Things I’ve noticed lately

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s getting darker earlier. I hate that.

It’s getting a mite colder, too. That, I don’t mind. In fact, I rather like the change.

I’m getting more tired of cooking and more into eating prepared foods. These Power Bowls aren’t bad.

As my car gets older – it’s a 2010 Ford Fusion SEL – my car insurance goes up. And I’ve got all those special discounts already: I don’t drive all that many miles per year, for example.

A lot of my friends are ill right now, and I don’t just mean the flu. Parkinson’s, heart problems, cancer.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been having a recurrent dream about Gerard. It’s now over a year and a half since he died, so I was initially puzzled about why I’d be having these dreams at this point. In the dreams, I suddenly realize I haven’t heard from him in a long long time. In the dreams it’s not because he died, it’s because he’s angry with me or is just moving on. In one of them, I catch sight of him in the grocery store from afar, and he looks fine. In the others, I’m just trying to figure out why he would have stopped calling me, when we used to speak just about every day. I think the dreams are a form of denial of his death, and they are connected with the fact that I’m about to start selling his essay book on November first.

Milei of Argentina gives the UN a piece of his mind

The New Neo Posted on by

Milei of Argentina has been making waves both within Argentina and without. I’ve written about him quite a few times before, in these posts.

Tuesday Milei addressed the UN General Assembly, which was fresh from its recent attack on Israel for having the temerity to defend itself. This is some of what he said

Milei focused on the 42-page “Pact for the Future” adopted by the UN on Sunday, which includes points promoting climate action, gender equality and regulation of artificial intelligence.

“Argentina will not back any policy that implies the restriction of individual freedoms or trade, nor the violation of the natural rights of individuals,” Milei said. “We invite all nations of the free world to join us, not only in opposing this pact, but in the creation of a new agenda for this noble institution: the freedom agenda.”

I wonder which nations still belong to the free world. There’s been a lot of attrition lately.

More here:

In his address to the General Assembly, Milei praised the organization’s original goal of pursuing world peace, but warned that it has mutated into a “multi-tentacled leviathan” that imposes a socialist agenda on its members. “It has been replaced by a supranational governance model of international bureaucrats who seek to impose a certain way of life on the citizens of the world. What is being discussed this week here in New York is nothing other than the deepening of this tragic course that this institution has adopted,” he stressed. …

…[Milei] explained why he is turning his back on the sustainable development agenda included in the Pact for the Future and the 2030 Agenda. He believes that they propose to “solve the problems of modernity with solutions that infringe on the sovereignty of nation states and violate people’s right to life, liberty, and property.” …

… “A toxic relationship has been promoted between global governance policies and international credit organizations, requiring the most neglected countries to commit resources they do not have to programs they do not need, turning them into perpetual debtors to promote the agenda of the global elites.”

The El Pais article from which I got those quotes is very down on Milei, pointing out his ostracization from the many other countries that are fine with the “global governance” program. To me, that’s not a mark against him.

Milei has steered Argentina on a pro-Israel course as well, and in his UN speech he added this on that matter and other flagrant hypocrisies committed by that organization:

“In this same house, we, that purports to defend human rights, we have also included bloody dictatorships in the Human Rights Council, including Cuba and Venezuela without reproach,” Milei said.

“In this same house, which purports to defend the rights of women, we’ve allowed on the CEDAW Committee countries that punish their women just for showing their skin,” Milei added.

“And this same house has voted against the State of Israel, which is the only country in the Middle East to defend liberal democracy.”

Milei is telling the emperor himself that the emperor is stark naked. But the emperor could not care less.

Whatever happened to that old-fashioned word, “defeat”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Now we have “extinguish”:

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo accused Trump of spreading “another lie” about Harris during an interview on MSNBC Tuesday. But what was really shocking was her chilling choice of words.

“How did we get here?” Raimondo asked, before declaring, “Let’s extinguish him for good. We have an answer — a remarkably talented candidate in Harris.”

Then of course there’s the use of the remarkably untrue phrase “remarkably talented candidate” to describe Kamala Harris.

But what of “extinguish him for good”? In and of itself it wouldn’t be so bad, although I don’t think it’s a common phrase in politics. However, from the very start of Trump’s presidency the language of his opposition has been eliminationist – and not just the language but the graphics and visuals as well, in some instances. The idea of his assassination being a good thing was normed way before Raimondo did her bit.

I have never before heard so many ordinary people refer in casual speech to wanting a president dead as I’ve heard regarding Trump. The assumption seems to be – as Routh’s son said – that hatred of Trump is what “every reasonable person” feels.

I also recall that, almost from the start, a MAGA hat was demonized as the mark of a racist. This sort of claptrap was not new; it had been leveled at Tea Partiers – “with no evidence,” as the left is so fond of saying about other subjects. So not just Trump but anyone who supports him was regarded as evil.

The idea that Trump is uniquely and intensely dangerous not just to Democrats but to our democracy and America itself has been hammered home (is that too violent an image?) even by those at the top of the Democrat power structure (or seemingly at the top): President Biden and Kamala Harris:

And yes, Trump himself has called Harris a threat to democracy. I think his rhetoric is more reactive, although – and for whatever reason, people on the right haven’t seen it as a call to action, nor do I hear or see much rhetoric about assassination of Democrat candidates coming from the right. I’d like to keep it that way.

Israel strikes targets in Lebanon

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s been known for a long time that Israel must degrade Hezbollah’s forces in Lebanon, because the Iran proxy is determined to destroy Israel. And although much of the world mouths sentiments about supporting Israel’s need to defend itself, when Israel actually does so it is accused of crimes it is not committing. It seems much of the world considers Israel’s self-defense to be a crime.

But Israelis have a stubborn desire to not be murdered or tortured or taken hostage by the enemies who surround it. And so, with the pager attacks a few days ago, the larger – and inevitable – attack on Hezbollah has begun. Talks will not deter either Iran (the country behind Hezbollah) or Hezbollah itself from action to destroy Israel, and that’s why this is necessary.

Hezbollah’s forces make Gaza look like pikers. If Hezbollah had joined in on October 7 with a large attack from the north, I think Israel would have been occupied and destroyed. That didn’t happen, and I’ve read that the reason was that Hamas jumped the gun on the attack, as it were, and Hezbollah was caught flat-footed. At any rate, here are some estimates:

According to estimates, prior to the October 7 massacre, Hezbollah had 40,000 short-range rockets able to travel up to 40 kilometers, as well as a few thousand medium-range rockets. …

Following the recent intensified strikes in Lebanon, the IDF estimates that approximately half of Hezbollah’s short- and medium-range rockets were hit.

However, Hezbollah still has a large supply of the missiles, as well as several thousand medium- and long-range rockets, as well as tens of thousand other short-range weapons which can reach up to 10 kilometers from the Israel-Lebanon border. The terror group also possesses UAVs and other types of weapons which may threaten Israel.

Over the past day, Hezbollah has fired around 200 rockets into Israeli territory. Israel, however, is assuming that if and when the terror group chooses to fire longer-range rockets, it will be able to do so.

The latest attacks by Israel involve this:

The Israel Defense Forces said it struck some 1,600 targets across Lebanon on Monday, including many homes it said housed weapons directly threatening the country, in the deadliest barrages of airstrikes since the 2006 war against Hezbollah, ratcheting up fears of a fresh outbreak of all-out conflict on the restive border.

“Fears of a fresh outbreak”? There’s been a simmering war there for a long time, and an outbreak of a larger war was inevitable. I’m no military expert, but I think it’s clear that when an enemy wants to destroy you and has the means and will to do so, war is going to break out. It’s a fantasy to think otherwise, or a self-deception. And if you don’t actually think otherwise but speak as though you do, then it’s a destructive lie.

More:

Speaking from an underground command room at military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was changing the balance of power with Hezbollah, signaling Israel would no longer play defense after months of cross-border violence.

Tens of thousands of Israelis have been displaced from their homes in northern Israel since last October by relentless Hezbollah rocket fire, and Israel’s cabinet last week designated the secure return of those residents to their homes as an official aim of the current conflict.

Most of the world doesn’t want those Israelis to return to their homes. But Israelis aren’t listening, nor should they be.

NOTE: Lebanon was once a fairly stable country where Muslims and Christians lived together in relative peace. Who destabilized it? It began with welcoming Palestinians to the country. A summary:

In 1970, the PLO attempted to overthrow a reigning monarch, King Hussein of Jordan, and following his quashing of the rebellion in what Arab historians call Black September, the PLO leadership and their troops fled from Jordan to Syria and finally Lebanon, where cross-border violence increased.

With headquarters moved to Beirut, PLO factions recruited new members from the Palestinian refugee camps. South Lebanon was nicknamed “Fatahland” due to the predominance there of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah organization. With its own army operating freely in Lebanon, the PLO had created a state within a state. By 1975, more than 300,000 Palestinian displaced persons lived in Lebanon. Aside from being used as an operation base for raids on Israel and against Israeli institutions across the world, the PLO and other Palestinian militant organizations also began a series of airplane hijack operations, targeting Israeli and international flights, carrying Israelis and Jews. The more profound effect on Lebanon was destabilization and increasing sectarian strife, which would eventually deteriorate into a full-blown civil war.

Israel intervened and drove the PLO out. Then Iran saw an opportunity and used Hezbollah to fill the power vacuum.

Routh’s son arrested for possession of child pornography

The New Neo Posted on by

They searched the computers and other devices of Oran Routh, the son of would-be Trump assassin Ryan Routh, and found hundreds of examples of child pornography. As a result, Oran Routh has been charged with receipt of and possession of child pornography.

I have some reservations about this. The search was of course initially in connection with his father’s assassination attempt, but at this point it’s hard to trust the authorities to be on the up and up; did they plant evidence for some reason? Nevertheless, my strong suspicion is that Oran Routh really has been a consumer of child pornography.

So my second reservation has to do with the harsh penalties for “mere” possession. I’m just not sure what penalties are appropriate for possessors. On the other hand, people who make or distribute or are connected with the making or distribution of child porn should have the book thrown at them. Child pornography is a huge scourge. And those who sexually abuse or molest children: likewise. Penalties should be great.

But the crime of possession of child pornography involves the downloading of the images created by the pornographers. The consumer gets off on these images, and that’s extremely creepy. In addition, it may or may not be a gateway to sexual exploitation by that person of children whom he (or she, but it’s overwhelmingly men) encounters in the real world, and if such abuse does occur, the penalties should be harsh. But what of those whose direct exploitation of children remains in the world of fantasy and imagery only?

The argument for strong punishment for such people is that, by looking at the photos or videos, they re-exploit the child and they also support and therefore encourage the business of those who make the pornography. These arguments have validity. I think possessors of child pornography should therefore be punished, but how much? That’s where I’m uncertain. The average sentence for possession seems to be 70 months. That’s about six years, although like most offenders, those sentenced for this crime often don’t serve their full terms.

Is this a fair penalty? Do the offenders get any treatment? Does treatment even work for this particular activity? Do the penalties have a deterrent effect? When someone with this particular perversion is in the privacy of his home and thinking about downloading child porn, does he even realize that this is a crime with harsh penalties? I think most people are well aware that the making or selling of such material is a terrible crime that directly involves the actual abuse of an actual child. But is there general awareness of the extent of the penalties for possession? And does that knowledge stop people from taking the risk? And should that lack of knowledge matter at all in terms of sentencing? Probably not.

I think almost everyone is aware that participating in child pornography in any way is wrong, however, although there are people who try to excuse it and normalize it. Same for child sexual abuse. Neither phenomenon is new, but like many things in society these days, the problems have been exacerbated, and the practices facilitated, by the computer. Things that were difficult and required special efforts to pursue – like child pornography – are now ridiculously simple to obtain online.

What’s more – and this is a different but related topic – children are getting access to adult porn online, and that is very dangerous as well. They are not at all ready for the intense experience, and to compound the problem much adult porn today involves violence against women. I have been impressed by the number of young girls identifying as trans in early adolescence who say that they began to feel that way as a reaction to seeing violence against women in online porn. That had become their perception of adult sex, since they had no actual experience of sex in the real world (or they themselves had been abused as children). In response, they developed a strong desire to escape their female identity, because that seemed to be the only way to avoid being the object of sexual violence.

Are these really pro-Kamala?

The New Neo Posted on by

When I saw these two Kamala Harris ads/cartoons at RedState, I figured that surely they must be spoofs meant to diss Harris. Unquestionably. They are that terrible.

But apparently they are really meant to boost Kamala Harris.

Here’s the first one. It offered by the abominable Lincoln Project, the place where ex-“conservatives” unite with far-leftists in their common cause of Trump-hatred. And true to form, that’s what the video is about as well: the unity of left and supposed-right or former right. In it, Sanders and Cheney look like two grumpy curmudgeons from “The Simpsons”:

Let that sink in.

And now, we have The Kammy. Before I posted it, I kept thinking that no, this can’t be a pro-Kamala effort. Cannot cannot be. It must be mockery. And so I did some more research, and apparently it was made by the writers of the original “The Nanny” theme, and they are indeed Kamala supporters:

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s so much news I could go on and on. But here’s a small sample:

(1) Is Hezbollah’s Ali Karaki still safe, after an Israeli attack? Judge for yourself.

(2) Peggy Noonan, of all people – I stopped reading her long ago – calls Kamala Harris an “artless dodger.” Not a bad turn of phrase by Peggy:

(3) Mark Robinson’s candidacy is apparently a train wreck and he is very likely to lose the NC gubernatorial election, and this was true even before evidence of his alleged previous offensive comments on a sex site years ago came out.

(4) Reporter Olivia Nuzzi has been sending nude-ish photos of herself to RFK Jr. Sounds like some sort of honey trap action to me, or perhaps she really is infatuated with him. Ah, female empowerment! At any rate, the fact that this is coming out now, after his endorsement of Trump, seems like an obvious attempt to hurt him by implying RFK cooperated and encouraged her. He does have a history of philandering, but if memory serves he says he stopped that long ago, probably when he got sober.

(5) Zelensky appears in Pennsylvania and speaks out against Trump and Vance. The Biden administration had flown him to Pennsylvania on a U.S. Air Force C-17. Zelensky’s actual statements appear to me to be more anti-Vance than anti-Trump. About the latter, his statements seem mixed. I have assumed Zelensky would prefer Harris to Trump anyway, for obvious reasons.

(6) That UN resolution the other day calling for Israel’s withdrawal from the supposedly “occupied territories” saw thirteen other nations on the side of “no,” along with the US. They are an assorted bunch. I don’t know the reasons for all of these to vote that way, but here’s the list: Argentina, Hungary, Paraguay, Palau, Micronesia, Nauru, Fiji, Tonga, Tuvalu, Papua New Guinea, Malawi, and Czechia. The article at the link goes into some of the reasons; Argentina’s was obvious, and it’s Milei.

Much of Western Europe, on the other hand, are shameless appeasers of terrorists. Many of those countries abstained, and some voted “yes” – Ireland and Belgium, for example, two of the most anti-Semitic and anti-Israel countries in Europe. Here’s the list:

Among the 43 countries that abstained were Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and European Union countries Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Sweden.

New Zealand supported the resolution as did 13 EU nations: Belgium, Cyprus, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain.

Would-be assassin Routh offers a reward for Trump’s assassination

The New Neo Posted on by

This is puzzling as well as troubling – puzzling because supposedly the guy had/has very little money, and troubling because the DOJ decided to release the content:

Authorities got the letter from a civilian witness, who said Routh gave him a box several months ago.

The witness opened the box after the September 15 assassination attempt. It included the letter, “ammunition, a metal pipe, miscellaneous building materials, four phones, and various letters.”

“This was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump but I failed you,” wrote Routh. “I tried my best and gave it all the gumption I could muster. It is up to you now to finish the job; and I will offer $150,000 to whomever can complete the job.” …

“Everyone across the globe from the youngest to the oldest know that Trump is unfit to be anything, much less a U.S. president,” Routh continued. “U.S. presidents must at bare minimum embody the moral fabric that is America, and be kind, caring and selfless and always stand for humanity. Trump fails to understand any of that.”

So apparently the letter was written quite a while ago and only opened by the recipient after the assassination attempt. Did Routh give instructions to the person to only open it if anything happened to him? Did the person abide by that, and why would Routh have trusted him to not open it? It must have been very tempting. Has the letter been authenticated by the DOJ as being from Routh? It was entered as evidence “as part of prosecutors’ written arguments for why Routh should continue to be detained.” There will be a hearing on this today.

Does Routh really have that sort of money? If so, was it earned, or of some other provenance?

And why was the letter released to the public at this point? That seems somewhat unusual to me. I suppose it’s meant to establish a clear motive: assassination. To most people, I think that motive was already obvious. To others, it won’t convince them because they’ll say the letter is a scam or a feint.

And to some, will it be an inspiration? So many are already inspired, and not just by Routh but by motives similar to his. To me, this is the most informative part of the letter:

Everyone across the globe from the youngest to the oldest know that Trump is unfit to be anything, much less a U.S. president. U.S. presidents must at bare minimum embody the moral fabric that is America, and be kind, caring and selfless and always stand for humanity. Trump fails to understand any of that.

There’s so much there. Does Routh really think his views are shared by “everyone across the globe”? If so, how about that half of the American population who voted for him? Do they simply not exist? Does America’s moral fabric consist of kind, caring, selfless, and always “standing for humanity”? Are these the premier characteristics you want in a president? How is “standing for humanity” measured? Trump is quite anti-war; does that not count? Gold Star families say he has been kind to them; does that not count?

Or is it all about mean tweets, after all? I know that many of my acquaintances hate Trump with the heat of a thousand suns, and I also find that they often assume this attitude is shared by every person who isn’t a racist hater. So the idea of the righteousness of the cause of getting rid of Trump is widely held. A recent poll documented the extent of the wish for Trump to be killed:

While 92% of Republicans say America would be worse off had Trump been killed, less than half of Democrats—48%—hold that same view. Another 28% of Democrats answered yes to the question—that America would be better off—and 24% of Democrats said they were unsure.

Routh must have thought that, had he succeeded, he would have been a hero to a lot of people. It seems he was correct in that assumption.

I recall that John Wilkes Booth thought he was striking a blow for the republic and against tyranny when he assassinated Lincoln. As he jumped to the stage, breaking his leg, he is said to have shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis” – that is, “thus always to tyrants”:

John Wilkes Booth wrote in his diary that he shouted “Sic semper tyrannis” after shooting U.S. President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, in part because of the association with the assassination of Caesar.

Legend is that Brutus said it when Caesar was assassinated, although it’s not clear that the words actually were said. But Routh – whipped up by Democrats and the MSM – seems to have been in the same tradition of thinking he would be helping us all out if succeeded in assassinating Trump, and a significant number of Americans agree.

Depressing, to say the least.

NOTE: Remember that Routh’s son, on hearing of his father’s arrest, said that “his dad hates Trump like ‘every reasonable person does'”.