The ever-shifting Strait

The New Neo Posted on by

You really have to check the news hourly to keep up. And even then, the waters are murky.

But here’s what I think may be the latest, which may have been superseded by the time I publish this post:

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps fired on at least two ships in the waters near Oman, after Tehran again moved to close the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday, according to a report citing a US official — as President Donald Trump accused Iran of trying to “get cute” while warning the regime “can’t blackmail us.”

Two IRGC gunboats approached a tanker about 20 nautical miles northeast of the Gulf country around 1 p.m. local time — and opened fire unprovoked, the tanker’s master reported, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Organization.

Audio recordings indicate that two Indian vessels were also forced back out of the strait following the gunfire. One of those ships was an Indian-flagged VLCC supertanker carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi oil, according to an X account that tracks maritime travels. …

“They wanted to close up the strait again, as they’ve been doing for years,” Trump said. “They can’t blackmail us.”

He paired that warning with an unexpectedly upbeat readout on diplomacy, saying talks were advancing despite the violence at sea.

“We have very good conversations going on. It’s working out very well,” he said. “They got a little cute, as they have been doing for 47 years. Nobody ever took them on — we took them on.”

Only Trump would say they got a little cute. It’s an almost affectionate putdown of the twisty negotiating tactics of his adversaries.

It seems that there are a host of different factions involved on the Iranian side, acting at cross-purposes and angry at each other – at least, according to this:

If the stock market were open, it almost certainly would be going down today. It’s probably fortunate that it’s closed.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

So much news! The following is just the tip of a large iceberg:

(1) Crude oil prices down; stock market up as the markets react to announcements regarding Iran.

(2) Mamdani may be able to get one of his wishes granted: the so-called pied-a-terre tax. Here’s the plan:

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani touted Gov. Kathy Hochul’s proposal on April 15 to tax expensive second homes as a sign of a progressive tide to tax the rich, but it will only apply to absentee owners.

The pied-a-terre tax puts an annual surcharge on homes valued above $5 million when there is no resident who lives primarily in New York City. The tax, which would need to be passed in the state’s delayed budget, would generate some $500 million in revenue annually, according to Hochul’s office.

“If you can afford a $5 million second home that sits empty most of the year, you can afford to contribute like every other New Yorker,” Hochul said in a statement. Non-resident owners do not pay New York City’s income taxes. To avoid taxation, property owners could make the home their primary residence or rent it out someone else who does so.

I assume they’re already paying hefty property taxes, aren’t they? So don’t they already “contribute”? I guess they don’t contribute enough for Zohran’s tastes. This would be on top of any property tax. It may also make it harder for the owners to unload the property if they want to sell and escape Mamdani’s clutches.

This quote from the article is unintentionally humorous, in a bleak way:

Hochul, a moderate Democrat up for re-election in November, has been hesitant to raise taxes, which the city cannot do without the state government’s permission.

Hochul is no moderate – except compared to the Communist Mamdani.

Oh, and this from him is pretty funny, too – because he was raised as a “global elite” by parents who definitely were:

We are one step closer to balancing our budget by taxing the ultra-wealthy and global elites with a pied-a-terre tax — the first of its kind in our state,

(3) ICE agents charged in Minnesota:

At a Thursday press conference, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty announced that her office had issued a nationwide arrest warrant for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent accused of pointing a gun at two motorists on a Minneapolis highway during Operation Metro Surge. Gregory Morgan Jr. of Temple Hills, Maryland, faces two counts of second-degree assault in the Feb. 5 incident.

Details of the incident at the link. Moriarty is Soros-backed, as you might imagine.

Also:

According to the New York Times, it is extremely unusual for a state government to arrest a federal law enforcement officer for on-duty actions.

Ya think?

(4) Is Democrat Senator Ruben Gallego next?

Luna told CBS News’ “The Takeout with Major Garrett” that the Arizona Democrat was the previously unnamed senator whom she said was facing “very disturbing” allegations in a cryptic social media post earlier this week.

A Gallego spokesperson told CBS News on Thursday: “These are right wing conspiracy theories being parroted by a fringe far right member of Congress. Senator Gallego has not received notification or been contacted by the ethics committee.” …

Luna said “there is a woman that allegedly is coming forward with attorneys [and] wants to go on-record about an incident that occurred between the two of them at the same time, and the event was sexual in nature, allegedly.”

Pressed for further details, Luna added that “I think any time that you are knowingly engaging in purchasing someone for sex, that that is something that should be taken seriously.”

Gallego has strongly denied wrongdoing in recent days. He told reporters earlier this week he has never engaged in any sexual misconduct …

Gallego was best buddies with Swalwell.

(5) Perhaps true?:

(6) While we’re at it, this article is from ten days ago:

A review by Iran International of citizen reports and source material found that, in about one month after the war began, at least 130 sites tied to internal repression were destroyed or hit.

They included 57 Basij buildings or bases, 43 police (FARAJA) facilities, 10 Revolutionary Guards compounds, and 11 security complexes involved in repression. Other targets included judicial buildings and the state broadcaster, institutions that helped complete the chain through prosecutions, propaganda and coerced confessions.

Iran International sources also put the toll among security forces at nearly 5,000 dead and about 21,000 wounded. …

The targets were not only militarily useful. Many were symbols.

Please read the whole thing. I don’t know anything about the reliability of the source, however.

Iran, the Strait, and the uranium: promises, promises

The New Neo Posted on by

News:

[Trump said] Very important is that Iran does not have a nuclear weapon and they’ve agreed to that. Iran’s agreed to that, and they’ve agreed to it very powerfully. They’ve agreed to give us back the nuclear dust, which is way underground because of the attack we made with the B-2 bombers. So, we have a lot of agreement with Iran, and I think something’s going to happen very positively.

He added, in answer to a reporter’s question, that contrary to some news stories there’s no 20-year limit in any agreement about nuclear weapons.

Also:

President Trump took to Truth Social on Friday morning with some good news for enthusiasts of the Strait of Hormuz being fully open and operational: “IRAN HAS JUST ANNOUNCED THAT THE STRAIT OF IRAN IS FULLY OPEN AND READY FOR FULL PASSAGE.”

He added that the US blockade “will remain in full force” until a deal is complete.

When is a deal complete? And what good is the word of the present Iranian regime? As usual the “experts” are just guessing as to what this means and what will happen next.

My take: the blockade really hurt Iran. So its leaders will play ball with Trump for a while. They will promise him things he wants, and then stall on the delivery. But Trump being Trump, he’s not afraid to pressure them more. Trouble is, if the Democrats win the midterms and this happens after that, they will try to stop whatever he does and perhaps they will succeed.

So he’s in a hurry. Personally, I’d like to see him keep up the blockage until the economic pressures mean that the regime can’t pay its army and the army joins the forces trying to overthrow the regime. But I assume that, if that doesn’t happen and the blockade ends sooner than that, there’s probably a good reason for it.

It also occurs to me that (at least in transactional terms) the enriched uranium and its turnover are somewhat akin to the Israeli hostages Gaza held – that is, the thing Trump most wants back, first and foremost.

I think Trump’s smart and I don’t think he trusts the Iranians; he will require proof and drive a hard bargain. But he’s a realist and knows he may have reached the limits of military action there without the dreaded “boots on the ground.” And he feels at this point that regime change – which he wants – will be up to a combination of the Iranian people and Israel’s formidable intelligence assets there.

No doubt he and Bibi have discussed all of this. But unless regime change occurs in Iran, anything Trump and Bibi do can be reversed by successors in the US and Israel determined to undo it and Trump and Bibi know it. Iran knows it as well.

And what of the Iranian people?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s hard to get news of what’s happening at present inside Iran, news you can trust. Here’s some encouraging reporting, though (the clip I’ve cued up is short):

Later he also says something I’ve been thinking for quite some time, which is that if the US finishes its part of the war, the Mossad will carry on inside Iran.

Plus, here’s a recent speech by the former Shah’s son (it’s also short), the Crown Prince:

I realize that our intervention may end with just the military and economic weakening of Iran. The people will somehow have to do the rest – and they either need arms to do it, or somehow the military needs to take on the IRGC and Basij.

Was the Pope correct about war and prayer, based on that Biblical verse?

The New Neo Posted on by

As I said, I would have preferred that Trump let the whole thing slide when Pope Leo criticized him (and yes, it was the Pope who “started it” in terms of the fight). But that’s not Trump’s way, and one of the purposes Trump’s response has served is to call attention to a couple of things about the current Pope.

The first is that yes, the guy is a leftist or at least left-leaning, based on earlier tweets he wrote and/or retweeted as a cardinal, which involve politics (see also this).

The second is in some way even more troubling – at least to me. The Pope seems to have gotten his scriptural context wrong. Watch this video, which explains it quite well I think. It’s not long, I’ve cued it up for a 3-and-1/2-minute segment that is the relevant part:

How could the Pope make such an error? Was he a “journalist” for the New York Times in his earlier life? No, not that and not much of anything else except growing up Catholic and answering an early calling to be a priest. The Pope’s quote was from Isaiah, a book of what Christians call the Old Testament and Jews call the Tanakh. There are differences between the two books that aren’t especially relevant to this discussion. But here’s the King James Version of the chapter, and I don’t see any way to interpret it as Pope Leo did.

Either Leo hasn’t really studied the text, or he’s distorting it to make an anti-Trump antiwar point. I’ll leave it at that.

Former lieutenant governor of Virginia kills wife and self

The New Neo Posted on by

You can find the horrendous story here:

Embattled former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his estranged wife and himself inside their million-dollar home outside the nation’s capital early Thursday, cops said.

The 47-year-old Democrat repeatedly shot Cerina Fairfax in the basement of their Annandale residence just after midnight before turning the gun on himself in another part of the abode, according to Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis.

The couple’s two teenage children were inside the home at the time of the murder-suicide, and their son called 911 to report the shootings.

A bit of background – during 2019, when Governor Northam was facing calls to resign, Fairfax had been the subject of allegations of rape from over fifteen years earlier. They were never proven, he denied them, Northam stayed put, and Fairfax lost a 2021 run for governor. Fairfax is black, his wife is black, and the rape accusers were black. More recently Fairfax’s life seemed to be falling apart:

“I don’t think it’s a secret that there’s been a divorce proceedings that have been ongoing. From what I understand in this early stage, former Lieutenant Governor Fairfax was recently served some paperwork associated with an upcoming court proceeding that apparently led to this incident last night.”

Conservative columnist Sophia Nelson, who described Fairfax as a “close friend,” claimed on X that he was “deeply depressed” due to the ongoing divorce battle, but insisted “we never saw this coming. Ever. We are all devastated.”

Police had responded to the family home back in January after Fairfax accused his wife of assaulting him.

Investigators later determined he’d lied after reviewing footage from multiple cameras that Cerina had set up inside the home.

How did police know so quickly that he killed his wife and then himself? It was on those same cameras, which he did not bother to disable

More here, from documents filed by his wife during their divorce. Again, we don’t know if this is true, but at this point it’s easy to believe it is:

Fairfax apparently was drinking so heavily that he would lock himself away in the office of his family’s home, where he lived among “empty wine bottles, trash and piles of dirty laundry” — and would only emerge “long enough to get food or smoke cigarettes,” the documents allege.

Cerina alleged that Fairfax “had chosen not to be a productive member of the family and that the dictionary definition of ‘deadbeat’ was accurate as applied to him,” the filing states.

The judge noted that Fairfax, who was representing himself in the acrimonious divorce, didn’t dispute the facts of the allegations against him.

As a result of his deadbeat behavior, a judge had ordered Fairfax to leave the family home by April 30.

It’s also a logical conclusion that the order to vacate was the immediate motivation for the murder-suicide. With 20/20 hindsight, it’s also easy to say that he should have been removed from the home earlier by police and sent to rehab (involuntarily if necessary), although that kind of action would have been unusual.

Things had gotten this bad financially:

Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was more than $750,000 in debt when his estranged wife Cerina filed for divorce this past July, according to documents reviewed by The Post.

Fairfax, who shot and killed Cerina and himself early Thursday in their Annandale home, claimed in financial disclosures to have set up a private law practice out of his residence. However, his gross income was given only as “varies” and his frequency of pay was listed only as “periodic.”

The onetime Democratic rising star also claimed to have no cash on hand, credit card debt nearing $28,000, an additional personal loan or lien against him worth an estimated $25,000, and outstanding student loans worth an estimated $33,700.

Fairfax also claimed a line of credit worth $550,000 from Long Island-based mortgage lender Arcdec Capital Solutions and a separate $117,000 loan from Florida-based AHA Real Estate LLC.

This seems to be a case of a man spiraling down into failure, alcoholism, and degradation, who decided not to let his wife escape either. It is a terrible tragedy and crime and I see no particular political implications in it. I hope the children get a lot of help; I assume they will need it.

[NOTE: Here’s a post I wrote about Fairfax back in 2019, when the sexual allegations were in the news.]

On Trump’s 2019 impeachment and the fake whistleblower

The New Neo Posted on by

Alan Dershowitz says “Trump Should Move to Expunge 2019 Impeachment”:

After newly declassified documents showed that an inspector general wrongly pushed an unvetted accusation from a Democrat operative who lied to launch the first impeachment of Donald Trump, legal expert Alan Dershowitz said that the president has a strong case for moving to expunge that first impeachment from his record.

While Dershowitz was a Democrat himself, he defended Trump during the impeachment trial. …

The defense team never got to confront the accuser with evidence that was exculpatory for the president, and now we have these new revelations to confirm how bogus the whole impeachment was.

Referring to an impeachment reversal, Dershowitz admitted, “It’s never been done. I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t be done. Impeachment is a quasi-judicial procedure, whether you have to go back to Congress and ask them to expunge it or go to the courts.” …

RealClearInvestigations named the “whistleblower” in question as intel analyst Eric Ciaramella. He was a registered Democrat, he met with Schiff before submitting his complaint, and he would not reveal any credible contacts, yet Inspector General Michael Atkinson didn’t even question, let alone rigorously assess, either the honesty or motivations of this “whistleblower.”

In fact, Atkinson did not even follow standard inspector general procedures, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revealed. Atkinson conducted interviews with four individuals only: “the Whistleblower, the Whistleblower’s friend who was a co-author of the January 2017 Russia Hoax Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) and close colleague of disgraced former FBI Agent Peter Strzok, and two character references who had zero firsthand knowledge of the July 2019 phone call.” Yet Atkinson exceeded his statutory jurisdiction based just on all that blatantly biased hearsay.

Just a different form of political lawfare against Trump – shall we call it “impeachment-fare”?

Reading this, I felt that the whole thing had a familiar ring – not every single detail, of course, but the main outline. Looking it up, I see that I wrote several posts on Ciaramella at the time it all happened. It wasn’t a secret who the so-called whistleblower was even back then, although it hadn’t been officially revealed. This post is especially relevant; please take a look.

Law, clarity, and simplicity

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Skip” makes this interesting observation:

Nothing glazes my eyes over faster than reading law. Yet one like me would think a written law shouldn’t need to be determined, it should be cut and dry what it means. Seems that isn’t the case and hasn’t been for a long time.

I think I might have said something similar prior to going to law school. But if there’s one thing I learned there – really really learned – it was that it’s impossible to do as described. The phenomenon is not something recent, either. It’s something that’s an intrinsic and unavoidable part of law.

The reason this is true is connected to what Karl Popper pointed out about language itself:

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

And that is true of all laws. One must try to write laws that are as clear and comprehensive as possible. But attempts to clarify all gray areas that can arise from a law will inevitably lead to laws that are incredibly lengthy and convoluted in their attempts to cover all bases, an attempt that always fails because life always serves up the unexpected and unforeseen. So these attempts at clarification often result in statutes that serve to make things murkier and more unwieldly.

That’s where courts come in. They are tasked with interpreting and applying laws. That’s how we get precedent and case law. And because it’s a matter of interpretation, we often get disagreements. The disagreements can be based on the definition of a word or phrase, the history of the people who passed the statute and what they said the law was about at the time, and the legal philosophy of the judges (which can be based on politics and how “elastic” they think a law should be).

It’s amazing that the legal system functions as well as it does, considering.

Tax day musings

The New Neo Posted on by

I did my own taxes by hand for years, burning the midnight oil night after night, filing at the last minute. Then I tried TurboTax, but for whatever reason it seemed to make things even more complicated. And so I gave up that approach, and finally about four years ago I decided to treat myself to the services of an accountant.

And a treat it was, although of course I still had to do some prep work. But it was so much easier to take my papers to the accountants, who were so very organized compared to me. In due time, back would come a big folder with my tax returns, forms and envelopes for estimated taxes next year all neatly typed. Of course, the fee for the service was quite a bit, but it was worth every penny.

Last year they raised their prices 50%. Still worth it. This year they raised their prices a bit more, but not more than the going rate for other accountants in the area. So I gave them the information requested by the designated date, which was about a month ago.

And waited to hear from them. And waited. And waited some more. Late last week I called to ask how things were going. The secretary said fine, and I’d be hearing from my accountant before the 15th. And indeed, yesterday the accountant called me.

Called me to say that she had asked for an extension and that in two or three weeks my taxes would be prepared.

Now, this is not the end of the world. An extension is okay, but it’s not what one expects from an accountant preparing a tax return that although not simplicity itself is really not all that complicated. I’d complied with all their instructions and I’d done it on time, something she acknowledged. But sorry, they were just swamped this year.

I asked quite a few questions and it turns out that one of the accountants had quit and they were shorthanded. But the real culprit was some new software system that seems to have stymied them much like TurboTax had messed me up years ago.

Was she telling me the truth? I don’t know. But it’s just another strange example of things not quite working as they’re supposed to.

[NOTE: Here’s a tribute I wrote in honor of my father, who was a CPA and lawyer. It’s about tax season and what it meant in our house when I was growing up.]