeletons in multiple closets, and they're in the process of hedging against a set of scandals that will force Joe's withdrawal from the race late in next year's primary season, leaving a limited field with no potential Democrat replacement having a clear primary campaign record. This will open the opportunity for Newsom to become the consensus last-minute white guy who isn't either Bernie Sanders or Pete Buttigieg.

He would keep Kamala as vice president.

The Alaska Airlines Pilot Who Tried To Crash The Plane

This is an intersectional story, because it links pilots who shouldn't be flying, magic mushrooms, and Oregon. According to KRON4,

Joseph David Emerson, 44, of Pleasant Hill [CA], was off-duty and sitting in the cockpit Sunday evening when he suddenly tried to cut off the jet’s engines, according to on-duty pilots who flew Horizon Air Flight AS 2059.

The pilots said they wrestled with Emerson for control of the aircraft, he pulled on emergency controls to cut the engines’ fuel, and the jet was “seconds away” from becoming a glider, prosecutors wrote in court documents. The quick-thinking captain, co-pilot, and flight crew were able to throw Emerson out of the cockpit, handcuff him, and make an emergency landing at a Portland airport.

On Tuesday, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office filed 84 charges against Emerson, including 83 counts of felony second-degree attempted murder, and one count of endangering an aircraft. The flight had 11 passengers who were children, court records state.

. . . Emerson was interrogated by Port of Portland Police Department officers who hauled him off the plane and took him into custody. During the interrogation, he admitted to pulling the jet’s emergency shut-off handles that control engine fuel, and described a motive behind why he did it, court documents filed by Deputy District Attorney Anthony Dundon state.

. . . “Emerson indicated he was in a mental crisis and had not slept in over 40 hours. Emerson admitted to (POPPD Officer) Thommen that he pulled both emergency shut-off handles because Emerson believed he was dreaming and wanted to wake up,” Dundon wrote.

. . . Emerson also said he had struggled with depression for six years and his best friend had recently passed away, according to court documents. He also admitted to trying “magic mushrooms” for the first time 48 hours prior to the flight, Dundon wrote.

So, aren't pilots routinely screened for psychological problems? Well, not really As of the 2012 link,

The case of the ranting JetBlue Airways captain—who went berserk when his co-pilot locked him out of the cockpit after noticing erratic behavior—got us wondering: how are airline pilots tested for soundness of mind?

Although the Federal Aviation Administration requires physicals every year for commercial pilots under 40 and every six months for those older, the FAA does not require psychological checks. The FAA-approved doctors order testing only if they think a pilot needs it.

. . . In the case of JetBlue captain Clayton Osbon, who snapped in mid-air on an Airbus A-320 on March 27, causing Flight 191 from New York to Las Vegas to be diverted to Amarillo, Texas, “it looked to me like a panic attack,” says Funk. The co-pilot “got the distraction out of the cockpit, which is the way you think as a crew member. He did what I expect any pilot at his level to do. You don’t fly at JetBlue if you’re a slouch.”

Once locked out, Osbon began shouting about threats from al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, and bombs aboard; he had to be subdued and strapped down by passengers, while the co-pilot took over and later landed the airliner. JetBlue is as mystified as anyone else about Osbon’s meltdown. “I’ve known the captain personally for a long period of time,” CEO Dave Barger told the “Today” show on March 28. “There [was] no indication of this at all in the past. Consummate professional.”

It’s exceptionally rare for a commercial pilot to simply lose it in flight, says John Cox, who flew for USAir for 25 years and is now president of Safety Operating Systems, an aviation safety consulting company in Washington, D.C. “I’ve been in aviation 42 years and I can’t come up with another case like this. This is an incapacitation event, and the leading cause of that is food poisoning…From a mental standpoint, it could be any number of things such as reaction to medication, a brain tumor, or a long list of things.”

In the case of Alaska Airlines pilot Emerson, it was magic mushrooms. But it's notable that Emerson was 44, which meant he was subject to physicals with some implicit psychological component at six-month intervals, and he had been suffering from depression for the past six years, yet he fell through the cracks.

Add to this the new tendency to legalize psychedelics, including magic mushrooms. Earlier this year,

Oregon has taken an unprecedented step in offering psilocybin, also known as magic mushrooms, to the public. Epic Healing Eugene - America's first licensed psilocybin service center - opened in June, marking Oregon's unprecedented step in offering the mind-bending drug to the public. The center now has a waitlist of more than 3,000 names, including people with depression, PTSD or end-of-life dread.

No prescription or referral is needed, but proponents hope Oregon's legalization will spark a revolution in mental health care. Clients do not need to live in Oregon to access psilocybin services but must be 21 years of age or older, said the state's Oregon Psilocybin Services. A preparation session must be completed with a licensed facilitator, the agency said.

It isn't known how Cpt Emerson obtained his 'shrooms, but it looks like, had he chosen, he could have swung by the legal dispensary in Eugene to participate in this revolution in mental health care. After all, 'shrooms are said to be remarkably helpful for, among others, those suffering from depression. Perhaps Edwards hadn't availed himself of the preparation session with a licensed facilitator. (Hey, how do you get that job?)

This is a front-burner issue for Robert Kennedy Jr:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the 2024 Democratic presidential legacy candidate with what may be the most famous last name in U.S. politics, says that he would legalize psychedelics and marijuana if elected to the White House – a promise that may surely get him support from psychedelic drug advocates in the United States. He also expressed his intent to federally tax both substances and use the revenue to create “healing centers” in rural areas for the millions of U.S. citizens who suffer from drug addiction. These healing centers would serve as a therapeutic tool for people recovering from substance abuse, where they could learn organic farming and heal physically, spiritually and emotionally[.]

Just get the meth heads on 'shrooms. That'll fix everything. It sounds to me as though the airline industry still needs a wakeup call, but the libertarians and others who want to legalize psychedelics at minimum are living in a dream world. It would be sad if a real crash had to raise this issue, rather than a close call.

But Really, Are Maher Bitar And Ariane Tabatabai Secret Agents?

This post on Xwitter sums up the questions many Republicans have been posing in recent weeks:

Maher Bitar, a Palestinian activist, Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian with deep ties in Iran are heading up our intelligence and defense. Robert Malley, who hired Tabatabai, had his security clearance removed. @MTG can oversight get answers? pic.twitter.com/L0Zk83cx5S

— #ProblemSolved (@ProblemSolved57) October 21, 2023

In other words, are Bitar, Tabatabai, and certain other figures like Reema Dodin currently working in sensitive jobs in the US government, actually agents of one sort or another for Iran or the Palestinians? If they are, while I acknowledge I'm a total outsider to that business, there are things that don't fit.

Let's just compare Bitar and Tabatabai to one of the most successful spies in recent history, Robert Hanssen, whose photo is at the top of this post. According to Wikipedia,

Robert Philip Hanssen (April 18, 1944 – June 5, 2023) was an American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent who spied for Soviet and Russian intelligence services against the United States from 1979 to 2001. His espionage was described by the Department of Justice as "possibly the worst intelligence disaster in U.S. history".

In 1979, three years after joining the FBI, Hanssen approached the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) to offer his services, beginning his first espionage cycle, lasting until 1981. He restarted his espionage activities in 1985 and continued until 1991, when he ended communications during the collapse of the Soviet Union, fearing he would be exposed. Hanssen restarted communications the next year and continued until his arrest. Throughout his spying, he remained anonymous to the Russians.

For starters, Hanssen had a long career as a spy that extended, with breaks, over a 22-year period, nearly as long as his career with the FBI itself. While Hanssen was remarkably careless at times in risking exposure through his sexual activities, the FBI appears to have discounted them and relied instead on his regular attendance at Catholic mass -- typically at times and parishes where his FBI superiors would see him -- to protect him. This appears to have worked for quite some time.

Hanssen's motives appear to have been enitirely financial, and he had an MBA, which suggests that his efforts were purpose-driven, methodical, and supplemented by his own growing background in counterintelligence. In general, his aim was to increase his value to his handlers by building credibility over a lengthy period of activity. As part of the overall effort, he at least made routine attempts to avoid bringing attention to himself while reinforcing a conservative Catholic public profile.

The Wikipeida entry on clandestine human intelligence says, at least of couriers,

Any involvement of the courier in activities that may draw attention from counterintelligence is unwise. For example, if there is a political party, friendship society, or other organization that would be considered favorable to Service B, couriers, under no circumstances, should be identified with them.

But wouldn't this apply to practically any clandestine operative? For instance, the Soviet government never showed serious interest in Lee Harvey Oswald's attempts to recruit himself as a Soviet spy, concerned that his various endorsements of communism indicated either mental instability or a likelihood that he was himself a CIA agent.

This would apply as well to Bitar's, Tabatabai's, and Dodin's fast-rising and high-profile careers as Iranian or Palestinian apologists, and in Bitar's and Dodin's cases well-documented participation in pro-Palestinian organizations and demonstrations. These immediately called attention to their potential subversive loyalties -- why would a clandestine organization want them in sensitive positions where they'd likely be constantly under suspicion? And even if they were placed in sensitive positions by a compromised superior, wouldn't this just throw immediate suspicion on the superior?

This may have happened, in fact, with Robert Malley, who is sometimes now thought to be the master spy responsible for recruiting Ariane Tabatabai. Maybe so, but if that was the case, he blew it, because he had his security clearance suspended and was put on leave from his job -- and i wouldn't be unusual for counterintellegence to leave Tabatabai in place to watch her and see whom she contacts.

So a real spy, a real mole, like Robert Hanssen, works over a much longer term and goes to some length not to draw attention to himself. His handlers will expect the same circumspection if only to protect themselves. Tabatabai and Bitar have had only short careers and by now are thoroughly blown -- from late adolescence, they did the opposite of keep a low profile. Instead, they come off as narcissistic self-promoters from the start.

I don't see them as spy material. They may well have influential sponsors who want to further their protégés' careers in intelligence or foreign affairs, but those sponsors have to be rank amateurs who if anything are doing damage to the causes they support. The decisions to hire them for sensitive positions are mainly incredibly bad personnel choices, but they've been made primarily through incompetence. At this point, they're more valuable to counterintelligence if they stay in their positions, because then they can be carefully watched.

And there's the other distinction, between actual agents of influence and useful idiots. At best, it seems to me that Tabatabai and Bitar are more on the useful idiot side, but I'm not sure if smart handlers on the Palestinian or Iranian side would even want them as useful idiots. They're narcissistic self-promoters playing in their own little personal dramas.