Trump takes Vance off the Iran case

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not sure why Vance was ever assigned to Iran in the first place, except that Trump may have felt that Vance would be perceived by the Iranians as more willing to deal than, say, Rubio. Trump wanted to Give Peace a Chance.

But at this point, Trump doesn’t seem any too pleased with Vance’s attitude towards that conflict, or to Trump’s handling of it:

Trump has tasked Vance to put his “complete and total attention” on corruption in Democrat-run states, which Trump insists is a much higher priority than negotiating with Iran. In fact, Trump declared in the same post that we don’t need a deal with Iran at all …

Vance has chaired Trump’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud for the last several months, which has mainly focused on Democrat-run states and cities anyway. Trump’s order for Vance to focus exclusively on this effort is new, and it follows Vance’s public criticism of Trump’s approach to Iran and Israel.

It also follows a last-ditch effort by Vance to cut a deal …

Vance has said that the Iran war was the reason for the midterm debacle. It certainly was part of the reason. But the Democrats’ brilliant plan to emphasize “affordability” (with the help of the MSM, and without needing to describe their supposed solutions) was more important, according to polls. Also, what element of the Iran war were people annoyed with? Wasn’t it that we dithered around trying to negotiate with those who cannot be trusted to negotiate? Wasn’t that Vance’s department?

This difference between Trump and Vance represents a very real split on the right. It’s between the Iran hawks and the isolationists, and it’s nothing new. However, it’s been fueled by the likes of the neo-Buchananesque Tucker wing. It’s hard to estimate that wing’s size, but I believe it’s consequential. Make no mistake about it, Vance is on that side, as has been apparent for quite some time. That he doesn’t necessarily buy into all the Jew-hating doesn’t mean he isn’t basically aligned with that wing on a foreign policy level.

[NOTE: I will add that I believe that one reason Republican turnout was down in this election was the influence of the Tucker wing. He explicitly told his listeners he cannot vote for the GOP this round; he started saying this back in June:

Carlson asked how any American “could support a political party that’s not loyal to the United States.”

“It’s not possible to vote for people like that and I’m not going to,” he said. “I voted Republican my entire life, I worked at Fox News … I’ve been a consistent defender for 35 years of the Republican Party, but there’s no defending this because it’s immoral.” …

“And if I’m out, then I think a lot of other people are out, too.”

Yes, a lot of his follower are bots or foreigners. But there are a lot of real voters in the US who listen to him and whom he influences, too. He wanted them to stay home, and they did.]

[NOTE II: I had hoped to publish that piece on the midterms and the GOP Congress and Thune today. I’m going to postpone it, though; too many other chores I have to do. However, I really do think I’ll be publishing it tomorrow.]

On the topic of election fraud in 2026

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicsguy” writes:

… [H]ere’s a very interesting article giving some POSSIBLE reasons for the statistically anomalous 20 million increase in Democrat votes last week. I know Neo abhors any idea of conspiracy in voting fraud, but this is worth a read:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/11/it-was-a-coup/

First, just to clear something up: I don’t abhor the idea of conspiracy in voting fraud, although of course I abhor fraud if and when it occurs. I’ve written a huge number of posts on the subject of voting fraud and I believe several things about it. The first is that of course it sometimes occurs. The second is that it tends to occur in geographic areas dominated by blue cities offsetting redder rural areas. The third is that much of the supposed “statistical” evidence for it is weak. The fourth (and perhaps most important) is that if it’s done well it’s almost impossible to detect.

Even more important, perhaps, is something I’ve written many many times: when voting security is lax – and in particular with the use of computers rather than hand-counting of paper ballots, as well as universal or widespread mail-in ballots – trust in the integrity of the voting process becomes fatally flawed whether there is significant fraud or not. That’s happened in the US; trust is very much broken. Once that happens, each side tends to think an election where they lost was stolen by the other side.

I read the piece physicsguy linked, and I’m unimpressed by it. For example, I’ve read previously that in many elections the results actually do seem to occur almost everywhere and to a similar degree – for example, let’s say we’re talking about a 5% swing to Democrats, or close races breaking uniformly to Democrats. Same is true for election years in which Republicans tend to get the breaks. The latter occurred, for example, in 2024. I remember the maps; do you? Here’s one, for example.

Now, it the author of that article had done a detailed comparison to the election of 2024 and compared the swings to the GOP back then to the swings to the Democrats this time, I’d be much more interested. In fact, I haven’t seen anyone claiming fraud in the 2026 election doing that sort of analysis (if you find something of that sort, please give me a link). The bank-and-forth cries out for explanation, if the Democrats could commit such widespread and influential fraud in 2020 and 2026, why were they asleep at the wheel in 2024? Surely they hated Trump and the Democrats just as much.

I suggest that anyone who hasn’t read my analysis of the 2026 results in the state of New Hampshire, please do so (here’s the link). When I looked at those results, in a state (NH) with enormous election security and which previously was controlled by the GOP at the state level, and saw the enormity of the swing to Democrats (with one anomaly: the Republican governor hung on), I became more convinced than ever that the 2026 election results were basically bona fide and represent an actual trend that holds for most of the nation.

That trend is the thing to which the right needs to be paying attention. Claims of fraud without sufficient evidence not only serve as an excuse, but they are counterproductive in that they can further depress turnout on the right. If everything is fixed, then there’s no hope and no reason to go to the polls. If low turnout on the right was the problem in this election – and I think there is strong evidence that was the case – then the claim of fraud everywhere is highly likely to depress that turnout further.

NOTE: I’m open to changing my mind about the 2026 election and fraud if I see an argument and evidence that is convincing and that explains what happened in 2024. So far I haven’t seen it.

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Twice-deported illegal alien gets on a flight from Newark to New Orleans and makes a bomb threat:

The New York Post reported that the bomb threat turned out to be a hoax. Local authorities also confirmed that Gomez-Alberto changed into all-black before making his run for the cockpit to lend credence to his threat.

As of Tuesday, Gomez-Alberto is in jail without bail. He is a Honduran illegal alien who spent over a decade repeatedlycrossing into the United States, being arrested, and then receiving either deportation or temporary release.

(2) Republican House member Massie’s attempt to impeach Hegseth has failed. But it is nearly certain that, when the new Congress is sworn in, a new and Democrat-led attempt will succeed.

Massie will be gone; he was defeated in the primary by Republican Ed Gallrein, who went on to win the general. It’s nice to see Massie go, but it doesn’t matter all that much because the Democrats now will have such a huge majority.

(3) And House members such as Mississippi Republican French Hill might just take Massie’s place in the sense of voting to impeach Hegseth:

A Republican congressman who narrowly won a seventh House term in deep-red Arkansas refused Sunday to rule out voting to impeach War Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“I want to hear the debate on it to see if it merits impeachment versus some other disciplinary action or action by the president, if he’s not getting the job done in leading the Department of War,” Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.) told CBS News’ “Face The Nation.”

I’d love to hear his definition of “getting the job done.”

(4) This article is not a spoof, I’m afraid. It’s all too real, all too ironic (a mild word for it), and all too typical of the UN:

“The UN General Assembly just elected the murderous Islamic Republic of Iran to its Committee for Program and Coordination, the main body shaping the world organization’s priorities on Women’s Rights, Human Rights, Disarmament, and Counter-Terrorism,” [UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer] wrote on X/Twitter after the vote was announced.

(5) Back in the 1940s James Thurber had a cartoon series called The War Between Men and Women. You can find a great many of the cartoons at this site. For example, there’s this:

He saw women as inherently more aggressive in these skirmishes. It’s certainly not universally true, but it definitely sometimes is the case, and now that women are so prominent in politics (compared to the 1940s, it’s night and day) we see this sort of thing with increasing frequency. By “this sort of thing” I mean the continual claiming of the mantle of victimhood while simultaneously advocating the oppression of men:

I know so many women who complain and complain about men in a kind of kneejerk way, much as they complain about the US.

(6) I have a long post in draft form on the topic of Thune, the SAVE Act, anger at the GOP members of Congress, and this past election. I’d hoped to get it ready today (I still have quite a bit to do on it), but I have had a lot of obligations to deal with today connected with chores involving my ex-husband.

I think I’ll get the post out tomorrow. I wanted to mention that I’m not ignoring the topic, which I think is huge. And you may find what I have to say on it to be different than what most people are saying.

Veterans Day; Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to just barely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.

Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).

I’m also old enough – and had a teacher ancient enough – to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade – although without being given much historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.

You can find the story of the poem here [well, you could when the post was first written, but the link is dead now]. It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater. It’s not necessarily great poetry, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.

The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice – and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.

The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed – even if each peace was only a temporary one.

And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence – or have continually threatened to – ever since.

So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one – and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has clearly not yet arrived – and, realistically but sadly, most likely it never will.

The refinery issue

The New Neo Posted on by

Please watch this; the part I’ve cued up is just two minutes long:

This isn’t something I’ve researched much yet, but my sense is that it’s more complicated than that.

It’s not as though Trump was unaware of the problem. But it’s been rough going. That article I just linked is from early September, 2026:

U.S. President Donald Trump told oil producers and refiners that he wants lower gasoline prices, immediately, at a meeting at the White House this week.

As gasoline prices remain above $4 per gallon on average across the United States and drivers are heading for the most expensive Labor Day weekend gas prices on record, President Trump urged executives from Chevron, Marathon Petroleum, Valero Energy, and PBF Energy, among others, to raise refining capacity to increase fuel availability.

This topic is way outside my field of expertise, and at the moment I don’t have time to do a deep dive on it. But apparently this has been going on for a long long time:

At the White House meeting, the executives reportedly discussed efforts to boost existing capacity and, most of all, the Renewable Fuel Standard. Some refiners criticized the blending targets as unattainable, which are driving up gasoline costs, sources with knowledge of the closed-door meeting told Bloomberg.

Moreover, U.S. refiners are not even entertaining the idea of building new refineries to ease potential similar supply crunches in the long term. …

Despite the deep pockets and the blockbuster profits this year, oil companies are unwilling to sink billions of U.S. dollars into a costly new construction venture that may not even be too profitable when it starts up in about five years, as fuel demand is expected to level off and even decline.

Why is it expected to decline?

More here:

A review of EIA refinery shutdown data indicates that approximately 2.6 million barrels per day of individual U.S. refinery capacity has been shuttered since 2001. Meanwhile, surviving refineries have been expanded, debottlenecked and made substantially more productive.

In other words, America did not simply shrink its refining system. America concentrated it.

We closed numerous facilities while investing heavily in the survivors. The result is fewer physical refineries, larger individual plants and less geographic redundancy in portions of the country. EIA’s 2026 data show 128 operating refineries and two idle facilities. That distinction matters when something goes wrong.

A barrel of Gulf Coast refining capacity is not necessarily a substitute for a barrel of lost West Coast refining capacity. Pipelines, ports, product specifications, transportation costs and refinery configurations matter. …

COVID provided an extraordinary stress test.

U.S. refining capacity fell 4.5% in a single year, to approximately 18.1 million barrels per day at the beginning of 2021. Six refineries closed during 2020. EIA attributed the closures to several causes, including collapsing petroleum demand, poor refinery economics and plans that in some cases predated the pandemic. Some facilities subsequently converted to renewable-fuel production.

This is where discussions of refinery closures can become too political too quickly. Not every refinery closed because of government policy. Some were old. Some were uneconomic. Some suffered accidents. COVID destroyed demand. Some companies preferred investing their capital elsewhere. Some refineries were converted to renewable diesel. Environmental compliance requirements and changing federal and state policies also influenced capital decisions.

Regardless of the explanation, capital allocation decisions ultimately depend on expected risk-adjusted returns. Capital asks a simpler question: What return am I likely to earn if I put another billion dollars here? If the expected return is inadequate relative to the risk, the money flows somewhere else.

Much more at the link, including this: “But refining is not like turning up the thermostat. A refinery already operating near its practical limit cannot magically process another 100,000 barrels tomorrow. Nor can a gasoline-oriented configuration instantaneously maximize diesel production.”

NOTE: As I said, there’s much much more at the link. I haven’t had time to read all of it, and at the moment I have some obligations that I need to tend to – however, I plan to read it a bit later today and perhaps add something more to this post. In the meantime, I have little doubt that some of you readers are a lot more up to speed on this than I am.

This type of ed is special, all right

The New Neo Posted on by

Special education teacher Dana Zentgraf has some advice for women, and she wanted to share it with the world:

It’s your son too. It’s all of them,” Zentgraf wrote in a Facebook post under her online name, “Da Graf.” “They are all menace[s] to society and we need to stop giving birth to them.”

“I have news for the mothers of boys who believe they raised their sons ‘right’: In the world we live in, raising a boy right at home does not guarantee that he will be seen or treated right outside those doors,” she continued. “You can do everything in your power to raise him to be a good man … But once he steps outside your home, he enters a patriarchal world that has taught men, in ways both subtle and overt, that they hold power over women.”

“If it’s too late to abort, raise him like your life depends on it because it does. All of our lives depend on it.”

If she indeed posted that, should this woman be teaching anyone? Of course not. She’s free to express such thoughts, but she shouldn’t be employed as a teacher or in any field in which she interacts with the public. And yet – at least as far as I can tell – she still holds her position.

But this post isn’t really about Zentgraf. It’s about the prevalence of this sort of unhinged rage, whether against men or any other group, and the somewhat-puzzling fact that so many teachers and others in the so-called helping professions think it’s perfectly okay to express such thoughts. It was (and still is, actually) a widespread phenomenon after the murder of CEO Brian Thompson and in particular after the murder of Charlie Kirk. We saw it after 10/7. We see it and see it and see it.

It’s not a totally new phenomenon. But what is relatively new is that the internet – and especially social media – give it a perfect chance to spread widely and to be normed. A person gets used to reading this sort of thing and seeing it get attention and approval from like-minded people who have found each other in online forums, and over time the expression of such thoughts seems more and more acceptable. Politicians, comedians (Dave Chapelle is a recent example), and other celebrities add to the din of the baying hounds.

Sometimes if a person goes too far there are consequences; sometimes not. But the Overton Window of what is “too far” has certainly shifted. And I don’t think we’re going back any time soon, or perhaps never.

Trump says his deportation program might have been too tough

The New Neo Posted on by

He also floats the idea that illegal aliens who’ve been here ten or fifteen years and been law-abiding ought to be given some sort of status that allows them to stay.

Here is the excerpt from the interview:

When Trump took office for the second time and announced his intent to close the border and deport illegal aliens, I believed (and I said to people I know) that he would concentrate on deporting actual criminals, not just criminals in the sense of having entered the country illegally. I believed that was what most Americans wanted, and that if the border was simultaneously closed and stayed closed (which would probably require the right to retain power, or it would open again), that would be sufficient. Deportation of all eleven million or twenty million illegal aliens was probably possible, but it would cause a huge backlash.

Mostly, Trump did what I wanted. But – as always was the danger – some people were deported whose only crime was entering the country, and whose stories were going to be amplified by the press and the left. Plus, the methods used were sometimes draconian, and some protestors were killed (probably killed in self-defense, but maybe not in some cases and in any event it was something that could and would be exploited by the left).

I think Trump is correct when he indicates in that video that the majority of people don’t want the abuela down the street deported – the lady who has never committed a crime other than her original illegal entry into this country. And it is absolutely the case that deporting such people will present the left with a golden opportunity to make the right look bad.

That’s been the case for a long long long time, as long as I’ve been blogging and even earlier. I’ve never come up with a solution for it.

How much of last Tuesday’s results were because of this? I think it was in there, but can’t quantify to what extent. I think “affordability” – which I feel was a brilliant campaign tactic by the left – was a larger factor. But I also think Trump is correct in that clip in terms of observation, whether you like what he says or not.

And I think any compromise on his part on this score will alienate a large portion of the right, as such moves from Republicans always have.

Whether or not Trump will actually change policy on this is anyone’s guess. He often floats ideas to see what will happen. Maybe he even wants to suggest such a compromise with the left because he’s hoping they’ll refuse to compromise, and that will end up making them look bad.

I don’t know.

ADDENDUM 6:00 PM:

By the way, this isn’t as much of a stretch for Trump as you might think. I suggest you look at the following older posts of mine: this one from 2025, as well as this from 2016 when Trump was first running.

From the latter post, here’s an excerpt (the quote in the first paragraph is from a 2016 Hot Air article that now gives a 404 message but dealt with Trump’s earlier less restrictive ideas on immigration):

“To make its point, the ad [made by people opposing Trump on the right] pulls from sources that range from 1990 to July 2015. … The sources on Trump’s positions on “amnesty” come from 2013 and June of last year…The tweet in 2013 came at the same time that Marco Rubio put together the Gang of 8 deal on immigration in the Senate, for which voters and other Republican candidates have punished him ever since. Trump’s 2013 tweet basically summarizes the Gang of 8 approach – secure the borders, then legalize most of the remaining illegal immigrants after background checks and fines, which some consider “amnesty.” The June 2015 statement appears to go a little farther in providing a “path,” presumably to citizenship, and Trump made that statement in the context of the presidential campaign. The difference might be that Trump wants a “touchback” first – deportation followed by immediate readmission – but that would be almost impossible to accomplish, and in the end no different in substance than the Gang of 8 deal which GOP voters mainly opposed.”

I [neo] have little doubt that Trump will either say he is being misrepresented in this ad, or has changed his mind. And I have little doubt that most of his supporters would find that A-okay. But I’ve long wondered—long before I ever saw this ad … —why Trump is forgiven for words and revisions that other candidates aren’t forgiven for. Many of his supporters say it’s because he’s strong on immigration, and that’s the most important thing, but I’ve also long noticed that he’s not been consistent on immigration and that, even if you only consider his words since he entered the campaign, they sound much tougher than they are.

In other words, he has gone back and forth at least somewhat on the subject over the years. That’s not so strange; he’s been in public life a long time. But also, in my 2025 post, you can see some backtracking even that recently.

As I indicated in my post today, I don’t know exactly what Trump’s goal is. I think he’s testing the waters.

Worldwide “anti-Zionism” – trolls and others

The New Neo Posted on by

Since I instituted the new comment policy a couple of months ago, trolls are blocked more efficiently and mostly automatically. I still get to see what they write, of course. But you don’t.

I don’t usually feature any of these comments, and don’t plan to do so in the future. But this one struck me as being emblematic of what’s out there, so here it is:

The greater of two evils is you disgusting Zionist scum who want to support Israel and my not voting made you lose. Hopefully Israel is destroyed so nobody can ever argue we must support it again. That money sink that steals all our tax money deserves to be nuked. And hopefully it will be.

It’s kind of a garden-variety sentiment these days, of the type you see online quite constantly if you do much online reading. Lies about Israel, plus vicious gleeful murderous intent.

The most interesting thing about it is who is spreading this sort of thing. There are so many possibilities. That particular comment has designators that place it as coming from the US, but of course people can cloak their locations in various ways so you can’t rely on that. Here are some of the possibilities for motive (whether the source is local or abroad; paid, a bot, or a volunteer):

(1) Some Israel-hating Arab country, or Iran.
(2) Russia or China, in order to further bitter infighting on the US right.
(3) Home-grown (US) radical Muslims, or foreign ones.
(4) Leftists, home or abroad.
(5) But more likely (IMHO) it might originate with someone on the Tuckeresque right – again either at home or abroad. The Tuckeresque right is more numerous than neo-Nazis these days, although the latter is a possibility as well.

A related thought – I was listening to the following video last night. It’s a highly informative discussion of all the forces that for decades have been spreading the “anti-Zionist” message worldwide. I speeded it up to listen, as I often do. If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, just watch however much you can. I really think it’s worth it: