Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Has Joe Biden ever had a good idea? Of course, it’s hard to say these days which of his policies actually are Joe’s ideas. But the Gaza pier had his telltale fingerprints on it, the mark of sheer stupidity. Here’s the latest on the fiasco that is the pier, aka Joe’s Folly.

(2) Oakland is removing its traffic lights because thieves keep stealing components of them.

(3) The rules for the presidential debate have been set. I wonder whether RFK Jr. will somehow make it. I doubt that either Trump or Biden wants him there.

(4) I keep reading polls that say Trump is doing well. It’s somewhat encouraging, but I haven’t linked to them and don’t pay them much mind because I think the wild card is “rigging” and fraud.

(5) A NY Post editorial says: “it looks downright cruel to keep trotting Biden around under the pretense that he can possibly serve four more years in the world’s most grueling job.” I find the statement a bit cryptic: cruel to whom? Not to Trump, whose chances of winning are increased by Biden’s obvious decrepitude. Not to Jill, who clearly relishes the thought of four more years with all that power and all those perks. I think Joe himself is very happy about it, too, as is the rest of his family. I suppose it might be most cruel to the casual onlooker, who might feel sorry for Biden, but in particular to those Democrats who plan to vote for him but look on his decline with dismay.

Robert Spencer on the transformation of Britain by Islam

The New Neo Posted on by

What’s been going on has become rather obvious, although some are in denial:

A world-historical societal transformation is taking place before our very eyes, and yet few have taken notice. Britain, the erstwhile leader of the Western world and the foundation and source of English-speaking civilization, is in its last days as a free society, and will soon become an Islamic state.

If by “soon” Spencer means within a year or two, and if by “Islamic state” he means an outright mullahtocracy such as Iran, I’d say his timeline is too quick. But the basic trend is there. Britain doesn’t need to become a theocracy (although I don’t doubt that’s the goal of some of its Muslim inhabitants) for Islamic ideas to take hold both in government and in public life, and of course vicious Jew-hatred is only one of those bad ideas. What’s more, the transformation relies on the sympathies and support of the left, which is a large segment of the population that isn’t Muslim.

More:

The English actor-turned-political-activist Lawrence Fox recently noted what was happening: “The Mayor of London is a Muslim. The mayor of Birmingham is a Muslim. The Mayor of Leeds is Muslim. Mayor of Blackburn – Muslim. The mayor of Sheffield is a Muslim. The mayor of Oxford is a Muslim. The mayor of Luton is a Muslim. The mayor of Oldham is Muslim. The mayor of Rochdale is Muslim. All this was achieved by only 4 million Muslims out of 66 million people in England.”

You might say it’s impressive in terms of the achievement of political power by a fairly small group.

More:

This kind of thing has happened before, but few remember. …

The invading Normans were few in number compared to the English, but once they had defeated the defenders, they set about systematically to ensure that England would remain theirs in perpetuity. They removed the native English from positions of political and ecclesiastical power. Norman French mingled with the Old English language, ultimately creating the English language as we know it today. Historian Richard Southern observed that “no country in Europe, between the rise of the barbarian kingdoms and the 20th century, has undergone so radical a change in so short a time as England experienced after 1066.”

Until now. Lawrence Fox continued: “Today there are over 3,000 mosques in England. There are over 130 sharia courts. There are more than 50 Sharia Councils. 78 percent of Muslim women do not work, receive state support + free accommodation. 63 percent of Muslims do not work, receive state support + free housing. State-supported Muslim families with an average of 6 to 8 children receive free accommodation. Now every school in the UK is required to teach lessons about Islam. Has anyone ever been given an opportunity to vote for this?”

All this has already transformed Britain, and much more is to come. JNS recently reported that “honor-based abuse cases in England rose by more than 60% in two years, with 2,594 cases in 2022 vs. 1,599 in 2020.” …

The native authorities, meanwhile, are cowed and submissive, afraid of offending their new masters.

The Rotherham sex abuse cases, ignored by authorities for a long time for fear of seeming racist and offending the Muslim population, were the portents of things to come. Or actually they were the sign that those things were already present.

The fear of being called “racist” and the existence of an extensive welfare state have combined to help contribute to this crisis, and have been almost as influential as Britain’s immigration policy itself. Add a refusal of the Brits to insist on assimilation, and the stage was set. At this point it seems to have reached a point of no return, as far as I can see.

Hamas spokesman says no one knows how many hostages are alive

The New Neo Posted on by

And what’s more, Israel must agree to a permanent ceasefire anyway.

It’s so hard to keep track of those elusive hostages:

In an interview with CNN released on Friday, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said that he did not know about how many of 120 hostages in Gaza are still alive. “No one has any idea about that,” he stated, adding that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation to free four hostages on Saturday resulted in deaths of three others, including an American citizen.

So neither he nor anyone else has any idea whether hostages are living or dead, but one thing they do know is that three were killed in the raid that freed the four hostages last week.

How do you know that a Hamas operative is lying? When his lips are moving.

That’s meant to be a joke in an unfunny situation. But it actually might be the truth that there is no person with an overview of what happened to every single hostage. It’s even possible that no person knows where they all are located, even just the living ones. As I’ve said many times, there were a lot of what I call “freelancers” from Gaza operating on October 7th, wild with the jubilation of satisfied sadism and the promise of money from Hamas for their captive prizes.

It’s even possible that three hostages died during or shortly after the Israeli raid, almost certainly either directly at the hands of Hamas (murdered in revenge by Hamas, that is) or “caught in the crossfire” when Hamas unsuccessfully used massive firepower in an effort to stop the hostage rescue, prompting massive firepower from Israel (I’m planning a post tomorrow dealing with some of the details of the rescue itself).

Or, as I said, every word out of the Hamas operative’s mouth might be a lie. The fact that CNN is interviewing this guy is both a bad thing and a good thing: bad because it gives him a platform to further spread his lies; good because it exposes (to those with eyes to see) his evil and unreasonableness.

Here are his demands of Israel, despite making no promises that hostages are even alive at this point:

Hamdan told CNN that any deal to release the hostages must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.

In other words, end the war and maybe, just maybe, we’ll give you back some dead bodies.

He said that the latest proposal on the table backed by the United States did not meet Hamas’ requirements as the group seeks “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the [lifting] of the siege, and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”

Despite Hamas’ losses, he seems to think they’re negotiating from a position of great strength; he is basically asking that Israel unconditionally surrender. What gives him and other Hamas operatives that feeling of enormous power? They see the world – including the Biden administration – as being on their side.

Europe’s fight on the right

The New Neo Posted on by

One of the things that’s become even more clear after the recent EU elections is that in many countries in Europe, as what reporters like to call the “far right” is growing, the right itself is experiencing discord between the old line conventional right and this so-called “far right.” It somewhat mirrors a similar split that happened in this country in 2016 with the rise of Trump, and was likewise reflected in the move in the House against Speaker McCarthy.

At the moment in the US the Republicans, facing the prospect of Trump or another four dire years of Biden and/or his minions, are somewhat united. That unity is fragile, but it was exemplified by the recent meeting between Trump and the GOP in Congress:

Donald Trump made a triumphant return to Capitol Hill on Thursday, his first with lawmakers since the Jan.6, 2021 attacks, embraced by energized House and Senate Republicans who find themselves reinvigorated by his bid to retake the White House. …

… He has successfully purged the GOP of critics, silenced most skeptics and enticed once-critical lawmakers aboard his MAGA-fueled campaign.

A packed room of House Republicans sang “Happy Birthday” to Trump in a private breakfast meeting at GOP campaign headquarters across the street from the Capitol. The lawmakers gave him a baseball and bat from the annual congressional game, and senators later presented an American flag cake with “45” candles — and then “47″ — referring to the next presidency.

In contrast, the right in France, England, and several other countries of western Europe is experiencing a major rift between the old and new (Ace discusses the issues at some length in this post). If the right in the countries of western Europe tears itself apart, the result is that left wins in those countries where it has happened. Some people find that result acceptable, for a while at least:

With the right’s vote [in Britain] now evenly split between Reform and the Tories, neither party can win more than a couple of handfuls of parliamentary seats. Labour will win seats with just 20-30% of the vote.

But, as the right in the UK has realized: We have to beat our first enemy first, and our first enemy is the fake Conservative Party that we vote for only to see it implement the left’s agenda with gusto.

I know that plenty of people on the right in this country feel similarly. There’s one big problem with it, though: the left and the Democrats – at least in the US – are determined to make it impossible for the right to ever win. When I was growing up, the party out of power could bide its time and regroup till its turn came around again with the swing of the political pendulum. Today’s Democrats have become hard left, and the danger is that if they come to power they will fix it so that there will be no return pendulum swing. For example, they have made it clear that they intend to pass a law such as HR1 that will gut the voting security of the red states to match that of the blue states and enable vote fraud and/or “rigging” on a nationwide scale. They also plan to create a couple of new states that will be overwhelmingly blue, changing the balance in the Senate and the Electoral College. Court-packing is on their agenda, too, in order to destroy the conservative majority on SCOTUS. That’s not a complete list of their legislative agenda, but just those three changes would do the trick.

What are called “left” and “right” in Europe are somewhat different. But I wonder whether the nations of Europe could survive a victory by the left at this point without being irrevocably changed for the worse. I’m hoping that the old right and the new right in Europe manage to get their act together in time to prevent that.

Abortion, the law, and morality

The New Neo Posted on by

Some issues came up about abortion in the comments yesterday, and I think I’ll briefly take up two of them.

(1) From “R2L”:

I wonder why the standing of the father is so seldom mentioned in these cases and discussions. Clearly many men impregnating a woman “by accident” are not interested in accepting the obligations of rearing a child, but some are. Since 23 of the chromosomes in the embryo/ fetus are not really part of “my body my choice” it seems very fair to ask why the original owner of those chromosomes might have “standing” as well.

“Standing” isn’t just an interest in something. It’s a legal right to sue concerning something, and requires an “injury in fact” that is “redressable” by the court. A man who impregnates a woman could certainly sustain an “injury in fact” through her decision to have an abortion, but that injury is not “redressable” by the court. There is no getting around the fact that the woman is the pregnant person and he is not, and he cannot force her to bear a child and continue a pregnancy in her own body against her will, nor can he take on the pregnancy himself in his body (despite what trans activists might have you think). Men have rights in their children once they are born, of course, as well as responsibilities, and courts get involved in those things from time to time. But the man is not pregnant.

(2) From commenter OBloodyHell:

Not a big fan of this kind of challenges [to abortion]. They key on — rely on — far too much upon religious interpretations to justify their actions.

Religion is not, and should never be, a basis for The Law.

And if you try and say it should, grasp this: You are opening the door for Islam to demand Sharia Law be the law they operate under.

No. HELL NO

If you cannot justify a position simply by the notions of “natural law”, rather than using Jesus and the Bible for cause, then you are not only wrong, you’re being STUPID to support it being LAW.

This doesn’t mean you cannot use peer pressure to push behavior in a given direction. It just means you should not be using LAW to do the job.

And here’s a reply from “R2L”:

OBH, I agree with you in general, but it seems to me most discussions of “natural law” end up sneaking in concepts of God, revelation, absolute instead of relative, soul, and other semi-religious and “self evident” (essentially axiomatic) ideas. At least most versions are oriented to our Western Judeo-Christian history. Natural law is seldom addressed from the perspective of evolutionary psychology and our evolved mental states (or companion neuroscience). Also, of course civil law was derived from studies of Roman Law, and development of cannon law when the pope became supreme ruler over souls (1057AD?), and the success of cannon law led secular leaders to adjust it for non-religious uses in turn. These ideas were more widely spread with the creation of universities starting around 1188 and later, then the printing press, etc. The Renaissance and the Enlightenment brought us to our current state of a republican constitutional democracy (at least in theory).

How do we move the law to a position where it will give standing to the potential person gestating in the womb? I gather, following PM Thatcher, we have to win the argument first, and then we can obtain the votes. Given the divide in our country on several ideological fronts and issues, that will not be easy.

The left is constantly trying to find “penumbras” and hidden rights within the language of the Constitution and statutes in order to push through rulings they want and expand the law to cover things it never was intended to cover. The right opposes that – except that now and then a certain number of people on the right happen to want a certain result from the courts, such as a nationwide ban on abortion, and those people (fewer than on the left, but still not a minuscule number) are hoping the courts will find an implicit right somewhere that can make that happen.

In my opinion, that’s not the correct approach at all. The Constitution neither guarantees a right to abortion – Roe – nor supports its ban on the federal level through courts or even as an act of Congres. States can decide for themselves. But if either side wishes a national requirement that abortion be made legal everywhere – the left’s position, for the most part – or wishes a national ban or strong limitation (the stance of some on the right), there is a remedy: a Constitutional amendment. That is the way to establish a national right or to take it away (Prohibition is a good example of the latter).

Why don’t people talk much about this remedy, the amendment process? Because it requires a great deal of consensus. The Founders made amendments difficult to pass, for very good reason. As “R2L” says, first win the argument and then get the votes. That can happen more easily on a state level, but it could happen on a national level if enough people in enough states agree on one point of view or the other. But that’s not where we’re at right now.

Turley on Pelosi and J6

The New Neo Posted on by

January 6, 2021. Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it? But news about it is still coming out:

The J6 Committee was an obviously biased set-up, a kangaroo court in Congress. I’m actually surprised that this recording ever came to light. I also strongly doubt it will have any influence on how Democrats feel about J6 and the security involved. The myth of J6 has built to such great proportions, and that happened quite soon after J6 happened.

And it was easy to predict. For example, here’s an excerpt from a post I wrote on January 7, 2021, the day after J6 occurred:

The double standards we’ve had for years are a pernicious part of the problem, and they’re not going away any time soon, because yesterday was something people can sink their teeth into.

Some on the right are saying that the left will be using this like the Nazis used the Reichstag fire. If they mean “to stoke hatred against the right as well as to repress it further,” then I agree. I’m not sure whether most people saying this realize that there is no historical consensus on who set the Reichstag fire: Communists as accused, or the Nazis themselves. But there is no dispute on how it was used by the Nazis.

And it’s the same way in which J6 has been used by the Democrats.

One of the questions the right has asked about J6 was always: since everyone knew there was a danger of violence on January 6, 2021, why wasn’t more security ordered? And since Nancy Pelosi was apparently able to have ordered it, why wasn’t she blamed? The answers are political ones. And the reason none of this came out during the J6 Committee hearings is the same obvious one: politics.

SCOTUS on the abortion pill

The New Neo Posted on by

In a unanimous ruling, SCOTUS says that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and therefore the challenge is thrown out and the pill remains legal:

“Like an individual, an organization may not establish standing simply based on the ‘intensity of the litigant’s interest’ or because of strong opposition to the government’s conduct,” wrote Kavanaugh. “The plaintiff associations therefore cannot establish standing simply because they object to FDA’s actions.”

That’s because the plaintiffs had no personal stake:

“The plaintiffs do not allege the kinds of injuries described above that unregulated parties sometimes can assert to demonstrate causation. Because the plaintiffs do not prescribe, manufacture, sell, or advertise mifepristone or sponsor a competing drug, the plaintiffs suffer no direct monetary injuries from FDA’s actions relaxing regulation of mifepristone. Nor do they suffer injuries to their property, or to the value of their property, from FDA’s actions. Because the plaintiffs do not use mifepristone, they obviously can suffer no physical injuries from FDA’s actions relaxing regulation of mifepristone.”

Did you realize that inflation was “functionally over”?

The New Neo Posted on by

Saith the experts.

[Hat tip: Althouse.]

From Zachary D. Carter at Slate:

Something is wrecking Joe Biden, but it isn’t the economy—at least the economy that economists know how to measure—and it isn’t inflation.

There’s a lot in that sentence. Does it assume that only one thing is the problem for Joe? Does it assume it’s a hard-to-perceive mystery? Does it assume that what economists measure is all there is to know about how a voter perceives the economy and how it affects him or her? Does it assume that economists’ measurements are unbiased?

And how do economists measure inflation? We get a hint in the next paragraph [emphasis mine]:

None of this has prevented Biden’s critics from declaring him an economic failure. They have instead shifted the goalposts. The warning cry of the early Biden years was “stagflation“—the simultaneous deluge of high unemployment and high inflation that defined the 1970s. … But that corner seemed to slip farther and farther away as unemployment remained stubbornly low and economic growth stubbornly high, so negative commentary began to focus exclusively on inflation. This remained a popular approach until inflation, for all intents and purposes, disappeared. According to the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure, prices rose just 2.7 percent between April of 2023 and April of 2024. Two-point-seven is higher than zero, but price changes at this pace are simply not perceptible to anyone except economists.

That paragraph emphasizes the idea that whatever criticism there is of the economy under Biden is some sort of artifact created by his critics, rather than a reality that people perceive all by themselves. It ignores the fact that unemployment figures are not necessarily a measure of actual unemployment (see this, for example, which although written in 2022 explains the principle). But even more importantly, I think, is the odd fact that it doesn’t credit the consumer for being able to think longer than the last year when evaluating inflation.

When I go to the grocery store and my grocery bill seems to be at least 30% higher than it was in 2020, I don’t get the warm fuzzies and tell myself that at least it hasn’t risen in the last year, or at least not all that much – although I beg to differ with the author of that piece, because 2.7% is perceptible to those on a tight budget.

But the last year isn’t the point. If what I used to pay for a bag of groceries during the Trump administration was pretty stable at $65, let’s say, and that same bag costs me a bit more than $100 now, I sure do notice. As for the 2.7% increase, in the last year, not only is it on top of the earlier bigger jumps, but 2.7% of $100 every week adds up to about $10.80 per month or about $130 a year. That’s not nothing to those who live paycheck to paycheck.

And people with families pay much more than $100 a week on groceries. This article from a year ago estimates the typical family of four should spend between $975 a month (if being very “thrifty”) to $1580 (if being economically “liberal”), with two levels in between. At a 2.7% rise for the year, that comes out to about $315 more per year even for the most “thrifty” among us. For people on a tight budget, that’s quite noticeable, and of course it’s on top of much higher rises – the same article mentions an 11.9% rise from 2021 to 2022.

There’s also this recent article:

In a recent interview, President Biden was told that food prices are up over 30% on his watch. But he casually dismissed this fact, claiming people have money to pay those elevated prices. …

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, average weekly paychecks have increased about $150 under Mr. Biden, or 14.1% in roughly three years. Normally, that would be cause for celebration, but not in the inflationary environment of “Bidenomics.”

Because prices have risen an average of 19.3% during Mr. Biden’s tenure, the average real, or inflation-adjusted, weekly paycheck has shrunk by about $50, or 4.4%. Today’s larger paychecks buy less, and consumers are being squeezed by higher prices everywhere.

This drop in purchasing power has many families relying on credit cards to make ends meet, pushing outstanding balances up to $1.1 trillion, even while the interest rate on that debt is at a record high.

Some of us haven’t gotten raises, either. Some of us are on fixed incomes, or are unemployed (for the latter, more than the statistics show).

Not only that, but grocery shopping is something we all do on a regular basis. We know how much our groceries used to cost on average. We know how much the prices have risen. And groceries are, of course, only one type of expense, although a very in-your-face one.

But back to the original article by Zachary Carter. This paragraph is unintentionally humorous:

With inflation functionally over, the search has now shifted to some other kind of price metric that can explain Biden’s terrible polling. The Washington Post editorial board hypothesizes that the country is experiencing “an inflation hangover,” feeling squeamish about higher price levels even though prices are no longer increasing at a meaningful rate.

Got it? Inflation is functionally over, meaning the thing that economists measure isn’t very high any more. But people at the checkout counter aren’t measuring the thing that economists measure, at least not in the timeframe that the economists measure it. We ask ourselves the old question “are you better off now or four years ago?” And in real life, which is where most of us live, “higher price levels” are indeed more important that the current rate of increase. Not only that, but what an economist considers a “meaningful rate” may not be the same as what the poor shmo in the grocery store, wondering whether to buy a piece of meat, considers a meaningful rate.

The writer goes on and on about various metrics, but still seems very puzzled as to why Biden is polling so badly. Now, to a hammer everything looks like a nail, and Zachary Carter seems to be an economics writer, but are Biden’s bad numbers in the polls really such a mystery? I think it’s more of a mystery why he’s still doing relatively well, but I chalk that up to Trump Derangement Syndrome on the part of so many voters.

Hunter relied on Biden privilege

The New Neo Posted on by

Jonathan Turley writes about Hunter Biden:

For Hunter Biden, though, this was the first time he’s ever been held accountable for any criminal conduct …

True; but let’s wait for the sentencing. I continue to think he’ll get just a wrist slap. Turley thinks otherwise, though:

The problem now is that this all played out in front of the judge who will now sentence Hunter.

Noreika witnessed the attempt to secure the sweetheart deal and then the disaster in open court.

She watched as a defendant not only refused to admit guilt, but decided to put on an obvious jury nullification defense.

That history could weigh in favor of a short jail stint for Hunter, a risk that would have been effectively eliminated by a guilty plea.

To me the most interesting thing about the risk-taking both Hunter and his attorneys took in forcing this trial was that they all seem to have fully expected an acquittal despite the incredibly strong nature of the incriminating evidence. Not just Hunter, but many members of the family have been getting away with cons and scams and skims for a long time, and they feel protected as quasi-royalty.

Miranda Devine writes at greater length on the same subject:

In the end, Hunter Biden and his army of pricey lawyers got tripped up by their own arrogance and overconfidence.

In Joe Biden’s home state, where the Biden name is feared and the Biden family has been royalty for 50 years, a jury of 12 ordinary Delawareans sitting in a courthouse in Wilmington judged the evidence honestly, ignored the intimidating presence of the first lady and found the president’s son guilty on all three felony gun charges.

For once, a Biden has been held accountable, although the gun charges were the least serious of the crimes considered by investigators in the troubled five-year financial probe of Hunter in Delaware.

The first son now faces a felony tax fraud trial in California in September but even there, the charges just skim the surface of the evidence and the links to Joe Biden’s corruption that investigators were blocked from pursuing. …

Hunter, 54, assumed his father’s power would protect him, as it has all his life.

Devine goes into many more details. But the bottom line is that Hunter has been a train wreck, a con man, a drug user, a people user, and a scam artist for much of his life, and his arrogance is phenomenal. He’s also been the son of a senator since he was two years old, and then the son of the vice president and now the son of the president. And the Biden family sticks together.

And Joe said that Hunter is the smartest man he knows.