Israel now controls the Philadelphi corridor

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve heard it said right from the start of the war that Israel must do this. Well, now it has:

The Israeli military announced on Wednesday that it had established “operational control” over the entire so-called Philadelphi Route along the Gaza-Egypt border, discovering dozens of rocket launchers and at least 20 cross-border smuggling tunnels there so far.

At a press conference Wednesday evening, IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said that the now-captured strip of land, which runs for a total of 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) all along the Gaza-Egypt border, served as “Hamas’s oxygen pipeline” for smuggling weapons.

Along the corridor, adjacent to the southern city of Rafah, the IDF said it has located so far some 20 tunnels that cross into Egypt. Hamas has been known to use such tunnels to smuggle weapons into Gaza, something the IDF believes it can no longer do as the military controls the area.

What will Egypt do? Not much, in my opinion, but I really don’t know. Egypt is in an awkward position, not wanting to seem at all sympathetic to Israel, but also really hating Hamas and not wanting the Palestinians in Egypt. Allowing the Gazans to smuggle weapons in through Egypt was Egypt’s way of getting payoffs and also of buying off the Palestinian crocodile so it doesn’t eat them.

Cicada double brood this year

The New Neo Posted on by

Just to take your mind off the Trump conviction and onto something vastly more pleasant: locusts!

It depends on where you live, of course. But here’s the scoop:

It has begun. Legions of cheese-puff-sized insects have started to climb out of the dirt after spending more than a decade underground sucking sap from tree roots. Over the next month and a half, their numbers will continue to grow across the South and then the Midwest in what will become an emergence of trillions of periodical cicadas.

Dr. Jessica Ware, an entomologist at the American Museum of Natural History, finds the insects graceful. “They have these beautiful red eyes and lace-like wings,” she says.

This small sliver of their life cycle that’s visible to us, when males and females get their sole opportunity to mate, is a raucous and unforgettable affair. There can be nearly 30 cicadas per square foot. Such high densities are likely a survival strategy since cicadas that come aboveground in off-years would find themselves easy, edible targets. “There’s safety in numbers,” Ware explains. During a mass emergence, “you hopefully have made your predators full with your siblings or distant relatives and you yourself live to pass your genes on to the next generation.” …

There will be no doubt once the cicadas have emerged in a particular place because they produce an ear-splitting wall of sound. “They are so loud,” says Dr. Susan Gershman, an evolutionary biologist at the Ohio State University, “that you can hear them inside your house with all the windows closed.” These are the males vibrating a special pair of abdominal membranes …

Where I live, we’ll just be plagued with the usual black flies and mosquitoes. That’s enough for me. But when I was growing up, I was around during a cicada year. I’ve written about it before:

I remember them well from my youth, circa 1962. In the well-arbored suburbs of New York and New Jersey, they sang in the trees and then carpeted the ground like fallen leaves in autumn, making an ominous crunching sound as one walked, the whole extravaganza a sort of cicadesque supernova explosion that signified their own demise and the launching of the next generation into subterranean abodes where they would hang out for the next seventeen years.

The Trump verdict: the bigger picture

The New Neo Posted on by

The verdict makes it more and more plausible – to fair-thinking people anyway – that there indeed was voting fraud in 2020 and that there will be voter fraud in 2024. After all, the trial and verdict have made it crystal clear how unscrupulous the left is and how the rules mean nothing to them except “what I can get away with legally if I have the right people in place.”

The conviction further de-legitimizes any possible Democrat victory in 2024. No one on the other side trusts them, and no one should. Trust is a funny thing. It’s vitally important in the running of a country, and once broken it cannot be easily re-instated, if at all.

This means that the Democrats do not care about keeping the trust of at least half (or more) of Americans. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: they must think they are positioned in a way that will allow them to keep power indefinitely even without the consent of the governed. I think that’s been evident for many years – plus it is a historical characteristic of the far left generally. But I think that, after yesterday, more and more people in the US will see that this is the situation we face as a nation.

Trump as martyr to lawfare at the hands of the Democrats

The New Neo Posted on by

Clearly, the Democrats thought it would be well worth it to convict Trump in a nakedly political show trial. The lawyers among them – and there are many such – had to be aware of the abysmal weakness of the case. They also had to be aware that a guilty verdict ran the risk of turning Trump into a martyr, a transformation that Russiagate and two impeachments had already begun but that the trials would intensify greatly.

So why did they do it? I think there are a host of reasons, some emotional and some cerebral. The emotional motive is clear: they wanted to see him squirm and they wanted power over him. You can see their glee about that now. But the other calculations are probably as follows:

(1) Take up his time and money in fighting the charges, and make it hard for him to campaign.
(2) Frighten other Republicans who fear the same thing can happen to them.
(3) Don’t televise the trial and instead filter it for the public through the compliant and Trump-hating MSM.
(4) For the entire campaign, call Trump a convicted felon. It is hoped that this will turn off many Independents who might otherwise have voted for him, and even some Republicans.
(5) Allow Stormy Daniels free rein to talk about a purported sexual liaison with Trump, thus embarrassing him and humiliating him and hurting Melania into the bargain.
(6) Perhaps jail him; we’re still not sure how that will go.

But there was always one big danger, and it remains. The case was weak and strange, transparently a show trial in a Democratic venue run by Democrats and peopled by Democrats on the jury. This took away from its validity and authenticity. The more people who perceived this, the more people who might consider Trump a martyr and the Democrats tyrants, which might increase the vote total for Trump rather than reduce it.

Which brings us to point number 7 on the list: Democrats must have thought and must still think that they will be able to overcome any voting deficit through cheating and/or rigging. Perhaps they are right – but then again, perhaps they are wrong. I’ve read various polls on the election today that say the conviction might actually help Trump slightly with voters, but I’m not even going to discuss them in depth here because I think it’s way too early to tell. One thing we do know is that donations to Trump increased greatly, post-verdict.

Another thing that’s obvious is that the Democrats are not afraid of Republican retaliation in kind. At the moment, because he is the president, Joe Biden is immune from criminal prosecution. They are banking on his remaining president for four more years, and after that will he even be around? If he is, he will be even more decrepit and supposedly either too sympathetic for that reason or actually too incompetent to stand trial.

But there are lesser Democrats who might be vulnerable. The Democrats are probably relying on several things to protect them: their capture of the FBI and DOJ, the fact that Republicans could not get a conviction in DC no matter what the offense of the accused Democrat, and the idea that Republicans are not cutthroat enough to go through with what the Democrats are willing to do in the name of a ruthless drive to power.

It remains to be seen whether the Democrats are correct about all of that. But even such a formerly mild and non-Trump-loving lawyer-pundit as John Hinderaker is proposing what I guess would be called civil disobedience by Republicans against Democrats:

If Joe Biden is re-elected following this outrage, he will be an illegitimate president. What does that mean? It means, I think, that no one should be obliged to follow his executive orders. All such orders will be illegitimate and should be disregarded, as appropriate. Likewise, residents of the sane states, and their public officials, should be free to disregard rules and orders that come out of the Biden administration’s agencies–the Biden EPA, and so on. And rulings of Biden-appointed judges, or of panels on which one or more Biden judges were part of the majority, should not be given any precedential effect.

More fundamentally, the Democratic Party is now illegitimate. We should stop treating it as a normal political organization. We conservatives have played by the rules, trying to hold our country together in the face of increasingly radical and irrational conduct from our political foes. Those days should be gone. The Democratic Party is now exposed as the enemy of freedom, democracy and the rule of law, and should be treated accordingly.

And yesterday Hinderaker advocated ruthless lawfare on the part of Republicans:

… [T]he Democrats understand nothing except the raw exercise of power. Therefore, Republican attorneys general and district attorneys should bring criminal charges against Democratic officeholders wherever possible. No Democratic officeholder should be allowed to retire, in any jurisdiction with Republican law enforcement, without facing criminal charges. …

Third, the criminal prosecutions should begin with Joe Biden. Unlike Trump, Biden is actually a criminal. He is already known to be guilty under the federal bribery statute, to the tune of at least $20 million. If Trump wins in November, his Department of Justice should immediately indict Biden, and Biden should be hounded until the day he dies or goes to prison, whichever happens first.

Of course, Republicans face a disadvantage that Democrats don’t. Some cases, including, I assume, a federal criminal prosecution of Biden, would have to be brought on the Democrats’ home turf, Washington, D.C. If that is the case, so be it: as Mark Steyn says, the process is the punishment. Biden likely would not live long enough to face a jury in any case.

And attorneys general in states like Texas, Florida, South Dakota, etc., should look into whether Biden’s taking of bribes or other actions could qualify as crimes under their states’ laws. After all, if Alvin Bragg can prosecute Donald Trump for federal campaign finance violations that he didn’t commit, another state official can likely find grounds to prosecute Biden for bribery, which he did commit.

It has been my impression that, until now, Hinderaker hasn’t been advocating any of this. And at least for quite some time he was not a Trump supporter. This event seems to have radicalized him – his J’Accuse…! and he is not alone. Anyone who cares about the rule of law faces the same decision about how best to fight this, because it cannot be countered by the usual means.

I plan to have more to say on that, too, in the future.

Reactions to the Trump verdict

The New Neo Posted on by

I spent the evening with a friend, trying to take my mind off things. Sometimes you just need to take a break.

But now I’m back. And I started to wonder what’s being said about the Trump conviction – not on the left; I’m pretty sure I know what they’re saying, and I have no interest in it; but on the right.

So here are some samplings.

From Ron DeSantis:

“Today’s verdict represents the culmination of a legal process that has been bent to the political will of the actors involved: a leftist prosecutor, a partisan judge and a jury reflective of one of the most liberal enclaves in America — all in an effort to ‘get’ Donald Trump,” DeSantis posted on X.

“That this case — involving alleged misdemeanor business records violations from nearly a decade ago — was even brought is a testament to the political debasement of the justice system in places like New York City. This is especially true considering this same district attorney routinely excuses criminal conduct in a way that has endangered law-abiding citizens in his jurisdiction.

“It is often said that no one is above the law, but it is also true that no one is below the law. If the defendant were not Donald Trump, this case would never have been brought, the judge would have never issued similar rulings, and the jury would have never returned a guilty verdict. In America, the rule of law should be applied in a dispassionate, even-handed manner, not become captive to the political agenda of some kangaroo court.”

Marco Rubio said much the same thing. And this from Tim Scott:

This was a sham trial and the clearest example we’ve ever seen of election interference. I am furious and no American is safe from Democrat political persecution. Joe Biden and the Democrat machine manufactured a legal case against Trump to win an election. I went to New York to stand with President Trump and the American voters will stand with him this November.

From Speaker Mike Johnson:

Today is a shameful day in American history. Democrats cheered as they convicted the leader of the opposing party on ridiculous charges, predicated on the testimony of a disbarred, convicted felon. This was a purely political exercise, not a legal one.

The weaponization of our justice system has been a hallmark of the Biden Administration, and the decision today is further evidence that Democrats will stop at nothing to silence dissent and crush their political opponents.

The American people see this as lawfare, and they know it is wrong—and dangerous. President Trump will rightfully appeal this absurd verdict—and he WILL WIN!

From Ted Cruz:

This is a dark day for America.

This entire trial has been a sham, and it is nothing more than political persecution. The only reason they prosecuted Donald Trump is because Democrats are terrified that he will win reelection.

This disgraceful decision is legally baseless and should be overturned promptly on appeal. Any judge with a modicum of integrity would recognize that this entire trial has been utterly fraudulent.

Elise Stefanik, J. D. Vance, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, and Mike Barrasso said similar things. So far, I see nothing from Mitt Romney. But much to my surprise, Mitch McConnell came through with this. It’s not much but it’s definitely something:

“These charges never should have been brought in the first place. I expect the conviction to be overturned on appeal,” McConnell wrote in a social media post on X.

McConnell’s surprise decision to weigh in on the outcome of a court case that he has refused to talk about for months may indicate that Trump’s conviction could have a unifying effect on the GOP — rallying even his biggest skeptics within the party to his defense.

Likewise, we have Susan Collins of Maine:

“It is fundamental to our American system of justice that the government prosecutes cases because of alleged criminal conduct regardless of who the defendant happens to be. In this case the opposite has happened. The district attorney, who campaigned on a promise to prosecute Donald Trump, brought these charges precisely because of who the defendant was rather than because of any specified criminal conduct,” Collins said in a statement Thursday evening.

“The political underpinnings of this case further blur the lines between the judicial system and the electoral system, and this verdict likely will be the subject of a protracted appeals process,” she said.

McConnell and Collins were two of the biggest Trump skeptics in the Senate GOP conference to slam the Bragg decision to prosecute the former president but other Republican senators not especially close to Trump also rallied to his defense.

Thune was another one:

“I’ve been on a flight, but just landed and saw the news. This case was politically motivated from the beginning, and today’s verdict does nothing to absolve the partisan nature of this prosecution,” said Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who opposed Trump’s effort to block the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory in 2021 and whose career Trump later tried to end in an act of retaliation. …

“Regardless of outcome, more and more Americans are realizing that we cannot survive four more years of Joe Biden. With President Trump in the White House and a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate, we can finally end the disastrous Biden-Schumer agenda that’s crushing American families and businesses,” Thune said in reaction to the verdict.

I said I wouldn’t take a look at what Democrats said. But I couldn’t help but notice, in the same article I got those quotes from, that Schumer’s statement was rather short and not exactly full of gloating:

No one is above the law. The verdict speaks for itself.

Indeed. And we know what it says: Democrats are utterly corrupt, utterly power-mad, and will do anything – including framing an innocent man – to hang onto power.

The verdict is in: GUILTY

The New Neo Posted on by

As we expected. But that doesn’t make it any easier.

I keep thinking in dramatic terms, such as: We have crossed the Rubicon. Or, this country is finished; it was nice while it lasted.

Then again, I tend to be a pessimist. So I try to consider more optimistic alternatives, such as: Maybe this will be a wakeup call for a lot of people. And, maybe this will backfire on the left.

One thing I know is that the left is drunk with power and never, never never wants to relinquish it. They believe their capture of the institutions is nearly complete, and so they no longer have to pretend. The only frontier left to conquer is SCOTUS, and they’ve been working on that for quite some time. Is it possible that SCOTUS will intervene in the Trump case?

You can find some of the details of the verdict here as well as here.

Who is Keir Starmer and why might he be the next PM of Great Britain?

The New Neo Posted on by

If you’re been following the upcoming British election – July 4 – you’ll have heard that the Labour Party is poised for a huge victory, perhaps as much of a parliamentary majority as 150 seats. As best I can tell, it seems to be a backlash against the recent Tory governments rather than any groundswell of love for the left. The British Conservative Party haven’t been very conservative either fiscally or otherwise, and Boris Johnson squandered a lot of goodwill with his COVID policies and hypocritical personal behavior while in office. And no one is enthusiastic about the bland Rishi Sunak, whose achievements have been underwhelming.

The Conservatives are widely perceived to have run out of chances and run out of steam. Thus, the pivot to Labour. But here’s the thing – why do people who are angry at the Tories for not having kept their promises think that a great way to deal with that would be to vote for the left? Isn’t that “from the frying pan into the fire”? And yet in the past I’ve seen that sort of reaction here, too; “I’ll show them! I’ll vote for something far worse!”

It’s interesting, also, that the head of Labour, a man named Keir Starmer, has positioned himself as a moderate. Is he in fact as moderate as he says? I certainly don’t know, but I do know that he’s the head of a party that isn’t moderate, and in recent years (although not now) he has supported things like the nationalization of major industries. Here’s some information:

A few days into the general election campaign, Keir Starmer surprised some voters by declaring himself a socialist. “I would describe myself as a socialist. I describe myself as a progressive. I’d describe myself as somebody who always puts the country first and party second,” he said. …

The Labour leadership shows little inclination to introduce radical policies, renationalise on any scale or boot the bosses out. Its hallmarks are political caution, economic stability and reassuring business leaders – not exactly a rerun of 1917. The expectations of many who describe themselves as socialists are low, and they may get even lower as the election campaign goes on.

Clear as mud.

Much more here:

Are Starmer’s milder positions just a ploy to get elected, and after that he will pivot to the real agenda – either voluntarily or as a result of pressure from his left flank? I don’t know, but if I had to guess my answer would be in the affirmative.

NOTE: A bit of trivia about Starmer is that he went to school with Andrew Sullivan

[Starmer] passed the 11-plus examination and gained entry to Reigate Grammar School, then a voluntary aided selective grammar school. The school was converted into an independent fee-paying school in 1976, while he was a student. He was exempt from paying fees until the age of 16, and his sixth-form study fees were paid by a bursary he received from the private school’s charity.Among his classmates were the musician Norman Cook, alongside whom Starmer took violin lessons; Andrew Cooper, who went on to become a Conservative peer; and future conservative journalist Andrew Sullivan. According to Starmer, he and Sullivan “fought over everything … Politics, religion. You name it.”

I wouldn’t call Sullivan a “conservative journalist.” But I guess, to the Brits, he qualifies.

One thing I’ve learned about waiting for a verdict …

The New Neo Posted on by

… is not to read tea leaves.

Did this juror look at Michael Cohen funny? Why did the jury ask for those instructions to be read to them again? What does it mean that they’re still deliberating?

Impossible to know.

In the Trump case, I feel a great deal of anxiety while waiting. But I’m not sure why because the trial has already been terrible in its most basic aspects: that it was brought at all, the extreme bias of the judge in his rulings during the trial, and his charge to the jury right out of the Alice stories.

So, what difference will the verdict make? Perhaps not much, as any lingering trust in the fairness of the court has been destroyed. But I still hope for a hung jury, because that may at least offer us the bare bones of a campaign season in which Trump is allowed to move around freely and meet the people.

What will happen if Trump is convicted and imprisoned?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “physicsguy” writes: “I haven’t seen anyone else express my real fear: a conviction and tossing Trump into jail is the spark that ignites CW2. Again, maybe that’s the Democrat long game to force marshal law, as well as keep Trump out of the WH.”

I don’t know the answer. We are in uncharted waters, at least in the history of this country. The left is in power and wants to make sure it never again relinquishes it. They have already gone much further than ever before in the US, but it comes from a combination of confidence and fear.

Confidence because they hold the reins of so many institutions: the presidency, the Senate, much of the judiciary, the MSM, much of social media and search engines, the DOJ, the FBI, the State Department, education at all levels, Hollywood, book publishing, the arts, the CEOs and higher-ups of many corporations and even of much of the military, and I’ve probably left out a thing or two.

And what’s the origin of the fear? It’s that, now that the left’s mask is off or at least partially off, they are afraid of the wrath of the people. They know that this is a top-down imposition of leftist values on a reluctant populace, and there’s strength in numbers. They talk about “our democracy” but are tremendously afraid of it, which is why they must control sources of information and also are not above election fraud if necessary. The fact that they are executing lawfare against Trump makes it crystal clear that cheating is something they are willing to do; is it any wonder people don’t trust the election process anymore?

Personally, I don’t think there will be any CW2. There certainly might be violence, though. For that reason, I think the left may stop at merely convicting Trump rather than imprisoning him, and may be satisfied – for the moment – with merely labeling Trump a felon. If so, I sincerely hope it backfires on them in November by encouraging Trump’s election.

By the way, the point of the persecution of the J6 defendants was to let it be known how any sort of violence from the right will be met by the government.