Biden and the press: now it can be told

The New Neo Posted on by

I think we already pretty much knew this, actually, merely by observing. But now it’s being admitted to:

Former President Joe Biden’s White House staff made “really unethical” demands of the press as part of a campaign to “bully” journalists into portraying the aging commander in chief in a good light, a former staffer revealed Tuesday.

“They did bully a lot of journalists, and I think they would tell you that now. They wouldn’t have told you at the time,” Michael LaRosa, who served as former first lady Jill Biden’s press secretary, told “The Young Turks” host Cenk Uygur.

The former president’s communications team, led by Anita Dunn, was “very hostile and very suspicious” of journalists and treated their jobs as if they were operating “out of a bunker,” LaRosa said. …

There was this thing in Biden world about quote approval, everything had to be on quote approval,” LaRosa said, explaining that the practice involved “one person” on Biden’s team deciding “what the reporter can use, what quotes they can use” after an interview with the president. …

“I mean you saw them get caught trying to script questions to radio reporters that summer, summer of 2024. It was very reminiscent to me of being on the campaign in 2020, where these young press staffers in these states like New Hampshire, or Iowa, or Nevada, they were sort of like dog trained to make the questions conditional for interviews,” he said.

“And I said to them, ‘Please never ask the journalist for the questions ahead of time. You can always ask about the topics, but do not ask them for the questions for Dr. Biden,’” LaRosa explained, claiming that he refused to take part in the practice when handling press for the former first lady.

Oh, how ethical of him! Jill didn’t need the help; Joe did. His was a Potemkin presidency, and the press was fully complicit.

And then there’s that name: Anita Dunn. She goes way back. I first mentioned her in 2009 when she worked for Obama and was blasting Fox as biased and holding up CNN as objective (unfortunately the video there no longer works).

Trump signs EO to promote US election security

The New Neo Posted on by

Nice try, although I doubt that this EO of Trump’s will hold up. The president does not have the authority to set nationwide voting rules for federal elections.

However, as you can see, the EO is cleverly drafted and in this particular form I suppose it might have a chance of court approval:

The order strengthens election integrity through a variety of mechanisms, including having the Election Assistance Commission require documentary, government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship on its voter registration forms, the administration said in a fact-sheet.

In order for states to receive federal funds for elections, they will be required to comply with “integrity measures set forth by Federal law, including the requirement that states use the national mail voter registration form that will now require proof of citizenship,” the document said.

“The Order improves the integrity of elections by directing the updating of the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0 and security standards for voting equipment and prioritizing federal grant funds accordingly,” the administration said. “This includes requiring a voter-verifiable paper ballot record and not using ballots in which the counted vote is contained within a barcode or QR code.” …

“All agencies must report on compliance with undoing Biden Executive Order 14019, which turned Federal agencies into Democratic voter turnout centers,” the document said.

The trick is that it doesn’t force states to do anything, but federal money is conditioned on compliance.

One of the things that is increasingly clear is that, by taking fairly commonsense approaches to a number of things, Trump pushes the left into taking more and more unpopular stances. Democrats for voting insecurity. Democrats for illegal violent gangs. Democrats for government fraud and waste.

ADDENDUM: And right on schedule, Governor Pritzker of Illinois claims that this will disenfranchise “millions.’

This woman is the president and CEO of NPR

The New Neo Posted on by

Mind-boggling.

When Twitter first came out, it struck me that a lot of people were revealing themselves through it. Did they think their tweets would not be noticed, or were ephemeral? Did a certain group contagion and abandon take hold? Did they think they were among friends?

Did they think at all?

And of course the notion of objectivity of coverage in the face of such a degree of partisanship is absurd.

And what of those Palestinian “protests”?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve heard many people wonder why there have been so few Palestinian protests against Hamas. My response has been that there’s only a small percentage of Palestinians who aren’t onboard with Hamas and the war, and the consequences of protests would be dire. Gaza isn’t exactly a bastion of free speech.

But now we have this:

CAIRO — Thousands of Palestinians marched between the wreckage of a heavily destroyed town in northern Gaza on Wednesday in the second day of antiwar protests, with many chanting against Hamas in a rare display of public anger against the militant group.

The protests, which centered mainly on Gaza’s north, appeared to be aimed generally against the war, with protesters calling for an end to 17 months of deadly fighting with Israel that has made life in Gaza insufferable.

But the public calls against Hamas, which has long repressed dissent and still rules the territory months into the war with Israel, were rare.

In the town of Beit Lahiya, where a similar protest took place Tuesday, about 3,000 people demonstrated, with many chanting, “The people want the fall of Hamas.” In the hard-hit Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, dozens of men chanted “Out, out out! Hamas get out!”

“Our children have been killed. Our houses have been destroyed,” said Abed Radwan, who said he joined the protest in Beit Lahiya “against the war, against Hamas, and the [Palestinian political] factions, against Israel and against the world’s silence.” …

The militant group has violently cracked down on previous protests. This time no outright intervention was apparent, perhaps because Hamas is keeping a lower profile since Israel resumed war against it. …

Later, they said they regretted participating because of Israeli media coverage, which emphasized the opposition to Hamas.

So, what I take from it is that (a) it’s a very small group (b) they’re angry that they’ve had negative consequences from the war they started and probably supported (c) they want a breather from war, but their sentiments regarding Israel and its right to exist have not changed (d) they blame everybody; and (e) Hamas is choosing to take it easy on them, perhaps because it serves their “suffering Palestinians” narrative.

This may be the truth [my emphasis]:

A 19-year-old Palestinian, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, said he planned to join demonstrations on Wednesday. His mother has cancer and his 10-year-old brother is hospitalized with cerebral palsy, and he said the family has been displaced multiple times since their home was destroyed.

“People are angry at the whole world,” including the United States, Israel and Hamas, he said. “We want Hamas to resolve this situation, return the hostages and end this whole thing.”

But truth is an elusive commodity in the Palestinian world. The whole thing may be some form of taqiyyah – that is, strategic deception. Hard to say. Actually, impossible to say. But I would guess there is a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the length of the war and its cost to the common Gazan. Having a temporary ceasefire gave them bit of respite, and then a resumption of the war must have seemed especially unwelcome. They believe that if the hostages were given up, the war would end. But I’m not so sure at this point; Israel cannot allow the situation to continue and leave Hamas or any similar group with similar goals in charge.

Signalgate

The New Neo Posted on by

I know I’m supposed to care deeply about Jeffrey Goldberg’s entrée into the administration’s Signal discussion of an attack in Yemen. And I probably should be writing more about it. But it’s just not of any real interest to me; it palls in significance to almost everything else going on in the US and the world, and was at worst an error that will hopefully never occur again and has not had any serious repercussions in terms of national security.

The most interesting thing about it is the question of whether it was a setup, but even that simply doesn’t interest me.

Sorry.

However, here are two links for you to peruse: this as well as this.

The fearful are leaving Trumpland

The New Neo Posted on by

This article caught my eye. It describes what you might call the Rosie O’Donnell phenomenon of people leaving the country because of their hatred of Trump and fear of what he has in store for them. Ordinarily the latter bears zero relation to reality. But that seems to be the echo chamber in which they live, and they’re willing to act on it.

For example, the article describes the motives of a gay couple moving to Ireland [emphasis mine]:

“This is not just four years of a president that we don’t happen to like,” Hennigan said. “This is a different regime, and it’s time to leave. For years, I saw progress with race equality, women’s equality, and gay equality. Now, I think maybe we’ve already lived through the pinnacle of equality, at least in this country.”

Atlas, a retired school teacher, and Hennigan, a travel adviser who can work remotely, are concerned about their rights as a gay married couple. Despite recently completing a 20-month renovation of their Boston home, they have decided to uproot.

I can’t even figure out what rhetoric of Trump they might be relying on to think that those rights would be threatened by Trump during his term. He did nothing about it during his first term, either. And a policy of blocking medical transition for youths actually supports gay people, because a great number of de-transitioners finally settle into accepting that they are gay rather than trans.

But logic has little to nothing to do with fear of Trump.

“Some of these people are mixed-race couples or same-sex couples that perceive a threat to their future in the US,” [an immigration law attorney] said.

In Ireland, by the way, gay marriage is indeed legal, but there are about half the number of such marriages per capita compared to in the US. Support for gay marriage is very high in Ireland, although the churches in Ireland oppose it.

However, the idea of Ireland as some sort of benign country is laughable to me, although my priorities are apparently quite different from those of the recent Irish arrivals from the US. I can’t imagine that they care one whit that Ireland has the distinction of being the most anti-Israel country in Western Europe, and that’s saying a lot. As Ireland’s few Jews consider fleeing, the Rosie O’Donnells and the Hennigans enter:

Ireland has been among the most outspoken critics of Israel’s response to the October 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel by Hamas militants that sparked the war in Gaza.

Polls since the start of the war have shown overwhelming pro-Palestinian sympathy in Ireland.

A survey in June by the news site The Journal found that 76 percent of Irish people believed the EU should impose economic trade sanctions on Israel over the conflict.

Protesters at rallies in Dublin told AFP they feel empathy with Palestinians due to Ireland’s centuries-long history resisting British rule.

The ignorance is almost overwhelming.

Ireland is also not without its share of violence, anti-immigrant (mostly anti-Moslem, not anti-affluent Bostonian) demonstrations, and populist sentiment. It would be ironic if these people moved to Ireland only to have Trumpism follow them there. But I doubt it, because populism isn’t especially strong in Ireland and leftism is.

At New York’s Natural History Museum

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m on my way home today, but yesterday I went to the Natural History Museum, an experience I recall from childhood with affection. It’s so huge that it would take many days to really cover it, and I was only there for about four hours, but I did see some old favorites.

First, though, I had to wait in line outside in the pouring rain. I’m not sure why there were so many people there, but there certainly were. But the wait was worth it.

Of course the dinosaurs were a beloved favorite. But I decided that it was the dioramas that still enchanted me. I usually don’t like stuffed animals, but these are so well done – with vegetation in the foreground and beautifully painted backgrounds, and the animals posed so realistically – that I still was transfixed by them.

Here was my favorite – or certainly one of my favorites. My photo doesn’t even begin to do it justice: the impressive size of it, the 3-D nature of it, and the delicate little flowers in front. But here it is anyway:

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) They say sunlight is the best disinfectant. And perhaps we’ll soon see how it works on NGOs:

Ahead of a key Senate hearing on Tuesday to examine the Biden administration’s work with outside entities to censor Americans, Chairman Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., blasted the former president’s “sprawling network of federal agencies and NGOs” reportedly used to limit speech and posts that were “disfavored.”

“The Biden Administration created a vast censorship enterprise, comprised of a sprawling network of federal agencies and NGOs that have been working overtime to censor Americans’ speech. From special reporting portals to the White House press secretary admitting at the podium that they were flagging posts to be taken down, the level of coordination to subvert the First Amendment and remove disfavored speech was beyond what most imagined,” the Missouri senator told Fox News Digital in an exclusive statement previewing the hearing.

Chairman Schmitt will lead his first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution to review “the role non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have played in the censorship of Americans, all while receiving billions in federal tax dollars and subsidies,” per an advisory.

We all saw the censorship and how far-reaching it was. But exactly how it was coordinated was somewhat opaque.

This should prove interesting.

(2) RIP Mia Love, who has died at 49. Here is her wish for America.

(3) How on earth did Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg get included in a Signal chat?:

The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, claimed President Donald Trump’s national security team added him in a Signal message thread regarding their plans for military strikes in Yemen.

(4) The sadists of Hamas release another propaganda video featuring two emaciated hostages. The families of both men had previously received signs of life.

(5) Democrat voters are unhappy with Democrats in Congress:

Congressional Democrats have typically enjoyed higher popularity with their voting base than their Republican counterparts. But the trauma of the 2024 presidential election defeat appears to have ruptured that relationship. A review of Quinnipiac University’s annual first-quarter congressional polling reveals that, for the first time in the poll’s history, congressional Democrats are now underwater with their own voters in approval ratings. …

Despite the restive energy in the party’s progressive wing, the Democratic discontent does not seem to be centered around a desire to pull the party to the left or the right. Democrats cannot seem to agree on which direction the party should move in — recent Gallup polling found that 45 percent wanted the party to become more moderate, while 29 percent felt it should become more liberal, and 22 percent wanted it to stay the same.

That sounds to me like a lot more Democrats want the party to become more moderate than more leftist. But if you add up the more leftist and stay the same versus more moderate, you get a roughly equal split.

A huge case of COVID fraud in Minnesota

The New Neo Posted on by

The COVID lockdowns were a disaster in so many ways that it’s hard to keep track of all of them. But one problem was that the situation represented an absolutely golden opportunity for corrupt grifters.

Here’s a huge case in Minnesota, Tim Walz’s state:

The founder of a Minnesota-based charity was convicted Wednesday of hatching a brazen ruse that pilfered close to $250 million in pandemic relief funds from a federal program meant to feed hungry children in need – in what prosecutors said was the nation’s largest COVID-19 fraud scheme.

Aimee Bock, the 44-year-old founder of Feeding our Future, was found guilty on federal charges of wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy for recruiting a network of people and organizations to operate as many as 250 fraudulent meal assistance sites throughout the state, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Minnesota.

Prosecutors said her non-profit took advantage of a COVID rule change that allowed for student meal-assistance programs to operate off school grounds, as well as for the involvement of for-profit restaurants – blowing federal funding meant to feed underserved children during the pandemic on her “lavish” lifestyle.

Her co-defendant, Salim Ahmed Said, who oversaw one of the phony kitchens in Minneapolis, was also convicted after the six-week trial on a mountain of charges for his role in the scheme.

Approximately 250 million dollars isn’t chump change, and 250 fake sites is an impressive number as well. These people thought big.

And it takes quite a degree of “lavishness” in one’s “lifestyle” to go through that money so quickly. But where there’s a will there’s a way:

Prosecutors said the fraudsters blew more than $240 million meant for kids on fancy cars, international travel and luxury real estate in Minnesota, Ohio, Kentucky, Kenya and Turkey.

Living way beyond one’s obvious means sometimes catches the attention of the authorities. And yet you can’t say the perps didn’t do at least some work for all that money:

Prosecutors said Bock and her 36-year-old accomplice, who owned the now-defunct Safari Restaurant, created fake meal counts, fraudulent invoices, and attendance sheets with bogus names of thousands of children supposedly served daily to secure additional funding from the US Department of Agriculture.

That’s got to take some time and effort, right?

There are about 70 people who have been charged as part of this fraud, “and more than 40 others have either pleaded guilty or been convicted.”

What’s not discussed in the article is that fact that Said is of Somalian ethnicity, as are most (or all) of the many other defendants except Aimee Bock. For example, here’s part of an article about some other defendants who took part in the scheme [my emphasis]:

Abdulkadir also agreed to pay $44,061,053 in restitution in conjunction with his co-defendants and must forfeit cash in several bank accounts as well as real estate that he purchased with stolen money in Minnesota and Ohio.

In a separate hearing Tuesday afternoon, Abdi Salah, 37, also pleaded guilty to a count of wire fraud in exchange for the dismissal of other charges. As a “minor participant” in the crime, he faces a recommended sentence of 21 to 27 months.

The men also face possible deportation. Like most of the defendants in the broader case, the Salah brothers are from Somalia. But unlike many of the others, they’re not U.S. citizens.

Abdi is a legal permanent resident, but Abdulkadir is in the U.S. illegally.

In December of 2021 — around the time he sent that email with the phony food invoices — Abdulkadir was fighting deportation. Prosecutors wrote in court filings that Abdulkadir failed to disclose millions in stolen money as income on his immigration paperwork. The defense countered that immigration evidence should be excluded because it could prejudice the jury.

Please read the whole thing. It’s quite something.

And let me add that I very much doubt that this Minnesota case is the sole instance of COVID fraud. There probably was a ton of it.