Trump: about to strike Iran, or not?

The New Neo Posted on by

The answer is “yes” – one or the other.

Here’s the NY Post on the subject, for what it’s worth:

Gen. Jack Keane — acting Army chief of staff at the start of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — told Fox News Channel that after the Islamic Republic’s latest rebuff of President Trump’s peace proposals, the US and Israel were ready to restart attacks using intelligence collected since the cease-fire went into effect April 8.

“It’ll be a combined operation with the United States and Israel going full-throttle, all-out, no half-measures here whatsoever,” Keane said on FNC’s “America’s Newsroom.”

If that’s the case, what would it look like? This war is against the regime and not the people, and so there is a limit to the number and type of targets that the US and Israel are willing to destroy.

According to Keane, the war has until now left about 30% of the slated targets remaining, and obliterating them will be the goal:

It’ll be those targets that the US and Israel wipe out next, including facilities tied to Iran’s missile and nuclear program, continued.

Along with military targets, Keane also suggested the US would take out Iran’s revenue sources, a threat Trump has repeatedly levied against Tehran.

Does he mean oil fields? I don’t know, but that’s what comes to mind.

The left and the isolationist right keep alternating between calling Trump a heinous criminal committing war crimes, and yelling “TACO” at him – which means “Trump always chickens out”. That way they’ve covered all the anti-Trump bases. It seems to me, though, that the “TACO” charge gives the Iranian regime the possibly false hope that if they wait Trump out he will never attack. It would serve them right for trusting the US MSM.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) This is one of the reasons why states should not automatically mail ballots to all registered voters:

A Marina Del Ray woman has admitted to bombshell charges that she paid homeless people on Skid Row to register to vote in a 20-year scheme tied to illegal petition signature collection.

She even let homeless people use her own address to register to vote — meaning mail-in ballots could be sent to her home, a plea agreement obtained by The California Post states.

(2) And speaking of elections, they’re investigating 2020 (again? still?):

[Todd] Blanche didn’t hedge. He didn’t offer the usual bureaucratic non-answer. He said it directly: “Well, there’s a ton of evidence that the [2020] election was rigged. That’s not something the DOJ needs to tell you about. There’s been evidence about that for many, many years. What I can tell you is that we have multiple investigations going on in Arizona, in Georgia, in Fulton County, Georgia.”

The questions driving those investigations are fundamental ones that, frankly, should have been asked and answered years ago. Why is it taking so long? Blanche addressed that head-on, too. “They’re very good at hiding misconduct and hiding — hiding what they’re doing,” he said. “And so that’s why we’re very focused on finding out whether the right people voted, whether people who were supposed to vote voted, whether there was one vote cast per voter.”

I doubt anything will come of this – not necessarily because there wasn’t fraud (although it’s certainly possible that there wasn’t), but because election fraud is indeed very difficult to prove except in very isolated cases in which a person is caught red-handed (as in example #1 above). I’ve said it before and I’ll probably say it again, but with universal mail-in voting as well as machine in-person voting, there simply aren’t enough built-in safeguards. The perception of fraud being relatively easy to pull off and relatively hard to find is in itself toxic to election trust. Election security and trust in the validity of elections are exceedingly important and have been tremendously undermined in recent years.

(3) And speaking of elections – again – Cassidy is toast:

Cassidy, who has represented Louisiana in the U.S. Senate since 2015, did not finish in the top two of the Republican primary. He will not advance to the June 27 runoff. His Senate career is over.

The two candidates who did advance, Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow and State Treasurer John Fleming, now face each other in a runoff that will determine which of them represents the Louisiana Republican Party against the Democratic nominee in November. In Louisiana, that general election is a formality.

Trump advocated against Cassidy, and understandably so: Senator Cassidy voted with seven other GOP members for Trump’s conviction in the impeachment effort that followed J6. But that wasn’t all Cassidy did – or tried to do – to Trump:

In 2023, after Trump was indicted for mishandling classified documents, Cassidy called for Trump to drop out of the 2024 presidential election. When Trump won the Republican nomination, Cassidy declined to endorse him.

(4) Cuba has obtained drones:

Cuba has acquired more than 300 military drones and recently began discussing plans to use them to attack the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, U.S. military vessels and possibly Key West, Fla., 90 miles north of Havana, according to classified intelligence shared with Axios.

Why it matters: The intelligence — which could become a pretext for U.S. military action — shows the degree to which the Trump administration sees Cuba as a threat because of developments in drone warfare and the presence of Iranian military advisers in Havana, a senior U.S. official said.

I would have thought it shows the degree to which Cuba is a threat.

(5) On Trump and China:

At their joint press conference on Thursday, President Trump said that he and Xi were “united” when it came to Iran: no nukes, open the Strait of Hormuz without Iranian blackmail, and no Chinese weapons sales.

And while President Trump said before the summit he didn’t need Chinese help with Iran, after their initial meeting, he told Sean Hannity that China will help “in any way it can.”

If all of this comes true, it is very bad news for Tehran.

That’s a pretty big “if.”

Stone Age dentists

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s not some sort of metaphor or epithet. Apparently, there really were Stone Age dentists:

Neanderthals used stone drills to treat cavities almost 60,000 years ago in what is the earliest known evidence of dental treatment.

The single molar, which was unearthed in a cave in southern Siberia, features a deep hole that appears to have been created using a sharp, thin stone tool during the lifetime of the tooth’s owner.

While the prospect of stone age root canal treatment may be excruciating to even contemplate, archaeologists say the discovery provides remarkable insights into Neanderthals’ advanced behaviours – and possibly their gritty disposition.

Dr Kseniya Kolobova, an archaeologist at the Siberian branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Novosibirsk, said: “This discovery powerfully reinforces the now well-supported view that Neanderthals were not the brutish, inferior cousins of outdated stereotypes but a sophisticated human population with complex cognitive and cultural capacities. [It] adds an entirely new dimension – invasive medical treatment – to the growing list of advanced Neanderthal behaviours.”

The dentist was pretty good, too:

A dental professor, who reviewed images of the tooth but was not part of the research, rated the Neanderthal’s work as “a decent job”.

“If I was marking this for a dental student, I wouldn’t give it an A, but given the circumstances it’s pretty impressive,” said Justin Durham, a professor of orofacial pain at Newcastle University and the British Dental Association’s chief scientific adviser.

The smoothed edges of the drilled cavity, and wear patterns inside it, suggested the individual survived and continued to chew with the tooth for some time after the procedure.

The tooth, which has been dated to be 59,000 years old, was found in Chagyrskaya, where the remains of Neanderthals and thousands of stone tools have been excavated. The lower molar features a deep hole in the centre of the tooth extending into the pulp cavity. Microscopic X-ray imaging revealed changes in mineralisation that indicated severe tooth decay.

The researchers conducted experiments on three modern human teeth to demonstrate that a hole of the same shape and same patterns of microscopic grooves could be created by manually rotating a narrow, elongated tool made from local jasper, between two fingers.

That was in the Old Stone Age, the Paleolithic. The surgical technique thought till now to be oldest is trepanning – drilling holes in skulls – from the New Stone Age (Neolithic). It apparently was quite widespread:

Trepanation is a worldwide practice that was extremely common during the Neolithic era. The main pieces of archaeological evidence are in the forms of human remains. At one burial site in France dated to 6500 BCE, 40 out of 120 prehistoric skulls found had trepanation holes. At the time only around 40% of people survived the procedure.[13] A skull of a child in an Harappan burial at Lothal dated to 2200 BCE shows signs of trepanation.

More than 1,500 trephined skulls from the Neolithic period (representing 5–10% of all cranial remains from that era) have been uncovered throughout the world – from Europe, Siberia, China and the Americas. Most of the trephined crania belong to adult males, but women and children are also represented.

More and more of the findings these days about ancient humans indicate that they were more sophisticated than previously thought. And perhaps even more stoic.

Israel’s defamation lawsuit against the NY Times for publishing the Kristof piece

The New Neo Posted on by

From Alan Dershowitz; very instructive:

As I thought, he says the lawsuit won’t work in the US. One reason is that an entity like Israel can’t sue under US law; it has to be a person who was harmed. Plus, the standard is very high in the US when suing a newspaper for defamation, due to New York Times Co. v. Sullivan (ironic, isn’t it, that the case involved the Times?).

Nevertheless, Dershowitz makes the point that Israel could sue in other countries that make it easier to win against media outlets, such as in Britain.

Dershowitz also points out that the NY Times’ printing of these particular allegations – which already had been floating around online for ages – gives the stories a kind of gravitas they didn’t have before, and could convince credulous readers who were neutral on the Israel question to turn against Israel because they trust that the Times wouldn’t print mere online rumors or mere Palestinian propaganda. Those who follow the Times more closely know that of course the paper would do that – and already has, many times. But lots of people aren’t that tuned in to these topics and can be persuaded by the Times’ high reputation of old.

Dershowitz also points out that the article was careful not just to be published as opinion – which doesn’t really protect it legally, although that’s the goal – but to not name any of the persons being accused of these crimes. Naming a person falsely would give that person a viable causer of action in the United States.

Plus, Dershowitz says that journalists are the most unethical group of people he’s ever dealt with; I can well believe it.

This National Review article describes what the advantages would be of a defamation lawsuit in Israel, even if the defamation case would basically go nowhere if brought in the US:

Which brings us to the real mechanism: 28 U.S.C. § 1782.

Once an Israeli proceeding is in reasonable contemplation, an interested person can apply in the Southern District of New York (where the New York Times is headquartered) to compel evidence production from a U.S. entity for use in foreign litigation. A properly framed § 1782 application does not ask the court to adjudicate the case; it simply asks the court to order the Times to produce the factual basis for one published allegation.

The subpoena categories write themselves: documents identifying the source and evidentiary basis for the dog allegation; fact-checking notes and editorial review records; communications with cited human rights organizations about this specific claim; internal discussions of reliability or corroboration. The Times will obviously raise reporter’s privilege. That is expected. But the answer here is a measured response: Nobody is asking for every source on every story. The request is for the factual foundation for one allegation the Times has publicly called corroborated and extensively fact-checked and “deeply reported.” Either show the corroboration or explain why you cannot. Both answers are informative.

None of this is a technical defamation case, but the critics declaring the claim dead on arrival are focusing on the colloquial use of the word “defamation” expressed in a spokesperson’s tweet and missing the tree for the forest. The real question is whether there exists a narrow, disciplined legal theory that forces the Times to produce the evidentiary basis for one of the most inflammatory factual allegations it has ever published. And there is.

Of course, many many more people have paid attention to the Kristof piece (many of whom might believe it) than would pay attention to any legal findings delegitimizing it. The Times and Kristof are well aware of that. They want their lies to get all the way around the world before the truth has a chance to get its boots on.

Steve Cohen of Tennessee’s 9th won’t be seeking re-election – plus, Virginia’s recent redistricting history

The New Neo Posted on by

I confess I was unaware of Steve Cohen before a couple of days ago, despite the fact that he’s been representing Tennesse’s 9th district in the US House for 19 years. The 9th has been a majority-minority district, but now that the state is being redistricted, he’s announced he’s not seeking re-election.

Cohen’s a few days short of his 77th birthday. Not a bad time to retire – but until the redistricting was announced, he wasn’t retiring; he was running for re-election. He’s also a white man who has represented a gerrymandered black district for all those years, with no serious challenges.

But even before dropping out, this year Cohen faced a Democrat challenger who might have threatened him: Justin Pearson, who is young, black, and to the left of Cohen (see this).

Now Cohen’s seat is also threatened for the first time by someone from the right – a black Republican woman named Charlotte Bergmann.

Black Republican woman? Isn’t that an oxymoron, according to Democrats? After all, black Republicans are just white supremacists.

In addition, as was virtually inevitable, SCOTUS has refused to hear the Democrats’ appeal of the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling that its recent referendum on redistricting was held in violation of the Virginia state constitution. That’s because SCOTUS ordinarily doesn’t have jurisdiction over cases that involve state courts interpreting state law – which explains the fact that the SCOTUS decision was unanimous. The Virginia lawyers and AG who were in charge of the appeal knew that (it’s really quite elementary), so they probably filed the appeal in order to use the SCOTUS ruling to rail against SCOTUS as an “undemocratic” institution and to support the Democrats’ fight to pack the Court if they gain power. To wit:

In a statement following the Supreme Court’s denial, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones went on offense. He framed the decision as part of a broader national effort by Republicans and conservative courts to consolidate political power ahead of the 2026 midterms. Jones accused President Donald Trump, Republican-led legislatures, and the judiciary of systematically undermining voting rights, particularly for black voters and communities of color, arguing that recent redistricting battles across multiple states reflected a coordinated strategy to entrench Republican control in Congress. He characterized both the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling and the nation’s highest court’s refusal to intervene as direct assaults on democratic representation and the will of Virginia voters.

The decision in the Virginia court rested on the Virginia constitution, in particular an amendment passed in 2020 to ensure that the state didn’t gerrymander. The 6-5 map that controls at present – the one the Democrats tried to overturn – was constructed in order to not be partisan, as the 2020 amendment dictated (the article is from 2020):

As votes for the 2020 General Election continue to get counted, it is clear that Virginia’s amendment to reform gerrymandering has passed. Campaign Legal Center (CLC) has been a leading national advocate for the passage of this amendment, supporting local partner OneVirginia 2021 throughout the process.

“Voters have said loud and clear that they are ready to move past Virginia’s long history of gerrymandering,” said Paul Smith, vice president of Campaign Legal Center (CLC). “After a sustained effort by a diverse coalition of national and in-state groups, legislators and the electorate have both proven that bipartisan solutions are possible when democratic principles are placed over partisanship. Paired with strong enabling legislation, the amendment will help Virginia adopt fair maps and a more inclusive process.”

Virginia will have a new 16-member commission, made up of eight legislators and eight citizens, divided evenly between the two parties. There will be measures in place to ensure public feedback and transparency.

It turned out, however, that the commission members ended up unable to agree on the new maps in a timely fashion, so the Virginia Supreme Court took over and appointed two masters to draw the maps. Those are the ones in operation now, the ones the Democrats tried to gerrymander again. They would have been successful, too, had they had enough time to comply with the constitutional requirements for holding the referendum.

Why was the Harvey Weinstein jury hopelessly deadlocked in his third NYC sex crimes trial?

The New Neo Posted on by

This is why. The accusation was that he had raped actress Jessica Mann in 2013. However:

Mann, now 40, broke down several times during her painful testimony as she faced off against her abuser for the third time after a jury at last year’s retrial could not convict the ex-powerhouse producer of rape.

“I said, ‘No’ over and over and I tried to leave,” Mann said through sobs, shortly before she demonstrated to jurors how Weinstein allegedly pinned both of her wrists above her head during the sex attack.

Mann had testified that she did have a consensual relationship at one point because she felt it could lead to a “loving relationship” — while also acknowledging she knew about Weinstein’s power in Tinseltown and how it affected her decision to get involved with him.

At what point did that consensual relationship end, how clearly was that communicated to Weinstein, and why were they alone together at the time of the alleged rape? Did the jury factor into their deliberations the fact that Mann is an actress and that her tears could be performative?

Most important of all, probably, was this piece of evidence [my emphasis]:

Weinstein’s attorney Teny Geragos held Mann on the ropes during a brutal, multi-day cross-examination when she was pressed repeatedly about her relationship with Weinstein and a so-called love note — written by Mann just two days after the alleged New York City attack — which was introduced for the first time at any trial.

“Do I love him or the idea of him? With him — easy. The idea of expanding that — fulfilling,” Mann mused — two days after she said she was sexually assaulted by Weinstein in a room at the DoubleTree hotel in Manhattan.

Based on that note, I think he should have been acquitted – not because he didn’t rape her (that is unknown and at this point unknowable), but because the note introduces very strong reasonable doubt that he did.

Sexual relationships are often fraught with miscommunication and/or misperception, plus failures of memory and ex post facto revisions of memory. The year 2013 is also a long long time ago.

So, what went on between Trump and Xi during the China visit?

The New Neo Posted on by

Hard to say exactly. Here are six points as the NY Post sees it:

1. Taiwan remains a flashpoint …

2. Xi shows willingness to help Trump on Iran [not with the war, but with keeping the Strait open] …

3. Trump teases trade deals and investment — though the summit was light on specifics …

4. Xi ‘open’ to opening up China for US business …

5. Pomp and pageantry reign supreme …

6. Trump and Xi built on their personal connections – but the US-China relationship could still go south

Points 5 and 6 are really just fillers. And of course, there may have been discussions behind the scenes that are not being revealed.

NOTE: Here is the perspective of Larry Kudlow:

Mr. Xi is bluffing [on Taiwan].

In recent weeks he has watched America end his influence in Venezuela, the Panama Canal, soon it will be Cuba, and of course Iran. I mean Communist China’s buying 90 percent of Iran’s oil and gas exports.

But with Mr. Trump’s air-tight blockade of Iranian ports, China is starving for energy. They might make a deal with us, but that too remains to be seen if it comes under Treasury Man Scott Bessent’s investment board idea.

And on top of all that, China’s economy has never recovered from the real estate property crash of a couple years ago. …

My point here is that while China has invested substantially in a strong military, their economy is malfunctioning and their political standing in the world is slipping badly.

All this reminds me of President Reagan and Gorbachev. The American economy was booming in the Reagan 1980s.

This seems somewhat optimistic to me. But, who knows?

And of course, if a Democrat president takes the helm, it all can change. Xi may be trying to wait it out while simultaneously trying to influence US elections in that direction.

How “journalism” works these days

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a discussion of the Kristof piece in the Times, but it’s actually of more general value than that because it explains how modern journalism works – not just for the NY Times but for so many media outlets. I’ve cued it up to show a ten-minute segment that I think is highly informative on the subject:

It may not be the SAVE Act, but it’s something

The New Neo Posted on by

Republicans got more serious in 2024 about trying to block the opportunity for fraud in the elections. This effort will be ramped up even further in 2026.

At least, that’s the plan:

Under former co-chairs Lara Trump and Michael Whatley, the Republican National Committee (RNC) did yeoman’s work in 2024 to build an election integrity operation which combatted election interference, ensured the polling places were not compromised, and that any irregularities and attempts to erode or block the people’s vote were immediately challenged and addressed.

Ahead of the 2026 midterms, RNC Chair Joe Gruters has plans to build even further on this with a multi-million dollar election integrity initiative across the U.S. …

“Describing the RNC as “disciplined and ruthless,” Chairman Joe Gruters revealed that the committee launched a multimillion-dollar election integrity push ahead of the 2026 midterms.

“The effort involves hiring directors in 17 states to recruit poll workers, poll watchers and election observers, while coordinating legal and Election Day oversight across key battlegrounds, Fox News Digital has learned.”

“Disciplined and ruthless” aren’t terms we usually use to describe the GOP. But both of those things are necessary. And I have to say I’ve seen more of those qualities recently than in the past, especially in terms of redistricting. Yes, Indiana and South Carolina have been disappointments in that regard, and the failure to pass the SAVE Act in the Senate isn’t good at all. But still, they’re doing better than in previous years.

Will this “election integrity initiative” bear fruit in 2026? Who knows?