Try, try again: Ukraine peace talks

The New Neo Posted on by

I take this as a hopeful sign. I’ll take any hopeful signs I can get:

Senior U.S. and Ukrainian officials are planning to meet next week to discuss the first steps of a deal to end the war.

Both President Trump’s team and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine confirmed the meeting, which is expected to take place in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia? Hey, why ever not.

More:

President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, also confirmed the meeting, saying the purpose was “to get down a framework for a peace agreement and an initial cease-fire as well.”

Witkoff indicated that Zelensky had bent the knee trying to repair the damage.

““President Zelensky has demonstrated that he’s intent on that good-faith path back. He’s apologized. He’s said he’s grateful. He said he wants to work toward peace.” Mr. Witkoff added that he believed Mr. Zelensky was willing to sign a minerals deal to create a U.S.-controlled fund that would receive revenue from Ukraine’s natural resources.” …

[Trump] said U.S. negotiators had “made a lot of progress with Ukraine and a lot of progress with Russia over the last couple of days” and showed optimism about a peace agreement.

He said Ukraine “wants to make a deal because I don’t think they have a choice.” But he also said in another way, Russia had no choice either.

Time will tell whether this is just a lot of blah-blah-blah or whether it will lead to something. I’m glad to know that talks are continuing, which I had assumed anyway. Witkoff is certainly a busy guy.

ADDENDUM: Here’s an interesting development: “Trump Threatens Russia With Sanctions, Tariffs Until Putin Agrees to Ceasefire.”

The American political divide

The New Neo Posted on by

Today I came across a reference to this 2009 speech by Charles Krauthammer, where he said this:

I said some years ago that the genius of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes was to have discovered a niche market in American broadcasting — half the American people.

It’s still more or less that 50/50 split, although TV cable news in general has become less influential and there are more varied alternatives, particularly online. There are also lone voices on the right at other networks, such as CNN’s Scott Jennings, who apparently is getting a well-deserved raise.

The leftward skew of most of the news on TV and elsewhere is driven by a number of things. I am pretty sure that the main one is that many or most of the people writing it and broadcasting it are true believers in their cause. They think they are helping to make sure that that stupid and unwashed 50% on the right doesn’t swell to become a far greater majority, and they are hoping that by reducing the American public’s exposure to any truth that might help the right, they are ultimately helping to shrink that 50% (and yes, I know; it might already be more than 50%).

I don’t ordinarily talk about politics to my friends. That’s not new for me; it’s something I can’t ever remember doing. It’s not that I didn’t have any interest in the topic for all those years. It’s just that I had no need to talk to friends about it. Friends were for other things – and besides, did we even differ? I didn’t know and apparently I didn’t care.

I recall, for example, that when I went back to graduate school in the 1990s, I’d been in school for two years in a very small program where I knew all of my fellow students very very well indeed but until the election of 1992 I didn’t know their politics. And the only reason I learned their politics was that the day after the election of Bill Clinton people came into class and mentioned that they were happy about the results. I remember being a bit surprised that everyone seemed to be a Democrat, but it had no special emotional importance to me and I saw it mostly as a curiosity.

It’s not that way anymore for so many people. Recently I lost another friend, not to death but to politics. This was someone I’d been close to for nearly forty years but who stopped talking to me with the election of Trump to a second term. She’d been aware of my differing politics for twenty years, but her TDS apparently finally reached a point where she is consumed by some combination of dread, fear, and hatred so powerful that she simply cannot talk to anyone on the right. And this is the case even though I virtually never talked about politics to her and she cites no specific offense on my part. It was enough merely to know that I am on the side of something she has come to feel is incredibly evil and dangerous.

And please don’t respond by saying something like “she was never really a friend” and “you’re better off.” She was a very good friend for almost four decades, and I don’t feel the least bit better off. As I get older, the loss of friends for any reason is extremely painful, and I find old friends to be irreplaceable.

I’ll close with this:

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Mysteriously, Hunter Biden’s paintings have fallen out of favor. Can’t imagine why.

(2) The cries of “Trump=Hitler” are a “grotesque banalization of Hitler and Hitlerism”:

When Trump held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on October 27, a little over a week before the election, many Democrats, and the increasingly hysterical talking heads on CNN and MSNBC, compared that rally to a meeting of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund in that same venue in 1939. Completely disregarding the impressively multiracial character of the MAGA supporters gathered to hear Trump, as well as the large contingent of Orthodox and Hassidic Jews also in attendance, the media incessantly identified Trump with Hitler and “fascism.” Not only was the deep-seated evil that was National Socialism trivialized beyond recognition, and not only was fascism crudely (and absurdly) identified with any opposition to a hard Left agenda, but crucial distinctions between fascism, National Socialism, and democratic conservatism were elided in a deeply misleading manner.

This drumbeat continues to this day. The Trump/fascism/Nazism elision is commonplace in leftist discourse.

I’m so old I can remember “Bushitler”. I also think that most Americans under fifty know very little about the historical person known as Hitler.

(3) Trump has a message for Hamas:

“‘Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye – You can choose,” Trump writes on Truth Social.

“Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you,” he says.

“Only sick and twisted people keep bodies, and you are sick and twisted!”

“I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say,” he warns.

“I have just met with your former hostages whose lives you have destroyed.”

“This is your last warning! For the leadership, now is the time to leave Gaza, while you still have a chance,” Trump says.

“Also, to the People of Gaza: A beautiful Future awaits, but not if you hold Hostages. If you do, you are DEAD! Make a SMART decision. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW, OR THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY LATER.”

I don’t think this will have any deterrent effect on Hamas. And I believe his threat is that the war will resume, with more powerful weaponry that Biden had denied Israel.

(4) Meanwhile, Trump’s people are talking with Hamas:

After the White House confirms that the Trump administration has been holding direct talks with Hamas, Israel says that it has let its feelings be known to Washington about the contacts but provides no further details.

“In our contacts with the US,” says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, “Israel expressed its stance on direct talks with Hamas.”

The White House said earlier this evening that Israel was consulted on the talks.

Direct talks with terrorist entities are unusual.

(5) Trump has paused some tariffs on Mexico and Canada for a month:

President Donald Trump on Thursday signed executive actions that delay for nearly one mo?nth tariffs on all products from Mexico and Canada that are covered by the USMCA free trade treaty, a significant walkback of the administration’s signature economic plan that has rattled markets, businesses and consumers.

The executive actions follow a discussion Trump held Thursday with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and negotiations between Canadian and Trump administration officials.

Are Mexico and Canada getting whiplash, metaphorically speaking?

Ukraine, Trump, and Europe: what in the world?

The New Neo Posted on by

I have a very uneasy feeling about world events. Of course, I wouldn’t exactly call that a new phenomenon. The Biden administration featured errors and weakness of such magnitude that aggressors felt emboldened and acted on it. Biden was certainly not the only factor, but I believe his presidency was an important element in at least three disasters (to a much greater extent in the first two compared to the third): the Taliban takeover when the US withdrew from Afghanistan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Hamas attack on Israel.

Trump made many promises during his campaign. One of them that seemed absurd to me was that if elected he would end the Ukraine war in one day. It was Trumpian hyperbole on steroids.

Did he actually believe he’d do it? Trump has a massive ego and in some ways it’s justified, but this claim always seemed divorced from reality and events have certainly not proven him correct. At the moment, we’ve “paused” military aid to Ukraine as well as intelligence-sharing (or some intelligence-sharing; I’ve read differing reports about that), and Putin is probably chuckling to himself – as the war continues.

Of course, Trump might get the last laugh in the end. I realize all these actions are designed to “persuade” Zelensky to cooperate, but it’s nerve-wracking to watch and I don’t have some sort of blind faith in Trump. On the other hand here’s what Trump’s Ukraine envoy says (and by the way, “Trump’s Ukraine envoy” is not a job I’d covet):

Asked what Ukraine will have to do to turn intelligence sharing and flow of military aid back on, Kellogg pointed to the proposed minerals deal between the US and Ukraine.

“The reason he came to the White House was to sign a document that was going to say this is us going forward — it’s not signed,” Kellogg said of Zelensky. “My point would be, and my personal belief would be, you don’t move forward until you get a signed document. Period.”

“But he’s offering is offering to do it,” Brennan said. “He is offering publicly at least to do it.”

“There’s a difference between offering to do it and doing it,” Kellogg replied.

Indeed. Not only did Zelensky offer to do it earlier, but he came to the White House to do it and then, with the cameras rolling, explained why he wasn’t going to do it. No wonder Kellogg is pointing out the difference. Kellogg added:

“When I was in Kyiv two weeks ago, I was very clear to President Zelensky the outcome if we didn’t have a signed agreement,” Kellogg later added. “I was absolutely— I was blunt, and clear, that this was a thing that could have happened.” …

“We’re going to end this war, and this is one way to make sure you understand we’re serious about it,” Kellogg said Thursday. “So is it hard, of course it is, but it’s not like they didn’t know this was coming. They got fair warning it was coming.”

Meanwhile, Macron gets into the act with this:

European leaders showed a cautiously receptive ear to President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to debate extending the French nuclear umbrella to Europe on Thursday, though some were reluctant to draw a line under years of U.S. protection.

In an address to the nation on Wednesday, Macron said he would launch a strategic dialogue over extending the protection offered by France’s nuclear arsenal to its European partners, seizing on comments from future German leader Friedrich Merz.

Although both France and Britain are nuclear powers, most European countries’ primary nuclear deterrence comes from the United States, a decades-old symbol of trans-Atlantic solidarity.

But the radical shift engineered by U.S. President Donald Trump’s new administration, which has made overtures to Russia, pressured Ukraine to make peace with Moscow, and adopted a more aggressive stance towards traditional allies, has focused minds.

Trump definitely wants NATO nations to pay more, and he doesn’t want to be the sole protection for Europe, but has he threatened to withdraw Europe’s nuclear protection? If so, I missed it. Is Macron trying to scare or pressure Trump? Does Macron include Ukraine in his definition of “European partners,” or is he just talking about NATO or EU nations?

Sites such as Foreign Policy are no help. For example:

A deep sense of powerlessness and outright panic has beset Europe. Leaders seem shell-shocked by the speed of Washington’s pivot to Russia, the relentless steps toward a trans-Atlantic divorce, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s comprehensive adoption of the Kremlin’s views on Ukraine and much else. Should the United States continue on this path, it will have existential consequences not only for Ukraine, but also for Europe itself—including an increasingly likely next war that it will have to fight without help from the United States. Trump’s public blow-up with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last Friday and the U.S. decision to halt weapons shipments to Ukraine have reinforced fears that the struggle against Russia may already be lost.

The first sentence seems on point to me, but after that it seems like typical anti-Trump leftist talking points. A “trans-Atlantic divorce“? More like a cooling of ardor. “Comprehensive adoption of the Kremlin’s views on Ukraine”? Stopping the war with the ceding of some land Russia already has held for quite some time and is unlikely to lose if the war continues, and establishing an American business presence in Ukraine in order to deter future invasion – is adopting the Kremlin’s views on Ukraine? I think Putin has much greater aims for a Ukraine takeover than that. And what is the “much else” in terms of point of view that Trump shares with Russia? Does the author have any idea what the “blow-up” with Zelensky was actually about, and about Zelensky’s part in it? And yes, I believe “the struggle” with Russia is already lost and has been for quite some time – if you define “winning” as regaining all the land Ukraine had prior to Russia’s invasion.

I won’t even try to make a prediction here.

European “conservatives” are not like American conservatives

The New Neo Posted on by

The article is behind a paywall, but you can find a lengthy excerpt at Instapundit:

True American conservatism is not just a political leaning. It is a philosophy rooted in the preservation of individual liberty and our God-given inalienable rights. Meanwhile, European conservatism is mere branding. What passes for “conservatism” in Europe depends entirely on the alternative, which often makes it little more than a nationalistic version of its left-wing opposition with a half-hearted call for marginally lower taxes and a growing opposition to unfettered illegal immigration.

Many years ago, somewhere along the line in my early blogging career, I learned that the words “left” and “right” do not mean the same in Europe as in the US. Exactly what they mean in Europe I’m not completely sure, but the above may be as good a summary as any.

Europe has never placed the same sort of importance as the US has on free speech, for example. Vance was correct about that – and it’s not a new phenomenon. I learned about it as long ago as 2006, when I did some research on defamation law in France and discovered huge differences.

The current article goes on:

Sure, these European conservative parties might occasionally borrow from the American conservative playbook in terms of their rhetoric, speaking passionately of freedom or tradition or liberty, but they lack the ideological backbone and the political will to turn these words into action. Let alone the fact that American conservatism is tied to the ideology that birthed the nation itself. European conservatism is tied to nothing.

I don’t know if I agree with that last sentence. Perhaps European conservatism is no longer tied to anything. But traditionally, wasn’t it tied to the status quo – institutions such as the church, the monarchies of old, the state itself? Perhaps it’s now divorced from all that and searching for a guiding principle. The guiding principle at the moment, at least for conservatives in some European countries, seems to be nationalism and a retreat from globalism.

What were the Democrats thinking last night?

The New Neo Posted on by

Something like this:

What they were thinking was if Trump is for it they’re against it – even if it’s supporting the aspirations of a kid with cancer or even if it’s trying to end a stalemated war.

They apparently conferred ahead of time on how to approach protesting Trump’s speech, but mostly what they did was sit stonefaced, hold up little signs, or – in the case of Al Green – yell and get themselves removed. They mostly looked childish and petulant. And they opened themselves up to ridicule even from leftists like Stephen Colbert:

Stephen Colbert also mocked the protests in a segment on his CBS’ “The Late Show,” sarcastically noting how the “Democrats are getting ready to fight back with their little paddles.”

“That is how you save democracy: by quietly dissenting,” Colbert added. “Or bidding on an antique tea set. It was hard to tell what was going on.”

It also gave Trump a golden opportunity to call them on it:

These people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it no matter what. Five times I’ve been up here, it’s very sad. And it just shouldn’t be this way.

I wondered, though, about Fetterman. It turns out that he wrote this:

“A sad cavalcade of self owns and unhinged petulance,” Fetterman wrote Wednesday on social platform X. “It only makes Trump look more presidential and restrained.”

“We’re becoming the metaphorical car alarms that nobody pays attention to — and it may not be the winning message,” he added.

I can’t find anything that answers my question about whether Fetterman stood up for anything Trump said during his speech, however.

After Al Green was escorted out due to his disruptive behavior, he talked to the press and said this:

@RepAlGreen after being removed from Joint Session of Congress: “I’ll accept the punishment. It’s worth it to let people know that there’s some of us who are going to stand up to against this president’s desire to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

Perhaps he’s talking about one of those 150-year-olds on the Social Security rolls – because Trump and other Republicans have said they have no intention of cutting those entitlements; only eliminating fraud and costly errors and inefficiencies to save taxpayer money.

However, the idea that Social Security, etc. will be eliminated or severely cut at the hands of Republicans has been a Democrat talking point for quite a while. I know at least one person who is terrified that Trump is going to do just that – cut or even end Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. I probably know plenty more people who believe it, but only one has explicitly mentioned it.

Democrats have lost their way. Or rather, the way they have chose from Obama on isn’t working for them these days. That way is: identity politics, fear-mongering, lawfare, and “anything Republicans and Trump are for we’re against.” However, the fear-mongering actually works for the Democrats with a lot of people. But it’s not working with enough people right now, and that’s why Trump was elected.

Last night in his speech, Trump trolled them about the lawfare – “How did that work out? Not too good.”:

SCOTUS rules that the government must pay the $2 billion …

The New Neo Posted on by

… because the district court judge said so.

This is a disturbing ruling:

If you thought the Supreme Court would act to halt the propensity of District Court Judges to overstep their constitutional boundaries by substituting their own policy and political judgments for those of the Executive Branch — as I [Professor Jacobson] did — you would be wrong.

In a ruling that left Justice Alito “stunned,” Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett sided with the three liberals. …

The government decision being challenged was a pause in payment pending a review as to whether the payments were owed and the work had actually been performed. The District Court did not allow that review and ordered everything to be paid — even for services not rendered or for fraud, if that turned out to be the case — with the government left with the empty remedy of trying to recoup payment. Even contractors who were not parties to the case had to be paid, for contracts the court never identified – just a sweeping pay it all order. This represents a policy determination. If contractors believed they were owed money, there is an avenue to assert claims for payment, but not in the District Court.

This represents, according to Professor Jacobson, “an attempt to substitute the political and policy judgments of judges for those of the executive branch.”

Legally, it’s a bit complicated. The District Court judge had issued a temporary restraining order that prevented the government from halting the payments of the two billion dollars. Then SCOTUS had issued a temporary stay on the District Court order, and they are now lifting their own stay. This is the reason:

Given that the deadline in the challenged order has now passed, and in light of the ongoing preliminary injunction proceedings, the District Court should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance with the temporary restraining order, with due regard for the feasibility of any compliance timelines. The order heretofore entered by THE CHIEF JUSTICE is vacated.

Justice Alito wrote in a dissent:

Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic “No,” but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned….

Unfortunately, a majority has now undone that stay. As a result, the Government must apparently pay the $2 billion posthaste—not because the law requires it, but simply because a District Judge so ordered. As the Nation’s highest court, we have a duty to ensure that the power entrusted to federal judges by the Constitution is not abused. Today, the Court fails to carry out that responsibility….