SCOTUS refuses to block the Texas Heartbeat Law at present

The New Neo Posted on by

The so-called Texas Heartbeat Law took effect yesterday.
Here’s the text of the law; it’s long and I’ve only read about a third of it. It includes, among other things:

Except as provided by Section 171.205, a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman unless the physician has determined, in accordance with this section, whether the woman’s unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat…

Except as provided by Section 171.205, a physician may not knowingly perform or induce an abortion on a pregnant woman if the physician detected a fetal heartbeat for the unborn child as required by Section 171.203 or failed to perform a test to detect a fetal heartbeat…

Section 171.204 does not apply if a physician believes a medical emergency exists that prevents compliance with this subchapter.

The law seems quite unusual for abortion-limiting laws in that the liability is civil and not criminal, which means that the state would not be bringing any actions under it but any random citizen could sue a provider under it. It is my understanding that there would be no action allowed against the woman herself, only against providers, but I’m not 100% sure about that. At any rate, it seems that the goal and the upshot would be that providers would get out of the business of doing abortions on anyone over 6 weeks pregnant, because otherwise they would risk a lawsuit and a loss of income.

A lot of the pro-abortion people are saying this effectively bans abortion in Texas. It doesn’t do that, but it does restrict it so much that the vast majority of abortions would indeed be liable to a civil lawsuit. A woman might have to go to another state if she wanted to have an abortion after that 6-week mark, and this would impact the most on poorer women.

SCOTUS has decided the case on procedural grounds, and it’s only a temporary decision not to block it:

It was a non-abortion ruling because by 5-4, with Roberts voting with the liberal block, the court found the case not ripe for judicial intervention. But it’s related to abortion, so according to the left, it’s the end of the world, and we’re already in that movie with the women in red robes and head coverings…

The government is not enforcing the law, private citizens are. But none of those private citizens have not yet filed a suit under the law, so there’s nothing for SCOTUS to decide yet. The Court left open that there might be other procedural ways to judicially challenge the law, and made clear it was not ruling on the merits.

So that’s it. That’s the entire thing. Someone actually has to bring suit in order for there to be a possible SCOTUS appeal. From the opinion:

…[F]ederal courts enjoy the power to enjoin individuals tasked with enforcing laws, not the laws themselves. And it is unclear whether the named defendants in this lawsuit can or will seek to enforce the Texas law against the applicants in a manner that might permit our intervention.

I assume we haven’t heard the last of the challenges to this law.

The message of “move on” from the Biden administration

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve long been annoyed by people who tell other people to “move on.” I’m talking about private life, although the exhortation is also used by politicians and has been especially useful for the left in the past.

When Biden scoffed at a question about the desperate people falling from airplane wheel wells in Kabul, he defended himself by pointing out that it had happened four or five days earlier. Critics tended to fasten on his exaggeration of how much time had passed. But to me the far more important thing was that he was implicitly using the “move on; after all, I’ve done so” argument.

Of course, in private life it’s not good to dwell unduly on the past. And sometimes that happens, and should be discouraged. But the passage of a few days is not distant enough, and what’s more if an issue is undiscussed and/or unresolved it can and often will fester no matter how long it’s been. One of the reasons it’s important to face such things even if there’s been a delay is to learn what the accused thinks about what he or she did. After all, a repeat in the present or the future is likely to occur if it’s brushed off. Plus, the person hurt by it or objecting to whatever happened will at the very least fear a repeat if it’s not aired and understood, and that can deeply affect the relationship, too. Why not at least try to clear the air?

I’ve also noticed a very distinct trend: it’s the person being accused of wrongdoing, and perhaps guilty of it, who is the one who insists that everyone “move on” and that such moving on is a virtue. Isn’t it interesting how that reverses things, how it allows the accused wrongdoer to cast off any guilt or any need for redress and to claim a virtue – the superior ability to move on – that the accuser lacks?

Biden and the Democrats would like nothing better than to have Americans move on from Afghanistan in this way. And it’s certainly happened before that the public at large has a short attention span. I don’t know whether it will happen this time, though. Of course, it also depends on how cooperative the MSM will be in covering the story with a pillow, till it stops moving. My guess is that members of the MSM will be very cooperative from now on, because they’ve “moved on,” too. After all, they are implicated as well in whatever happens in Afghanistan, because they were instrumental in getting Biden into the White House.

A few words from Ric Grennell and Lara Logan on Afghanistan

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Ric Grennell speaking about the intelligence community and the Afghanistan withdrawal:

Here’s Lara Logan on Tucker last night (one correction – I think “Islamophobia” accusations actually became a thing quite a bit before Obama came to office; my recollection is that it happened and CAIR pushed it when Bush was president and not all that long after 9/11):

Now that we’re out of Afghanistan – except for that indeterminate number of citizens left behind – how we will even learn the details of what’s happening there? The Biden administration would be only too happy if we never learn, because if it turns into the killing fields it would reflect poorly on them. So a blackout or near-blackout of news is a good thing as far as they’re concerned.

If this report is true, it is abominable

The New Neo Posted on by

Please read.

An excerpt:

Director of MRC Latino, Jorge Bonilla, posted an interview of Pardo-Maurer. Pardo-Maurer, who was in the State Department for years, since at least 2001, said he was being told that the Department of Defense already knew who the bomber [at the Kabul airport] was ahead of time, before the bombing and when the Kabul attack would occur…

But Pardo-Maurer went further in his interview. He said not only did they know where and when it would happen, but that they had a Predator drone lock on the bomber, but that “they” refused to grant permission to take the guy out. “[Permission] was requested and was denied,” he said. Why? “Because we are in this process of negotiating with the Taliban who aren’t even in control of their own government or their own people.”

If so, betrayal on top of betrayal on top of betrayal.

We do know that we knew there would be an attack of some sort at or near the airport, because the US gave the warning to stay away.

Happy 75th birthday, Barry Gibb

The New Neo Posted on by

Today is the 75th birthday of Barry Gibb, the last surviving member of the Bee Gees. It’s an achievement to be alive, given what he’s been through. And it’s also his anniversary; he and his wife celebrate 51 years of marriage, as well. I don’t have to tell you what an achievement that is, especially for a guy so famous, and known in his prime as a major sex symbol.

Barry Gibb is a man of many voices. You may only know his falsetto, the voice of the Bee Gees’ rather short but enormously successful disco period. But of all his voices (falsetto with vibrato and without, tremolo, whisper, head, chest, raspier chest, operatic chest) I think it’s his chest voice I prefer.

So maybe this one for today with a lot of chest voice, live and from 1975 (in the unlikely event you don’t know who Barry is, he’s the guy playing rhythm guitar, who begins the song). I could choose one of his great solo songs, but I like the group all together, so I chose this one which only features Barry sporadically. I love the slow bridge here, too:

Happy Birthday, Happy Anniversary, and many many happy returns.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a birthday and anniversary video linked by commenter “Ruth.” It really captures a lot of Barry Gibb’s appeal, including snippets of interviews with him and his wife. One thing I want to mention is that the infidelity his wife Linda refers to occurred before their marriage – I recall that being clarified in the full interview or another similar one. Barry and Linda were well aware of the perils of touring for a marriage, and usually they traveled en famille.

The Ghani phone call and the Congressional mandate: for Biden, it’s both the crime and the coverup

The New Neo Posted on by

The main part of the coverup right now – at least, as far as we know – is the declaration that the US military evacuation of Afghanistan was a success. The MSM is mainly falling in line, even though a week ago it temporarily seemed as though they had forgotten to be propagandists and vaguely remembered how to be reporters.

Yesterday, though, we had a curious leak of a transcript of Biden’s last phone call with the then-president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, occurring on July 23 of 2021. That was about three weeks before the fall of Kabul and five weeks before Biden’s hot-footed military exit from Afghanistan. At the time the phone call was made, Biden was busy reassuring the American public that all was well and the country would hold out against the Taliban for a long time.

I call the leak “curious” because this sort of thing was reserved for getting Trump. I don’t think there was a single leak of that sort with Obama (or Biden when he was VP), but here we are just seven months into Biden’s presidency and we have the leak of a diplomatic phone call. It makes me think one of two things. The first is that the leaker might have thought this reflects well on Biden – after all, he is relatively coherent in it. The second is that the leaker is well aware it makes him look bad, and the leaker represents a group of people, probably on the left, who are outraged with Biden. It may be significant that this leak was to Reuters, a British news agency generally on the left. So this may reflect the fact that the Brits are generally hopping mad at Biden. And rightly so; he betrayed and blindsided them in addition to so many others.

Here’s what the leak revealed [my emphasis]:

BIDEN:…I have been meeting with our Pentagon folks, and our national security people, as you have with ours and yours, and as you know and I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban.

And there’s a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.…

Pause for a moment and contemplate what he said. He is well aware that not only is there a perception that this is going to be a fiasco, but that it may be true. But he wants Ghani to cooperate in pretending it’s going much better than that.

More:

You clearly have the best military, you have 300,000 well-armed forces versus 70-80,000 and they’re clearly capable of fighting well, we will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is and what we are doing. And all the way through the end of August, and who knows what after that.

We never provided air support, and certainly not “after that.” These are lies and I believe that Biden knew at the time they were lies, although I can’t prove it. Or maybe they’re not lies because Biden changed his mind. Or maybe he later forgot he said it. Anything is possible with this man.

He repeats himself for emphasis:

We are also going to continue to make sure your air force is capable of continuing to fly and provide air support.

Neither was done. Au contraire.

Chani replies:

GHANI: Mr. President, we are facing a full-scale invasion, composed of Taliban, full Pakistani planning and logistical support, and at least 10-15,000 international terrorists, predominantly Pakistanis thrown into this, so that dimension needs to be taken account of.

Ghani makes the magnitude of the threat clear, as well as the Pakistani element to it. Did Biden do any “taking care” of “that dimension”? If he did, I’ve not heard of it.

More from Ghani:

Second, what is crucial is, close air support, and if I could make a request, you have been very generous, if your assistance, particularly to our air force be front loaded, because what we need at this moment, there was a very heavily reliance on air power, and we have prioritized that if it could be at all front-loaded, we will greatly appreciate it.

“Front-loaded” means heavier at the start.

Why no air support? Did Biden forget, or did he just not give a crap right from the start? I think the latter: he didn’t like the optics or the risks of any air support and never had any intention of providing it. I can’t prove that, but it’s my strong suspicion. The whole thing is shot through with lies and betrayals on Biden’s part; just riddled with them.

Then there’s this deception closer to home:

President Joe Biden waived a mandate in June that would have forced the Pentagon to provide a detailed report to Congress about the risks of leaving Afghanistan.

Under the federal statute, the administration was barred from reducing troops in Afghanistan below 2,000 without first briefing Congress about the expected impact on U.S. counterterrorism operations and the risk to American personnel. Biden waived the mandate in June, arguing that providing this information to Congress could undermine “the national security interests of the United States.”

The Biden administration spent months assuring Congress that the U.S.-trained Afghan forces would be able to forestall a Taliban takeover when American troops left the country on a pre-determined deadline. That assessment was proven wrong days after the withdrawal, when the Taliban overran the Afghan National Army and seized control of Kabul, forcing a chaotic evacuation of U.S. personnel and allies.

That’s quite a loophole, isn’t it? The Pentagon is supposed to provide the information, but the president can waive it more or less at will by defining disclosure as potentially affecting national security. And wouldn’t everything under the statute affect national security?

So the plans were kept secret from Congress, too. This constitutes a betrayal of the American people; but what else is new?

Biden was well aware – at least, when he had more of his faculties, and I think he continues to be aware – of the way the Vietnam War ended. In the following incident, he may have mischaracterized the endpoint there for South Vietnam as being the result of Nixon and Kissinger instead of the result of the Democrat-run Congress pulling the plug on the ARVN, but he knew the basic outline in terms of the politics of it:

By the time Biden became vice president in 2009, the disastrous war in Iraq, the endemic corruption of the Afghan government, and the return of the Taliban had made him a deep skeptic of the American commitment. He became the Obama administration’s strongest voice for getting out of Afghanistan. In 2010, he told RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, that the U.S. had to leave Afghanistan regardless of the consequences for women or anyone else. According to Holbrooke’s diary, when he asked about American obligations to Afghans like the girl in the Kabul school, Biden replied with a history lesson from the final U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia in 1973: “F*** that, we don’t have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam, Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”

Will Biden and the Democrats get away with it? Our exit from Vietnam starts looking good compared to our exit from Afghanistan. Now Biden’s “F*** that” also extends to the Americans left behind, our European allies, and the American people who are left more vulnerable than before to fanatic Islamic terrorism.

Naked emperor Biden tells us all to admire his sparkling new suit of clothes

The New Neo Posted on by

In Biden’s speech today on the Afghan withdrawal, you might say he’s delusional. Then again, perhaps he knows he’s lying. Hard to tell, really.

The message seems to be one Biden’s aides and advisors have approved, though, or I don’t think he’d be delivering these remarks. It’s the message they will all employ going forward: we’re great, we handled this well, we planned for every contingency, and anything that went wrong is the fault of the cowardly Afghan army and Biden’s terrible predecessor Donald Trump.

Please read the Twitter responses to the speech, listed at Legal Insurrection. What Biden is asserting is astounding in its mendacious boasting and blaming. Mary Chastain, author of the piece, calls it “gaslighting” – which it is, but that’s really too mild a word for it, although I don’t have a better one at the moment.

I have never seen anything like it before in this country, although analogies to other countries and times come to mind – for example, it’s Baghdad Bob level garbage, as is obvious to anyone who has followed it at all. And I have no doubt that most of the Democrats in Congress will nod along and tell the public to forget about it all now, everything is just fine and Uncle Joe and the other adults are in charge.

Pernicious stuff. How much of the MSM will fall in line, and how much will say enough is enough? I don’t yet know, but my guess is that the first category will be far larger than the second.

Here are just a few of the tweets in reaction to his speech. There is a tone of stunned disbelief at the boldness and shamelessness of the lying:

From Guy Benson:

Defiant victory lap.

POTUS asserts “we were ready” for what happened thanks to his administration’s incredible contingency planning.

Astonishing.

From Curtis Houck:

After trumpeting the mission that killed 13 U.S. soldiers as having unfolded as “designed,” Biden blames the Americans left behind in Afghanistan for putting themselves in this position, insisting it’s likely many of them like it there.

And note these remarks by NBC’s (yes, the MSM) Richard Engel, who talks about how Biden pooh-poohs the continuing and even increased threat:

Note also the responses at Twitter to Engel’s words. Whether the tweets are from bots, Democrat operatives, or the actual Democrat rank-and-file, the tweets are examples of why Biden and company feel they can get away with this sort of messaging.

The very first one was this:

War correspondent freaking out now that there’s no American war to cover.

There are others in that vein.

Here’s a slightly different approach:

That’s enough Richard Engel. The war is over! There’s plenty to do on the Climate Crisis all over the world.

Just a few short years ago this sort of behavior – leaving people behind, withdrawing with a series of dreadful decisions that maximized risk both during the withdrawal and in the future, and blatantly lying about it for all to see – would have been unconscionable in a president. That may or may not still be the case. I suppose we’ll find out. But I predict no impeachment (the Democrats would have to be in favor of it, and they are not) and no 25th Amendment unless and until Joe is literally not functioning and/or the left has figured out how to position the chosen successor in there. I don’t think the chosen successor is Kamala Harris; she’s certainly not their ideal one.

Lying in such an obvious way has two main functions. The first is that it informs other Democrats what the party line will be, and loyal ones will echo it and even believe it – just as O’Brien got Winston Smith to believe that two plus two equals five if the party dictates that belief. The second is to laugh at and mock those on the right who know otherwise but are presently impotent to stop them. And Biden, his advisors, and the present Democratic leaders aim to make it their business to make the opposition permanently unable to stop them.

The Afghanistan evacuation decision tree

The New Neo Posted on by

Our withdrawal from Afghanistan is riddled with bad decisions. Whether they were intentionally bad and designed to harm the US I do not know, but in this post I’ll assume for the sake of argument that that was not the case and that they were simply very very bad decisions. Once that assumption is made, it seems to me that all of those bad decisions flowed from two initial and basic bad decisions, both set by Joe Biden (and/or some of his aides) and adhered to with great stubbornness and a total lack of flexible response to changing conditions.

The first terrible decision was to set a rigid date for withdrawal no matter what happened – a date chosen not for strategic reasons but for Biden’s idea of good PR. The Taliban insisted on the date as well after Biden had announced it. Since they realized that Biden was 100% committed to a total withdrawal on that date, he had no leverage with them to exercise even if he was capable of and willing to exercise it.

The second terrible decision by Biden was that he refused to order enough troops to manage the evacuation safely or smoothly. I’m no fan of the generals here, but he was asking them to do impossible things and as a result they had to make some choices that were going to be difficult.

Neither the hard deadline – without conditions – nor the low number of troops even for the transition made any sense, except perhaps in Biden’s mind and maybe the minds of a few other aides.

The otherwise totally inexplicable and bizarre decision to leave Bagram stemmed from these two unwavering decisions. If there wasn’t enough military personnel to defend both Bagram and the Kabul airport, and they didn’t think the Taliban would take over until after we had evacuated most or all of the Americans, then the Kabul airport seemed more convenient. A fatal choice. But again, one that stemmed from the original two decisions.

And so later, when the Taliban were entering Kabul and gave the US the choice of controlling either the Kabul airport or the city, I think the general in charge figured he had to surrender the city to the Taliban because in order to get people out the US had to control the airport.

That put the US in the truly awful position of allowing the Taliban to control the streets of Kabul, and to be able to let certain people get to the airport and detain or beat or even kill others. Instead of depending, like Blanche Dubois, on the kindness of strangers, the US had to depend on the kindness of terrorists. An absurd position to be sure, but flowing from the lack of troops and Biden’s refusal to order enough troops to make it possible to continue to be in charge of both the city and the airport.

Then, because the Taliban controlled the city, the US had to give the Taliban the names of the Afghans who had helped them and who wanted safe passage through Taliban checkpoints. It is absurd and actually seems insane and evil to have done that, but they were in a situation in which all choices were very very bad. And again, it all stemmed from those first two choices of Biden’s and his determination to stick with them and make everyone else stick with them.

This entire sequence and many many others seems nonsensical, illogical, and in violation of every rule of successful evacuation. But it has its own internal “logic” because each decision flows from those first two terrible ones.

[NOTE: The generals had their own decisions to make – obey or refuse to obey by resigning. They apparently chose the first.]

Another news day, another roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) The government is denying that they left the military dogs behind in Afghanistan. Of course, they lie all the time. But it’s certainly at least possible that they’re telling the truth this time.

(2) Lara Logan emphasizes the Pakistan angle, and also adds some chilling facts about cell phone tracing in Afghanistan:

(3) The stranded? No biggee [emphasis mine]:

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby acknowledged Tuesday that Americans were “stranded” in Afghanistan…

“Right now I think the tools we have available to us and that we’re going to use as a U.S. government is going to be more in the diplomatic, economic lanes, and we don’t really see a military role right now,” Kirby told host Willie Geist after he asked if the military would have a role in rescuing those Americans…

Geist inquired as to how diplomacy was going to get those Americans out of Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

“It’s not completely unlike the way we do it elsewhere around the world. We have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time and we do everything we can to try to facilitate safe passage,” Kirby said, contradicting Psaki.

“We have made it very clear what our expectations are to the Taliban, and if the Taliban want to govern, and they say they do … obviously we’re going to hold them to their deeds, not just those words,” Kirby added. “And so there are leverage tools we have available to us to hold them to account.

Yes – people stranded all the time, like when their money and credit cards are stolen.

And “leverage tools” – do tell what you think they are at this point, Kirby. At the moment, the Taliban seem to have all the weaponry and money they need, and then some. What else are you going to do, say we’re sending troops back to Afghanistan? That’s a real knee-slapper.

(4) Australia seems to be loosening – or planning to loosen – its COVID restrictions:

Australia is set to end its “covid zero” policy after Prime Minister Scott Morrison determined that the country’s approach is not “sustainable” in the face of the more infectious COVID-19 delta variant.

Australia has maintained a strict policy of restrictions and lockdowns to stamp out any outbreak, but the government over the weekend laid out a new plan that marks a sharp change in policy.

The government will drop most restrictions once 80% of adults are vaccinated, which the government believes could happen by the end of the year.

But its policy was always “unsustainable”, and that was true way before the Delta variant came into existence.

(5) Dennis Prager writes (hat tip: “AesopFan”):

I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly [complete withdrawal] benefits America.

“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.

It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.

The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21 and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.

So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.

The damage to the reputation of America — as an ally and as a strong country — is not easily overstated.
…
On the other hand, [the question of who benefits] has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.