Is a hostage release plan actually in the works?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been about fourteen and a half months since the Israeli hostages were taken to Gaza. It has been a nightmare for their families and friends, and although there is probably some comfort in the fact that the war has been going better than expected lately, it doesn’t change the intensity of the pain and the horror of the imaginings that fill the gap left by little to no information about who is alive and who dead, what hideous psychological and physical torture the hostages themselves have endured, and when and if it will ever end.

And so I keep paying attention to stories such as this:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to hold a high-level meeting on Thursday with top security officials as efforts to reach a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas appeared to gather momentum, Israeli televion reported Wednesday.

Netanyahu’s planned assessment, which will include Defense Minister Israel Katz and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, comes as CIA chief William Burns reportedly arrived in Qatar Wednesday night to try and hammer out the outstanding issues. Channel 12 news said that if there was progress, senior Israeli officials would join the talks. …

Despite optimism that a deal can be reached in the next few weeks, the report said there are still disagreements on several key issues including the number and identity of the hostages to be freed; a mechanism for the return of displaced Gazans to the north of the strip; the identity of the Palestinian security prisoners to be released as part of the deal; and a mechanism for exiling the most dangerous of those prisoners to other countries.

I seem to recall that during the Obama years, some of the Guantanamo prisoners were released to other countries with a supposed guarantee that they wouldn’t be able to leave those countries, and the promise was not kept. Anyone who believes such promises at this point is very very gullible.

Trump’s impending presidency looms large in these talks:

Hamas is concerned that US President-elect Donald Trump will allow Israel to resume fighting in Gaza at the completion of the first phase of the three-stage ceasefire that is currently in advanced negotiations, four sources familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.

They are right to be “concerned.”

Trump said again this week that he wants the war in Gaza to end, but an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes he’ll have more flexibility under Trump to resume fighting after the first phase than he would under Biden.

The two things are hardly contradictory. Sometimes the way to end a war is to end it more quickly through decisive victory.

Georgia Court of Appeals kicks Fani Willis off the Trump case

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s about time:

The Court of Appeals of Georgia disqualified Fulton County DA Fani Willis from President-elect Donald Trump’s election case over her relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade.

“The remedy crafted by the trial court to prevent an ongoing appearance of impropriety did nothing to address the appearance of impropriety that existed at times when DA Willis was exercising her broad pretrial discretion about who to prosecute and what charges to bring,” wrote the court.

The court didn’t throw out the indictment, so a new prosecutor will get to decide whether to keep going with this case.

Here’s Jonathan Turley:

This case against Trump should never have been brought, and should have at the very least been thrown out on the merits longs ago. I hope that any newly-appointed prosecutor will stick a fork in it; it’s done.

The CR bill: it’s not business as usual

The New Neo Posted on by

Oh, they tried to make it business as usual. But the message went out from the incoming administration and the voters that this wasn’t going to be okay. And Congress was forced to listen.

The story:

The revolt was spearheaded by Elon Musk, one of Trump’s closest advisers and co-chair of the nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, as he went on a tirade on X Wednesday against Republicans who supported the stopgap measure.

Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance then weighed in on the GOP battle in a lengthy statement issued from the Ohio senator’s X account in which they called on Republicans to be “tough” and “smart” and not accede to Democratic requests.

The leaders also issued a new directive that had not been discussed previously: Pass a debt limit increase before Trump comes into office so the deliberations are held now under President Biden’s term.

Trump then went on Truth Social and directly threatened Republicans who wouldn’t vote for a debt limit increase now with a primary.

What now? Perhaps this:

“I was communicating with Elon last night,” Johnson said Wednesday on Fox & Friends. “Elon, Vivek [Ramaswamy] and I were on a text chain together, and I was explaining to them the background of this. And Vivek and I talked last night, about almost midnight, and he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ He said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’”

Several people on comments threads have been pointing out that AI has helped the dynamic duo, Vivek and Elon, to evaluate the pitfalls in the bloated 1500-page bill quickly.

The Ramaswamy/Musk DOGE team is a fascinating and innovative development that only emerged in the latter part of the Trump campaign and especially after the election. Two smart fellows, they felt smart. Washington DC is often where smart people meet their match in bureaucratic boondoggle. But we’ll see; this development has a lot of promise.

And it really really helps that Trump won a decisive victory that is seen as a mandate for change. That’s unusual for a second term, but this is an unusual second term – a second term that’s noncontiguous with the first term.

And you know what? “Government shutdown” isn’t quite the threat it used to be. This old dog may not hunt anymore:

“Republicans have now unilaterally decided to break a bipartisan agreement that they made,” Jeffries, a New York Democrat, told reporters Wednesday night. “House Republicans will now own any harm that is visited upon the American people that results from a government shutdown or worse. An agreement is an agreement. It was bipartisan. And there is nothing more to say.”

Oh, I’m pretty sure there will be more to say from both sides.

Thanks, Biden administration, for Tren de Aragua

The New Neo Posted on by

Now it’s Utah:

A Venezuelan dissident who is running for office in Utah warned that local authorities “are not ready” to deal with Tren de Aragua — as the vicious prison gang has expanded its territory to at least 18 states.

Carlos Moreno, who is running for Salt Lake County Council in District 2, spoke out in a previous interview with The Post against Tren de Aragua gangbangers, who have been linked to at least two separate crimes in the Beehive State capital — including an alleged prostitution ring. …

Tren de Aragua members embedded themselves in the large waves of migrants who arrived at the US-Mexico border under the Biden administration.

Federal authorities released some of them because they lacked access to Venezuelan databases — but they also couldn’t return them because the Maduro regime stopped accepting deportation flights.

Roughly 2,000 migrants who arrived in Utah in recent months were shipped there by nearby Denver, which has received 40,000 migrants since 2022 and has also been hit with its own wave of gang-linked crimes.

Hey, spread the joy, right?

Assassins: Luigi Mangione and John Wilkes Booth

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Let’s assume for the moment that alleged killer Mangione is guilty, for the sake of this post.)

Luigi Mangione and John Wilkes Booth: what on earth do they have in common?

Well, it’s a stretch, but there are some odd commonalities. They were both from prominent families. They were both raised in Baltimore. They both shot their victims in the back – for Booth and Lincoln, it was the back of the head. They both escaped after the shooting but were caught a few days later: 12 days for Booth and 5 days for Mangione (one big difference is that Booth was killed and Mangione taken peacefully). And they were both 26 years old at the time.

One of many big differences is that John Wilkes Booth was already a huge celebrity when he killed Lincoln, and Mangione was not. And of course Lincoln was also a far more prominent man than Thompson. But Booth’s celebrity status points to another thing he had in common with Mangione: he was considered extraordinarily handsome.

Now, a caveat: I don’t consider Mangione extraordinarily handsome. But he’s a fairly good-looking guy, and a certain female mostly leftist (and not just female) segment of the internet has gone wild about his “hotness.” So I’ll just stipulate that he’s handsome.

Booth, on the other hand, was an old-fashioned bona fide “matinee idol” of startlingly good looks. I recall the first time I ever saw his photo; I was shocked by how classically handsome he was. He was actually often called “the handsomest man in America” at the time:

John Wilkes Booth wasn’t the best actor in the Booth family: he was outshone by his father, Junius Brutus Booth, and by his brother Edwin. But John Wilkes was the most beautiful of the Booths, the handsomest man in all America, it was said: lithe and feline, with dark Fauntleroy curls and a leading-man mustache.

Indeed, and many fans – and there were many, prior to the assassination – had photos of Booth such as this one:

He was quite the ladies’ man:

“The stage door was always blocked with silly women waiting to catch a glimpse” of “this sad-faced, handsome boy,” Reignolds wrote. Booth was the first celebrity on record to have the clothes torn off his body by crazed fans.

Of course, that was before he became an assassin. For Mangione, the crazed and lusting women came after.

I sometimes think about what a stupendous shock Lincoln’s assassination must have been, even more shocking perhaps than any other presidential assassination. Not only was he the first US president ever to be assassinated, but he was killed only five days after Robert E. Lee’s surrender. And to top it all off, Lincoln’s killer turned out to be the Brad Pitt and Robert Redford and Errol Flynn and Tyrone Power of his day all rolled into one. We accept the strange event as a given because we learned about it as children and it was just history, long ago and far away. But at the time if occurred, it wasn’t history, it was news.

Why does Kamala Harris want to run again?

The New Neo Posted on by

Kamala Harris hasn’t lost her taste for politics. Apparently, she may want to be the next governor of California. And Californians seem to be gluttons for punishment, so she might even succeed in getting elected.

Then again, maybe she wants to run for the presidency in 2028, says the same report. Can this be true? She seemed so tense and stressed, so clearly not up to the task, in 2024. Despite the “joy” campaign message, I don’t think she felt much joy at all running for president.

So maybe this report about possibly running again in 2028 is just face-saving garbage. Or maybe not. Maybe she’s banking on the Trump administration failing, and then she could say “I told you so.”

Her motive? Power, I guess. And I think she did enjoy the perks of the vice-presidency. Once you’ve tasted that, maybe you hunger for more. Plus there’s the attraction of the chance to be the very first woman president.

(Note the “Election 2028” tag. It’s begun. This is actually my second post with that tag.)

Here’s one of the consequences of Trump’s 2024 win

The New Neo Posted on by

A confession: I’d never heard of Softbank before this announcement was made.

Another thing the left’s gleeful lusting after Luigi Mangione proves is that …

The New Neo Posted on by

… they don’t really give a rat’s patootie about gun violence. They just want it to be against the “right” victims and with the “right” – that is, young and telegenic – perpetrators.

While we’re at it, the presidency of Joe Biden also proves that the left doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about the dangers of electing someone elderly. Remember when they blah-blah-blahed about how old McCain was? I sure do. And even in 2024 they made an effort to do the same about the admittedly-elderly-but-still-sharp Donald Trump – an effort that was ludicrous considering how they ran the already cognitively-challenged Biden in 2020 and then propped him up for four years.

Yes, I know, hypocrisy is the name of the political game. But it’s amazing how brazen they are and how obvious it is. And it’s also amazing how many people seem to accept it and buy into it. That doesn’t mean that Republicans aren’t hypocrites at times. But it happens somewhat less frequently.

Hostage release negotiations – looking up?

The New Neo Posted on by

Israel may be getting a big Chanukah present – and more than eight of them. There’s room for very cautious optimism:

“We are the closest to a hostage deal since the last one,” Defense Minister Israel Katz told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.

One-hundred-and-five captives—81 Israelis and 24 foreign nationals—were released during last year’s ceasefire with Hamas that lasted from Nov. 24 to Nov. 30. As of Dec. 16, 100 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza, with 36 having been declared dead.

An Israeli official, previously skeptical about negotiations, confirmed this week that progress has been made in talks aimed at securing the release of Israeli hostages held by the Hamas terror organization in the Gaza Strip.

Additionally, a source familiar with the negotiations told Israel Hayom that talks to formulate a hostages-for-ceasefire deal are expected to be completed by Chanukah, with implementation spread over an extended period.

There have been optimistic reports on this before. What has changed? One obvious thing: the election of Trump – and his ultimatum to Hamas. It’s a very different message than those conveyed by the previous US administration. Also, Iran is much weaker than before and that makes Hamas weaker. And speaking of Hamas being weaker, Sinwar is dead.

How many hostages are alive? No one knows. But I believe the number isn’t zero.