Notes from Chairman Biden

The New Neo Posted on by

A mite confused:

In comments first reported by the New York Post, Biden addressed an NAACP campaign event in Michigan Sunday night, where he repeatedly railed against his presumptive Republican opponent, former President Trump, while offering an aside about the contagion – which began in 2019 while the latter was in office.

“When I was vice president, things were kind of bad during the pandemic,” Biden said near the beginning of his remarks.

“And, what happened was Barack said to me: ‘Go to Detroit – help fix it.’”

Addled.

The explanation is that he’s not addled about when he was president, he’s addled about the difference between a pandemic and a recession:

The White House’s official transcript following the president’s remarks included a strikethrough of the word “pandemic”—instead replacing it with the word “recession.”

Biden was apparently referring to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, who took office while Biden was still VP back in 2014.

I actually think that’s what happened. But even so, it’s still odd for a speaker not to catch the error immediately – that is, if that speaker is thinking straight and paying any attention to his or her words. Joe is doing neither.

What’s more, there’s this:

“In his interview with our office, Mr. Biden’s memory was worse,” Hur said in his report. “He did not remember when he was vice president, forgetting on the first day of the interview when his term ended (‘if it was 2013—when did I stop being Vice President?’), and forgetting on the second day of the interview when his term began (‘in 2009, am I still Vice President?’).”

So let’s just split the difference and say that Biden is addled about a lot of things.

And then there was Biden’s stirring commencement speech at Morehouse College: With malice towards all and charity towards none. No, that’s not a quote; it’s a summary:

“You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered, and there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder if the ‘democracy’ you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy? That Black men are being killed in the street,” Biden said.

He continued, “What is democracy? The trail of broken promises still leaves Black communities behind. What is democracy? You have to be ten times better than anyone else to get a fair shot. Most of all, what does it mean? As you’ve heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure.”

“They don’t see you in the future of America. But they’re wrong,” he added.

The crowd applauded at his comment.

What a malevolent force Biden is.

Dispatches from the Kangaroo Court of New York

The New Neo Posted on by

Astounding proceedings today.

Astounding.

Cohen embezzled 60K from Trump, but is not being prosecuted for it nor did he plead guilty to it. He got off by testifying against Trump on these ridiculous charges.

And then there was Judge Merchan and Costello. You may recall who Costello is – he was Cohen’s lawyer at one time, and has information directly contradicting almost all of Cohen’s testimony against Trump, particularly as regards Trump’s motivation and knowledge.

Oh, plus the fact that Merchan contributed to Biden’s campaign in 2020 and to a group called “Stop Republicans.” This was illegal for him to do, even though the donations were small.

ADDENDUM:

Here’s a good one from Turley:

Here we go again: donation time!! [BUMPED UP: scroll down for today’s new posts]

The New Neo Posted on by

Ah yes, here we go again.

It’s been awhile since I’ve asked for donations. In the meantime, many readers have donated anyway, and I thank you all profusely. Some of you even have a setup whereby you make a monthly payment, which is also great. I appreciate it so very much, and it helps to keep this blog going.

If anyone wants to contribute to thenewneo, please click on the “Donate” button either to the right or at the bottom of the page, depending on what sort of device you use when reading the blog. If the Donate button is not showing, disable your adblocker and that should make it visible.

I thank everyone in advance. If it weren’t for you readers and commenters, I’d probably be doing something other than this in my dotage.

I’ll probably keep this post at the top of the blog for the next week.

California dreaming: the Racial Justice Act is a law enforcement nightmare

The New Neo Posted on by

I hope this doesn’t spread to other states. It’s bad enough that it’s the new policy in California. It’s truly stunning to contemplate:

California is about to demonstrate what a world constructed from the tenets of critical race studies looks like. The sentencing reversal in California v. Windom is the result of a recent law that will likely bring the state’s criminal-justice system to its knees. The Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020 without meaningful public review, turns long-standing academic tropes about implicit bias and white privilege into potent legal tools. And the floodgates are about to open. Starting this year, the RJA allows anyone serving time in a California prison or jail for a felony to challenge his conviction and sentencing retroactively on the ground of systemic racial bias.

The Act was introduced by stripping an old bill of its content and replacing it with this content and then fast-tracking it in a stealth way without hearings or publicity. Now it’s the law, and it’s an incredible one that will have enormous repercussions:

The Racial Justice Act operationalizes the proposition that every aspect of the criminal-justice system is biased against blacks. But according to the act’s legislative authors, it’s too hard to prove such bias in the case of individual arrests and prosecutions. Therefore, the act does away with the concept of individual fault and individual proof. From now on, statistics about past convictions are sufficient to invalidate a present trial or sentence. …

[Previously, defendants were required to] show that criminal-justice decision-makers were purposefully biased against them, in order to throw out a conviction or a sentence under the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court ruled. Statistics purporting to show a historical pattern of bias are not enough to support the requisite showing of individual discriminatory purpose against a particular defendant.

Thanks to the RJA, McCleskey no longer governs bias challenges in California. From now on in California, statistics purporting to show a pattern of bias in the past are enough to invalidate a current arrest, criminal charge, or judicial sentence.

And it doesn’t need to actually show bias, just a disparity in results. The insane presumption is that all races and groups commit crimes in proportion to their percentage in the population, and any disparity in numbers is evidence of discrimination.

Please read the whole thing.

The ICC wants to arrest Netanyahu for defending Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

Israel is the only nation in the world forbidden to defend itself against murderous predators out to destroy it, and punished for doing so. Merely repeating the words “Israel has a right to defend itself” means nothing, while acting to stop it and condemning it for actually doing so in the most humane way possible for an army fighting against terrorists who hide among civilians.

And it’s not as though the murderous predators are subtle, nor do they limit themselves to mere words. They invaded Israel and committed a series of barbaric and sadistic war crimes against its citizens, during a ceasefire. They documented those crimes, bragged about them, broadcast them, and vowed to commit them over and over till Israel and Israelis are destroyed. And this was not some outlaw terrorist group, it was the elected government of Gaza.

But here’s the latest from the ICC prosecutor. He is requesting a series of arrest warrants. The first group is for Sinwar and other Hamas leaders who masterminded the vicious crimes of 10/7. The second group is this:

I have reasonable grounds to believe that Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine (in the Gaza strip) from at least 8 October 2023:

– Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(b)(xxv) of the Statute;
– Wilfully causing great suffering, or serious injury to body or health contrary to article 8(2)(a)(iii), or cruel treatment as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
– Wilful killing contrary to article 8(2)(a)(i), or Murder as a war crime contrary to article 8(2)(c)(i);
Intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population as a war crime contrary to articles 8(2)(b)(i), or 8(2)(e)(i) …

And so forth.

The leaders of Israel are fighting a terrorist group dedicated to its destruction, right on its borders, who purposely hide among the civilian population in order to effect results of this very sort. It is doing so with more care to protect civilians than in any other urban warfare conflict on earth, against a force that wishes its own civilians to die, the better to spread anti-Israel propaganda. So congratulations, Hamas! The ICC is playing right into your hands. It is ironic that rules of war supposedly designed to prevent or discourage outrages such as the genocide against the Jews in World War II have ended up being tools for further genocide. But there’s a lot of irony in history.

To the Biden administration’s credit, they have condemned this in no uncertain terms – even though, by much of their previous rhetoric, they have encouraged it in a cynical double game:

“The ICC prosecutor’s application for arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is outrageous. And let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas. We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security,” Biden said.

The US State Department also condemned the move, saying, “The United States fundamentally rejects the announcement today from the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) that he is applying for arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, together with warrants for Hamas terrorists.”

“We reject the Prosecutor’s equivalence of Israel with Hamas. It is shameful. Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization that carried out the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and is still holding dozens of innocent people hostage, including Americans,” the State Department added.

The statement continued, “Moreover, the United States has been clear since well before the current conflict that that ICC has no jurisdiction over this matter.

The ICC has no jurisdiction, but it has influence. This gives ammunition to the Israel-haters and Jew-haters who say there is an equivalence between Netanyahu and the Sinwars of the world, or even that Netanyhu is worse. It could subject Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders to arrest if traveling internationally.

More:

House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik called for Congress to impose sanctions on the ICC following Khan’s statements.

“The ICC is an illegitimate court that equivocates a peaceful nation protecting its right to exist with radical terror groups that commit genocide,” Stefanik (R-NY) told the New York Post.

The “international community” has long imposed standards on Israel it would not and does not impose on any other country. The goal is to isolate Israel from the rest of the world. “Shameful” doesn’t even begin to describe it.

NOTE: The ICC prosecutor, Karim Ahmad Khan, is a British-born lawyer of Pakistani descent, a Muslim who is a member of the Ahmadiyya branch of Islam. The latter is a sect that does not believe in terrorism but wants Islam to take over the entire world by peaceful means. However, this all doesn’t really matter; if not by Khan or another Muslim, the request would have been issued by some other non-Muslim Westerner devoted to “international law” and Israel-hatred. There are plenty of candidates.

Who was Iran’s Raisi, and what happens now?

The New Neo Posted on by

Iran’s President Raisi, who was killed in yesterday’s helicopter crash, was responsible for the death of many political prisoners:

He was sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 known as the “death committee” at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

In 2022, to quell mass street protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, who died in police custody after being arrested by morality police for allegedly not wearing a hijab, Raisi unleashed a thuggish security crackdown on young people across the country that killed more than 500 people and saw more than 22,000 detained.

The article I linked said his nickname was the “Butcher of Tehran.” A kind of Iranian Robespierre. He was also probably next in line to replace the elderly Supreme Leader Khamenei, who is 85 years old and ascended to the office in 1989 as Khomeini’s successor. Prior to that, he – like Raisi – held the office of president. So you see the way the Iranian succession goes.

Now what will happen? Raisi will be replaced by the First Vice President, but in 50 days an “election” will take place to choose a successor. But the real question is who will succeed Khameini. Before Raisi’s death, it was considered to be a contest between Raisi and Khameini’s son. Now I suppose Khameini’s son is the frontrunner, but I’m going to assume there are plenty of other candidates jockeying for position. This article, written before Raisi’s accident, mentions that Khameini’s son might not succeed his father because there is some opposition to the idea of a hereditary rule. The article also mentions someone named Alireza Arafi as a possibility.

But the person who becomes the new president and the person who ends up succeeding Khameini (not necessarily the same person) will be cut from the same stern cloth as the others in the Iranian theocracy. Of the I am fairly certain.

And then there’s the question of whether the helicopter crash was an act of sabotage by a rival or enemy. My guess is that – because of the weather and the age of the helicopter – it was a bona fide accident. But as is the case in some murder mysteries, there’s no dearth of candidates for the perp if it was a deliberate act. Any of Raisi’s rivals are possibilities. The internet has already started blaming the Mossad, but it doesn’t seem like it matches their usual modus operandi.

Helicopter carrying Iran’s President Raisi crashes

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s official – Raisi’s plane has crashed:

It has been approximately 10 hours since authorities lost contact with President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter in the country’s East Azerbaijan Province, where dense fog hindered search efforts during the day. Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency warned that extreme cold would only hinder the search further as night fell.

The overnight low temperature in the nearest city of Tabriz will be in the low 50s on Sunday. It’s difficult to obtain precise weather data from the remote mountains where the crash took place, but temperatures there will dip closer to freezing, according to CNN meteorologists.

Iranian officials say they have located the exact crash site and are sending teams there. Earlier, authorities managed to make contact with two people who had been aboard the aircraft, according to a government spokesperson.

So if this report is correct, there are survivors.

UPDATE: It is now being reported that there are no survivors.

The majestic Gillian Murphy as the Swan Queen Odette

The New Neo Posted on by

Gillian Murphy has been with American Ballet Theater for about 25 years. She’s getting close to retirement age (she’s 45), but this video was made at least fourteen years ago. Murphy is exceptionally strong and she is also tall for a ballet dancer (probably around 5’6″, which is quite tall for a female dancer since they spend so much time on pointe).

That makes Murphy naturally queenly and less fragile, but her arms and upper body give the necessary fragility and vulnerability here. Her long fingers are very expressive and she uses them masterfully; it’s not all that common to notice a ballerina’s fingers but I find hers very arresting. Her extensions are extreme but her upper body and flow saves her performance from being too acrobatic.

The moments in this pas de deux when the Prince folds her “wings” in and cradles her are performed beautifully (and filmed well, too) so that the viewer really understands what the gesture means. He’s saying You needn’t be a swan anymore and try to fly away – be a woman, and I will love and protect you. That is essentially what the Act Two love story is all about.

There is often confusion about the Swan Queen. She’s a woman under a spell and has been transformed into a swan by day, but she becomes a woman again at night. When Prince Siegfried meets her and dances with her she is a woman, but a woman who retains her swanlike characteristics. She can be released from the spell if someone vows to love her forever, and is faithful to that vow. It’s that last part that leads to his involuntary and unaware betrayal in Act Three.

But here’s the pas de deux from Act Two. The part I mentioned about folding in her wings can be seen from around 5:58 to 6:12, and then again from 6:27 to 6:37:

How many illegal aliens will be voting in 2024? And how many voted in past elections?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s some research:

In 2014, the academic journal Electoral Studies published a groundbreaking study by three scholars who estimated how frequently non-citizens were illegally voting. Based on data for the 2008 presidential and congressional elections, the study found that:

– “roughly one quarter of non-citizens” in the U.S. “were likely registered to vote.”
– “6.4% of non-citizens actually voted.”
– 81.8% of them “reported voting for Barack Obama.”
– illegal votes cast by non-citizens “likely” changed “important election outcomes” in favor of Democrats, “including Electoral College votes” and a “pivotal” U.S. Senate race that enabled Democrats to pass Obamacare.

The study’s voter registration rate was estimated with data from two key sources:

1. A national survey in which 14.8% of non-citizens admitted that they were registered to vote.
2. A database of registered voters that reveals what portion of the surveyed non-citizens “were in fact registered” even though “they claimed not to be registered.”

By combining these data, the author’s “best” estimate was that 25.1% of non-citizens were illegally registered to vote.

That was in 2008. There’s a lot of other information in the article, including data that contradicts those results, and the caveat that it’s hard to get valid data on the subject.

There’s also this:

To prevent illegal voting by non-citizens, Congressional Republicans recently introduced a 22-page bill to “require proof of United States citizenship” to register to vote in federal elections.

While reporting on a press conference announcing the legislation, media outlets like the Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, Rolling Stone, and NPR attacked the bill as unnecessary. NPR, for instance, reported that “it’s already illegal” for non-citizens to vote in federal elections and “there’s never been evidence to support the idea noncitizens are voting at anything other than miniscule numbers.”

Catch-22, of course. If we don’t require proof of citizenship, how would we know the extent of non-citizen voting and/or voting attempts, and how would we ever document and prove it? It is currently impossible to do so, and those objecting to the bill either are abysmally stupid or duplicitous in their arguments. But we’re used to that, right?

CORRECTION: The title of this post should read “non-citizens” rather than “illegal aliens.” [Hat tip: commenter “Paul Nachman.”]

The ghouls of Gaza

The New Neo Posted on by

The IDF has discovered the bodies of three of the hostages:

The military announced Friday that soldiers recovered the bodies of three hostages from the Gaza Strip, as intensive fighting raged there between Israeli forces and Hamas.

The three were named as Itzhak Gelerenter, Amit Buskila, and Shani Louk.

In a press statement, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the bodies were recovered in an overnight operation carried out by the military and Shin Bet.

The IDF is understandably laconic on the details, but later in the article it mentions that “some of the intelligence for the operation came from Palestinian terror suspects captured by the IDF and interrogated by the Shin Bet.” All three were killed at the NOVA festival and their dead bodies were brought to Gaza.

Shani Louk has been known almost from the start to be dead. Louk became emblematic of the barbaric violence of the Gazans on October 7 towards women. Her half-naked and twisted body was paraded through Gaza as a trophy, a symbol of conquest and domination by Hamas over Israel as well as sexual titillation for the Gazan masses who cheered her death and mutilation.

However, until recently, Itzhak Gelerenter and Amit Buskila were thought to have been alive. But apparently that never was the case; they were killed on October 7 in Israel and their bodies brought to Gaza.

It’s not that these people were killed in Gaza and their bodies kept in Gaza, which would have been bad enough. No, their dead bodies were transported to Gaza either by their killers or by other Gazans on October 7 hoping for glory or a payoff or both. Hamas operatives as well as ordinary Gazans knew the bodies’ value as mediums of exchange for the living terrorists and murderers imprisoned in Israel.

What does this tell us of Hamas and the Palestinians? We’ve long known they’re in the grip of a death cult, and this is further evidence of that. The desecration of dead bodies is not a mark of civilized behavior, and that’s a reason the Palestinians are fond of making up fake stories about Israelis doing something similar although it’s the Palestinians who specialize in it.

We also have just learned that two Thai nationals thought to have been living hostages had also been killed on October 7 and their bodies taken to Gaza. I have come to believe that there are no living Thai hostages left in Gaza, although there are still some living Israelis. The reason I say this is because so many Thai hostages were released early on, and I see no reason Hamas would still be holding the rest if they had been alive. The Thai hostages are not worth all that much to Hamas; that’s why they initially released so many. I also believe that on October 7 the terrorists who killed and/or kidnapped the Thai nationals may not all have been aware that they were not Israelis.

It continues to astound and depress me that so many people around the world either deny these horrors or excuse them, believing a host of lies about Israel, Gaza, and what’s happening there.

And as for the word “ghoul,” which I used in the title of this post, I learned the following after I chose the word:

Ghoul is from the Arabic … ‘to seize’. …

In Arabic folklore, the ghul is said to dwell in cemeteries and other uninhabited places. A male ghoul is referred to as ghul while the female is called ghulah. A source identified the Arabic ghoul as a female creature who is sometimes called Mother Ghoul or a relational term such as Aunt Ghoul. She is portrayed in many tales luring hapless characters, who are usually men, into her home where she can eat them.

Some state that a ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shape-shifting demon that can assume the guise of an animal, especially a hyena. It lures unwary people into the desert wastes or abandoned places to slay and devour them. The creature also preys on young children, drinks blood, steals coins, and eats the dead, then taking the form of the person most recently eaten.

So the word is from the Arabic. Interesting.

NOTE: Yesterday I read this sad story of an elderly Israeli couple slain by terrorists on October 7. Their only son lived, and relates the story. RIP.

ADDENDUM:

The body of another hostage has been found during the same operation and just identified. The story is similar; he was killed on October 7 and his body taken to Gaza. He was Ron Benjamin, 53:

Benjamin had set out the morning of Hamas’ harrowing attack for a bike ride with friends near Kibbutz Be’eri, but turned around after hearing sirens, The Times of Israel reported.

He was last heard from at 7:30 a.m. on Oct. 7, when he called one of his daughters and left a voicemail that he was going home to Rehovot due to the volley of rockets, the outlet reported.

The article also adds this detail about Shani Louk – and perhaps it is true of the other bodies as well:

Louk’s father, Nissim Louk, said his daughter’s body had been discovered in a cool, deep tunnel and was still in excellent condition when it was brought home.

Hamas knew these people were dead but they allowed the families to believe they were still alive, the better to torment the relatives and encourage them to pressure the Israeli government to make concessions. It was also understand that a Rafah operation by the IDF would probably lead to the finding of some hostages, dead or alive. But the whole world, including Biden and company, seems to have wanted to protect Rafah.