Democrats refuse to pass law requiring illegal immigrants to be tested for COVID…

The New Neo Posted on by

…and yet it is reported that border guards will be fired if they refuse to be vaccinated by November 1st.

Not only that, but many of those untested and possibly-COVID-infected illegal aliens who are streaming across the border courtesy of Joe Biden & Company have been seeded throughout the country without consulting the communities in which they will be placed.

Here’s some information about the proposed bill:

Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks offered her REACT Act on Wednesday in the United States House of Representatives. Democrats, however, blocked the bill, which would require the Department of Homeland Security to give a COVID test to everyone crossing the border illegally.

Miller-Meeks called her bill “commonsense legislation.”…

“[A recent DHS] report further stated that we recommend DHS reassess its COVID-19 response framework to identify areas for improvement, to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 while balancing its primary mission of securing the border,” she said. “Currently everyone legally entering the United States by plane is required to display a negative test for COVID-19. Why aren’t we requiring this of those who come here illegally?”

It’s not even as though this bill would require the deportation of people who test positive. It merely would require that they not be released from custody for a while. Also, it’s not as though other people entering this country from foreign lands aren’t being tested for COVID. They are. For example:

While the Biden Administration is testing individuals arriving from Afghanistan and vaccinating them for COVID as well as other childhood illnesses, it isn’t doing that with those crossing the border illegally.

Miller-Meeks also had this to say:

“We recently watched a debacle unfold in Del Rio, Texas where we have learned that DHS did not test any of approximately 15,000 migrants who camped out under the Del Rio Bridge, many of whom came from South America where they’re experiencing the Lambda Variant. We now know that around 12,000 of these individuals were released into the United States.”

I’ve looked and looked, but I have yet to find an article that explains the rationale the Democrats gave for blocking the bill. Maybe they didn’t even offer one – after all, they have the House majority and can vote without explaining why.

When queried a little while ago about why illegal entrants to the US aren’t required to provide proof of vaccination or be tested for COVID, Jen Psaki gave her typically nonsensical and even insulting-to-intelligence type of answer:

“As individuals walk across the border they are both assessed for if they have any symptoms, the intention is for them to be quarantined, that is our process.”

“They’re not intending to stay here for a lengthy period of time.”

Sure thing. I thought the official administration word is that COVID can be spread even without symptoms, and I’m also under the impression that the people crossing the southern border illegally didn’t come all that way merely to have a cup of coffee and return.

The bill had originally been introduced back in March, when it was defeated. Miller-Meeks (who won her election by six votes, by the way, and whose seating was challenged by Democrats) is a military veteran and physician who for a while was the director of Iowa’s Department of Public Health.

Does anyone doubt that Democrats are hypocrites on the subject of COVID and public health? The evidence is overwhelming. And of course that’s not the only issue on which their hypocrisy shines forth.

At what point, if ever, will Americans’ dissatisfaction with the Biden administration translate into voting behavior?

The New Neo Posted on by

Polls certainly reflect that dissatisfaction – if you believe the polls. And there also are the “eff-Biden” chants at football games, although we don’t know what percentage of people share the intensity of that particular sentiment. But Biden has come close to running this country into the ground in short order, and people are noticing.

I haven’t yet had any in-depth talks with any of my Democrat-voting friends about all of this, but the superficial and brief chats I’ve had with some of them indicate unease and dissatisfaction on their parts. For example, they uniformly don’t like what happened in Afghanistan.

And yet I have no sense that any of them would even consider voting for a Republican. Let me emphasize that I don’t know, because – as I said – I haven’t yet had lengthy talks with them. But that is what my gut tells me, for two reasons. The first reason is that I well know how difficult it is for a lifelong Democrat to vote for a Republican. And it’s only gotten more difficult in the last two decades or so, as Republicans have become more and more demonized by the Democratic establishment and by the media as well as social media. Voting for a Republican is, in many people’s minds, sympathy for the devil.

The second reason is Donald Trump. For example, one friend I spoke to expressed a great deal of upset at the way Biden handled Afghanistan, and then said to me, “But hadn’t Trump agreed to do the same thing?” In other words, she had read in the news that Biden was just following Trump’s plan, and she had no source of competing information – except me, and I proceeded to explain the differences between Trump’s plan and Biden’s “plan.” The point is, though, that Trump has been so thoroughly demonized for so long – and so many of the people receiving that information don’t seriously doubt their sources – that any criticism of Biden can be countered with a “but Trump was the same or probably worse” rejoinder.

Each such discussion feels a bit Sisyphean, rolling that ball uphill again.

Jordan Peterson on the use of crises to curtail liberty, and as a religion substitute

The New Neo Posted on by

I put this portion of the following Jordan Peterson interview (about 17 minutes) up on the post I just published, but I also want to highlight it by giving the excerpt its own post here. If you find listening to videos too slow, I suggest you go to “settings” on the video and change the speed to a faster one:

The new aristocrats: masks for the masses, liberty for us

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s no longer news when a Democrat politician who has been pushing masks and mask mandates – such as, in this case, Joe Biden – goes against his or her own recommendations and goes maskless.

Same for parties of more than a few people, or traveling, or any number of things that they have no trouble recommending or even mandating for the peasantry (that’s most of us) but which they themselves flout when they feel like it.

Plus the fact that mandatory masks for the servers such as waiters and clerks in stores is another factor in creating an obviously tiered society. These rules are sometimes promulgated not by the government, but by the individual business, but the effect is nevertheless of a class system with visual signifiers.

In the beginning, masks were frowned on. Then they were recommended, sometimes mandated. But the rules themselves often have little logic, because – just to take one point of many – a person can wear an ineffective mask (single-layer cloth, for example), or even reuse a dirty one over and over and over, and still be in compliance.

At this point the masked sometimes give the unmasked dirty looks, or (less often) vice versa. And there is jewelry to attest to vaccination status for the virtue-signaling. And not just jewelry, and not just the vaccinated. Here’s a wide range of items, from necklaces and earrings attesting to a person having had the vaccine, to various sorts of T-shirts – as well as the much more rare anti-vax item, a logo showing an extended middle finger and the words “Vaccinate this.”

Perhaps the most ironic is this door sign with seasonal fall and Thanksgiving symbols and the word “WELCOME” on the first line and in somewhat smaller print on the second line, “VACCINATED GUESTS.”

Otherwise known as “non-lepers.”

I’m treating this subject somewhat lightly here, but it’s really not light at all. Perhaps if COVID posed a threat on the order of the Black Death, some of this divisive hysteria would be warranted. But at this point, when we know this is not true, the masks and all the other mandates are a mean of control. There will be others, and other crises to justify them.

I want to highlight a portion (about 17 minutes) of this recent Jordan Peterson video on the subject. I think this video is so good, and so important, that I’m going to give it its own post in a moment (if you find listening to videos too slow, I suggest you go to “settings” on the video and change the speed to a faster one):

Glenn Greenwald: on the Hunter Biden laptop coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s another excellent article by Glenn Greenwald. An excerpt:

From the start, the evidence of [the Hunter Biden laptop’s] authenticity was overwhelming. The [NY] Post published obviously genuine photos of Hunter that were taken from the laptop. Investigations from media outlets found people who had received the emails in real-time and they compared the emails in their possession to the ones in the Post’s archive, and they matched word-for-word. One of Hunter’s own business associates involved in many of these deals, Tony Bobulinski, confirmed publicly and in interviews that the key emails were genuine and that they referenced Joe Biden’s profit participation in one deal being pursued in China. A forensics analyst issued a report concluding the archive had all the earmarks of authenticity. Not even the Bidens denied that the emails were real…

Despite all that, former intelligence officials such as Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan and his Director of National Intelligence James Clapper led a group of dozens of former spooks in issuing a public statement that disseminated an outright lie: namely, that the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” …

But the complete lack of evidence for these claims [of “Russian disinformation”] — that even these career CIA liars acknowledged plagued their assertions — did not stop the corporate media or Big Tech from repeating this lie over and over, and, far worse, using this lie to censor this reporting from the internet…

But the media disinformation about the Post’s documents — obviously designed to protect Joe Biden in the lead-up to the election — were not the worst aspect of what happened here. Far worse was the decision by Twitter to prohibit any discussion of this reporting or posting of links to the story both publicly and privately on the platform. Worse still was the immediate announcement by Facebook through its communications executive Andy Stone — a life-long Democratic Party operative — that it would algorithmically suppress the story pending a “fact check” by “Facebook’s third-party fact-check partners.” Despite multiple requests from me and others, Facebook never published the results of this alleged fact-check and still refuse to say whether it ever conducted one.

Much more at the link. It constitutes a good summary of the entire situation re the Hunter laptop.

And here’s a video from Greenwald, which I haven’t watched yet:

One commenter to that video at YouTube writes, “What’s sad and infuriating about all of this, is that Americans will never hear about it, except here.”

A response there adds, “Worse, they will hear it, and dismiss it.”

And still another person comes back with, “This is what I am realizing now. It’s not that people on the left (traditionally my people), don’t know the truth, they don’t want to know the truth. ”

But this person offers some hope: “There is always a beginning. From Glen’s lips to your ears & then it spreads if y’all spread it. We’re the tool that spreads the truth that Glen finds. He’s as reliant on us to change this world as we’re on him to bring us breaking news.”

Democrat infighting threatens to derail their transformative agenda – for now

The New Neo Posted on by

For once, Democrat infighting can’t be contained and Pelosi seems to have lost her iron grip on the group. I don’t trust it to be long-lasting, though, because the “moderate Democrat” has become mostly a myth, and the “progressives” (that is, the fanatic left) seem to be in control. But at the moment the party is somewhat stalemated:

If you’ve been following the saga surrounding the Joe Biden-backed $3.5 reconciliation bill, you know things aren’t going well. As RedState reported yesterday, Democrats have moved into a period of open civil war over the “Build Back Better” agenda and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, with progressives refusing to pass the latter unless they get the former.

The problem is that the progressives have no leverage, and having a 50/50 split in the Senate does not, in fact, give one party a broad mandate to completely transform the nation into a socialist paradise. Standing in the gap on the Democrat side for some semblance of sanity, Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema find themselves facing an onslaught from the far-left of their own party…

Keep in mind that this “bipartisan infrastructure deal” was supported by every single Democrat senator just a month ago. But with the progressives over in the House calling the shots, the left is going to possibly nuke a bill that is full of their priorities, because they can’t get all of another bill that has even more of their priorities. If that sounds self-destructive, that’s because it is.

Is it just these two Democrat senators holding the line? Perhaps, but perhaps they’re providing cover for others (including House members) who don’t really want the more extreme bill passed because that would threaten their re-election chances. I have long been amazed at how often it is that Democrat members of Congress who hold themselves out to be moderate vote for whatever leftist bill the party puts in front of them. Could it be that this is an exception?

One more point – RedState author “Bonchie” writes that a “50/50 split in the Senate does not, in fact, give one party a broad mandate to completely transform the nation into a socialist paradise.” Of course it doesn’t, but since when have the Democrats cared about having a mandate? The only question is whether they have the power and therefore the means to wreak that transformation, not whether the people want it. If they don’t want it, it still may be possible to shove it down their throats.

Failure is an orphan: the generals testify on the Afghanistan withdrawal

The New Neo Posted on by

Generals Milley and MacKenzie testified yesterday that they told Biden that such a precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan was not recommended and would lead to disaster:

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services committee Tuesday, head of U.S. Central Command General Frank McKenzie confirmed that he initially recommended President Biden maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, contradicting the president’s claim that the military unanimously recommended total withdrawal.

McKenzie also warned that a full withdrawal would lead inexorably to the collapse of the Afghan forces and government.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley, also present at the hearing, echoed McKenzie’s assertion, saying they both believed that a small footprint should be maintained until the Taliban complied with certain conditions for withdrawal. While neither general would say explicitly that they conveyed that opinion personally to President Biden, McKenzie said it “would be reasonable to conclude that” their evaluations were delivered to Biden ahead of the withdrawal.

This has been treated as bombshell news, because in a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos, Biden had said something quite different, which is “No one said that to me that I can recall.”

So here we are, in the land of the liars in which we have to figure out who, if anyone, is telling the truth. Of course an argument can be made that all of them are, because it’s certainly possible that they told Biden at the time and that he cannot recall it anymore. But actually, that doesn’t matter in terms of Biden’s decision-making process at the time, and what responsibility the generals have for the disaster.

They are obviously trying to say, “Don’t blame me!” But it’s possible they’re lying, too. I happen to think they’re telling the truth, though, for two main reasons. The first is that although they are boot-licking CYA cowards and lying is certainly something they’re willing to do, I don’t think they would give military advice that was obviously insane, or insanely stupid, as our military withdrawal from Afghanistan actually was. That plan bears the mark of the stupid, corrupt, and somewhat delusional president – with the help of some of his advisors such as Blinken.

The second reason I think the generals are telling the truth about their advice is because of something I wrote on September 20, which I’ll reproduce here:

…I think it’s instructive to look back and see what people in government were saying. For example, consider this article from April 22, written very shortly after Biden announced his withdrawal schedule.

One of the most curious bits of Congressional testimony to reflect on now was by General MacKenzie [emphasis mine]:…

“’My concern is the ability of the Afghan military to hold the ground that they’re on now without the support that they’ve been used to for many years,’ Gen. Frank McKenzie, commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“‘I am concerned about the ability of the Afghan military to hold on after we leave, the ability of the Afghan air force to fly, in particular, after we remove the support for those aircraft,’ he added.

“Pressed later in the hearing on continuing to fund Afghan forces when U.S. troops withdraw, McKenzie said that without ‘some support,’ the Afghan forces ‘certainly will collapse.'”

So MacKenzie didn’t just supposedly say this to Biden. He said it in public, to Congress, in April of 2021, and this was reported in the news at the time. So it’s a matter of public knowledge. I’m not sure why I seem to have been the only one who is noticing at this point, but MacKenzie’s prior public statements seem worth considering as evidence that this is indeed what he also told Biden.

That hardly absolves either MacKenzie or Milley, however. As I’ve written from the beginning of the debacle, they should have resigned if they knew they were carrying out orders that weren’t just some small or even big error of judgment on the part of Biden (or whoever was giving them), but were insanely destructive and so against even common sense that even a small child could see that disaster would follow. They should never have been part of carrying them out, but not only did they implement them but then they made excuses and claimed things were going well. Now they are in CYA mode.

As for Biden, the main issue isn’t what he remembers now, although that of course is an issue. The more important question is what he knew then, back when he made his decisions, and why he made them in spite of both advice and ordinary common sense reasoning. The other issue is, of course, whether it was Biden who made the decisions at all.

What a horrific mess.

John Hinckley is going to be released from supervision

The New Neo Posted on by

John Hinckley, who forty years ago attempted – and nearly accomplished – the assassination of President Reagan (and also wounded several others), is being released without conditions. The idea is that his mental illness is in remission and he is no longer dangerous.

Hinckley’s fate and his release rest on the fact that he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. That means that he was never imprisoned, but has instead spent years in a mental hospital, and then more recently under various types of supervision but outside of that hospital:

In 2015, Hinckley was spending unsupervised time with his mother, and his family made the first petition for him to be released from the custody of St. Elizabeths. In 2016, a federal judge granted Hinckley “full-time convalescent leave” from the hospital to live with his mother, contingent upon Hinckley carrying a GPS-equipped cell phone monitored by Secret Service agents.

Those four years between 2016 and 2020 involved an incremented progression of allowing Hinckley to live outside of his mother’s home, easing of monitoring, and a restoration of his name and speech rights.

The supervision is now supposed to end in June:

Hinckley is now 66 years old, and his mother is ailing, which affected the urgency of this ruling. His court-imposed restrictions include regular doctor and therapist visits to oversee the psychiatric medication he receives, as well as decisions on when and how often he attends individual and group therapy sessions. Once these restrictions are gone, and Hinckley has no family connections, will he be able to continue this maintenance?

This actually is a rather tough case, because an argument could be made – and was made successfully at his trial – that Hinckley was suffering from some variety of mental illness when he committed his crime, and he was judged not guilty as a result under the laws of the time. Those laws have since been changed, in part as a result of Hinckley’s case:

At his 1982 trial in Washington, D.C., having been charged with 13 offenses, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity on June 21. The defense psychiatric reports portrayed Hinckley as insane while the prosecution reports characterized him as legally sane. Hinckley was transferred into psychiatric care from Bureau of Prisons custody on August 18, 1981. Soon after his trial, Hinckley wrote that the shooting was “the greatest love offering in the history of the world” and was disappointed that Foster did not reciprocate his love.

The verdict resulted in widespread dismay. As a consequence, the United States Congress and a number of states revised laws governing when a defendant may use the insanity defense in a criminal prosecution. Idaho, Montana, and Utah abolished the defense altogether. In the United States, before the Hinckley case, the insanity defense had been used in less than 2% of all felony cases and was unsuccessful in almost 75% of those trials. Public outcry over the verdict led to the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984, which altered the rules for consideration of mental illness of defendants in federal criminal court proceedings. In 1985, Hinckley’s parents wrote Breaking Points, a book detailing their son’s mental condition.

Changes in federal and some state rules of evidence laws have since excluded or restricted the use of testimony of an expert witness, such as a psychologist or psychiatrist, regarding conclusions on “ultimate” issues in insanity defense cases, including whether a criminal defendant is legally “insane”, but this is not the rule in most states.

Vincent J. Fuller, an attorney who represented Hinckley during his trial and for several years afterward, said Hinckley has schizophrenia. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution, diagnosed Hinckley with narcissistic and schizoid personality disorders and dysthymia, as well as borderline and passive-aggressive features. At the hospital Hinckley was treated for narcissistic and schizotypal personality disorder and major depressive disorder.

Hinckley’s crime was an especially heinous one: attempted assassination of a president. It was only “attempted” not because Hinckley didn’t try very very hard to kill Reagan, but because he didn’t succeed in his goal although he nearly killed him. And press secretary James Brady, whom Hinckley wounded, was disabled for the rest of his life, and his death 33 years was ruled a homicide (although for various legal reasons, Hinckley could no longer be tried for it).

In some basic way, it seems as though Hinckley should not be released, although I’m well aware that on the legal level there’s nothing really holding him anymore since he was never convicted. On the practical level, it seems to me that his dangerousness – and whether he will continue to take his meds – is impossible to predict, and so I don’t think the supervision should have been lifted.