Okay, so why is it raining every weekend? and other complaints
Rain, rain, rain here in New England – for the past few weekends. Today is the same.
It doesn’t matter all that much to me, since I set my own hours and weekends are not especially special. But I know it matters to the vast majority of people. And in New England, with its long winters, spring and summer and fall are especially precious, with summer and warm sunny weather a particularly looked-forward-to part of the year.
I know rain is good for the flowers (the weeds, too). Except that the blossoms on the trees – now mostly past – drop quickly in all the rain, and therefore their time is shortened. And vacationers who’ve planned weekend visits and made reservations, as well as the shop and restaurant owners in resort areas – what of them? The businesses need to make a lot of money in the summer in order to keep afloat.
While I’m complaining, I might as well add another gripe: why do so many good events come all at once? I can experience lengthy periods when there’s not much that’s happening in the social sense, and then bingo! Four competing invitations, or several out-of-town visitors on the same day, and no ability to do it all. I realize it’s hardly the worst problem in the world, but it still makes me grind my teeth in frustration that it’s not more spaced out.
Have a nice weekend, folks.
Neo-neocon versus The new neo
Commenter “Jamie” has an interesting observation:
I am reminded that this blog used to be called NeoNeocon, and I used to read it as eagerly then as I do now – and I believed to my bones something approximately the opposite of the paragraph above: I believed that if the troublemaker nations in the Middle East just experienced a taste of Western life and freedom, they’d love it, want it, and change their ways to get it. I was not all that young, but certainly foolish.
The lesson I take from all this is that the effects – even fairly short-term, such as the “12 years to climate disaster” claims – of large and complex problems are more or less impossible to predict with any confidence. And therefore, when considering solutions, we MUST be conservative, like rock-ribbed conservative, or risk bringing about new horrible problems in our attempts to solve the one we see as most important at the time.
When I changed the name of this blog to “the new neo” it was because my use of the “neocon” moniker had been misunderstood from the start. My original reason for calling the blog “neo-neocon” was that I was newly conservative – really really newly conservative. Of course, I was no longer newly conservative after a few years.
But as far as my neoconnish foreign policy beliefs went, I had always felt that spreading liberty and democracy by military conquest would be difficult and to have any chance at success it would require an occupation of that country as well as a lengthy time commitment. Fairly quickly it became apparent that the US was unwilling to do either and certainly not both. Plus, democracy without something like the Bill of Rights – and a population educated in why this was important to defend – was often just another road to tyranny.
The larger question was and is: do people really want liberty? Some certainly do, but whether it’s a majority I can’t say for sure and rather doubt – and have come to doubt even more. That’s why I’ve quoted Dostoevsky’s “Grand Inquisitor” passage so many times on this blog, even long ago when it was “neo-neocon.” Let’s have another go-round with that quote.
In this passage the Grand Inquisitor is addressing Jesus, who has come back to earth. Although the Inquisitor is a man of the Church, he is not in favor of what he believes Jesus offers to humankind, which is freedom. Instead, the Inquisitor proposes to enslave people, and he tells Jesus how he will go about doing it.
I’ve divided it into paragraphs that are not there in the original, the better to clarify what’s being said:
Command that these stones be made bread – and mankind will run after Thee, obedient and grateful like a herd of cattle. But even then it will be ever diffident and trembling, lest Thou should take away Thy hand, and they lose thereby their bread! Thou didst refuse to accept the offer for fear of depriving men of their free choice; for where is there freedom of choice where men are bribed with bread? Man shall not live by bread alone – was Thine answer. Thou knewest not, it seems, that it was precisely in the name of that earthly bread that the terrestrial spirit would one day rise against, struggle with, and finally conquer Thee …
Knowest Thou not that, but a few centuries hence, and the whole of mankind will have proclaimed in its wisdom and through its mouthpiece, Science, that there is no more crime, hence no more sin on earth, but only hungry people? “Feed us first and then command us to be virtuous!” will be the words written upon the banner lifted against Thee – a banner which shall destroy Thy Church to its very foundations, and in the place of Thy Temple shall raise once more the terrible Tower of Babel …
… It is then that we will finish building their tower for them. For they alone who feed them shall finish it, and we shall feed them in Thy name, and lying to them that it is in that name. Oh, never, never, will they learn to feed themselves without our help! No science will ever give them bread so long as they remain free, so long as they refuse to lay that freedom at our feet, and say: “Enslave, but feed us!” That day must come when men will understand that freedom and daily bread enough to satisfy all are unthinkable and can never be had together, as men will never be able to fairly divide the two among themselves. And they will also learn that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, miserable nonentities born wicked and rebellious. Thou has promised to them the bread of life, the bread of heaven; but I ask Thee again, can that bread ever equal in the sight of the weak and the vicious, the ever ungrateful human race, their daily bread on earth? And even supposing that thousands and tens of thousands follow Thee in the name of, and for the sake of, Thy heavenly bread, what will become of the millions and hundreds of millions of human beings too weak to scorn the earthly for the sake of Thy heavenly bread? … In our sight and for our purpose the weak and the lowly are the more dear to us. True, they are vicious and rebellious, but we will force them into obedience, and it is they who will admire us the most. They will regard us as gods, and feel grateful to those who have consented to lead the masses and bear their burden of freedom by ruling over them – so terrible will that freedom at last appear to men!
The Brothers Karamazov first appeared in 1880, and Dostoevsky died just a few months later. That sounds like a long time ago, but it’s really not that long in the scheme of things (for example, three of my four grandparents were born before then).
I first encountered “The Grand Inquisitor” in the 60s, when we read it in high school. I didn’t fully understand it at the time (not that I fully understand it even now), but it gripped me with a memorable power, and I understood it well enough to be frightened by it, to get the gist of it, and to consider it important.
A lot of years have passed since then, and it only seems more important. Nevertheless, in the US and Western Europe, hunger is not what drives people towards the left. What does? The left has been labeled as virtue, and people wish to feel good about themselves. Being on the left also gives people the sense that they can control others and make a better world, and many people love the idea of the power to dictate to others. They may want freedom for themselves, but not for others.
And maybe it’s time to repeat another favorite passage of mine, this time from Milan Kundera in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting:
… [H]uman beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.
A warm welcome back to Abrego Garcia
The left’s latest hero-victim, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, is apparently on his way back to the good old USA. This leftist victory may be Pyrrhic, however:
Abrego Garcia is headed home, but with a twist: He’ll be charged with participating in a conspiracy to human traffic illegal immigrants from Texas to the rest of the country. …
The indictment was filed under seal last month, so this wasn’t an overnight decision. Attorney General Pam Bondi had originally said Abrego Garcia “is not coming back” to the United States, but it appears the body cam footage of him allegedly trafficking illegal immigrants in Tennessee changed the calculus. This also gives the administration an out regarding the legal challenges surrounding Abrego Garcia’s deportation. They no longer have to fight that battle if they go ahead and charge him with serious crimes, keeping him detained in the process.
For further context, some weeks before this news, Abrego Garcia’s business partner, who is in jail on other charges, was given limited immunity for his cooperation.
Why did the left choose Abrego Garcia as their latest poster child? I believe that initially they were unaware of all the details of his criminal history, and once they were in that hole they had to dig deeper. But that sort of thing has never stopped them from being successful with their propaganda; all you need to do is remember George Floyd and how few people know his actual history or the details of his death, thanks to leftist media.
However, one of the advantages the right has is that the left keeps choosing unpopular causes to champion – such as the retention of criminal illegal aliens and the promotion of men-who-identify-as-women in women’s sports.
Open thread 6/7/2025
Purposeful misunderstanding: the slogan “Free Palestine”
The Boulder firebomber apparently yelled “Free Palestine!” as he hurled flames at his victims. That’s a favorite slogan of the pro-Palestinian movement so au courant among the leftists of America today. And who wouldn’t want people to be free?
Leftists are very good at sloganeering with phrases that seem to have one meaning but actually have another. “Hope and change” – but hope for what? Change to what? “Liberte, egalite, fraternite,” – but the balance of liberty with equality is very tricky. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion” sounds fine until you realize that “equity” means reverse discrimination. And on and on and on.
I was reminded of true meaning of the phrase “Free Palestine!” on reading this essay on the Boulder firebomber by Ed Victor, a man who was standing in the Boulder crowd that day:
Upon reflection, I have come to realize that “Free Palestine” can mean something for those who want a Palestinian state, but it has also become a rallying cry for killing the Jews. It was the rallying cry for the two people gunned down in Washington, D.C., just two weeks ago. It was the rallying cry in Boulder.
But it was apparent long ago what “free Palestine” means:
(1) The use of the word “Palestine” for the Arab peoples of the region is an appropriation of a term that always included Israel since its coinage by the Romans, who gave the name to the Jewish homeland. It was also the name the colonial British used for the region.
(2) Gaza had basically been “free” of Israelis for close to twenty years, right up to the point when the Gazans initiated the 10/7 attack.
(3) “Free Palestine” also means that Gaza, Judea, and Samaria be completely free of Jews.
(4) The phrase also refers to this little ditty chanted by the pro-Palestinian demonstrators: From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free. The river is the Jordan River and the sea is the Mediterranean. It doesn’t take a professional geographer to see that this area includes Israel.
All of this seems rather obvious to me. The phrase leads the unaware to think it means something benign. It doesn’t. But the Orwellian aspect of it is purposeful
Limiting nationwide injunctions
You have almost certainly noticed that the federal courts are busy issuing injunctions on many of Trump’s directives, even ones that seem to have solid legal underpinnings. What is to be done?
The federal courts are under the aegis of Congress:
Article III of the Constitution grants Congress the power to establish lower courts. Congress has used this power in the past to create and abolish entire judicial branches and has passed legislation limiting a federal court’s ability to issue various injunctions.
Congress would be within its constitutional authority to prohibit federal district courts from issuing national injunctions. Alternatively, Congress could establish a three-judge panel or other lower court responsible for issuing national injunctions so that this power could no longer be wielded by a single, rogue judge.
The problem:
There are currently more than 1,000 active and senior district court judges, sitting across 94 judicial districts, and subject to review in 12 regional courts of appeal. Because plaintiffs generally are not bound by adverse decisions in cases to which they were not a party, there is a nearly boundless opportunity to shop for a friendly forum to secure a win nationwide…If a single successful challenge is enough to stay the challenged rule across the country, the government’s hope of implementing any new policy could face the long odds of a straight sweep, parlaying a 94-to-0 win in the district courts into a 12-to-0 victory in the courts of appeal. …
Once they have identified a federal action to challenge, it is not difficult for public interest groups to recruit a plaintiff in friendly jurisdictions. Beyond the fundamental unfairness of this sort of forum shopping, these groups seek national injunctions by presenting a single, carefully selected circumstance to be ruled on, then demand universal relief applicable to every person in the country.
What has Congress done? The House has passed H.R.1526 (No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025):
(a) … no United States district court shall issue any order providing for injunctive relief, except in the case of such an order that is applicable only to limit the actions of a party to the case before such district court with respect to the party seeking injunctive relief from such district court and non-parties represented by such a party acting in a representative capacity pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
“(b) If a case is brought by two or more States located in different circuits challenging an action by the executive branch, that case shall be referred to a three-judge panel selected pursuant to section 2284, except that the selection of judges shall be random, and not by the chief judge of the circuit. The three-judge panel may issue an injunction that would otherwise be prohibited under subsection (a), and shall consider the interest of justice, the risk of irreparable harm to non-parties, and the preservation of the constitutional separation of powers in determining whether to issue such an order.
It was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee, where they’ve been holding hearings. My guess is that the problem is the need to get sixty votes for cloture, or to end the filibuster in general. The latter would set a bad precedent, but it’s pretty clear that the Democrats will be ending the filibuster if they ever obtain a Senate majority.
Then there’s SCOTUS, another route to the same end – depending on what it decides. Here’s the case in question:
The case, Trump v. CASA, Inc., reached the Justices after a lower court barred the Trump administration from enforcing an executive order related to birthright citizenship. The Court is now set to decide for the first time whether this sweeping form of relief passes constitutional muster.
The oral argument on this case already occurred about three weeks ago.
And that’s where we stand at present.
D-Day, 81 years later
[NOTE: The following is a slightly-edited version of a previous D-Day post.]
Today is the eighty-first anniversary of D-Day, the Normandy landings in WWII that led to Western Europe’s liberation.
I wonder how many people under forty, either here or in Europe, now know or care what happened there. The dog barks and the caravan moves on.
The world we now live in seems so vastly different, including the relationship between the US and western Europe. But make no mistake about it; if threatened in a way that finally gets their attention, Europeans would be counting on us again. And although until few years ago I still thought that our armed forces probably would be up to the task, I now have my doubts. Some of our administrations and especially our press would fail us.
About forty-five years ago I visited Omaha Beach, site of the worst of the carnage. A quieter place than that beach and those huge cemeteries, with their lines of crosses set down as though with a ruler, you never did see.
But the scene was quite different back in 1944. The D-day invasion marked the beginning of the end for the Germans.
The weather was a huge factor, and the Allied commanders had to make the decision knowing that the forecast for the day was iffy and the window of opportunity small. For reasons of visibility and navigation (maximum amount of moonlight and deepest water), the invasion needed to occur during a time of full moon and spring tides, and all the invasion forces had already been assembled and were at the ready. To postpone would have been hugely expensive and frustrating, but to go ahead in bad weather would have been suicidal.
This is how bad the weather looked, how difficult the decision was, and how much we owe to the meteorologists, who:
…were challenged to accurately predict a highly unstable and severe weather pattern. As [Eisenhower] indicated in the message to Marshall, “The weather yesterday which was [the] original date selected was impossible all along the target coast.” Eisenhower therefore was forced to make his decision to proceed with a June 6 invasion in the predawn blackness of June 5, while horizontal sheets of rain and gale force winds shuddered through the tent camp.
The initially bad weather ended up being an advantage in other ways, because the Germans were not expecting the invasion to occur yet for that reason:
Some [German] troops stood down, and many senior officers were away for the weekend. General Erwin Rommel, for example, took a few days’ leave to celebrate his wife’s birthday, while dozens of division, regimental, and battalion commanders were away from their posts at war games.
In addition, there was Hitler’s personality and his reluctance to give autonomy to his military commanders:
Hitler reserved to himself the authority to move the divisions in OKW Reserve, or commit them to action. On 6 June, many Panzer division commanders were unable to move because Hitler had not given the necessary authorization, and his staff refused to wake him upon news of the invasion.
.
This didn’t mean that the beaches were not heavily fortified and manned, especially Omaha:
[The Germans] had large bunkers, sometimes intricate concrete ones containing machine guns and high caliber weapons. Their defense also integrated the cliffs and hills overlooking the beach. The defenses were all built and honed over a four year period.
The number of Allied casualties was enormous. Reading about it today makes one appreciate anew what these men faced, and how courageously they pressed on despite enormous difficulties. This is just a small sampler of what occurred on Omaha Beach at the outset; there was much more to come:
Despite these preparations, very little went according to plan. Ten landing craft were lost before they even reached the beach, swamped by the rough seas. Several other craft stayed afloat only because their passengers quickly bailed water with their helmets. Seasickness was also prevalent among the troops waiting offshore. On the 16th RCT front, the landing boats found themselves passing struggling men in life preservers, and on rafts, survivors of the DD tanks which had sunk. Navigation of the assault craft was made more difficult by the smoke and mist obscuring the landmarks they were to use in guiding themselves in, while a heavy current pushed them continually eastward.
As the boats approached within a few hundred yards of the shore, they came under increasingly heavy fire from automatic weapons and artillery. The force discovered only then the ineffectiveness of the pre-landing bombardment. Delayed by the weather, and attempting to avoid the landing craft as they ran in, the bombers had laid their ordnance too far inland, having no real effect on the coastal defenses.
These obstacles and unforeseen circumstances were extraordinarily costly in terms of the human sacrifice that occurred that day. Note that I use the word “obstacles and unforeseen circumstances” rather than “mistakes.” Today, if the same things had occurred (at least, while under the aegis of a Republican administration), they would be labeled unforgivable errors rather than the inevitable difficulties inherent in waging war, in which no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
Another historical footnote is the following passage from Eisenhower’s message to the Allied Expeditionary Forces: You are about to embark upon the great crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. It’s another sign of how times have changed; the word “crusade” has become verboten.
In his pocket, Eisenhower also kept another statement, one to activate in case the invasion failed. It read:
Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that Bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.
The note was written in pencil on a simple piece of paper, and is housed in a special vault at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library & Museum in Abilene, Kansas, a bit of thought-provoking fodder for an alternate history that never occurred.
Open thread 6/6/2025
Seems like the love affair between Trump and Musk is over
Really really over.
It seems to feature a huge (yuge?) disagreement about the budget bill, including but hardly limited to a detail about subsidies for EVs:
[Trump] repeatedly emphasized that Musk only began voicing concerns after the bill’s EV cuts, insinuating that Musk’s discontent was less about principle and more about profit. “He never had a problem until right after he left,” Trump said. “He knew everything about it… better than almost anybody.” …
Trump reminded the press that he had stood by Musk for years—politically and personally. “I’m very disappointed in Elon. I’ve helped Elon a lot,” Trump said. “He hasn’t said bad about me personally… but I’m sure that’ll be next.” …
“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
I consider that last statement to be an inflammatory escalation, which is Trump’s habit.
And then – as Trump predicted – came a personal attack on Trump from Musk:
Time to drop the really big bomb:@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public.
Have a nice day, DJT!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 5, 2025
Childish of Musk. Of course Trump is in the “Epstein files.” We’ve known for ages that Trump had some dealings with Epstein years ago, as have so many people in public life. The so-called “Epstein files” are – as I wrote in this February post – merely a list of contacts. People have blown them up in their minds to be some sort of smoking gun, which they are not.
This whole thing is remarkably stupid and juvenile, perhaps even destructive. But we have two very powerful men at loggerheads, who don’t like to lose and are accustomed to winning, both of whom have quick tempers.
SCOTUS gets it right in reverse-discrimination case
Not only that, but the decision was unanimous and Ketanji Brown Jackson authored the opinion.
Then again, this was a slam-dunk case in terms of the law, so it should have been unanimous. However, as we know, there is no limit to how much judges (particularly leftist judges) can turn the law inside out to reach the decision that aligns with their pre-existing political opinions. So the unanimity of this decision is something to praise.
Petitioner Marlean Ames was hired by the Ohio Department of Youth Services in 2004 and worked in various roles in the agency. In 2018, her boss, who is gay, conducted a performance evaluation and found that her work met or exceeded expectations in all categories. In 2019, she applied for a new position within the agency, but was passed over for another candidate—a lesbian. Then it got worse. The agency not only demoted Ames from her administrative position and reduced her pay, but also replaced her with a gay man.
She sued under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, claiming she was discriminated against due to her sexual orientation.
The 6th Circuit Court denied her relief in Ames v. Ohio Dept. of Youth Services. Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog explained:
“The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit threw out Ames’s sexual orientation claim. It explained that because she is straight, she was required to show “background circumstances” to support her allegations of reverse discrimination. And although plaintiffs usually make this kind of showing, the court of appeals suggested, with evidence that a member of a minority group made the allegedly discriminatory decision, or with evidence demonstrating a pattern of discrimination against members of the majority group, Ames cannot do either. The decision-makers in her case – the people who hired someone else for the bureau chief job and who demoted her – were also straight, and there is no “pattern” of reverse discrimination beyond her own case, the court of appeals reasoned.”
In an opinion authored by none other than the uber-liberal Ketanji Brown Jackson, a unanimous Court ruled that the lower court must reconsider the case and exclude the “background circumstances” standard …
In other words, the lower court simply made up a new rule and applied it to Ames, holding her to a higher standard because she’s a straight person, which is (still) considered being in the majority. Many leftist judges seem to like to legislate in accordance with their own beliefs, but at least this time SCOTUS slapped them down:
The Sixth Circuit has implemented a rule that requires certain Title VII plaintiffs—those who are members of majority groups—to satisfy a heightened evidentiary standard in order to carry their burden under the first step of the McDonnell Douglas framework. We conclude that Title VII does not impose such a heightened standard on majority group plaintiffs. Therefore, the judgment below is vacated, and the case is remanded for application of the proper prima facie standard.
Good.
Did you know that dog ticks can live for up to two years without a host?
You can consider this fact depressing or inspiring. Or perhaps both. Depressing, because those little buggers can live a long long time without a good feed. Inspiring, in terms of the myriad methods earth’s creatures can develop in order to survive.
How do I know this factoid about dog ticks? Well, I looked it up:
Some sources say ticks can live for 24 hours or one full day without a host, while others say they can live for up to two years without food. The truth is, both could be right, but it depends on the conditions, species of tick and the stage of their lifecycle. …
The American dog tick can survive for even longer than deer ticks! Unfed larvae are able to survive for up to 540 days, while unfed nymphs have been recorded to survive for up to 584 days! Even more impressive, unfed adult American dog ticks can go 2-3 years (up to 1,053 days) without food!
Impressive indeed.
Why was I researching this? A friend of mine hosted a dog tick, and although I didn’t know it was a dog tick I took a photo and looked it up. The strange thing is that this friend hadn’t been outside (or around any dogs) for days.
The good news is that, at least in this part of the world, dog ticks don’t transmit disease compared to deer ticks, which can.