Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Chanukah begins tomorrow evening. In honor of the holiday, Israel has released a video they found that Hamas had made in December of 2023 for propaganda purposes but never made public, of the six hostages whom they later foully murdered, lighting Chanukah candles:

Weak and emaciated hostages pray and sing as they light the festive candles, a video aired by Israeli TV channel Keshet 12 reveals. The footage originally recorded by Hamas for propaganda purposes showed hostages giving each other hope as they celebrated Hanukkah. Another video showed them marking New Year’s Eve 2024.

RIP.

(2) Many states – nearly all of them blue – have refused to hand over their voter roll data for inspection, and the DOJ is suing.

(3) The GOP has proposed a new law that attempts to deal with the Obamacare subsidies which are due to expire soon. Part of the proposal:

Under the legislation, groups or associations of employers could band together to offer health insurance regardless of industry, provided they:

– Existed for at least two years for purposes other than providing insurance

– Establish formal governance with employer-controlled boards

– Cover at least 51 employees total

– Offer coverage to all employees of member employers

– Self-employed individuals could join as both employers and employees if they work at least 10 hours weekly or 40 hours monthly in their business, with at least 20 self-employed members needed to form a group.

The bill includes protections requiring plans to follow ACA nondiscrimination rules …

Much more at the link.

(4) More on the Minnesota fraud:

“Most of that $500 million hasn’t served a single meal, and some of the simple things are if they would have just gone to the facilities, you know, you hear of the thousands of people being served out of an apartment twice a day, all they would have to do is show up and look at it,” Minnesota Republican state Sen. Mark Koran told Fox News Digital about the fraud that was hiding in plain sight in Minneapolis.

“There was a legislative auditor report that showed that 30 property owners where these businesses claim to operate out of, contacted the Department of Education who manage it, who managed that program, and they told them one, the businesses don’t exist in their facilities, so they don’t exist, period, and one of them I think was a city park,” Koran said.

“And so the Department of Education gave that complaint to the nonprofit Feeding Our Future to address those issues, and the Department of Education continued to pay millions to those thirty with a blatant, simple process of ‘We’ve been notified they don’t exist’ and they rejected and ignored it.”

(5) A large percentage of Somalis in Minnesota are on some form of welfare:

– More than half (52 percent) of children in Somali immigrant homes in Minnesota live in poverty, while only 8 percent of children in native-headed homes are in poverty.

– One in eight children in poverty in Minnesota lives in a Somali immigrant home.

– About 39 percent of working-age Somalis have no high school diploma, compared to just 5 percent of natives.

– Among working-age adult Somalis who have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, half still cannot speak English “very well”.

– About 54 percent of Somali-headed households in Minnesota receive food stamps, and 73 percent of Somali households have at least one member on Medicaid. The comparable figures for native households are 7 percent and 18 percent.

– Nearly every Somali household with children (89 percent) receives some form of welfare.

An Animal Farm for our times

The New Neo Posted on by

Switching it up:

Originally conceived by George Orwell as a satirical allegory for the Russian Revolution and the subsequent struggles of the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm’s political ire is redirected in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at greed, rapacious consumerism and corporate corruption and malfeasance. There’s also a timely dig at populist political movements.

I’ll fix that for you: “Originally a satirical allegory for the evils and lies of Communism, the Russian Revolution, and the subsequent struggles of the USSR under the rule of Joseph Stalin, Animal Farm’s political ire is perverted in this lively CG-animated adaptation directed by Andy Serkis. Rather than Stalinism, Serkis takes aim at its opposite, capitalism, emphasizing the greed, consumerism and corporate corruption that can accompany it. There’s also a dig at populist political movements such as Trump’s.”

More from the review:

But while it may struggle to satisfy diehard Orwell purists, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective – albeit one which permits us a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella.

I’ll fix that for you: “But while it should outrage those who’ve read the Orwell original, the film still takes a political stance and delivers an emphatic message celebrating equality and the power of the collective, things the original work mocked as propagandist lies that the left always betrays. This gives present-day leftists a little more hope than was present in Orwell’s 1945 novella.”

ADDENDUM: there’s an odd contradiction in Orwell, because he was a lifelong socialist and yet he criticized Communism, which is a form of socialism. I wrote about that in this post.

Tucker Carlson and the art of the Big Lie

The New Neo Posted on by

This video is a discussion of an especially egregious lie told recently by Tucker Carlson. The part I’ve cued up is only about ten minutes long, and you don’t even have to watch it all to get the picture, although it really is worth watching the whole thing. Carlson’s lie is not a subtle one, but he seems for the most part to be getting away with lies this blatant:

Here’s a summary of the provisions of the Ugandan law Carlson is misrepresenting [my emphasis]:

The act prescribes life imprisonment for sex between two people of the same biological sex and the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality”. The latter offence includes “serial offenders”, same-sex rape, sex in a position of authority or procured by intimidation, sex with persons older than seventy-five, sex with the disabled and mentally ill, and homosexual acts committed by a person with a previous conviction of homosexuality. Further, under its provisions, the promotion (including normalisation) of homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment for up to 20 years and fines.

The bill is highly popular within Uganda according to polls, and was voted for nearly unanimously by Parliament. The United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and the European Union, and several local and international NGOs have condemned it.

Tucker is a vicious liar. In this case he’s especially targeting Ted Cruz, whom he almost certainly hates because Cruz is one of those Christian Zionists whom Carlson has said he hates “more than anybody.” In the clip, Carlson also implies that Cruz’s objection to the Uganda law in question is racist.

If you don’t want to take the YouTuber’s word, or mine, for the fact that Carlson is flagrantly lying, you can check the text of the Ugandan law itself here.

Which makes Tucker’s lie especially fascinating and subtly pernicious is that he invites people to check out the law even though it contradicts his description of it. My guess is that he assumes – correctly, in most cases – that the mere fact that he suggests that people check it out means that the vast majority never will. After all, wouldn’t most people assume that Carlson would never have said to look at it for themselves if he wasn’t telling the truth about it? Among other things, he’s relying on his reputation from the past as a regular newsperson who does his research, in order to gain people’s trust for his lies now.

NOTE: Carlson has recently said he’s planning to buy some real estate in Doha, in order to prove what a free-thinking American he is.

Is MTG Plotting to Destroy the GOP?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s the headline of this piece by Matt Margolis at PJ Media. My first thought on reading the title was: well, join the club. If that’s her goal, she’s got plenty of company on the right – or the former right.

There’s a history to this sort of thing, although the details vary. We’re all familiar with erstwhile conservatives Bill Kristol, and the Cheneys. They didn’t just leave the fold, they decided to turn on it and unite with their former opponents on the left and far left. Two more recent examples are Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, pundits who at least for a while seemed to be solidly on the right and now are in flagrant “tear it down, ha-ha-ha” mode, and although they haven’t joined with the far left they are certainly helping it along by being every bit as awful as the left always claims the right is.

From the Margolis article about MTG:

Greene’s final weeks in Congress have been nothing short of bizarre. The once-fiery Trump loyalist has spent recent days cozying up to liberal media outlets and apologizing to Democrats for her past conduct. She recently appeared on CNN to trash President Trump and the GOP. This is the same woman who spent years trolling progressives and championing conservative causes without apology. Now she’s doing a liberal media blitz and trashing the GOP on her way out. She even participated in a photo op with Code Pink, a left-wing anti-war group.

Despite the alleged effort to oust Johnson, sources say that the plan is likely to fail and that she may not even introduce the motion. However, if it were to succeed, it would be a political disaster for the GOP as we head into the midterms.

And then we have the infuriatingly destructive behavior of a great many Republicans in the Indiana Senate. I don’t pretend to have my finger on the pulse of Indiana, but WTF is this?:

The Indy Star reports:

The Indiana Senate rejected mid-decade redistricting today, capping off a bitter state fight for control of Congress that has divided the GOP, spurred violent threats and dramatically changed the political landscape ahead of the midterm elections.

The failure will likely be seen by President Donald Trump and his allies as a rebuke of his vision for cementing a congressional majority at all costs. Several groups have promised to spend top dollar on unseating those who oppose redistricting, setting the stage for a messy primary if the Senate did not pass the bill.

If it had succeeded, Indiana will join a handful of other states who have changed their maps mid-decade for political goals, likely eliminating Indiana’s two Democratic congressional seats and fracturing Indianapolis in the process.

This was an own goal, something in which the GOP seems to specialize.

J. D. Vance tweeted:

Rod Bray, the Senate leader in Indiana, has consistently told us he wouldn’t fight redistricting while simultaneously whipping his members against it. That level of dishonesty cannot be rewarded, and the Indiana GOP needs to choose a side.

The Indiana Senate is controlled by the GOP, the bill had passed the Indiana House, and it should have passed the Senate easily. I’ve read that Rod Bray has TDS, and that it’s a spite thing, but I have no idea whether that’s true. His Wiki entry offers few hints, except that he’s from a family that’s been active in Indiana GOP politics for a long time.

Trump seems to think it’s Bray who’s the culprit:

“Unfortunately, Indiana Senate ‘Leader’ Rod Bray enjoys being the only person in the United States of America who is against Republicans picking up extra seats, in Indiana’s case, two of them. He is putting every ounce of his limited strength into asking his soon to be very vulnerable friends to vote with him.” …

“Bray doesn’t care,” Trump said. “He’s either a bad guy, or a very stupid one!”

The Time article goes into the supposed reasons for the rejection by the Indiana GOP:

But some local officials have said redistricting close to the 2026 primary will “create chaos,” citing huge expenses in ensuring that voter registration systems are updated to reflect the redrawn maps and that voters are duly informed of the changes. “It would put a great deal of stress on the election system,” Kate Sweeney Bell, clerk of Marion County, said, according to Axios. “That pushes away poll workers, causes longer lines at polling locations, frustrates voters, and ultimately sows distrust in the process.”

It’s also not as if Indiana voters want Republicans to redistrict mid-decade. An August poll found that a majority of them oppose it, and some voters have expressed concern that the new map also diminishes their representation as lawmakers would have to cover a wider, more varied geography. Another poll released in November found that many Indiana voters would instead want state lawmakers to focus on voter issues like property taxes and energy bills.

There’s also concern that the new maps would be “a dilution of Black votes,” given that Carson [a black Democrat member] may lose his U.S. congressional seat after redistricting.

One analyst wrote for the Indiana Capital Chronicle that even with Trump and Republican Gov. Mike Braun pushing for redistricting, state lawmakers may find their political careers in jeopardy if they go ahead with the plan, which would be “breaking faith with Hoosier voters.”

What I glean from that is that they think it would be too much work, and they’re afraid of being called racists. That’s in addition to whatever TDS may exist among the group, and the desire to spite Trump.

There’s this sort of thing:

To state senator Mike Bohacek, there’s also a personal element: his vote against redistricting came in response to Trump’s use of the word “retarded” to describe Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in the President’s Thanksgiving message. Bohacek, whose daughter has Down syndrome, is an advocate for persons with intellectual disabilities, and posted on Facebook that Trump’s “choice of words have consequences.”

Bohacek doesn’t seem to be the least bit perturbed at the idea that the consequence of his anger at Trump’s use of the word “retarded” may be the Democrat left winning control the US House of Representatives in 2026 and not only frustrating the entire agenda of the right but replacing it with their own. I think that Bohacek’s vote really says a lot about so much of the Trump opposition being an issue of style rather than substance, an attempt to show that “we’re not crass like Trump.” Who is the petty one here?

“Affordability”: Democrats and Republicans

The New Neo Posted on by

“Affordability” is the word du jour, fastened on by the left and considered by them to be a winning approach in the wake of Mamdani’s victory. To the right, that’s puzzling, because it seems quite clear that the Biden administration made things worse in that regard, and it’s been getting at least somewhat better under Trump.

But “somewhat better” isn’t “all better,” even though to expect the latter would be unrealistic.

Here’s a good discussion of this issue, and why it is that people don’t seem to see that electing Democrats isn’t the solution. They discuss it for about 37 minutes, but there’s no need to watch for that long to get the gist of it (and these guys are always entertaining, too):

Then again, the solution to “affordability” means something different to left and right. To the right, it means getting inflation under control and getting wages up. To the left, it means “we give the virtuous among you subsidies,” and “virtue” is defined by the identity group to which you belong.

NOTE: David Foster of Chicago Boyz deals with the issue of “affordability” here.

Europe’s imagology

The New Neo Posted on by

Food for thought:

Europe’s current elites still live in what can be called a “narrated world,” a reality facilitated by institutions, consultants, and public relations machinery. Narration replaces analysis; virtue replaces vision. For three decades, European societies were told that history had ended and that globalization would dissolve geopolitics. The illusion produced intellectual disarmament. For example, when Russia invaded Ukraine or China weaponized trade, the continent was shocked, not because these events were unforeseeable, but because they contradicted its preferred narratives. Strategic communication cannot substitute for strategic comprehension.

This reminds me of the triumph of imagology, as described by Milan Kundera decades ago. I’ve written about the concept many times here; this is Kundera’s 1990 quote:

For example, communists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stronger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time an an office, where he sits for eight hours facing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.

From that first link, a remedy of sorts is offered:

To recover agency, Europe must first articulate what it stands for beyond comfort and regulation. The starting point is intellectual: to acknowledge that the new Cold War is not a metaphor but a structural reality. The DragonBear will not dissolve through diplomacy, and America’s patience is not infinite.

Next, Europe must translate awareness into capacity by linking industrial and defense policy, incentivizing capital investment, and embedding innovation within security planning. Dual-use technologies, from AI-driven tools to quantum encryption, should define the next generation of European deterrence.

Finally, Europe must reform its leadership class. Institutions that cannot prioritize or exercise agency will never produce strategy. Renewal will come only with a generational shift, led by those who understand that freedom is not merely inherited, but must be safeguarded, defended, and sustained.

… Without a guiding vision, Europe oscillates between moralism and denial. It preaches multilateralism to a world of blocs, advocates dialogue to adversaries who weaponize it, and confuses consensus with strength. The outcome is strategic drift and irrelevance.

Because the US, like Europe, participated in both WWI and WWII, I think we tend to underestimate how different the US and European experiences were in both wars. Both originated in Europe and much of the damage done was accomplished even before the US entered. The number of deaths in Europe were on a different scale, the physical destruction phenomenal and widespread, the suffering far greater. Even the UK, which was never invaded and conquered, endured a great deal of destruction both physical and economic. In many ways, I don’t think Europe ever has recovered, and this even affects younger generations that experienced nothing of the war.

America only started to lose its confidence with the Vietnam War, and although the left has pushed the idea of shame onto Americans it hasn’t quite taken. Trump is hated by the left in part because he refuses to deal in American shame, but instead invokes American pride.

I don’t see Europe taking the advice offered in that article – at least, not western Europe. Eastern Europe, having experienced life under the Soviets, was forced into accepting reality over imagology to a greater extent.

As Trump said, they’re not sending their best

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another poor illegal alien arrested by mean old ICE:

Gerson Emir Cuadra Soto, 33, also known as “Fantasma,” was detained on Monday on immigration-related charges. He is believed to have overseen an MS-13 kill squad called “El Combo,” which is designed to carry out assassinations on behalf of the gang. In his home country of Honduras, he has been charged with four homicides, for which he was imprisoned.

Authorities believe he was involved in the July 2022 assassination of Said Lobo Bonilla, the son of former Honduran President Porfirio Lobo Sosa. Bonilla and three others were gunned down after leaving a nightclub in Tegucigalpa.

However, Cuadra Soto and two of his co-defendants were able to bribe their way out of jail and flee, eventually entering the United States illegally under the Biden Administration. He first entered Texas from Mexico before making his way to California and obtaining a driver’s license under his true identity, the attorney’s office said.

Federal agents tracked Cuadra Soto to his home in Nebraska, where he was taken into custody without incident.

What the Biden administration did in failing to enforce immigration law was incredibly destructive. We knew it was happening, watched it in real time, and couldn’t stop it. Now we are reaping the effects; there are also rumors of impending terrorist attacks as a result. I can’t foretell the future, but what we’ve already seen is bad enough. And yet the Democrats and most of the MSM would have you think that ICE and Trump have declared war on sweet little old abuelas and innocent school kids.

And why is the NY Times just now suddenly discovering that there was a border problem under Biden? And even now, the Times frames it as Biden’s fault, at least from the headline: ““How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration”. Biden did it, not the Democrats running the show instead of him? But Biden, at least, would have the semi-excuse of cognitive decline. What’s the NY Times’ excuse? That they just now have woken up from a long Rip Van Winklerian sleep?

See this from the NY Post on the open borders, the motivation for it, and what the Democrats say turned the tide:

Texas is deep red, after all — and more poor migrants could only help turn the state blue over generations, potentially tipping the Electoral College permanently to the Democrats.

Abbott short-circuited that design by putting illegal immigrants on buses and sending them to blue cities throughout the country: Denver, Philadelphia, DC, New York.

Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants poured into Democratic cities that thought the border emergency was somebody else’s problem.

It was a winning move:

“Many Biden officials came to view Mr. Abbott’s campaign as the point Democrats lost the debate,” the Times notes — and quotes Biden’s former assistant director for policy at ICE, Deborah Fleischaker, saying, “I don’t think we ever recovered.”

The cynical Machiavellian viewpoint is phenomenal.