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The New Neo Posted on by

(1) In yesterday’s primaries on the GOP side, we had the defeat of NC member of Congress Madison Cawthorn. I hadn’t been following his trajectory closely, but let’s just say he had major issues. The link provides further details. Because the district he is coming from is red, his ouster probably won’t affect the House balance of power.

(2) Speaking of yesterday’s primaries, the fight between GOP Senate candidates Mehmet Oz and David McCormick in Pennsylvania is too close to call. This was the contest in which celebrity Oz was backed by Trump, angering a lot of people on the right who don’t trust Oz and who prefer McCormick. The race is so close that a mandatory recount may be triggered. Whoever wins, I hope he’s strong enough to beat the very “progressive” Democrat John Fetterman, who’s got his own problems of the health variety.

(3) The new official “disinformation” board is no more. Pity. Boy, that must have polled poorly. Then again, media and social media have been serving the same twisted function for quite some time.

(4) The US is in the hypersonic weapons game.

(5) To ask this question is to answer it: “The alleged supermarket killer is self-described as authoritarian left — so why isn’t this being reported?”

Comments

Roundup — 48 Comments

  1. (6) Dow drops another 1000 pts today, and the Fed talks about another 75pt increase in interest rates in June… when does housing crash? When does the economy go totally underwater?

  2. “The new official “disinformation” board is no more….”

    Thus sprach Mr. Big!
    …And we should believe them on this claim why exactly?

    (No doubt they’re all having a real hearty belly laugh out on Martha’s Vineyard….)

  3. Neither the hedge-fund manager (McCormick) nor the Trump-endorsed flip-flopping dual citizen (Mehmet Oz) inspires much confidence. The best candidate was probably Carla Sands (who never had a chance), while Kathy Barnette, despite some inconsistencies in her resume and some ill-advised comments, was attacked quite unfairly by GOPe and is probably much closer to an agenda of “America First” than the other two. It is always a mistake for Republicans to attack other members of their own party using the tactics or the terminology of leftists.

  4. “When does the economy go totally underwater?”

    It already is. (They just haven’t “reported” it yet.)

    But everything IS going to plan…even if there may have been a few setbacks. (We just have to get this MiniTrue business settled. Everything’ll be OK, not to worry. We never knew that Ms. Tinklebell was so, um, talented. Next pick will be far more reliable and impossible to fire—you’ll LOVE her!)

    “Biden” will print enough money to feed EVERYONE who needs food (and drink, and gas, and entertainment, and fentanyl).

    One small catch, though. You gotta be law abiding. IOW, you gotta support “Biden”. Ya can’t be an INSURRECTIONIST.

    Otherwise, no food for you. Or your family. Or your pets. No drink. No gas. No entertainment. No nuthin’.

    It’s YOUR choice! (And we DO believe in freedom of choice. Absolutely we do….)

    Just to conclude, thank you Justin Trudeau for providing all of us with this all-important heads up!

  5. BTW, fresh from the Ultra-huge teleprompter in the Ultra-fake Oval Office!

    The new four freedoms:
    1. FREEDOM from Freedom of Speech!
    2. FREEDOM from Freedom of Worship!
    3. FREEDOM from Freedom of Want!
    4. FREEDOM from Freedom of Fear!

    “Biden” guarantees it!

  6. On a day of bad news, Comrade de Blasio seems to be considering a run for Congress. Having done his very best to destroy Gotham (and passed along the baton to the preening peacock Adams, who is every bit as incompetent), he now imagines himself worthy of becoming a Congress-critter.

  7. “Rolling Stone has gone and dialed the absurdity level up to eleven, with this ridiculous headline: “The Buffalo Shooter Isn’t a ‘Lone Wolf.’ He’s a Mainstream Republican.”
    Didn’t Trump point out that the media publishes fake news, IE lies.

  8. The guy who defeated Cawthorn will be elected. No political observer, right or left, thinks that district will go D.

    It is to be hoped that Cawthorn grows in maturity and finds a solid life path.

  9. #2, Pennsylvania GOP dodged a bullet called Kathy Barnette, but I’m hoping Dave McCormick can pull out the close race here. Funny enough, I know the Fetterman family, his brother and father much better than John.

    He will be a tough candidate in November, especially since the Democrat Josh Shapiro will be winning in a landslide over Doug Mastriano. The governor’s race may be enough to carry Fetterman and a couple of Congressional representative who would otherwise struggle this year. Mastriano has his passionate grass roots following but will struggle badly in the statewide race. It’s a shame the party threw away a vital governor race like this.

  10. Wait what? So the Mary Poppins lady decides to leave DHS (a public agency) to return to her former job in public service. So what? Another question–she worked at the Woodrow Wilson Center but I read that Princeton University has banned Woodrow Wilson’s name from the campus due to his rampant racism. Does that mean she’s a racist too?

  11. Oz is actually very much like Trump. He has a history of leaning left, but claims he has seen the light as a “conservative”. Who knows if you can or can’t trust him, but one thing for sure – he’s a political outsider.

    David McCormick, on the other hand is a typical RINO, holdover from the Bush administration. You KNOW you cannot trust him to do anything but serve the status quo and the GOP establishment just like Romney, McCain, and Liz Cheney.

    Oz may not live up to his claims and may only be half as good as you want. McCormick will surely be everything you DON’T want, much like Rob Portman turned out to be.

  12. Wait what? So the Mary Poppins lady decides to leave DHS (a public agency) to return to her former job in public service. So what?

    –Bill Serra

    So the left can’t always get away with their latest bat-crazy fascist plan to cut off oxygen to conservatives. This is happening more and more.

    I don’t counsel cockiness or complacency, but it’s worthwhile to take in good news when it happens and adjust our strategy appropriately. It’s not 2008 or 2020 anymore.

  13. Typical, Ed. We all dodged a bullet in Kathy Barnette. Wink-wink.

    No support for your statement whatsoever. McCormick is RINO squish swamp dwelling GOPe scum who will sell out Republicans at every turn.

  14. “When does the economy go totally underwater?”

    It already is. (They just haven’t “reported” it yet.)

    A recession is two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. Usually the NBER decides when the recession began in hindsight. So Barry is possibly/probably correct.

  15. TommyJay,

    The problem it seems to me is a lot of the things that go into GDP are really nowhere near negative right now. Retail sales were released yesterday and they were pretty good and manufacturing has been expanding by a fair amount. It was the trade imbalance almost entirely that led to first quarter negative GDP and that was only by a little.

    Some of the major retailers reporting earnings this week are painting a picture of higher income people still spending but the middle and lower incomes are really getting squeezed by inflation which is obviously who it hits first.

    So this may be one of those deals where we may be in some level of a recession even if the usual ways of measuring it don’t say it exactly.

    Of course it would be nice if the legislative and executive branches actually took some measures that would help but apparently that isn’t going to happen.

  16. Ed – Landslide if everyone loves the $6 a gallon gas, $200 weekly grocery bill and lockdowns by November. Think everyone will forget Emperor Wolf and welcome Emperor Shapiro?
    Voted for Kathy, will take McCormick, won’t go for Oz.

  17. So the left can’t always get away with their latest bat-crazy fascist plan … — huxley

    This [ending the disinformation czar] is noteworthy in my mind simply because it seemed recently that there wasn’t any limit to the bat-crazy fascist ploys.

    What was so different about this one that it failed? Was it the case that virtually no one could claim that Nina Jankowicz would be an honest or unbiased operator of such a potentially dangerous board?

    Or has the Biden admin. has used up most or all their “benefit of the doubt” credits? Very recently we’ve had Musk, Bezos, and even the WaPo fact checkers level some heavy guns at Biden.

  18. The other thing is the employment situation is not flashing recession right now either. In fact there are not enough workers something like 1.7 jobs for every 1 job seeker.

    It would be a very strange recession with 3-4% unemployment that is for sure but God only knows how we have seen a lot of strange things the last two plus years and the employment rate can and probably will change if inflation continues at this rate for too long.

  19. TommyJay,

    I think a lot of business people are seeing this administration doing nothing to fix any of these problems. Really nothing.

    Have we ever had a president that is so uninterested in alleviating the major issues facing virtually everybody in some way or another.

  20. “The alleged supermarket killer is self-described as authoritarian left — so why isn’t this being reported?”

    A racist authoritarian leftist… what a surprise.

    The majority of Pennsylvanians will vote for their future enslavement.

  21. Griffin,

    I wish I knew the numbers better, but two types of borrowing are perhaps important. One thing I’ve heard is that at the end of 2021 there was a lot stock owned on margin debt. That garbage will definitely fuel market declines until much of that debt gets cleaned out.

    The other is consumer debt. Mostly, credit card debt I presume. Fill your tank and put it on the card. I’ve heard that this has gone up, though good numbers were not provided.

    Credit card balances rose year over year, reaching $841 billion in the first three months of 2022, according to data released Tuesday from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

    Great. How much is it up??

    Home sales in my neighborhood has been white hot. As physicsguy suggests, that can’t last.

  22. Griffin,
    Yes, the unemployment situation is tres weird. Is it possible that the Fed. gov. has really wrecked the work ethic of the country in two short years? People don’t want to work?

    I think a lot of business people are seeing this administration doing nothing to fix any of these problems. Really nothing.

    We’d be lucky if it was really nothing. They keep throwing more gasoline on the economic fire. It’s almost like Vladimir Putin is running things. Let’s cancel oil and gas lease sales. The southern border is a porous mess; let’s open it up some more.

  23. }}} The Biden administration has “paused” its controversial plans to create a Disinformation Board, causing its would-be leader to resign.

    I’ve highlighted an important word, there.

    Unless they get totally bitchslapped for this, you can bet there will be more to come, over time.

    The abortion called the DMCA was stomped on time and again, rejected by the public vociferously, rejected by many many nations via the WIPO, and yet it still got passed by the USA internally.

    This ain’t the last of it, not by a long long long shot

  24. }}} he now imagines himself worthy of becoming a Congress-critter.

    Well, to be honest, he DOES clearly have his head shoved so far up his ass that it’s sticking back out the top… So he’s at least well-qualified by the main criteria for public office.

  25. ObloodyHell,
    Indeed, one has to read or listen carefully. Pause, is the operative word.

  26. j e said at 3:26 pm: ” It is always a mistake for Republicans to attack other members of their own party using the tactics or the terminology of leftists.”

    We have a State Senator primary runoff in progress now, in Central Texas. Throughout the period after the regular primaries, there has been an almost-daily onslaught of attack placards arriving in the mail, attacks on one of two candidates (the incumbent). There’s nothing to identify the source of the placards – it’s an Establishment Republican dark money well, being tapped by his opponent, who’s a fat-jowled, good ol’ boy, Chamber of Commerce Country Clubber with a dubious history in business and state politics. His campaign hasn’t put out anything from him directly, speaking to policy positions, governance and policy ideas, anything of substance. Just attacks on the other guy.

    It’s amazing that the Est. Repubs. still think that this kind of messaging will work. The other guy was in line to get my vote even before I bothered to research his record.

    With the America First Trump endorsements bringing in solid gains, this will be the moment when the Est. Repubs. begin considering a scorched earth campaign season. Losing seats to Democrats could become preferable to having America First congressmen on seat – at least the Democrats are corrupt enough to play ball and keep the gravy flowing. I think it’s going to be a very nasty campaign season. And incidentally, this is always how Republicans lose – political seppuku.

  28. physics guy,
    I think nobody really knows when it will crash, or can we be certain it will?
    Somedays I think it could just steadily get worse, and some days I think we could wake up one morning with the new normal and by afternoon the stock market has crashed and the US dollar gets dropped as reserve currency and by the end of the day or that week, we are in Weimar Republic territory.

  30. Madison Cawthorn was a wingnut and he got effectively bounced out of office for it. He chose his party poorly — if he were a Democrat he could have hooked up with three other wingnuts and formed his own squad.

  31. Leaving aside judicial positions and positions adjacent to the courts (for which certain tenure in professional guilds would be a prerequisite), it is IMO advisable that candidates for elective office or for appointive offices regulated by retention-in-office referenda be in a certain age range on the date of the election in order to lawfully run. For conciliar bodies covering a population over 1,000,000, general executives covering a population over 50,000, and specialized executives covering a population over 100,000, the age range might be 39.0 to 72.0. For jurisdictions with smaller populations, the lower bound might be between 25 and 39 and the upper somewhere between 72 and 86 depending on the population of the jurisdiction. The range would expand symmetrically the smaller the population of the jurisdiction.

    In Cawthorn’s case, the only office he should have been seeking (IMO) would be that of a seat on a small town’s council or school board. Full-time electoral politics is a distraction from learning a proper trade. Following your proper trade and sitting in a local office part-time is what you should be doing if you’re not refraining from electoral politics entirely. On the other end, we should encourage retired persons to make municipal councils and school boards an activity. They have the institutional memory and the spare time.

    To add to that, rotation-in-office rules and rules which narrow the portal for members of the bar and public employees to run for office. Too many people entrenched for decades, too many lawyers, too many quondam legislative aides, too many schoolteachers.

    There’s an upside of down and it would be agreeable if Cawthorn were to find it. He’s had little vocational training.

    https://www.abtrainingcenter.com/north-carolina-property-casualty-license

  33. What was so different about this one that it failed? Was it the case that virtually no one could claim that Nina Jankowicz would be an honest or unbiased operator of such a potentially dangerous board?

    Or has the Biden admin. has used up most or all their “benefit of the doubt” credits?

    TommyJay:

    I wonder too and don’t know for sure. Perhaps Jankowicz said the wrong thing to Jill Biden the other day and Jill tripped the trap door under Jankowicz’s feet.

    It happens.

    However, I tend to neo’s suggestion it might be bad polls or yours that Biden has used up his “Get Out of Jail Free” cards.

    I say we are in new territory. Democrats have pushed their game farther than they could sustain and now national opinion is pulling them back like a great big rubber band.

    I was there at the dotcom crash: Stuff works until it doesn’t.

    Then there’s hell to pay.

  35. Hes a quack on so many issues cawthorn would not kneel to kapernicks extortion didnt want to along with this splendid little war that could cost us another 3 trillion

  36. Dr oz is, politico went to the trouble of finding who had maimed cawthorn double standard much

  37. Lee Also:

    Yes, thanks. Funny thing – how many people do I know of named “Oz”? Apparently, two.

  39. So when will the “No Malarkey” “president” get canned for misinformation, disinformation and ULTRA-MENDACITY?

    “Foreign Agent: Hunter Biden-tied firm finally admits it lobbied U.S. for controversial oligarch”—
    https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/democrat-firm-tied-hunter-biden-finally-admits-it
    Key grafs:
    “Six years, an impeachment trial and a Senate investigation later, a Democrat firm that helped Hunter Biden’s Ukrainian gas client has admitted it worked as a foreign agent lobbying the Obama-Biden administration and that its client was the controversial oligarch Nikolai Zlochevsky….”
    “…Hunter Biden joined Zlochevsky’s company in 2014 as a board member and consultant, a hiring that stirred years of controversy and led to former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. And when Blue Star was hired to help Burisma overcome the corruption allegations Hunter Biden was looped into the early strategy discussions, emails show….”

    “The smartest guy I know” is giving Harry Houdini a run for his money…but then Houdini didn’t quite have the same connections…

  41. And in that awesome battle between the Babylon Bee and the NY Post over who IS the current American Paper of Record, the latter is going all out to catch the former and may even be able to pull ahead with this extraordinary under-cover report:
    “More people would rather sleep with their pet than their spouse”—
    https://nypost.com/2022/05/18/more-people-would-rather-sleep-with-their-pet-than-their-spouse/

    It may be too late for Depp and Heard but some, perhaps many, will surely benefit…

    Other recent Post stories of note:
    https://nypost.com/2022/05/18/why-the-media-is-ignoring-trial-at-center-of-russiagate/
    https://nypost.com/2022/05/18/justice-coming-for-dirty-51-hunter-biden-laptop-liars/
    https://nypost.com/2022/05/17/when-will-we-learn-from-our-covid-frauds-and-failures/

  42. Something big FINALLY starting to happen, officially, regarding the January 6 hoax:
    “80 ‘Suspicious Actors’ Under Scrutiny by Jan. 6 Defense Attorneys”—
    https://yournews.com/2022/05/07/2340057/80-suspicious-actors-under-scrutiny-by-jan-6-defense-attorneys/
    H/T Instapundit.
    Key graf:
    “Defense attorneys seek to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol….”

  43. I know some people in western NC, the district where Cawthorn lost. His constituent service was poor to non-existent, and in general he presented as too immature for his position.

  44. I don’t know about Barnette. I like her. (I also liked the idea of Tim Scott, Barnette, and Hershel Walker giving Rs more African American Senators than Ds, although I believe that if you swap Warnock for Walker, you still get the same result.)

    What scared me about Barnette was the unforced errors that she and her campaign made in the weeks leading up to the election. Salena Zito could not get Barnette’s campaign to answer basic questions about her biography. The campaign told Zito that Barnette was very protective of her privacy. They did clean that one up a few days later. Right before the election, Barnette also flubbed a question about whether she was in the capital building on January 6th, refusing to answer. (You might be able to get away with running a January 6th participant in a deep red state or district, but not in Pennsylvania. If you run a Republican who scares away surburban Philly and Pittsburgh voters, the Democrat wins.)

    Building on that point, the Mastriano nomination is hugely frustrating. For a long time, the governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania swung between the two parties like clockwork every two terms. Republicans lost out in 2014 when Tom Corbett got caught up in the Joe Paterno scandal. (The deep red parts of central PA didn’t turn out for the governor who fired Joe Paterno.) Now after two terms of Tom Wolf, Republicans have thrown it away again. PA Republicans are going to be shut out of the governor’s mansion for 12 straight years and possibly 16 when you consider that Tom Corbett is the only Pennsylvania governor in the last half century or so to lose reelection.

    Remember Trump’s endorsement of Mastriano in November, and for the four (and maybe eight) years after that. If Trump had backed Barletta, he might have pulled it off and Republicans would have had a much better chance to win in November. (Can a principled MAGA supporter really have much to criticize about Lou Barletta?) The truth is that Trump doesn’t give a rip about anything other than the greater glory and power of Donald Trump. It’s time to kick him to the curb.

  45. “So Barry is possibly/probably correct.”
    Oh, gosh. Don’t go around quoting me. I don’t know anything about the economy…(which probably means I’d be a shoo-in for a “Biden” cabinet post…)…

    Speaking of which…
    “Economic Optimism Has Collapsed Under Build-Back-Better-Biden: TIPP Poll”—
    https://issuesinsights.com/2022/05/19/economic-optimism-has-collapsed-under-build-back-better-biden-tipp-poll/
    H/T Powerline blog.
    Opening graf:
    ‘Last week, President Joe Biden gave a speech about the economy, saying that “as I go across the country, our economy has gone from being on the mend to on the move.” What country is Biden talking about, exactly? Because here in the U.S., the economy went from booming under President Donald Trump to disaster under Biden…
    “…For Biden to say the economy “is on the move” is truly delirious…”

    And so, moving from “delusional” to “delirious”….heh…
    (…though to be fair to “Biden”, “his” wonderfully kinetic phrase, “being on the move”, may well have meant in the direction akin to that of the recently doomed Chinese aircraft….)

    All this being said, however, this is NO FAILURE on “Biden”s part, as we have already heard from some quarters…and NOW hear from Victor D. Hanson:
    “Is Biden’s ‘success’ our mess?”—
    https://jewishworldreview.com/0522/hanson051922.php

  47. Now after two terms of Tom Wolf, Republicans have thrown it away again.

    You’re the guy who deserves to be fragged in the foxhole

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