Kamala Harris and Joe Biden: joined at the hip

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I touched on Harris’ statement during her appearance on The View, in which a softball question question from Sunny Hostin led to a response that has heads scratching everywhere. But the more I think about it, the stranger it becomes.

To review:

The left-leaning distaff panel asked the 2024 Democratic nominee if she would have done anything “differently” than Biden, 81.

“There is not a thing that comes to mind in terms of — and I’ve been a part of — of the decisions that have had impact,” responded Harris, 59.

So not only did Harris say there was nothing – absolutely nothing – she would change in a presidency that was fraught with obvious problems that even the left can see, but she was specifically owning the administration’s decisions and saying she was closely involved with them. In this, she echoed Biden’s recent comments, remarks that were often interpreted as trying to sabotage Harris’ campaign.

And this was not just a one-off for Harris. She pretty much repeated part of it in an interview with Howard Stern (a NeverTrumper, by the way):

She doubled down on her support for Biden hours later in an interview with SiriusXM’s Howard Stern.

The president is “still doing a great job,” the veep told the shock jock. “He’s not done. He’s not done.”

Granted, Harris has a tough job. The task is to differentiate herself from the errors of Biden while remaining loyal enough that she’s not perceived as attacking him. But she took on this task willingly when she agreed to be his substitute as nominee. Some sort of ambition drives her – to be the first woman president? To have power? To have perks? To do what they ask her to do? All of the above? Some of the above?

It was always obvious that she would have to figure out a way to thread this needle. She has done a poor job of it. But I wonder whether her advisors have helped: is there a message they’ve told her to say and that she’s failed to deliver? Couldn’t she choose one or two disagreements? I wouldn’t think it so hard to say something like this: “I think Biden did a great job, and I was part of some great decisions of which I’m proud. But – as with any administration – of course there are things that, with the benefit of hindsight, I’d change. For example, in the withdrawal from Afghanistan …” and then she could choose something about that fiasco.

And yet she said nothing of the sort. Why?

I refuse to believe Kamala Harris is stupid. You don’t go to law school and pass the bar and not be able to argue a position, even a difficult position. Something else is going on. I may write more about this in a future post, but at the moment here’s what comes to mind for possibilities:

(1) She has some sort of core conflict about her entire career as VP and as presidential candidate. Whether it’s some sort of impostor syndrome in which she doesn’t feel adequate to the task, or whether it’s some other thing, I don’t know.

(2) I have a gut feeling that she’s not a great liar. You may laugh at that idea – after all, she’s a politician, and she often lies through her teeth. But there is something so “off” about her affect that I can at least imagine that lying so much makes her uncomfortable, or has come to make her uncomfortable.

(3) Plus, perhaps she really does feel some sort of loyalty to the man who is responsible for her rise to this position. He chose her as VP when she really wasn’t doing well politically, having dropped out of the primaries quite early after Tulsi Gabbard savaged her in the debates. Joe has been, in a very real way, her sponsor, and she really has worked closely with him for three and a half years. She – and/or Pelosi, Obama, and the rest – shafted him, and she wants to throw him a bone.

(4) She doesn’t want to alienate the voters who like Biden and feel he was dealt with wrongly.

(5) She really isn’t that smart and can’t keep her story straight (I don’t think this is it, but I’m putting it in here as a possibility).

(6) She knows the fix is in and she will win no matter what she says.

That’s not meant to be an exhaustive list.

And meanwhile:

NOTE: See also this about what’s been going on with Joe lately.

Jewish Democrat and former member of the House endorses Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the story:

Peter Deutsch, a former Democratic congressman from Florida, endorsed former President Donald Trump on Monday, citing concerns over Israel’s security as the top issue motivating his decision.

“I feel very comfortable today publicly announcing that I’m endorsing Donald Trump to be reelected as president and I’m planning on voting for him on Nov. 5,” Deutsch said during a press call hosted by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee to commemorate Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks.

Deutsch, who splits his time between Israel and Florida and served in Congress from 1993 to 2005, expressed particular approval of Trump’s hard-line approach to Iran, including recent remarks in which the former president rebutted President Joe Biden in saying Israel should strike the country’s nuclear facilities.

By contrast, he argued, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have pursued policies that have emboldened Iran even after its ballistic missile strike on Israel last week.

“Their policies towards Iran make the world a dramatically less safe place,” Deutsch, who is Jewish, said in his brief remarks during the call. “It’s not just about what is happening in the Middle East. It’s literally about the homeland. It’s about Israel. Iran, their enemy is not just Israel — their enemy remains the United States. They still want to destroy the United States.”

Seems like a reasonable position to me on the part of Deutsch. I doubt he’s alone, either. But he is no longer in office, and so he’s free to depart from the party line with no loss of assistance from those in the party who decide where the money and other support will be going.

Then again, it might be a good idea for him to hire an excellent lawyer. There is the cautionary tale of Mayor Adams of New York, who strayed from the party line. I’m pretty much in agreement with Barnes in this video on the arrest of Adams, such is my cynicism these days:

About that FEMA money that isn’t available because it was given to illegals

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some details:

The FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter Program (ESFP). The FEMA migrant-spending program began as an offshoot of a Reagan-era plan called the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP). EFSP had the goal of providing aid to homeless Americans, most notably the elderly, handicapped, families with kids, Native Americans, and (especially) veterans.

That was essentially where ESFP funding went until a border crisis in the late spring and early summer of 2019. More than 111,000 adult migrants travelling with children in “family units” (FMUs) and unaccompanied alien children (UACs) crossed the border illegally that May, and President Trump needed additional money to get the kids out of CBP facilities.

One would assume money for needy migrant children would have prompted a rapid bipartisan response, but congressional Democrats left Trump twisting in the political wind for weeks before they gave him the funding he needed. …

Trump asked for ESFP to be ended in his FY 2020 and FY 2021 budget requests as duplicative of other federal activities, but as Reagan himself explained, “a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth”. Consequently, ESFP received $125 million in FY 2020 and $130 million in FY 2021.

After taking office, President Biden pushed for and received spending legislation called the “American Rescue Plan” (ARP).

ARP appropriated $400 million for what FEMA termed “regular EFSP” (the one Reagan approved), and an additional $110 million for “humanitarian relief to families and individuals encountered by” DHS. The temporary ESFP for migrants (called “ESFP-H”, for “humanitarian”) from the 2019 supplemental was now a line item.

The program then grew. There’s much much more at the link; it’s difficult to summarize, so I suggest you go there to read it. It’s the most complete treatment of the subject that I’ve seen so far.

There’s also the fact that the Biden/Harris administration seems to feel we have plenty of money to help Lebanon with its “humanitarian needs”:

Most of the responses there are brutal and well-deserved.

Tampa’s vulnerability to Milton

The New Neo Posted on by

The mayor of Tampa was quite blunt about it:

[Mayor] Castor noted that many Floridians are already leaving the area. For those trying to stay home, she urged them to reconsider.

“They may have done that in others,” Castor said, referring to Floridians riding out previous storms. “There’s never been one like this.”

“Helene was a wake-up call. This is literally catastrophic, and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die,” she continued.

Sometimes hurricanes are overhyped, which creates a “boy who cried wolf” mentality in residents. This time, though, the danger does seem very stark, and what happened with Helene will probably make people pay very serious attention.

Why is Tampa so vulnerable? The answer is rather simple:

The city is especially susceptible to hurricane damage due to its low-lying topography. …

While the city has survived other tropical storms over the years, Hurricane Milton, a category 5 storm which is set to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday, is concerning because Tampa is vulnerable to storm surges due to its shallow waters. Milton’s storm surge is forecasted to raise water levels by eight to 12 feet in Tampa Bay, if peak surge happens during the high tide. …

The last hurricane to directly impact Tampa Bay was the Tarpon Springs Hurricane of 1921. As a Category 3 storm, it caused eight deaths, an 11-foot surge and cost $10 million in damages (worth nearly $180 million today when accounting for inflation).

That seems a lot less serious than what is forecasted for Milton.

More here:

The heightened risk is partially a result of topography. The Gulf of Mexico coastline of Florida is shallow with a gentle, sloping shelf. The higher ocean floor acts as a barrier that retains the storm’s outflow of water, forcing the ocean to surge onto shore. That’s the opposite of Florida’s east coast, where the ocean floor drops suddenly a few miles from the coast.

“You can have the same storm, the same intensity, the same everything, but very different surges,” said Klotzbach.

A 2015 report from the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark and Co. concluded that Tampa Bay is the most vulnerable place in the U.S. to storm surge flooding from a hurricane and stands to lose $175 billion in damage. …

“It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,” Emanuel, who has studied hurricanes for 40 years, said. “I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.”

Considering everything, Tampa has been rather lucky in regard to hurricanes till now.

___

Kamala’s latest interviews

The New Neo Posted on by

60 Minutes scored an interview with Kamala Harris and put out clips to advertise it. One of them got so much negative attention that the fabulously creative and helpful folks at CBS decided to fix that by editing it out of the “complete” [sic] interview as shown:

It’s so interesting what one can do with editing. For friends, get rid of the worst parts. For enemies, truncated quotes that seem to be saying something the person didn’t actually say, plus editing out the good parts. And that’s, of course, in addition to softball questions for friends and “have you stopped beating your wife?” questions for enemies. I must say, however, that 60 Minutes interviewer Bill Whittaker was far better – less partisan, somewhat more challenging – than Harris’ previous interrogators.

Then there’s the fact that Harris did an interview with a podcaster whose program is named “Call Her Daddy.” It’s basically a show that’s popular with young women and discusses sex. Why on earth would Harris choose that particular venue for a long-form – 45-minutes long – interview? She was asked the question by the podcaster and gave some nonsense answer about being able to be “real” there, but the question remains, at least in my mind. Why spend time catering to a demographic that she already has sewn up? Harris has a limited amount of time to explain herself to the American people. Isn’t this a waste, and doesn’t it have the added risk of turning off a group that she needs: men? Or has she given up on that? Byron York says that it’s about turnout and the calculation is that this appearance will motivate greater turnout in her supporters. But I think just the name “Donald Trump” is the greatest motivator of all for them.

Today Harris appeared on The View, which has got to be one of the friendliest shows of all for her – and again, it’s a show watched mainly by women. And yet she managed to say something there that was quite stunning, considering how she’s tried until now to sell herself as an agent of change:

Indeed, Kamala has a “delicate dance” to perform – not dissing the administration too much while nevertheless distancing herself from it. But her attempts have proven that she has two left feet.

NOTE: I was wondering where the name “Call Her Daddy” came from. To me, dinosaur that I am, it conjures up the question “who’s your daddy?”, which I don’t ordinarily think of as a “female empowerment” question. It turns out it’s supposed to signify this: “The podcast name ‘Call Her Daddy’ reflects female empowerment, originating from a conversation where cohost Sofia Franklyn suggested women should be seen as powerful by calling them ‘daddy’ instead of men.”

That makes zero sense. Does it mean that to disempower men we should call them “mommy”? Doesn’t calling a woman “daddy” to indicate strength imply that real power resides in men and the trappings of men, including words that signify manhood?

How bad will Hurricane Milton be?

The New Neo Posted on by

The forecasts are dire indeed, and after what happened in North Carolina I hope people take them very seriously and evacuate:

Hurricane and storm surge warnings are now posted along Florida’s western Gulf Coast, where the storm poses threats of life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds and flooding rainfall by midweek.

“If Milton stays on its course this will be the most powerful hurricane to hit Tampa Bay in over 100 years. No one in the area has ever experienced a hurricane this strong before,” warned the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay. …

A hurricane warning is in effect along much of the western Gulf Coast of Florida from Bonita Beach northward to the mouth of the Suwannee River, including Tampa Bay. …

A storm surge warning stretches from Flamingo northward to the Suwannee River, including Charlotte Harbor and Tampa Bay. This means a life-threatening water rise from storm surge is possible in the area, generally within 36 hours. …

M?ilton more than doubled the criteria for rapid intensification, and the National Hurricane Center has called its intensification “explosive”. Its winds increased from 65 mph at 10 a.m. CDT on Sunday to 160 mph at 11 a.m. CDT Monday. That 95 mph wind increase in just over 24 hours is among the extreme bouts of rapid intensification ever observed in the Atlantic Basin.

Landfall is expected in Florida on Wednesday. Please stay safe, everyone.

10/7: Sad anniversary

The New Neo Posted on by

Looking back at 10/7, I recall that the news of just how bad it was came out slowly. First it was that maybe 20 Israelis had been killed. Then more, and then more and more and more, in a cascade of escalating horror.

The sadism on the part of the Gazans was perhaps the most shocking part of it, but it should not have been. We had had many indications of that before: the Ramallah lynching, for example. But the scale of that was small and this was huge.

And then there were the pro-Hamas demonstrations all around the Western world, particularly among students. But should that have been a surprise? After all, anyone who paid attention could see it had been building for decades. But still, the size of the group that had been won over by these sentiments, and the intensity and ferocity of the anti-Jew hatred they expressed, was stunning.

And the UN, and the anti-Israel press? Shouldn’t have been any sort of surprise either.

Well, as the poet Philip Larkin wrote of a different subject – pre-WWI Britain – “never such innocence again.” At least, not for those who’ve noticed; they won’t be shocked again by something of this nature. But the truth is that every generation must learn the same things over and over.

What are those things? That Jew-hatred is a poison that can take any number of forms, and does. That its psychological attractions are many, and that malign forces are dedicated to fostering it. That the internet, social media, the MSM, and academia are a big part of its ease of spread in the present day.

If you learn the history of the Nazis’ attempts to exterminate Jews – the Jews, as in the entire Jewish people – you’ll notice that the Nazis dedicated a great deal of time and effort towards that goal, and that they received a fair (although differing from country to country of Europe) amount of assistance from local Jew-haters in each country. And the Nazis were remarkably successful in their goal of making Europe Judenfrei; two-thirds of the Jews of Europe were murdered and many of the rest fled to other places.

One of those places was Israel, which did not yet exist as a country although Zionism did. But the goal of many Jews to make Israel a country predated WWII and the Holocaust by many many years. WWII underlined the need for a safe haven, because without a country the Jews were at the mercy of others. But of course, the existence of Israel has also given the Jew-haters of the world a convenient focus for their rage and target for their attacks, and they have taken full advantage of that.

That is one of the many reasons 10/7 was so shocking. It was a murderous pogrom within Israel itself, at the hands of its Arab neighbors some of whom had pretended to want peace (the Gazan workers Israel let in, for example) while preparing for a barbaric slaughter of Jews and anyone who happened to have the misfortune of being in Israel (Thai agricultural workers, for example). The IDF and Israeli leadership failed on 10/7 to live up to its end of the bargain, which was that no such things would be allowed to happen in Israel, except in small and sporadic ways. The enormity of the pogrom of 10/7 demonstrated, even to many peacenik leftists in Israel, that there was no partner for peace in those who have come to call themselves “Palestinians.”

I wish I had a solution but I don’t. I know that the election of the Harris/Walz ticket would make things worse, because beginning with Obama the Democrats have decided to cater more to Iran than ever before, and to try to block Israel from finishing the job. I know that the universities need reforming in this and so many other ways, but I also know that those who teach the attitudes that have led to Israel- and Jew-hatred being so widespread on campuses all over the Western world are deeply entrenched.

And then there are the hostages. How many are alive and how many dead? And for the living, how deep and horrific is their continuing suffering? It is almost unbearable to think of it. Should it be a surprise that the hostages are still being held? No, because their value to the Palestinians (and Iran) is huge.

The newer phase of the post-10/7 war, which features an increase in Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah (and even Iran at times), does’t bode well for the hostages’ release. But after the initial release of some of the women and children in the exchanges of last fall, I don’t think anything was good news for the hostages except the rescue of a fortunate few who’d been held in circumstances that made rescue possible although highly difficult. The more recent murder of the six hostages as Israeli forces were closing in is the sort of thing I expect for the future, unfortunately.

I see a long war ahead in the region. Next month’s election here will determine the role of the US in that war. But Israel will have to stand alone, if the US doesn’t stand with it. Most Israelis know they have no choice.

Plastic surgery regret

The New Neo Posted on by

You know how it is with YouTube. You look at one video on a certain subject, and after that – at least for a while – the algorithm floods you with similar videos, tempting you to watch. So I must have looked at a video about cosmetic surgery, and since then I’ve watched quite a few.

I find them fascinating. There are basically two kinds. Few people my age are featured, but there is a batch of youngsters – teens or early twenties – mostly having nose jobs, and a batch of what in the cosmetic surgery world passes for old (that is, forties and fifties and maybe just turning sixty) having face lifts.

For the most part, I tend to think they look better in their “befores,” especially the youngsters. And even the older face lift group has the disadvantage of having purposely harsh lighting and no makeup “before,” as well as lines drawn by the surgeon on their faces to highlight and seem to deepen whatever lines already exist. Even then, the “after” photos sometimes look good but sometimes look odd to me, as though their faces have been washed of all character.

The nose job group tends to feature a pretty young woman with a nose that is not at all grotesque or disfiguring, at least in my mind. It’s usually a nose that I think she would probably grow into and would seem distinguished and “interesting” as she gets a bit older, but she’ll never get the chance because she ends up with a retrousse-type nose that turns up at the tip and is quite narrow. Their faces often end up looking unbalanced and doll-like to me.

Here’s an example of the facelift sort, with the “before” featuring bad lighting, no makeup, and extra lines drawn, compared to the “after” with great lighting and tons of makeup, as well as smiles. I can get results like that in videos without a face lift, just by manipulating those things. I’m not saying the face lift did nothing for this woman. I just think she was probably quite attractive before if she’d had the right lighting and makeup, and in the “after” she looks artificial and a bit frozen and overly made up:

Here’s another face lift example, this time without the lines drawn. This is a much younger woman, and she looks great in the first photo even without makeup and with the harsh lighting.

Here’s an example of a nose job video in a young woman. I chose this one because it was the first short video that came up when I did a search at YouTube for “nose job” rather than because it has any special characteristics. It’s rather typical but some of the videos are even more extreme in the relative attractiveness of the “before” nose and what I consider the too-diminutive and slightly-unnatural look of the “after.” Then again, she seems very happy with the results:

There is also a whole genre of nose job and/or face lift disaster videos where something has gone wrong and a second or third or fourth surgery is required. These are sad, but fortunately the majority of cosmetic surgeries don’t end up this way.

But the stories that most fascinate me are ones where the person is unhappy with the results for different reasons. Usually, the person has gotten exactly what she (it’s usually a “she,” although quite a few men get cosmetic surgery too) wants. But there’s an unease, sometimes a dramatic one. The feeling is one of unexpected loss of identity: she doesn’t recognize her own face anymore.

The face is extremely central to our idea of ourselves. That’s why so many young women who are insecure find fault with features that are basically fine, although not like a model’s. But after having those features “fixed,” many young women (I don’t know what percentage) experience regret that can be quite intense even though their surgeries were successful in the objective sense.

They look in the mirror and don’t recognize the person they’re seeing. This can happen to many people at the beginning but they adjust quite nicely in a few days or weeks. But for some the feeling persists and persists. I’ve even seen videos where young women ask to have a little bump put back on their noses, or ask to have the tip turn down again. Revision surgery can be done but it’s riskier and usually requires grafts of cartilage from ear or rib.

Why is Kamala Harris keeping pace in a race that seems 50/50 at this point?

The New Neo Posted on by

After all, shouldn’t she be losing badly? She’s part of the Biden administration, and by most metrics they’ve done a lousy job compared to Trump’s track record. She doesn’t speak well, especially when unscripted. She has an off-putting personality to a lot of people. She doesn’t have viewpoint consistency and can’t explain her many flip-flops.

Nevertheless, the race is a toss-up. Here’s my list of the reasons why:

(1) The vast majority of people still vote party line, and the country is pretty evenly split in that regard. I’m not talking about party registration, which is a different matter because many many people who pretty much always vote party line nevertheless register as Independents.

(2) The MSM is a huge factor and shapes public perceptions for the Democrat.

(3) In line with #2 and the Democrats’ message for the last eight years, Trump has been so successfully demonized that a great great many people would vote for literally anyone who would run against him.

(4) Abortion is still a huge issue and Kamala is its champion. This attracts many people who are essentially one-issue voters.

(5) Identity politics, in which Kamala Harris is a twofer: female and black. And her exact percentage of blackness in the genetic sense is unimportant. She is black enough.

(6) Kamala Harris is also relatively young, and looks good for her age. Trump is getting pretty old now, even though he’s very mentally alert. His choice of a young whippersnapper like Vance is good in that regard, but there is still a big age gap between Trump and Harris.

(7) Harris represents herself as an agent of change, which seems ludicrous to me since she’s been vice president for almost four years. But I think there are voters who buy it. After all, she’s never been president before. Biden has, and Trump has. And although Obama beat her at becoming the first black president, she would be the first female president, which also represents something fresh and new to a lot of people.