The waiting game in Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

The killings have reached enormous levels. The mullahs are like cornered rats with very sharp teeth:

With the Iranian regime conducting one of the deadliest crackdowns in recent decades despite repeated warnings by President Donald Trump, the U.S. and several Western countries have advised their citizens to leave the country immediately.

The advisory comes amid reports that the U.S. was pulling out hundreds of troops from bases in the region, including the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest American military installation in the Middle East. “The Pentagon has begun withdrawing some U.S. troops and assets from a key base in Qatar as a precautionary measure while President Trump weighs whether to take military action against Iran, officials said,” The Washington Post reported.

The British broadcaster Sky News saw this as “a signal the US is readying a strike – or giving itself the option to do so.”

The death toll is reported to now be as high as 15,000. It’s impossible to know, but there’s little doubt it’s very high, and more to come.

Trump needs to do something effective, and it should happen as soon as possible. From the Times of Israel, on why it hasn’t happened yet:

Israeli and Arab officials have suggested the Trump administration hold off on striking Iran for now, believing that the Islamic Republic may not be sufficiently weakened in order for a US attack to topple it, NBC News reported Tuesday.

The report came as US President Donald Trump told reporters that he has not yet decided what course of action he will take in response to Iran’s killing of protesters.

Protests have taken place across all of Iran’s 31 provinces, according to the US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency. It said Wednesday that at least 2,571 people had been killed and more than 18,100 had been arrested in the more than two weeks of protests. The Mossad is said to believe the death toll is more than twice as high.

NBC said that Israeli and Arab officials prefer the US wait to strike until the Iranian regime is further stretched, and that this message was relayed in talks held the past few days involving US political and military leaders.

Can this report be trusted? Or is it a pretense to try to get the mullahs to believe no action is forthcoming any time soon when in fact something is imminent?

SCOTUS decides in favor of standing for candidates challenging voting rules

The New Neo Posted on by

This seems like good news to me:

The Supreme Court on Wednesday backed a Republican congressman from Illinois who is challenging a state law that allows mail ballots to be received after Election Day, a decision that may make it easier for other candidates to challenge voting laws – even if they ultimately win their election.

The decision, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, was 7-2 with two of the court’s liberals dissenting.

“Candidates have a concrete and particularized interest in the rules that govern the counting of votes in their elections, regardless whether those rules harm their electoral prospects or increase the cost of their campaigns,” Roberts wrote. “Their interest extends to the integrity of the election—and the democratic process by which they earn or lose the support of the people they seek to represent.”

The congressman, Michael Bost, challenged an Illinois law that allows ballots to be received up to two weeks after Election Day, as long as they are postmarked by the election. Bost sued in 2022, claiming that the Illinois law ran afoul of a federal law that sets a uniform day for federal elections. …

“Today’s ruling could open the door to a lot of litigation—and potential chaos – on the far side of the next contested election,” said Steve Vladeck, CNN Supreme Court analyst and professor at Georgetown University Law Center.

“If candidates will generally have standing to challenge how votes are counted in any election they’re running in, that could dramatically expand the horizon of legal challenges that can be brought challenging even those elections that were completely by the book,” Vladeck said, “potentially injecting more uncertainty in those critical days and weeks after Election Day going forward.”

That’s certainly true. But I doubt the professor would be complaining if it happened to be a Democrat mounting the challenge for any reason.

The justice who sided with the conservative majority was Elana Kagan, by the way.

On Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “huxley.”]

Trump nixes negotiation while the killings continue:

“I’ve canceled all meetings with Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops,” Trump says, repeating his announcement from the Truth Social post, again telling protesters, “help is on its way.”

What’s there to negotiate? Hopefully, the only thing under consideration would be to allow them to surrender the government and leave the country. Even that seems way too kind.

More from Trump:

US President Donald Trump reiterates his call for Iranians to keep protesting, take over their institutions and save the names of those cracking down against them.

I’m not sure how an unarmed populace “takes over institutions,” except through sheer numbers.

Bill Clinton refuses to testify before Congress

The New Neo Posted on by

This story focuses on two elements that have come to bore me greatly. One is Bill Clinton, and the other is the much-hyped (much overhyped, IMHO) idea that Epstein, who did have sex with underage girls, involved many other famous people in the practice.

However, in case you’re interested, here it is:

President Bill Clinton defied a subpoena to give a deposition regarding Jeffrey Epstein in front of the House Oversight Committee.

The sworn closed-door deposition should have happened at 10 AM ET.

Chairman James Comer is not happy:

“Well, I think everyone knows by now Bill Clinton did not show up, and I think it’s important to note that this subpoena was voted on in a bipartisan manner by this committee. This wasn’t something that I just issued as chairman of the committee. This was voted on by the entire committee in a unanimous vote of the House Oversight Committee to subpoena former President Clinton and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.”

He faces contempt of Congress, perhaps. But that’s not usually all that meaningful either, is it?

Will Hillary show up tomorrow? I doubt it, but if she does I very much doubt it will be meaningful.

Ten percent of the US budget goes to theft/fraud

The New Neo Posted on by

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has an estimate for us:

Somewhere between 5-10% of the total federal budget gets gobbled up by wrongdoers each year, Bessent said, citing data from the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

“If we can narrow that number, President Trump asked for a $500 billion increase in the defense budget to fortify the 10 to 20 years of neglect,” Bessent told journalist Christopher Rufo in a recent interview.

“If we need to flex up our military budget, if we can get rid of this waste, fraud, and abuse, we can finance a safer, sounder US with that, without taking on more debt. Sounds like a pretty good outcome to me.”

It is infuriating to think that much money has gone to criminals. And yet it’s believable. The amount almost certainly mushroomed during COVID, when many of the controls (including those on voting security, by the way) were relaxed. I don’t think this relaxation policy was done in all innocence, either. Was it done in part to facilitate fraud, graft, grift? I would bet on the answer being “yes.”

Plus:

Beyond fraudulent government spending, the Internal Revenue Service estimates that it has failed to collect hundreds of billions of dollars worth of taxes owed.

The IRS most recently projected that the so-called “tax gap” was about $606 billion as of fiscal year 2022.

Pretty soon we’ll be talking about real money.

[NOTE: That last sentence is a riff on this quote from Senator Everett Dirksen:

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

Indeed.

Scott Adams, RIP

The New Neo Posted on by

He said he was going to die soon and he kept his word: Scott Adams has died of prostate cancer at 68.

All of us are unique, but Adams was one of the more unique and independent-minded people around:

Adams became famous through “Dilbert,” the comic strip that poked fun at corporate culture with keen insight into the absurdity, cruelty and incompetence of management inside large organizations. In his last decade and a half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis.

His 2013 best seller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years.

In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.

In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice.

A trained hypnotist, Adams predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.

I think his most impressive offering in the latter part of his career was his analysis of “The Charlottesville Hoax” – how it was perpetrated and the thinking process of those who bought into it.

He will be missed.

Here his ex-wife reads a final message from Adams:

Oregon will finally be purging its voter rolls of “inactive voters”

The New Neo Posted on by

The state is being sued about this, but that has nothing to do with the actions now being taken to clean up the rolls, says Oregon’s Secretary of State Tobias Read:

That process could lead to the cancellation of as many as 800,000 registrations. That’s the number of voters Read says are currently classified as “inactive” on the voter rolls. To be clear, inactive voters do not receive ballots, but their names remain on the rolls.

Who are these people? “Inactive” merely means the ballot mailed to the voter was returned as undeliverable. It doesn’t mean the voter hasn’t voted in years, it doesn’t mean the voter is dead, it doesn’t mean the voter doesn’t exist, it doesn’t mean the voter isn’t a citizen; it seems that any of those things could be the case and the voter will remain on the rolls and get a ballot in the mail without asking.

Why did this weeding out process take so long?:

Read, a Democrat elected in 2024, says he’s acting not in direct response to any of the lawsuits, but because he wants to increase voter trust in mail elections.

“There are many examples of people seeking to undermine confidence in our elections,” he says. “We want to do whatever we can to remove any reasons for doubt.”

Say, I’ve got an idea I’d like to share with Read: end universal mail-in ballots and have in-person voting, with the old-fashioned absentee ballot request system with its checks on fraud. But funny thing, that’s not even being considered.

In the comments at the link, here’s an interesting response in answer to another commenter’s query about what’s inherently suspicious about universal mail-in ballots:

1. Ballot secrecy.

In the home it is possible for dominant and potentially abusive family members to watch the marking of the ballot. This overlaps with a similar problem in such family environments of dictating the vote, or outright ballot theft.

Then when tallying, it is possible that the signed security envelope that contains the ballot can, as it is opened, be correlated with the ballot. In short, a malevolent actor can record who voted for whom/what. Not saying it happens or is likely, but it is much more possible than under the old ballot box system.
[EDIT: Anyone who is scared of Trump ought to be worried that in the future, with sufficient power, it could be covert policy for such “vote-peeping” to be used to identify his enemies. I’m not a conspiracy sorta guy, but this seems like a glaring threat.]

2. Selective release of early results.

Now I’m working from memory and could be wrong, but I believe that the votes are tallied as they arrive, if not tallied, then removed from the security envelopes at least, making it possible to tally early. I think it is unlawful to release the on-going count, nor do I think it has been done, but again, it’s possible where it is not possible with the ballot box method.

Related to this is a weird thing I discovered (or think I did, I could find it with some work) is that when the signed security envelopes come in, your name is marked as having voted. This is fine, but it looks to me like this information is released to both parties and based on the fact that your name is not marked as having voted they will call you and try to get you to vote for their issues/candidates. This OK as it is (although annoying), but the possibility exists that a favored party–depending on which has power–can suppress the information to the opposing party. Not possible in the ballot box method.

3. “Stolen” votes in the household.

This relates to #1. The ballots come to the home and if there is an abusive situation the actual ballot may be taken from the abused person and filled out by the forceful head of house.

Related to this but much less abusive is the situation that happened while my daughter was away at college, out-of-state. For the entire 4 years a ballot came for her to our house that she was never present to fill out. If I had wanted to open it and fill it out, then forge her signature–easy enough since I had examples at home–I have little doubt that I could have gotten away with it.

4. Miscounting.

This has actually happened at least once, and we know this because it was detected, but any undetected instances would pass.

In the old ballot box version, the vast bulk of votes were taken from the precincts to the tallying sites on the same day. There is an old tradition of partisan observers being present when the votes are counted–figuratively looking over the shoulders of the of vote counters. Now, since the votes are counted as they come in (if they are), is much harder for partisan observers to view the entire process, leaving many more of the votes to be tallied with no observers present. It is at such a time when the sole detected cheating was done: a GOP lady who was counting altered at least one ballot and was caught. She shamefacedly admitted to it and was given a light penalty.

There is no excuse for having such a bad system, subject to manipulation. Once it is in place, however, it is almost impossible to go back. The left depends on the system.

The world is waiting for Trump to act

The New Neo Posted on by

Or at the very least, the Iranian people are certainly waiting.

Or perhaps action has already begun?:

Friday we reported the assassination of IRCG commander Mahmoud Haqiqat in Iranshahr.

Now, in a Livestream, TousiTV is reporting the assassination of other IRCG officials …

Israeli agents? The US? Locals with their help?

“Reza Kasab, head of a ballistic missile unit in Kashan, this was a professional hit. He was assassinated by a suicide drone attack.”

“There are a lot of operatives on the ground carrying out these attacks.”

“Multiple generals have been killed in Iran.”

He notes that Israel’s strikes last year killed multiple senior IRGC officials, so now the replacement leaders are being killed.

“Islamic State TV in Iran have confirmed that IRCG have lost hundreds of their personnel in leadership.” My suspicion is that the IRCG have lost hundreds, but not all in leadership.

Reports of Mossad agents on the ground helping the revolution. This is the sort of thing that both sides in the conflict would say to help shore up resolve in their respective bases, but the drone attack suggests it’s true. (Could also be IDF special forces, CIA, or U.S. special forces.)

But it carries more weight when it comes from Mossad’s official Farsi Twitter account. “Go out together into the streets. The time has come. We are with you. Not only from a distance and verbally. We are with you in the field.”

Trump says this:

US President Donald Trump said Sunday that Iran proposed negotiations after his threat to strike the Islamic Republic over its bloody crackdown targeting demonstrators there, a move coming as activists said the death toll in protests rose to at least 544.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump was asked whether the regime has crossed his red line, given that he has pledged to target the Islamic Republic if it kills protesters.

“They’re starting to [cross it]. It looks like [it]. There seem to be some people killed that aren’t supposed to be killed… They rule through violence,” he responded.

“We’re looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it, and we’re looking at some very strong options. We’ll make a determination,” he said, adding that he is receiving hourly updates on developments at the protests.

Not much to go on there.

Meanwhile, the left doesn’t seem to care:

There have been no demonstrations in support of the embattled protesters. People who screamed falsehoods about Israel’s “massacres” of women and children in Gaza have been struck totally dumb about the carnage of civilians being deliberately wrought in Iran.

Most Western media initially ignored the Iranian insurrection, then downplayed it as mere “cost of living” protests, and then began to amplify regime propaganda claims.

An old story; the left ♥ the mullahs.

I keep checking the news on Iran …

The New Neo Posted on by

… but it’s hard to know what’s really happening and hard to predict what will happen. It’s potentially transformative, though. A whole lot of dominoes could fall if Iran fell; Iran has been an enormous driver of terrorism and turmoil.

What seems to be true at the moment:

The mullahtocracy has blacked out the internet for three full days.

The regime is issuing threats to the US and Israel. The threats are not empty, but they don’t intimidate the way they once did because of the events of last summer.

A massacre is feared.

Some mosques are burning:

The people of Iran have reportedly set fire to dozens of mosques in the last 14 days. How to explain to them that this is an act of… what’s the word… decolonization. How to explain to them that it is not Islamophobic to burn down a mosque, because mosques are not places of worship in this case, but places for state apparatus to commit acts of suppression. How to explain to them that the women of Iran are burning their hijabs and lighting the Supreme Leader’s face on fire, using the flame to ignite their cigarettes, because they have been mandated to constrict themselves against their will. How to explain to Mamdani’s core that being sworn in on a Quran to a democratic position gives Khameini and the Islamist regime the last laugh, because the Quran justifies brutalizing your wife and sex trafficking children. How to explain to them that they don’t stand for human rights at all, but for the violators of freedom itself.

Lots of photos at the link of young women lighting cigarettes with burning photos of the Iranian leaders.

I’m old enough to remember (and I remember it well) how in the buildup to the 1979 takeover by the mullahs, young women of the left – the grandmothers of today’s Iranian hijab-burners? – marched wearing the covered-up religious garb and declared that to be a sign of liberation. It puzzled me greatly at the time. These days the marriage of leftists and Islamofascism is a given.

It’s said that the regime has called in reinforcements from its satellites, such as Hezbollah, to crack down on its own people:

As anti-regime protests spread across Iran for a 12th straight day, the Islamic Republic has reportedly turned to foreign militias for support, with two independent sources confirming that roughly 850 Hezbollah, Iraqi militia and Quds Force-linked fighters crossed into Iran to bolster the regime’s security forces.

The reported movement marks a significant escalation in the regime’s response, signaling a willingness to rely on allied foreign militias with combat experience to help suppress domestic dissent.

“This is nothing new for the regime. It is the logical extension of a playbook the ruling clerics have used since 1979 to outsource repression to ideologically loyal militias and then integrate them into the state’s coercive infrastructure,” Iran expert Lisa Daftari told Fox News Digital.

And the world waits to see what, if anything, Trump will do:

Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before. The USA stands ready to help!!! President DONALD J. TRUMP

NOTE: I’ve written many many previous posts on Iran’s history. I especially suggest these, and in particular this, this, this, this, and this.