Oh, and by the way, Kamala Harris is best buddies with the owner of The Atlantic, Laurene Powell Jobs

The New Neo Posted on by

Laurene Powell Jobs, the very deep-pocketed owner of The Atlantic, is an extremely close friend of Kamala Harris and a big supporter.

Surely that had nothing to do with the Atlantic’s publication of a poorly-sourced hit piece on Trump by Jeffrey Goldberg two weeks before Election Day. The allegations in the article have been denied by almost everyone involved except for Goldberg’s anonymous sources and the Trump-hater John Kelly.

Here’s some of the history of Powell Jobs and Harris:

Powell Jobs, the widow of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, has been friends with the Democratic presidential nominee for years. In fact, these two powerful women are so close Harris has referred to Powell Jobs as part of her family.

In 2017, then-vice president Joe Biden swore in Harris as a U.S. senator, and right after the ceremony they posed for a photo in the Capitol with her family. Then she asked Biden to take a picture with her “extended family,” according to a report from The New York Times. Powell Jobs—one of the richest women in the world—was quick to jump in.

Powell Jobs and Harris have been friends for two decades, and she’s also made other “quiet” donations amounting to millions of dollars to an organization backing Harris, three people briefed on the gifts told The New York Times. Powell Jobs also allegedly played a “key role” in helping usher Biden out of the race, making room for Harris to step up.

There’s a great deal more at the link, but you get the idea.

Everything you never wanted to know about Kamala Harris

The New Neo Posted on by

I watched parts of a video of Tucker Carlson interviewing attorney Harmeet Dhillon about Kamala Harris’ early days as a prosecutor and DA in San Francisco, and then AG in California. Dhillon knew her back then. The video is very long and I didn’t watch the whole thing, although I plan to do so. But it’s the most comprehensive look I’ve seen at Harris’ history prior to holding office at the national level.

Here it is:

In Dhillon’s opinion Harris was primarily interested in advancing her own career, which was helped along by a combination of ingratiating herself with powerful men in San Francisco’s Democrat machine politics and checking the favored identity boxes. If you think about it, that’s pretty much how she got to her present position, as well.

Perhaps the part of the video that interested me the most, though, was Dhillon’s opinion on what’s been going on with Harris lately in terms of her problems answering questions. One good thing Dhillon says about Harris is that the Kamala Harris she knew back then was smart, articulate, and highly confident. Dhillon says she doesn’t even recognize the Harris of today as that same person, she seems to have changed so much. Dhillon has no idea what happened to Harris to cause the change; drink, drugs, a blow to the head, something entirely different? But whatever the cause, there’s been a big switch, and not for the better.

Dhillon adds that some people who did opposition research on Kamala back in those days found that as a prosecutor she had tried eight cases in Alameda and two in San Francisco. They couldn’t find a record of any more than that, although it’s possible they missed some. I include this because people here were wondering a while back about how many cases Harris has actually prosecuted.

You can also see some discussion of the issue of “what happened to Kamala?” in this tweet and the responses to it.

This journalist never met another one who supported Trump

The New Neo Posted on by

Talk about living in echo chambers.

See this:

Jay Caspian Kang, a staff writer for The New Yorker, ascribed media bias not to a conspiracy among journalists, but to the fact that the overwhelming majority of journalists are left-leaning.

Kang wrote a piece for The New Yorker, “How Biased Is the Media, Really?” in response to a recent Gallup poll showing that Americans’ trust in mass media remains not only historically low, but consistently abysmal for the third year in a row.

He responded by addressing multiple common critiques from Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, including the accusation that “Every news organization that feigns objectivity is actually heavily slanted toward the left. Not only that; the media is actively working with the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump.”

“The most obvious explanation for this impression is that the press corps is mostly made up of liberals,” he wrote in the piece, adding that “At prestige outlets—many of which do don the armor of impartiality—the imbalance skews a lot further to the left than what many outsiders might imagine.”

Actually, no. We imagine it quite well, I can assure you.

Kang adds:

I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: in the course of a fifteen-year career that has included stints at radio shows, print outlets, digital media and television, I have yet to meet a Trump supporter at work.

He attributes this, strangely enough, not to selection for political uniformity but to demographics: they’re all urban, college-educated, upper middle class. Guess what, though? Although such groups are indeed overwhelmingly Democrats and left-leaning or leftists, there are plenty of people who fit that description who could be hired but are not hired and never will be hired. Or they’re forced out, like Bari Weiss.

It would be easy to meet a Trump-supporting journalist, though, if Kang actually wanted to do so. He could toddle on over to a conservative publication and suggest going out to lunch to talk. Or, find a great conservative writer on Substack. Or drop me a line.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

Mostly Nazi stuff, but not totally Nazi stuff.

(1) And speaking of Nazis and Hitler, here’s a take on how today’s Democrats resemble the Nazis.

(2) And here’s some of the lengthy history of Democrats calling Republican candidates Nazis.

(3) Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff (who is Jewish), says that Trump is anti-Semitic. Emhoff must be totally objective about that, right? It’s an absurd line of attack, but I’m sure some Trump-haters buy it and it fits right in with the current “Nazi” theme that’s so popular.

(4) Remember Maricopa County? Well, they’re announcing in advance that it will probably take 10-13 days to get election results there. So very reassuring! Who wouldn’t trust them?

(5) Democratic fundraisers were aware of Biden’s cognitive decline at least a year before he was forced out.

CNN Town Hall: Kamala answers the classic job interview question, and also says Trump is a fascist

The New Neo Posted on by

It was always good for a laugh – remember? The classic comedy answer to the classic job interview question of “What would you say is your greatest weakness?” was something like “I’m just too conscientious” or “I work too hard” or “I’m a perfectionist.”

So here was Kamala during yesterday’s CNN “Town Hall” with Anderson Cooper:

One voter asked Harris about her weaknesses and what she would do to overcome them as president. She went on to describe “a weakness that some would consider a strength.” She said she understood the importance of “having a team of very smart people around me that bring to my decision making process different perspectives,” which was somewhat unusual given Harris’s notorious reputation as a difficult and dysfunctional boss who burns through employees at a rapid pace. Another weakness Harris cited was her insistence on studying too hard. “I’m kind of a nerd sometimes, and some might call that a weakness, especially if you’re, you know, in an interview or, just, kind of, you know, being asked a certain question and, just, you’re expected to have the right answer right away, but that’s how I, that’s how I work,” she explained.

Cooper followed up to ask Harris what mistakes she had made and what she learned from them. Harris’s response was inscrutable but seemed to imply that she wished she had studied harder to avoid getting tricked by nefarious reporters. “In my role as vice president, I mean, I probably worked very hard at making sure that I am well-versed on issues and, um, I think is very important, it’s a mistake not to be well-versed on an issue and be compelled to answer a question,” she said. One of Harris’s (many) disgruntled former staffers told the Washington Post in 2021 that Harris was not “somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work” and often blamed staff for her lack of preparedness.

The woman is comedy gold. But all was not fun and games, oh no. There was anti-fascist work to be done. The very first question out of cooperative Cooper Anderson’s mouth – referencing the charges by General Kelly that Trump repeatedly praised Hitler, and her own contentions that Trump is unstable – was whether she can say something more to seal the deal for herself and convince those who like Trump not to vote for him. Harris answered that yes, Trump is “increasingly unstable and unfit to serve.”

Wow, Kamala, that’ll do it!

It’s quite clear that this is a memorized bit as she goes on to say that “the people who worked for Trump” – listing a few – “have all called him unfit and dangerous.” She then goes on to highlight Kelly’s remarks without explaining that Kelly and Trump were very much at loggerheads when Kelly worked for Trump and that Kelly was forced out because of it and has hated him ever since. She adds that “one has to think about” why someone who “is not political” is saying this to the American people now, two weeks from the election.

Why, indeed. What a mystery! A guy who’s hated Trump for six or seven years, and has been the source of several previous high-profile attacks on him similar to the present one – why on earth would he say this in October, of all times? Is there anyone on earth who still would be puzzled by this phenomenon? Kamala’s not, because she answers: “And frankly, I just think [Kelly’s] putting out a 911 call to the American people.”

Kamala is fond of intensifiers like that: “frankly.” It’s usually a tell from a person that he or she is not speaking frankly, just as “to be honest” means a lie is coming up and “let me make it clear” (which is a Harris favorite) means you’re about to hear something very cloudy.

And all Kamala is doing, too, is just alerting the American people before it’s too late. What a heroine!

She goes on, “Understand what could happen if Donald Trump were back in the White House.”

I’ll bite: inflation goes down? Peace in the Middle East? There are quite a few possibilities there.

Harris then adds that this time there won’t be people like Kelly there “to hold him [Trump] back.” She goes on to state that Trump “said he would be a dictator on day one” (another of Harris’ favorite truncated Trump quotes; the “dictator” part was a joke spoofing his critics, and referred only to two executive orders, one on the border and one on drilling, that he would issue his first day in office). “The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said that he was ‘a fascist to the core.'” Now, who might have said that? Why, you guessed it: Mark Milley.

Harris then advises undecided voters to go online and listen to Kelly talk about Trump. And then Anderson asks her point-blank, “Do you think Donald Trump is a fascist?” I bet you can’t guess what Harris’ answer might be: “Yes, I do.” And then immediately again, for emphasis: “Yes, I do.” Harris then goes into a paean to the generals, who obviously have no political bias and should be trusted (!). Then, just for good measure, she repeats Kelly’s “suckers and losers” accusation towards Trump from 2020, another charge only Kelly has reported and which everyone else involved has denied. Do you sense a pattern here?

Harris talks about how Liz and Dick Cheney have endorsed her – a fact that I can’t quite imagine many undecided voters will find compelling. Also, other Trump-hating establishment Republicans have supported her – who would have thunk it! What a bunch of selfless patriots.

She goes on in that vein, throwing in a few more truncated Trump quotes. If you watch the video, you might agree with me that it’s a fascinating performance in a very icky way. Not only is it an over-the-top smear disguised as an unselfish warning, but Kamala simply doesn’t have a knack for acting. Her faux concern about the prospect of Trump the fascist “standing behind the seal of the president of the United States!” – something she repeats for emphasis, as though she is sickened by the idea that this fascist will defile the sacred emblem – is something to behold.

I have seen many politicians in my life. But I’ve never seen anyone as obviously false as Kamala Harris. And although politicians lie a lot, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a campaign so totally and utterly based on lies.

Harris believes abortion is a fundamental freedom …

The New Neo Posted on by

… and doesn’t even seem to be supporting exemptions for religion-based health facilities.

Harris said, among other things:

I don’t think we should be making concessions when we’re talking about a fundamental freedom to make decisions about your own body.

I have a hunch, though, that Harris supported mandatory COVID vaccinations for the military, for example – an issue which certainly seems to have a much better fit with the idea of making decisions about your own body than a pregnancy does. After all, a pregnancy directly and absolutely concerns the body of another: a baby. And that right seems pretty fundamental, at least as a potential: the right to be born.

Whether a person supports abortion or doesn’t, any argument that the procedure only concerns a woman’s body seems obviously duplicitous to me. But it’s a standard argument used by many supporters of abortion. Also, if the right to abortion is such a “fundamental freedom,” it’s certainly not mentioned in the Constitution. The proper route for making it federal law and a protected freedom would be a constitutional amendment. But Harris and the left won’t go that route because they know it doesn’t have enough support right now to pass that way.

Who leaked Israel’s plans for attacking Iran?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: We can’t totally discount the possibility that these aren’t Israel’s real plans. If Israel were smart – and I think Israel is usually smart, although it certainly wasn’t smart about 10/7 – then Israel would never share its true military plans with the US. There are just too many potential leakers with access. But I’m going to assume that this involves a leak of real plans.]

In the whodunit of the leak of Israel’s plans for attacking Iran, there are – as with most mysteries – an embarrassment of riches concerning the possibilities. There are that many Iran-friendly people with access, unfortunately. Malley would have ordinarily been the most likely suspect, but he hasn’t had a security clearance for a while, so I think he’s out.

But you may be assured that our intrepid FBI is on the case:

Marked top secret, the documents first appeared online Friday on the Telegram messaging app and quickly spread among Telegram channels popular with Iranians.

Ryder said he could provide no details about the probe, including who in the department is working with the FBI, which is leading the investigation.

“The investigation is in its first few days, so it’s important to let that investigation run its course,” he said, adding that the department takes the safeguarding of sensitive information very seriously and will continue to do so.

The FBI is also known for its propensity to leak damaging information about Trump. But in this case, I’m going to assume it would be hard for the FBI to implicate Trump (although, where there’s a will there’s a way), and that the classified information was released by someone in the Biden administration. Who could it be? There’s this theory (hat tip: David Foster), as well as this one. To me, the latter is most likely to have “legs.” But really, there are probably a host of possible candidates.

During Obama’s presidency, the Iran-friendly “experts” started gaining more power in the State Department and in US intelligence in general. It seems to me to be a destructive and dangerous trend that upends many decades of bipartisan agreement on basic aspects of Iran policy, as well as policy towards Israel. That agreement is no more, and hasn’t been the case for quite some time.

Jeffrey Goldberg tries to engineer an “October surprise” in The Atlantic

The New Neo Posted on by

And Kamala Harris does her best to amplify it:

That’s the heart of Kamala Harris’ message: (a) the Kamala-friendly press either publishes what amounts to gossip from unnamed Trump-haters about something Trump supposedly said (usually without checking with other sources present at the time, or without publishing their actual denials), and/or distorts and uses truncated quotes to publicize and misrepresent something Trump said in public (b) Harris and other Democrats, as well as the rest of the Democrat-favoring press, repeat the gossip and/or the mischaracterization of the public quote as though it’s the truth (c) repeated often enough, it becomes part of the myth of Trump=Hitler that so many people believe, a myth that has been carefully constructed over the years through a series of these lies and misrepresentations by the press and Trump’s opponents.

Here’s an article about Goldberg’s story, and the many denials of its truth by people involved:

Goldberg’s dishonest hit piece is the latest in a long line of far-left outlets lying and deceiving the American people before a major election.

Mayra Guillén, the sister of fallen soldier Vanessa Guillén, whose family was featured as proof in Goldberg’s piece, slammed the outlet and Goldberg for exploiting her sister’s death.

“Wow. I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics — hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Mayra stated. “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”

Mayra’s comments come after Goldberg claimed that Trump displayed “contempt, rage, parsimony, racism” at the thought of helping the Guillén family pay for Vanessa’s funeral. Vanessa was bludgeoned to death by another soldier at Fort Hood, Texas, and her family was invited to the Oval Office to meet with Trump. Her death was also the impetus for military reforms for women at bases at the state and federal levels.

According to Goldberg’s article, upon hearing that the funeral cost $60,000, Trump said, “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f-cking Mexican!” and told Mark Meadows, his chief of staff at the time, “Don’t pay it!” The Guillén family is of Mexican origin.

While Goldberg’s claims are sourced by “contemporaneous notes” and “a witness,” they were disputed publicly by senior members of the Trump administration who were actually in the room at the time of the alleged incident.

“Any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillen or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false,” Meadows said on social media. “He was nothing but kind, gracious, and wanted to make sure that the military and the U.S. government did right by Vanessa Guillen and her family.”

Goldberg’s smear piece is in line with his 2020 lie, the “suckers and loser” hoax that was also heavily rebutted by nearly everyone involved, which he originated late in the election season as well. Conveniently, Democrats have since been rolling that hoax out every time Trump mentions the military, as they did again in the aftermath of Trump attending the Arlington National Cemetery ceremony.

The Atlantic used to be a fairly reasonable publication, but that was many years ago. It’s owner is now Laurene Powell Jobs, who has very deep pockets that are at the service of the left. You can see the value of such propaganda if you go to Maya Guilen’s Twitter page and read the replies to her tweet. I’d estimate that half of them swallow the Atlantic article whole and call her at best a naive and conned dupe of Trump, and half support her and excoriate The Atlantic.

And if you want to see a transcript of what Harris actually said to amplify Goldberg’s reporting, go to this post. Her speech displays the typical stuff we’ve come to expect of this campaign, and it is even likely that the Goldberg piece was pre-coordinated with the Harris people. Harris’ speeches and ad-lib remarks are big on the “bloodbath” and “dictator on day one” and “fine people on both sides” truncated quote false accusations, as well. Her predecessor Biden loved to use them, too.

NOTE: I deplore the use of the anonymous source, which has become ubiquitous in these hit pieces. I wrote a long post about anonymous sources and what’s wrong with the practice. You can find it here.

ADDENDUM: I need to add this:

… Goldberg claimed Natalie Khawam, Guillén’s family attorney, told him the Army and donations ultimately covered Guillén’s funeral.

Khawam replied thusly:

ADDENDUM II: Trump’s campaign replies:

Trump campaign responds to Kamala Harris’ presser where she said Trump “invoked Hitler.”

“Kamala’s dangerous rhetoric is directly to blame for the multiple assassination attempts against President Trump and she continues to stoke the flames of violence all in the name of politics.”

“She is despicable and her grotesque behavior proves she is wholly unfit for office.”

True. And she already holds the vice presidency of the United States.

ADDENDUM III:

David Harsanyi weighs in with an excellent article. Here’s an excerpt:

It’s not that the Atlantic’s Editor-in-Chief, Jeffery Goldberg, has the journalistic ethics of a drunk National Enquirer reporter. It’s that the entire media spreads his gossip without a hint of skepticism.

A new hit piece from the Atlantic, reminiscent of an old hit piece from the publication, reported that former President Donald Trump belittled a dead soldier and praised Hitler’s generals (and what self-respecting piece about Trump doesn’t mention der Fuhrer?)

The first thing to remember is that Goldberg could literally make up any quote from an alleged “anonymous” source, and he would face no repercussions. No major outlet will challenge the veracity of his shoddy work, which breaks numerous journalistic norms, because his accusations are aimed at the right target. The media, after all, is now the democracy-saving business.

The owner of the famed magazine certainly doesn’t give one wit about its integrity either. The Atlantic, which loses tens of millions of dollars every year, is owned by billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs, who isn’t worried about the magazine’s 164-year tradition of “challenging assumptions and pursuing truth.” Rather, as she explained to her ”close” and “genuine” friend, Vice President Kamala Harris, at an event not long ago, she wants to lift up “cultural narratives” that will create “a more just and equal society.”

Goldberg’s 2024 narrative is suffering from the same problems his 2020 “suckers and losers” hit piece did. Anonymous sources make claims that a bunch of on-the-record people contradict. There’s a 0% chance that any reputable newspaper, 10-20 years ago, would have run a story about a president demeaning fallen American servicemen based on an anonymous source without any corroboration. …

Similar to [Goldberg’s 2020] “suckers and losers” piece, not one person is on the record confirming the event. Meadows denied it happened. Guillen’s sister and the family’s lawyer denied it happened. Guillen’s friend denied it happened. Ben Williamson, a White House communications person who was there, told Goldberg that Trump “absolutely did not say that” and “that is not true.”

You can believe him or not. However, what did Goldberg do? He wrote that Williams “didn’t hear Trump say it,” which tells you plenty about the integrity of the piece.

Exactly. Please read the whole thing.

Kamala Harris: not exactly honest

The New Neo Posted on by

Now the news comes out about more Kamala Harris plagiarism. This time it involved testimony she gave to Congress in a written statement back in 2007:

On April 24, 2007, Kamala Harris testified before Congress in support of the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act of 2007. The bill, which was introduced that year but never passed the upper chamber, would have created a student loan repayment program for state and local prosecutors, and Harris, then the district attorney of San Francisco, argued it would draw top legal talent to offices like hers. …

Virtually her entire testimony about the bill was taken from that of another district attorney, Paul Logli of Winnebago County, Illinois, who had testified in support of the legislation two months earlier before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both statements cite the same surveys, use the same language, and make the same points in the same order, with a paragraph added here or there. They even contain the same typos, such as missing punctuation or mistaken plurals. One error—a “who” that should have been a “whom”—was corrected in Harris’s transposition. …

The main difference between their testimonies is that Logli submitted his to the Senate instead of the House. And unlike Harris, Logli is a Republican. …

Harris, who also testified about two other bills that day, devoted approximately 1,500 words to the John R. Justice Act. Nearly 1,200 of them—or 80 percent—were copied verbatim from the statement Logli submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee on February 27, 2007, two months before Harris delivered her testimony.

If you’re going to plagiarize, you may as well do it up right.

The graphics at the article are impressive. There’s more, too – Harris was also “repackaging stories from other locations as though they happened in California.” And “In a 2010 report on organized crime, Harris copied several passages from Bill Lockyer, one of her predecessors as California attorney general, without attribution.”

It’s become much easier to do that sort of thing with the advent of personal computers. However, it’s also become easier to locate instances of plagiarism.

What else has Kamala been up to? Well, there’s this oopsie involving her law school admission and first year:

Harris was admitted [to Hastings Law School] under a program called LEOP. According to the University:

“UC Hastings created the Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP) in 1969 to make an outstanding legal education accessible to those who come from disadvantaged economic and educational backgrounds.

“Students are encouraged to submit a “separate LEOP statement describing the adversity they faced and its impact on their academic preparedness for law school.”

A Politico article from 2021 also referenced this part of Harris’ law school experience:

She was part of the pre-orientation Legal Education Opportunity Program (LEOP), which had been founded in 1969 to help law students from disadvantaged communities navigate the stringent demands of the first-year curriculum. Harris had come to a predominantly white institution after four years at a historically Black university. Beyond introducing students to Socratic pedagogy, case-briefing and exam-taking, the pre-orientation also gave students of color a sense of community and a hamlet of solidarity in a cut-throat environment.

So, what was Harris’ disadvantage? It seems from that paragraph that it was having gone to a black 4-year college? But Howard is the most famous black college of all, and I think it had a pretty good reputation back then. Isn’t it racist to consider a degree from Howard a disadvantage that wouldn’t have prepared its graduates properly? Or perhaps the idea is that being black at “a predominantly white institution” automatically constituted a disadvantage in the eyes of Hastings? Nowhere is there a hint about Harris’ dual heritage being Indian, but that possibly factored into it as well.

When these things occurred, I doubt Harris expected this level of scrutiny years later.