Ken Paxton acquitted in Texas Senate

The New Neo Posted on by

I haven’t written much about the impeachment of Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas. Today was the vote in the Texas Senate, and he’s been acquitted of charges of bribery, corruption, and being unfit for office.

The Texas legislature is controlled by the GOP, and yet in the House the vote to impeach Paxton was overwhelming. In the Senate, which requires 2/3 to convict, it wasn’t close. What’s going on? It’s not that easy to tell, but from reading a bunch of newspaper articles (not especially informative) and a ton of blog posts and comments, the gist of the rumors goes like this: the impeachment was an attempt by Bush forces in Texas and the Republican Speaker of the Texas House to take Paxton – a far more conservative, Trump-supporting guy – down.

Here’s a little recent history about Paxton and the speaker:

On May 19, 2023, Phelan struggled to speak while executing his duties as speaker of the Texas House. Fellow Republican and attorney general Ken Paxton called upon Phelan to resign due to “apparent debilitating intoxication”. Phelan “negatively impacted the legislative process and constitutes a failure to live up to his duty to the public” according to the statement. Phelan’s office characterized Paxton’s statement as “a last-ditch effort to save face” given the timing – that same day, a Republican-led House committee came public with an investigation into Paxton that had been ongoing since March of that year. That investigation led to the House formally impeaching Paxton on May 27 by a vote of 121–23.

I know very little about inner Texas politics or the Texas GOP, except that I assume there is a split between the anti-Trump Bush forces and the pro-Trump conservatives. The scuttlebutt also is that the House members voted quite quickly for the impeachment, fearing retaliation from Phelan if they didn’t vote that way. I have no idea whether this is true, but if anyone knows more about Texas politics than I – and that might be many of you – feel free to opine in the comments.

The amazing astounding Thomas Sowell has come out with a new book at 93

The New Neo Posted on by

[Hat tip: commenter “T J.”]

When I first discovered the writing of Thomas Sowell, about a year into what ultimately became my political change, I experienced a tremendous sense of admiration and relief. Admiration because his writing was so clear and so intelligent, and relief because it made more sense than anything political I’d ever read.

I’ve watched many Sowell interviews over the years, and the guy is similarly clear and intelligent when speaking. He’s also afraid of no one and is never intimidated. I imagine he’s made plenty of enemies over the years, but I doubt any of them can outwit him. I’ve read his autobiography, too, and his life story is as interesting as one might think.

No one lasts forever, and Sowell has reached the venerable age of 93. But guess what? He’s come out with a new book, Social Justice Fallacies. I haven’t read it but I think I can recommend it without reservation.

And here he is at 93, being interviewed about it. I’ve only watched a couple of minutes, but he looks and sounds fantastic:

NOTE: Although Sowell’s been on the right for a long long time, he’s actually a political changer himself, having been a Marxist in his early years.

Hey, what’s a little sex work among Democrat friends? And “mean old Republicans pounce!”

The New Neo Posted on by

A few days ago I wrote a post saying that I didn’t care much about certain allegations concerning Obama’s sex life – allegations I didn’t believe anyway, but which involved consenting adults. One reason was because there were plenty of other reasons I was never voting for him. But I didn’t realize I needed to add a few caveats to that “consenting adults” rule, such as: unless the sex acts are what is now euphemistically known as “sex work” and/or broadcasting your sex acts online.

But now I realize that the political arena doesn’t seem to preclude such acts, so it’s necessary to mention them as being of concern. To wit:

Democratic Virginia House of Delegates candidate Susanna Gibson blasted her opponents for engaging in “the worst gutter politics” after videos surfaced of her and her husband performing sex acts online for cash.

Gibson, a 40-year-old mother of two who is running in a hotly contested race to represent the state’s District 57, hosted several live webcam shows on the adult streaming website Chaturbate, the Washington Post revealed in a bombshell report Monday.

The nurse practitioner has since railed against her political opponents, accusing them of engaging in dirty politics.

You almost have to admire Gibson for her bold rhetorical jiu-jitsu. You see, if a person “performs sex acts online for cash” (and by the way, these videos were recent, not something she did in her wild youth), that’s not the “dirty” thing. Opponents pointing out that this occurred is the dirty thing. Got it.

More Orwellian garbage from Gibson:

“My political opponents and their Republican allies have proven they’re willing to commit a sex crime to attack me and my family because there’s no line they won’t cross to silence women when they speak up,” Gibson told CNN in a statement on Tuesday.

And from her attorney:

Gibson’s attorney, Daniel P. Watkins, said the circulating videos are a violation of Virginia’s revenge porn law, which makes it a crime to “maliciously” disseminate or sell nude or sexual images of another person with the intent to “coerce, harass, or intimidate.”

That law was meant to involve private photos or videos, not sex work online for pay and open to the public, that has already been “disseminated” (the puns write themselves) by the participants themselves.

More details here – perhaps more details than you’d like, although perhaps not.

Speaking of Obama, I will also note that one of his early acts as a politician was to get henchmen to out Blair Hull and Jack Ryan in terms of allegations during divorce proceedings; here’s a memory refresher.

Three remaining Whitmer “kidnapping” defendants are acquitted

The New Neo Posted on by

This is good news:

William Null, twin brother Michael Null and Eric Molitor were found not guilty of providing support for a terrorist act and a weapon charge. They were the last of 14 men to face charges in state or federal court. Nine were convicted and now five have been cleared.

The Nulls and Molitor were accused of supporting leaders of the plan by participating in military-style drills and traveling to see Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan. The key players, Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr., were convicted of a kidnapping conspiracy last year in a different court.

In the latest trial, the jury heard 14 days of testimony in Antrim County, the location of Whitmer’s lakeside property, 185 miles north of the state Capitol.

These guys pulled out of all of it when talk of any sort of violence entered. But the prosecution insisted on trying them anyway. I haven’t read much about how the venue for this trial was chosen and whether it differed in political demographics from the areas in which the previous trials were conducted, but my guess is that the juror pool was significantly more to the right than for the other trials. The men may have been fortunate that Whitmer’s vacation home was so far north. And I am virtually certain that if this case had been tried in DC, like the J6 cases, these men would be going to prison for a long time no matter how weak the evidence.

Another interesting detail is that two of the three men took the stand in their own defense. That’s not all that usual in a criminal trial, but their lawyers must have felt they’d be good witnesses.

This was the scene when the verdicts were read:

NOTE: I’ve written a great deal about the Whitmer cases, which I consider to be government entrapment. Some of my posts can be found here.

The long knives are out for Kamala Harris

The New Neo Posted on by

The drumbeats get louder:

Multiple liberal columnists have now urged President Biden to ditch Vice President Kamala Harris as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election.

Columnists at The Washington Post, New York Magazine’s The Intelligencer and a prominent independent writer said there are “better options available” for Biden’s running mate and that he should choose one of them if he wants a shot at winning re-election.

Among the Democrats mentioned to replace Harris were Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

What on earth is “better” about those people? They are among the most leftist of Democrats, and I don’t see any of them as having national draw. What’s sort of funny is that each of them is a member of at least one favored victim identity group, and Harris’ intersectional favored-identity-group affiliations are why she was chosen. And although the article mentions that Harris isn’t especially popular with black voters, I think that a significant number might be offended anyway if she’s dumped, and the same is true for some women voters.

I don’t quite get why dumping Harris would help Biden significantly. People generally vote for president rather than vice president. However, I suppose the thinking on the left is that everyone knows Biden is so old and cognitively challenged that he might not serve out a term, and therefore a younger vice president might have a good chance of attaining the office during the four years following the 2024 election, if only the Democrats can manage to eke out a win with the unpopular Biden. But I wonder what they’re seeing in the polls indicating they might be having difficulty “fortifying” the 2024 election, because they certainly seem worried.

Open thread 9/15/23

The New Neo Posted on by

Since this year’s 9/11 anniversary, I’ve watched more documentaries about it on YouTube. This is one that tells an extraordinary story. You may already know a bit about it – as I did – but the details are astounding:

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

I bask in the heartfelt praise:

It’s constantly consequently lovely and in addition brimming with a thrilling time to me personally along with our business office co-workers to look your blog at the least thrice in a very full week to find out the revolutionary assistance exhibiting.

Hunter Biden is indicted on federal gun charges

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, this is interesting:

Hunter Biden was indicted Thursday on federal gun charges out of Special Counsel David Weiss’ investigation.

Biden was charged with making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm; making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer; and one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.

These are felony charges. But previously, Weiss was ready to make a deal that wrote them off. The only reason that deal didn’t go through seems to have been that the judge asked a few questions and the answers were highly unsatisfactory.

But one wonders whether this is also related to something I wrote about a few minutes ago – the deep desire of the Democrats to rid themselves of Joe Biden, whose candidacy has become a possible liability. Otherwise, I can’t imagine they’d let this indictment go forward – unless, of course, the plan is to provide cover for legal “fairness” by indicting Hunter and then merely slapping him on the wrist. That’s certainly a possibility.

One more idea is that these charges are meant to deflect from the much larger issue of the influence-peddling financial scheme in which Joe is highly implicated. It may be a case of introducing the narrative: “haven’t Hunter and Joe suffered enough?” “Do those cruel pouncing Republicans want a pound of flesh?”

The present charges carry a maximum of five to ten years, but I can’t imagine that Hunter, if found guilty, would serve anything like that amount of time (or any time at all).

There’s also this:

Weiss also withdrew the two misdemeanor tax charges in Delaware with the intention of bringing them in California and Washington, D.C. — the venues where the alleged misconduct occurred. Prosecutors have not offered a timeline for those charges.

If Hunter is charged at all with those things, I predict the timeline will be whatever it needs to be to most benefit whatever the Democrats want to happen with Joe.

Hunter’s defense appears to be that the plea agreement that got him off so very easy is still in effect.

Interesting times, interesting times.

David Ignatius: Biden is wonderful, great, fab – but shouldn’t run in 2024

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m in awe of the mental gymnastics it takes to write an opinion piece like this one by David Ignatius:

What I admire most about President Biden is that in a polarized nation, he has governed from the center out, as he promised in his victory speech. With an unexpectedly steady hand, he passed some of the most important domestic legislation in recent decades. In foreign policy, he managed the delicate balance of helping Ukraine fight Russia without getting America itself into a war. In sum, he has been a successful and effective president.

Pravda could not have done better. But Ignatius is not through – oh no, he’s just getting warmed up:

But I don’t think Biden and Vice President Harris should run for reelection. It’s painful to say that, given my admiration for much of what they have accomplished. But if he and Harris campaign together in 2024, I think Biden risks undoing his greatest achievement — which was stopping Trump.

Say what? Stopping Trump is his greatest achievement (I’d say it’s his only achievement, if you consider it to be an achievement, which I don’t). But why not run again, if Biden has indeed accomplished that great achievement and all the other ones that Ignatius claims have made Biden “a successful and effective president”? What more could a person want from a candidate, really?

This is why not, according to Ignatius: Biden is too old. And Harris is too unpopular – or, as Ignatius puts it: “Harris has many laudable qualities, but the simple fact is that she has failed to gain traction in the country or even within her own party.”

“Failed to gain traction.” Now, that’s a turn of phrase. But tellingly, Ignatius says that, although “time is running out” on finding an alternative to Biden, there’s another problem:

Right now, there’s no clear alternative to Biden — no screamingly obvious replacement waiting in the wings. That might be the decider for Biden, that there’s seemingly nobody else. But maybe he will trust in democracy to discover new leadership, “in the arena.”

Ignatius doesn’t speculate on why, in this enormous country full of Democrats in elected office, there are no clear alternatives to this old geezer and his incredibly unpopular veep. But I’ll take a guess: the Democrats have gone so far to the left that the vast majority – maybe even all – of their younger politicians are way too extreme for the general electorate. Biden was old enough and fake-avuncular enough to have been able to fool a lot of people into thinking he was a genial middle-of-the-roader, but the vast majority of younger Democrats would be unable to perform such a feat. And Kamala seems to be unable to perform even the simplest political moves without flubbing them.

Of course, it may not matter. If the Democrats “fortify” the election enough, by hook or by crook, any Democrat could win, even Kamala. But why should the Democrats make the task of winning more difficult for themselves by nominating Biden and Harris?

I am convinced, however, that Biden will not be listening to the likes of David Ignatius and leaving the field voluntarily. Of course, I very much doubt that Ignatius is speaking for himself and without coordination with other Democrat movers and shakers saying more or less the same thing. They would like Biden out; but, as I’ve written many many times, they face several obstacles in accomplishing that goal. One of them is Biden’s overweening ambition and stubbornness. The other – and probably the larger one – is the lack of a decent replacement.