The Fox interview: how do you solve a problem like Kamala?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen many clips of last night’s interview on Fox News with Kamala Harris, read excerpts and reactions, but haven’t been able to bring myself to watch the entire thing. I’m sure Harris’ fans have good things to say about her performance: she’s so feisty and brave, and that sort of thing. And those who have no intention of ever voting for her say it was a train wreck, which I think it was. More to the point, of course, is what that tiny but oh-so-important group of undecideds in the middle might think, if they’re even paying attention. From what I’ve read and seen, though, I can’t imagine it won many of those people over.

Bret Baier seemed surprisingly tough and also well-prepared. The critique from the left was, predictably, He was so mean he interrupted her! And even, from some, How dare a white man do that to a black woman! Those who say those things don’t seem to understand that you can’t claim to be strong and not be able to take challenging question and/or interruptions. But then again, Kamala Harris is accustomed to dealing with an obsequious press.

One thing I can say for Harris, however: she had a game plan and she stuck with it. The game plan was and is rather simple: don’t get pinned down in any actual answers except Trump BAD! Over and over and over.

There were some extraordinary exchanges. For example:

BAIER: Your campaign slogan is a new way forward and it’s time to turn the page. You’ve been vice president for three and a half years. So what, are you turning the page from.

HARRIS: Well, first of all, turning the page from the last decade in which we have been burdened with the kind of rhetoric coming from Donald Trump that has been designed and implemented to divide our country and have Americans literally point fingers at each other. Rhetoric and an approach to leadership that suggests that the strength of a leader is based on who you beat down instead of what we all know the strength of leadership is based on who you lift up. The strength of an American president, which is one who understands that the vast majority of us have more in common than what separates us.

BAIER: More 70% of people…

HARRIS: That is about turning the page on rhetoric that people are frankly exhausted…

BAIER: …more than 70% of people tell pollsters the country is on the wrong track, they say the country is on the wrong track. If it’s on the wrong track, that track follows three and a half years of you being vice president and President Biden being president. That is what they’re saying. 79% of them. Why are they saying that? If you’re turning the page, you’ve been in office for three and a half years.

HARRIS: And Donald Trump has been running for office…

BAIER: But you’ve been the person in the office. Madam Vice President…

HARRIS: …both know what I’m talking about. You and I both know what I’m talking about.

BAIER: I actually don’t. What are you talking about?

Well he might ask. What she’s talking about is the only thing she feels comfortable talking about, which is that Trump is evil. Trumpety Trump Trump Trumpa-dump. Meanwhile, of course, as she goes on and on about the awfulness of Trump, she seems not to notice that it is she who thinks her own “strength as a leader is based on beating down Trump,” – or contnually attempting to do so.

Her next statement to Baier was this:

HARRIS: What I’m talking about is that over the last decade, people have…but listen, over the last decade, it is clear to me and certainly the Republicans who are on stage with me. The former chief of staff to the president, Donald Trump, former defense secretaries, national security advisor, and his vice president, one that he is unfit to serve…that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances and it being about him.

There’s that irony again: does she not understand that she has become the “someone who professes to be a leader who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances and it being about Trump”? Does she not even hear herself?

And then:

BAIER: Your campaign slogan is A New Way Forward and It’s Time To Turn The Page. You’ve been Vice President for 3.5 years. What are you turning the page from?

HARRIS: The last decade of Donald Trump.

Decade? He’s been in power for a decade? Who knew? He started in 2014? He’s been in power during the entire Biden/Harris administration? If he’s been so powerful for so very long, including during the nearly four years that Harris has been VP, why would he disappear if she were to be elected?

As time goes on and I hear more from Harris, I become more worried about what kind of president she actually would be if, heaven forbid, she won the election. Someone on some comment thread wrote, “She makes Hillary Clinton look like Dinah Shore.” And I have to add that she makes Biden look competent. Even in his addled state, he can draw on decades and decades of maneuvering in the political arena. The guy was never especially smart, but he had something on the ball – some sort of wily ability. I don’t know what Kamala has, and I don’t think she knows either, except identity politics and the demonization of Donald Trump. I certainly hope it won’t be enough to get her into the White House.

Here are two videos made after the interview. The first is from Baier:

The second is Ben Shapiro’s reaction:

Sinwar dead: can it be?

The New Neo Posted on by

I was astounded when I read the news that the IDF had killed Sinwar, and also somewhat disbelieving. But when I read that they had announced that DNA testing had confirmed his identity, I became convinced that Sinwar has finally met his end.

The circumstances are amazing in the sense that we had read he was always surrounded by twenty-or-so hostages. But that’s not how the scenario went:

Sinwar, architect of the October 7 Hamas invasion and slaughter in southern Israel, was shot dead along with two other terrorists in a firefight in Rafah, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security agency announced.

He was not being directly targeted, and troops only realized that one of the three dead terrorists was apparently Sinwar when they inspected the scene of the firefight on Thursday morning. …

Part of Sinwar’s finger was removed for expedited testing as the location was booby-trapped. His body was extracted and brought to Israel later Thursday.

In a joint statement, the IDF and Shin Bet said Israel’s military activities gradually constricted Sinwar’s area of operations, ultimately leading to his death.

There was some intelligence that Hamas “senior officials” were hiding in the area, but it seems pretty clear that the troops didn’t know they had zeroed in on Sinwar until after he was dead. More intelligence afterwards – “indications from Gaza” – also let them know that Sinwar might have died.

I sometimes wonder how it is that Israel has enough DNA information on these terrorists to identify their bodies, but there are several ways it could happen. The first is through relatives. But for Sinwar, there’s another obvious method, which is that he was in Israeli prisons for many years and only released in the Shalit deal. While in Israel he had major medical treatment for cancer. I strongly suspect that Israel is very familiar with his DNA for that reason.

And this is especially interesting, if true:

According to an unsourced report on Channel 12, Sinwar had previously been hiding with the six hostages who were executed by their Hamas captors on August 29 and whose bodies were recovered by the IDF on August 31 — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27.

It said Sinwar likely gave the order to kill the six as he fled.

It said the firefight on Wednesday took place in the same area as the six hostages were held and killed.

It also said that the IDF had checked when the six hostages’ bodies were recovered whether terrorists killed in the area had included Sinwar. This was found not to be the case, but indications, including DNA evidence, were found at the time that Sinwar had been in the area.

I remember that reports of the killing of the six hostages included the note that the area was checked for the DNA of terrorists.

Not only was the area where Sinwar was killed boody-trapped, but he was wearing a military vest with grenades.

And remember all the shrieking a while back from the Biden administration and much of the world that the Israelis shouldn’t go into Rafah? Fortunately Israel didn’t listen.

I think it goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: Sinwar was the architect of October 7 and the political leader of Hamas. I hope his death will serve to deeply demoralize remaining Hamas forces and those Gazans who have supported Hamas.

Various world leaders have used the opportunity of Sinwar’s death to renew calls for a ceasefire; I kid you not. And Biden has done some bragging, saying the Israelis did it with the help of his administration:

Biden says he will soon speak to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders “to congratulate them, to discuss the pathway for bringing the hostages home to their families, and for ending this war once and for all, which has caused so much devastation to innocent people.”

Actually, it’s an opportunity to end this war by finishing the job in the military sense.

From Netanyahu:

Turning to the hostage families, Netanyahu says this is “an important moment” in the war. “We will continue with all our strength until the return of all of your loved ones, who are our loved ones.”

Netanyahu then turns to Gazan civilians: “Sinwar ruined your life. He told you he was a lion, but in reality he was hiding in a dark den. And he was killed when he fled in a panic from our soldiers.”

“To the Hamas terrorists I say: your leaders are fleeing and they will be eliminated,” he continues.

He says that anyone holding hostages will be allowed to live if they lay down their weapons and release their captives.

“And at the same time I say, whoever harms our hostages, his blood will be on his head,” says Netanyahu. ” We will come to a reckoning with him.” …

Addressing the people of the Middle East, Netanyahu says there is “a great opportunity to stop the axis of evil and create a different future.”

Netanyahu says that Sinwar’s killing makes clear to critics in Israel and abroad why his government insisted on continuing the war.

I think it’s always been clear. Problem is, Israel’s “critics” don’t want Israel to win this war.

Nevertheless, this is a day of great hope.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

So much news …

(1) Pay now or pay later, but somebody pays. And I’m surprised that the WaPo is reporting on this:

(2) Harris calls a question about whether Trump will put all non-white people in camps “an important point.” She doesn’t go so far as to say Trump will do it, but she says:

You’ve hit on a really important point and expressed it, I think so. Well, which is? He is achieving his intended effect to make you scared. He is running full time on a campaign that is about instilling fear. Not about hope, not about optimism, not about the future. But about fear.

Another case of Harris saying Trump is doing what she is doing here. The entire Democrat platform is based on two things: fear of Trump and the giving of supposedly free stuff by the Democrats.

(3) Hat tip: commenter “sdferr.”

Good for Tom Cotton.

(4) The Harris campaign lies about a musical interlude at a Trump rally. The rally was stopped to attend to the needs of two people in the crowd who had medical emergencies, and the Harris campaign says it happened because Trump got lost and confused. That’s rich, coming from the group that covered up Biden’s cognitive difficulties for years. And although even ABC said it wasn’t true, Harris has continued the lie:

(5) Federal employees are worried that Trump might win.

The FBI quietly admits that crime went up

The New Neo Posted on by

Well, well:

When the FBI originally released the “final” crime data for 2022 in September 2023, it reported that the nation’s violent crime rate fell by 2.1%. This quickly became, and remains, a Democratic Party talking point to counter Donald Trump’s claims of soaring crime.

But the FBI has quietly revised those numbers, releasing new data that shows violent crime increased in 2022 by 4.5%. The new data includes thousands more murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults.

The Bureau – which has been at the center of partisan storms – made no mention of these revisions in its September 2024 press release.

Shhh – wouldn’t want people to notice if it confirms what the right has been claiming.

More:

It’s been over three weeks since the FBI released the revised data. The Bureau’s lack of acknowledgment or explanation about the significant change concerns researchers.

“I have checked the data on total violent crime from 2004 to 2022,” Carl Moody, a professor at the College of William & Mary who specializes in studying crime, told RealClearInvestigations. “There were no revisions from 2004 to 2015, and from 2016 to 2020, there were small changes of less than one percentage point. The huge changes in 2021 and 2022, especially without an explanation, make it difficult to trust the FBI data.”

There are many things that make it difficult to trust the FBI, and not just to distrust their data.

The actual changes in crimes are extensive. The updated data for 2022 report that there were 80,029 more violent crimes than in 2021. There were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies, and 37,091 aggravated assaults. The question naturally arises: should the FBI’s 2023 numbers be believed?

No.

The article goes on to add that these figures contain a lot of “estimated” data anyway, plus:

Another problem with FBI crime data is its reliance on reported crimes. Most crimes go unreported, with only about 45% of violent crimes and 30% of property crimes brought to the police’s attention, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey. …

A half-century ago, the DOJ provided a total crime measure, including both reported and unreported crime. The results of the department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics 2023 National Crime Victimization Survey, released in mid-September, tell a very different story from the FBI data.

The NCVS interviews 240,000 people each year about their personal experiences.

Instead of the FBI’s 3.5% drop in the reported violent crime rate in 2023, the NCVS found a 4.1% increase in the reported violent crime rate. Even with the revised FBI numbers, in 2022, the FBI’s 4.5% increase pales in comparison to the NCVS’s 29.1% increase. …

While the FBI claims that serious violent crime has fallen by 5.8% since Biden took office, the NCVS numbers show that total violent crime has risen by 55.4%. Rapes are up by 42%, robbery by 63%, and aggravated assault by 55% during Biden’s term. Since the NCVS started, the largest previous increase over three years was 27% in 2006, so the increase under Biden was slightly more than twice as large.

The increases shown by the NCVS during the Biden-Harris administration are by far the largest percentage increases over any three years, slightly more than doubling the previous record.

Lots more at the link.

Hezbollah’s extensive tunnel world

The New Neo Posted on by

Since the IDF entered Gaza after October 7, we’ve seen many photos and videos of the vast underground network there. Now that the IDF is in southern Lebanon, it has discovered an even more sophisticated network of tunnels. In Gaza, Israel found the tunnels after Hamas’ attack on southern Israel. In Lebanon, Hezbollah was still in the readiness stage for a massive and deadly invasion of northern Israel:

According to IDF spokesman Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari, the complex was designed for a Radwan battalion to arrive, suit up, then head into Israel on foot and on motorbikes.

IDF forces captured the complex late last week and found anti-helicopter missiles, mortar shells, rifles and other munitions.

One of the operatives was holed up in the bunker, and was killed by the Air Force.

Some of these tunnels were right next to UN posts in the region:

Note that preparations with Iran for the October 7 attack by Hamas began in the first year of the Biden administration. No coincidence.

Also, the US has issued this threat – to Israel:

More:

Notably, the letter from U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was addressed to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, bypassing Netanyahu.

The letter demands that Israel take concrete steps to improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza within 30 days. In addition to ensuring regular aid transfers, the U.S. also calls on Israel to allow Red Cross visits to Palestinian detainees and to halt Knesset legislation that would prevent the Palestinian aid agency UNRWA from operating in Israel.

The deeper implication of the Blinken-Austin letter is that if Israel does not address the humanitarian crisis in northern Gaza within 30 days, it could face a severe arms crisis, as the U.S. continues to delay shipments of heavy bombs. Failure to meet the U.S. demands could jeopardize the continuation of military aid, which requires approval from both Blinken and Austin.

It seems it was a mistake for Israel to trust the US. But for a long time, support for Israel was bipartisan. That ended with Obama, and the Biden administration (otherwise known as Obama’s third term) has continued the confrontational hostility, which has increased in this election year in order to placate the Democrats’ very large left flank.

Partial remains of Mallory’s companion “Sandy” Irvine found on Everest

The New Neo Posted on by

This is about the discovery:

The partial remains of Andrew “Sandy” Irvine are believed to have been found on the slopes of Mount Everest, a century after he died alongside his fellow British climber George Mallory while attempting – or just possibly returning from – the first ascent of the mountain.

The two men, part of a British expedition to climb the north-east ridge, were last seen making a push for the summit on 8 June 1924. They never returned, leading to one of the most enduring mysteries in mountaineering – whether the two men died after reaching the summit, as members of their team believed.

Mallory’s remains were found in 1999, and last month, a team of climbers and film-makers discovered a foot encased in a climbing boot and sock – on which was sewn a label identifying it as Irvine’s.

If you go to the link and look at the photo of the label (it can’t be embedded here for copyright reasons), you’ll see something very much like what I use to sew into my clothing when I went to sleep-away camp. Of course, come to think of it, although that didn’t happen 100 years ago, it was – well, let’s just say a very long time ago.

The finding of the foot, sock, and boot doesn’t solve the mystery of whether the men reached the summit or not. I like to think they did, but my guess is that we’ll never know.

Prof Joe Smith, director of the Royal Geographical Society, said of the discovery: “Sandy was an exceptional figure and made a significant contribution to our understanding of Everest and the Himalaya. This discovery of his remains provides an element of closure for his relatives and the wider mountaineering community, and we are grateful to Jimmy and his team for enabling this and ensuring Sandy is in safe hands.”

RIP.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Helpful:

I can’t say I’m surprised.

(2) I haven’t written about this yet, but it’s pretty spectacular:

(3) Kamala Harris consents to an interview with Fox’s Bret Baier. My guess is that he will go fairly easy on her. Hope I’m wrong about that.

(4) CBS recently edited Harris’ interview to make her seem smarter, and now CBS has edited Speaker Johnson’s interview to make him seem stupider.

(5) There’s no love lost between Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi these days. Pelosi herself said that they haven’t spoken since he got the boot as a 2024 candidate:

Pelosi (D-CA) spoke with British journalist Jonathan Freedland in a recent episode of “The Guardian’s Politics Weekly America” podcast where she revealed Biden has not spoken to her since he was forced out.

“Not since then, no,” she said. “But I’m prayerful about it.”

By the way – do you agree with me that Biden has seemed somewhat more with it ever since it happened? Maybe he’s been getting more rest.

Ana Kasparian: another change story

The New Neo Posted on by

Ana Kasparian is – or used to be until recently – a “progressive journalist.” But she’s had one of those mugged by reality experiences – literally [my emphasis]:

“The Young Turks” co-host Ana Kasparian explained what drove her to ditch the Democratic Party while on Jillian Michaels’ “Keeping It Real” podcast on Monday.

The progressive media host described feeling “politically homeless” over the past few years, as she started seeing an intolerance to debate and the free exchange of ideas as well as an embrace of soft-on-crime policies by the left that she believed were detrimental to society.

She ripped efforts to “demonize and even dehumanize the other side” while admitting she used to be a person who believed you could not be friends with conservatives or someone who supported former President Trump. …

Kasparian said a turning point for her was when she was scolded by liberals after confessing she was fearful to leave her house after being sexually assaulted by a homeless man while walking her dog in Los Angeles in 2022.

I want to pause here and point out what grabbed my attention. The first thing is that, although I’m not familiar with her work as a “media host,” if she was on “The Young Turks” she was definitely to the left. So for someone such as that – who is publicly affiliated with that wing of the party and whose livelihood depends on it – to go through a political change experience, the incident that sparks it would ordinarily be fairly dramatic as well as something that hits in a very personal way. After all, the left has had a “strong intolerance to debate” as well as “soft-on-crime policies” for many years. And yet Kasparian only began her change journey after her 2022 experience.

That’s not a criticism by me, by the way. I applaud her for waking up to the situation rather than denying it, however late her change occurred. She goes on:

“Before I knew it, I started getting these messages, and it’s really, really harsh stuff, about how, ‘You are painting a picture of the homeless community. How could you be like this? These are your unhoused neighbors and they need help,’” she said of the negative messages she received.

“A few people accused me of being racist, even though I had never disclosed the race of the individuals who did this to me. And in fact, they were white,” Kasparian continued.

Does any of that ring a bell for you? It immediately reminded me of the story Barack Obama told in 2008 about his own grandmother, that “typical white person” who raised him and whom he casually threw under the bus in his effort to give a lofty speech about race in America. To refresh your memory, I wrote this at the time:

And along the way [Obama] managed to make what I felt was one of the single most revoltingly self-serving statements I’ve ever heard in a speech. …:

“I can no more disown [pastor Wright] than I can my white grandmother—a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

In addition, I wrote this around the same time:

And please read what actually happened to Obama’s grandmother as he previously related the story in his book. Turns out she was nearly mugged, and her allegedly racist comment was made not in front of Obama but reported secondhand by his grandfather. Obama’s grandmother appears to have mentioned to the grandfather that the aggressive panhandler who bothered her was black, and the grandfather told Obama that was the real reason she was afraid.

I’m sure you can see the parallels here, and the way Obama’s example of what counts as racist remarks set an example for the sort of reactions Kasparian got. Of course, it’s not just due to Obama. But I strongly believe that this sort of reaction became more common during his candidacy and presidency: that one cannot speak ill of a person from a leftist-protected group – be it a black person or an “unhoused” person or an “undocumented” person or whatever – even though that person has obviously acted in such a way that it is appropriate to speak critically of him or her.

So that’s what Kasparian ran into. It’s astounding that she was shocked by the reaction she got, but apparently she was. I think it’s because, until it happened to her, it was easy for her to just tell herself that other people – people on the right who said similar things – were bigots because that’s just how they were already defined. She knew she wasn’t a bigot, plus of course she also knew her assailant wasn’t even black and that it was merely an assumption of her holier-than-thou critics that he was. But they were treating her the way Obama spoke of his “typical white person” of a grandmother.

Here’s more of Kasparian’s story, which ends this way for now:

Today I’m less certain and more curious than I was four years ago. I’ve made humiliating mistakes while covering political news because I was previously unwilling to consider or understand the perspective of Americans who vote differently from me.

That’s quite an admission, and I admire her for it. Few people are capable of it. What’s more:

The point of this new project is the pursuit of intellectual freedom and open mindedness. I want to nurture curiosity without fear of offending the sensibilities of loyal partisans. I reject arguments about the evils of platforming people who are considered too naughty to converse with. I want to facilitate dialogue.

I don’t know what my political identity or label is, and I’m not even sure I want to be pigeonholed. This is my effort in pursuing extreme honesty and humility in the quest for common ground and truth without the constraints of a tribal identity.

Last night I happened upon this video, which is relevant. The topic is the difficulty of changing one’s mind, and the ways in which people deny evidence that would cause them to do so: