The Humpty Dumpty left uses “ban” to mean whatever they say it does

The New Neo Posted on by

And that meaning is 100% determined by politics.

Used to be that just about everyone understood that little kids didn’t have free access in their school libraries to everything ever published. Nor was every book in the world on their “recommended reading” lists.

Duuuh.

The word “ban” was reserved for prohibitions on the publishing or distribution of a book even for adults in a certain country or state or city. And the sale of pornography to minors was prohibited just about everywhere in the US (and plenty of other countries). I seem to recall that, in my youth, kids under 18 couldn’t even purchase a Playboy magazine, although I certainly knew that didn’t stop them from locating one. Even now, I don’t think kids can enter an “adult” bookstore or a shop that sells erotica and purchase something.

Remember the quaint “Banned in Boston”? That didn’t mean “not available in grade school libraries” or “not recommended for younger students.”

Now, however, there are numerous claims by the left that that type of school rule or non-recommendation constitutes a “banning” by the right. And I’ve heard Democrat voters I know parrot this idea back as though these actions constitute a real banning, whereas if most of them knew what was actually involved they’d be in favor of it. But the left doesn’t want them to know that.

Here’s the latest incident of this type from the left.

The left pays particular attention to the use of language, as Orwell knew full well.

And why do I call them the “Humpty Dumpty left”? This is why:

`And only ONE for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’

`I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”‘ Alice said.

Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. `Of course you don’t– till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”‘

`But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”‘ Alice objected.

`When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, `it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.’

`The question is,’ said Alice, `whether you CAN make words mean so many different things.’

`The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, `which is to be master– that’s all.’

There’s no rule that a president and VP can’t be from the same state…

The New Neo Posted on by

…although there’s a common misconception to that effect. I noticed a couple of people mentioning the supposed rule yesterday in the comments – thus, this post.

Here’s the scoop:

There’s no law or regulation against a president and vice president of the United States being from the same state. The reason why some people mistakenly believe such a prohibition exists comes down to a particular aspect of the Electoral College system laid out in Article II of the U.S. Constitution.

Article II states: “The electors shall meet in their respective states, and vote by ballot for two persons, of whom one at least shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves.”

Under the original system, electors did not distinguish between candidates for the nation’s top two offices; the candidate with the most votes became president, while the runner-up became vice president. The 12th Amendment, adopted in 1804 after two chaotic elections, mandated that electors cast separate ballots for president and vice president. However, the rule preventing an elector from voting for two people from his home state remained in effect under the new system.

In most elections, this quirk in the system wouldn’t even matter.

In other words, a candidate for president can choose a VP from his or her home state. Nothing prohibits it and in most elections it’s fine. However – and this can be a rather big “however” – in a close election, and if the home state of both has many electoral votes, it can end up mattering.

How would it go if the election results were close, and the electors in Florida were prohibited from voting for both members of a (highly unlikely anyway) Trump/DeSantis ticket? Here are some possibilities:

One possible scenario is the Electoral College would vote to elect the new president but not elect the vice president. In that case, the election of the next vice president would become the work of the U.S. Senate, where each senator would get one vote.

If that vote is miraculously tied — well, we’re not sure what would happen next. Some people say the sitting vice president might get to break the tie. Others note that the vice president is not a senator, which is the process spelled out in the Twelfth Amendment…

Another possible scenario is that the Electoral College would vote to elect a new vice president and not a president. In this case, the U.S. House of Representatives would break that deadlock, with members of each state casting a single vote. A majority wins.

So it seems that nothing would prohibit it. But in these day of razor-thin victories, it would be highly inadvisable. Back in 2000, Cheney clarified – prior to the election – that he was a Wyoming resident rather than a Texas resident, in order to be Bush’s running mate and avoid the problem entirely. Recalling how close that 2000 election was, it turned out to be a good move on his part.

As I already wrote, though, I believe chances are extremely dim that Trump and DeSantis would ever run on the same ticket (note, by the way, Trump’s latest mendacious and hypocritical claim against DeSantis. That linked article also describes DeSantis’ stance on the IRS and taxation.)

Wherefore woke corporations?

The New Neo Posted on by

The right has a saying: “Get woke, go broke.” It’s not always true, but it does seem as though it is sometimes the case that taking a woke leftist stance hurts the bottom line. Just ask Budeweiser or Disney. And yet it’s seemingly done all the time.

It certainly didn’t used to be that way – that is, companies were far more rigorous in enforcing a “no-politics or alignment with causes” stance (see this). What changed? On the surface, it would seem to make no sense, but there are a host of reasons for it that probably would take a book to explain (and there may be a book someone has already written, and that someone isn’t me).

Here are a few of those reasons that come to mind: (a) the generation that is often in charge these days was educated, steeped, and marinated in leftist social activism as an absolute good and perhaps a required good (b) these woke campaigns are included in the general heading of historically less controversial anti-discrimination – in this case, in ascending order of presentation in time, anti-racism, anti-homophobia, and anti-transphobia (c) human resources departments have become completely dedicated to these things, as well; and (d) the companies are afraid of threats and boycotts by the left if they don’t toe the leftist line.

They are learning that the right can put economic pressure on them too.

Will it matter? I don’t know. I think there will be a little pullback by these companies from the more egregious examples, but not a lot.

Sort-of predictions for election 2024

The New Neo Posted on by

Here are some predictions of mine, even though I usually try not to make political predictions. But I’ll go out a step or two on a limb and say that:

(1) Trump and DeSantis will not run on a ticket together, even though a lot of people would like it if they did.

(2) Robert Kennedy Jr. will not be the Democrat nominee. He’s considered a loose cannon by the Democrat establishment and the more people hear him the more they will be exposed to his wackier views, of which he has many. Nor is he the least bit conservative, although some of his somewhat more mainstream views, particularly on COVID, are shared by a lot of people on the right as well as some on the left. I also believe his voice problems are a drawback, although not as important a drawback as the rest.

(3) Nor will Michelle Obama be the nominee on the Democrat side. She doesn’t want the job.

(4) I continue to think Biden will be the nominee. The only way he’d be withdrawing would be if he experienced a catastrophic decline in health. Many people predicted he’d be replaced by now as president, but I never thought so – for the simple reason that he’s incredibly useful to the Democrat Party. He will do or say virtually anything the left requires, and he does it while cloaking himself in the aura of his stint as Obama’s VP, as well as his lengthy history in the Senate and his goofy fake-genial persona. Sure, he’s an old white guy, but he says and does the correct woke things and he chose Kamala as his VP, and although she’s been a bitter disappointment to the left in terms of her own popularity as a possible successor, she still checks the right boxes.

(5) The Republican nominee? I make no predictions. Trump is way in the lead, but it’s so early that most people aren’t really aware of much about DeSantis, not from their own perceptions anyway. I do think that the eventual nominee has a tough tough task ahead of him to overcome the built-in obstacles to victory in the presidential race.

The DeSantis versus Trump duel

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a given that the left and the MSM hate DeSantis and will do their best to destroy him. It’s also a given, apparently, that the portion of the right one might call EverTrumpers also detest DeSantis.

People who’ve read my blog for years know my history with Trump. Early on I realized his appeal and also that he had a chance of winning the nomination and even perhaps the presidency (see this post of mine from August of 2015, for example). But he worried me for two big reasons: I didn’t trust him because he seemed like a loose cannon, and I thought he was actually very likely to lose to Hillary Clinton. And so I didn’t support him in the primaries, although afterwards I was very nervous about his prospects. And then, after he won, I looked at him objectively in terms of what he actually did as president, and for the most part I liked what I saw.

I’ve also written that I think something happened to him in the fall of 2020, shortly before the election. I think it’s possible that it had to do with his serious bout with COVID, or perhaps the meds he took to combat COVID, such as steroids. Whatever it may have been, I noticed it almost immediately when he returned. There was something off about him. It was as though some of his political instincts had deserted him.

And I think there’s been something off about him ever since. That said, I would vote for him were he to be nominated, and certainly I would not for a single moment consider voting for Biden. But I think – as I’ve also written several times – that Trump has almost no chance of winning the general in 2024. People’s minds are made up about him, and too many people are “anyone but Trump.”

But does any Republican have a chance in the general? I don’t know (as I indicated in this post from yesterday), and there are several very worrisome factors that militate against it.

I haven’t yet watched DeSantis’ appearance on Twitter last night to kick off his campaign, but I know that my post on that subject drew some interesting comments typical of what I see around the right side of the blogosphere whenever DeSantis’ candidacy comes up. They range from suggestions that Florida needs him more, that he should wait for 2028, that he doesn’t have the common touch that Trump has, to (mostly seen on other blogs) that he’s just Jeb lite and that he’s being disloyal to Trump by running at all.

These statements all seem either wrong to me, irrelevant, or preposterous.

For example, DeSantis helped drive reform of the voting system in Florida and as a result the state is more reliably red and the voting process there is more reliable in general than it was before. He’s set the state on a course good enough that I think he can move on to something else with the idea that a successor Republican will do well there. If it turns out that DeSantis has a better chance of beating Biden than Trump does, then he owes it to himself and to us to run now.

But does he have a better chance? Polls are irrelevant; it’s way too early in the game for them to matter. I happen to think at this point that he does have a better chance in the general than Trump, but I say to others why not watch the campaign and see how he does rather than pre-judge him as lacking? In other words, I think whether he has general appeal or not – including whether he’s “likeable,” a trait Trump isn’t all that strong on himself with an awful lot of people – will become more clear as time goes on.

The loyalty argument seems to me to be the most hypocritical of all, because there’s no way that Trump would follow such a rule if he saw his own opportunity. Politics ain’t beanbag.

I also think that Trump – who is, among other things, very lively and entertaining – has accustomed his supporters to the show he presents. Neither DeSantis nor most other politicians can offer such a show. They’re perceived sometimes as boring. But it does not mean they would do worse in the general; perhaps the opposite is the case. Trump’s very liveliness and outspokenness so often segue into nastiness and/or outrageousness that those traits alone have turned off a great many voters.

I think that many of the people who go around the blogosphere writing these negative things about DeSantis are sincere. But I’m convinced that many are not. I’m convinced that a significant number are actually on the left and are trying very hard to widen the rift between these two sides of the Republican electorate, because they know that would be a likely way to effect a Biden win in the end. Each time I write about DeSantis in a positive way, I see some completely new commenters suddenly appear who are critical of him, people who’ve never commented here before. Paid operatives? Perhaps.

[ADDENDUM: Ace says it all, and then some.]

A trans person speaking out against the medical transition of children

The New Neo Posted on by

In this recent post I wrote the following:

Many trans people…are appalled at what today’s extreme trans activists have done in their name. There are actually a number of trans YouTubers who have embarked on trying to make it clear that they know that there are important biological differences between people who are born in a sex and people who transition to it, and it is not the least bit disrespectful or transphobic to admit the truth on the subject.

I thought I’d present an example, so you could see the sort of thing I mean. This is a person who was born a woman and now presents as a trans man, and I doubt if you met him on the street you’d suspect such a history. But he’s very upfront about that history (which includes a transition that occurred at the age of 30) and about the fact that he is still a biological woman and that – as he says – no amount of testosterone would make it otherwise. He’s very blunt, as well as dedicated to the cause of protecting children from social media indoctrination and medical interventions. He often interviews de-transitioners, which is how I first found him because I sometimes watch such videos. But in this particular clip he’s speaking alone and explaining his point of view regarding the treatment of children:

DeSantis declares as a 2024 Republican presidential candidate

The New Neo Posted on by

He chose to make the announcement on Twitter, and then to stick around to schmooze with Elon Musk and moderator David Sacks.

Twitter crashed from the stress, and the MSM is headlining that rather prominently.

According to the PJ post I just linked:

It was part traditional Q&A and part three guys shooting the breeze…

I wasn’t sure what to expect with this innovative platform, but so far, I really like what I see. DeSantis came across as very knowledgeable, articulate, and likable.

I didn’t watch it. Maybe later I’ll see if a clip is easily accessible.

How many people…

The New Neo Posted on by

…will continue to think this guy was an evil MAGA-supporting white supremacist? The MSM knows what it’s doing: set the narrative early, and then when the facts contradict the narrative, just move on.

Most people will never catch up with the truth.