Farage’s Brexit Party will not block Johnson’s Conervatives in coming UK election

The New Neo Posted on by

This is potentially big news:

In a massive boost to Prime Minister Boris Johnson-led British Conservatives, Nigel Farage has pulled hundreds of Brexit Party candidates ahead of the December 12 election. The Brexit Party will not field candidates in all 317 seats that the ruling Conservative party won in the last general election.

“The Brexit party will not contest the 317 seats the Conservatives won at the last election,” Farage said. “We will concentrate our total effort into all the seats that are held by the Labour party, who have completely broken their manifesto pledge in 2017 to respect the result of the referendum, and we will also take on the rest of the remainer parties. We will stand up and fight them all.”

The Brexit Party had the potential of costing Prime Minister Johnson the election, a “wargaming” simulation conducted by the Daily Telegraph concluded on Monday. The newspaper predicted, “Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party could decide [the] election by denying Conservatives 90 extra seats.”

So that’s got to be good for Johnson and the Brexit forces. But here’s my question: why doesn’t Johnson pull out of the contests for the seats Conservatives don’t presently hold? Isn’t there still a good possibility that the Brexit candidates and the Conservative candidates in those districts will split the pro-Brexit vote and allow a Labour candidate to win those particular seats?

Remember 2016, the Flight 93 election? Well, the 2020 election figures to be…

The New Neo Posted on by

…the Nineteen Eighty-Four election, according to Victor Davis Hanson:

It is becoming a stark choice between a revolutionary future versus American traditionalism.

I don’t think there’s any “becoming” about it. This has been true of elections ever since at least 2008 and perhaps earlier. After all, remember “hope and change” and Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of this country?

Some of this transformation had already occurred, of course, with events such as the reform of immigration laws during the 1960s. I’m not going to argue about when it really began – for example, you could start with Wilson or TR the “progressive,” or you could talk about FDR or the income tax or even the popular election of senators – but now it’s reached a sort of fever pitch and is far more open in its manifestations and goals.

More from Hanson:

The choice in reductionist terms will be one between a growing, statist Panopticon, fueled by social media, a media-progressive nexus, and an electronic posse. Online trolls and government bureaucrats seek to know everything about us, in Big Brother fashion to monitor our very thoughts to ferret out incorrect ideas, and then to regiment and indoctrinate us to ensure elite visions of mandated equality and correct behavior—or else!

In other words, the personality quirks of a Trump or an Elizabeth Warren or a Bernie Sanders will become mostly irrelevant given the existential choice between two quite antithetical ideas of future America. In 2020 we will witness the penultimate manifestation of what radical progressivism has in store for us all—and the furious, often desperate, and unfettered pushback against it.

We are also well beyond even the stark choices of 1972 and 1984 that remained within the parameters of the two parties. In contrast, the Democratic Party as we have known it, is extinct for now. It has been replaced since 2016 by a radical progressive revolutionary movement that serves as a touchstone for a variety of auxiliary extremist causes, agendas, and cliques—almost all of them radically leftwing and nihilistic, and largely without majority popular support.

One of the things that stuns me is that so many people who are about to vote Democratic in 2020 seem unaware of the extreme leftist and anti-liberty nature of today’s Democratic Party despite the fact that it is no longer hidden. When Obama was running, he was smart enough to present a facade that was somewhat moderate (you might say it was moderately moderate), especially in 2008. But now the mask is off for the Democrats, and yet many people still cling to an antiquated notion of what voting Democratic means. And of course, a growing number of people (especially the young and the college-educted) know full well what it means and they approve and applaud.

Hanson discusses the aspect of this change that has resulted from indoctrination via the school system. He emphasizes universities, but the rot now goes all the way down to the youngest students:

Our universities effectively have eroded the First Amendment and the due process protections of the Fifth in matters of sexual assault allegations. Higher education is now controlled by a revolutionary clique. It institutionalizes racially segregated dorms and safe spaces, matter of factly promotes censorship, and either cannot or will not prevent students from disrupting lecturers with whom they disagree. What or who exactly say not to all that? Who would dare say that America in its third century is not going to change its use of English pronouns or decide that there are not three and more biological genders?

One of the problems is that it may be too late, and that’s true even if Trump is re-elected. Is his unique (to say the least) personality a mere speed bump along the way to leftist domination? In my darker hours I very much fear it may be:

Like it or not, 2020 is going to be a plebiscite on an American version of Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. One side advocates a complete transformation not just of the American present but of the past as well. The Left is quite eager to change our very vocabulary and monitor our private behavior to ensure we are not just guilty of incorrect behavior but thought as well.

The other side believes America is far better than the alternative, that it never had to be perfect to be good, and that, all and all, its flawed past is a story of a moral nation’s constant struggle for moral improvement.

The election is almost exactly one year from now.

Veterans Day, Armistice Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a previous post.]

Yes, indeed, I am that old—old enough to just barely remember when Veterans Day was called Armistice Day. The change in names occurred in 1954, when I was very small, in order to accommodate World War II and its veterans.

Since then, the original name has largely fallen out of use—although it remains, like a vestigial organ, in the timing of the holiday, November 11th, which commemorates the day the WWI armistice was signed (eleventh hour, eleventh day, eleventh month).

I’m also old enough–and had a teacher ancient enough—to have been forced to memorize that old chestnut “In Flanders Fields” in fifth grade—although without being given any historical context for it, I think at the time I assumed it was about World War II, since as far as I knew that was the only real war.

You can find the story of the poem here . It was written by a Canadian doctor who served in the European theater (there is no separate URL for the discussion of the poem, but you should click on the link about it if you scroll down on the left sidebar). It’s not great poetry by any means, but it was great propaganda to encourage America’s entry into what was known at the time as the Great War.

The poem’s first line “In Flanders fields the poppies blow” introduces that famous flower that later became the symbol of Armistice—and later, Veterans—Day. Why the poppy?

Wild poppies flower when other plants in their direct neighbourhood are dead. Their seeds can lie on the ground for years and years, but only when there are no more competing flowers or shrubs in the vicinity (for instance when someone firmly roots up the ground), these seeds will sprout.

There was enough rooted up soil on the battlefield of the Western Front; in fact the whole front consisted of churned up soil. So in May 1915, when McCrae wrote his poem, around him bloodred poppies blossomed like no one had ever seen before.

But in this poem the poppy plays one more role. The poppy is known as a symbol of sleep. The last line We shall not sleep, though poppies grow / In Flanders fields might point to this fact. Some kinds of poppies are used to derive opium from, from which morphine is made. Morphine is one of the strongest painkillers and was often used to put a wounded soldier to sleep. Sometimes medical doctors used it in a higher dose to put the incurable wounded out of their misery.

Now a day to honor those who have served in our wars, Veterans Day has an interesting history in its original Armistice Day incarnation. It was actually established as a day dedicated to world peace, back in the early post-WWI year of 1926, when it was still possible to believe that WWI had been the war fought to end all wars.

The original proclamation establishing Armistice Day as a holiday read as follows:

Whereas the 11th of November 1918, marked the cessation of the most destructive, sanguinary, and far reaching war in human annals and the resumption by the people of the United States of peaceful relations with other nations, which we hope may never again be severed, and

Whereas it is fitting that the recurring anniversary of this date should be commemorated with thanksgiving and prayer and exercises designed to perpetuate peace through good will and mutual understanding between nations; and

Whereas the legislatures of twenty-seven of our States have already declared November 11 to be a legal holiday: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate (the House of Representatives concurring), that the President of the United States is requested to issue a proclamation calling upon the officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings on November 11 and inviting the people of the United States to observe the day in schools and churches, or other suitable places, with appropriate ceremonies of friendly relations with all other peoples.

After the carnage of World War II, of course, the earlier hope that peaceful relations among nations would not be severed had long been extinguished. By the time I was a young child, a weary nation sought to honor those who had fought in all of its wars in order to secure the peace that followed—even if each peace was only a temporary one.

And isn’t an armistice a strange (although understandable) sort of hybrid, after all; a decision to lay down arms without anything really having been resolved? Think about the recent wars that have ended through armistice: WWI, which segued almost inexorably into WWII; the 1948 war following the partition of Palestine; the Korean War; and the Gulf War. All of these conflicts exploded again into violence—or have continually threatened to—ever since.

So this Veterans/Armistice Day, let’s join in saluting and honoring those who have fought for our country. The hope that some day war will not be necessary is a laudable one—and those who fight wars hold it, too. But that day has clearly not yet arrived—and, realistically but sadly, most likely it never will.

What’s with this “OK Boomer” business?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s a thing.

William Shatner got into a Twitter fight about it.

Here’s an explanation of how the phrase is being used:

…[T]he term ‘boomer’ doesn’t precisely mean ‘baby boomer,’ not on the internet, anyway, where Kelly adds “we’re constantly navigating our identities.”

“We’re not using ‘boomer’ per se to take down people who were born after World War II in the baby boom. We’re using it in an ironic, often humorous, though sometimes malicious way as a catchall or stand-in for a set of attitudes. A ‘boomer’ [in this case] is an older, angry white male who is shaking his fist at the sky while not being able to take an insult. They have close-minded opinions, are resistant to change — whether it’s new technology or gender inclusivity — and are generally out of touch with how their behaviors affect other people.”

In other words: shut up, old white male person who hasn’t hopped onboard every stupid trend that’s come down the pike to be embraced (and required) by younger people ignorant of history, intolerant of liberty, and to a large extent devoid of one of the possible perks of old age: wisdom.

Oh, but I’m generalizing, something I don’t like to do based on age, or sex, or race, or much of anything else. People are individuals, and neither the young nor the old are any one thing.

However, if I may allow myself to generalize, I will add that people who use the phrase “OK Boomer” as a put-down, a way to insult someone and discount that person’s point of view if he or she happens to disagree and to be older, are themselves ignorant and arrogant fools.

Maybe they’ll learn better as they get older.

Of course, it was certain Boomers who popularized the phrase, “Never trust anyone over thirty” – which was actually coined by Jack Weinberg, activist leftist and member of the previous generation, the Silent one. Ooops! Both Boomers and Silents are now being reviled by some of those under 30 – although some Millennials are now feeling the hot breath of forty breathing down their necks.

Thirty years ago the Berlin Wall came down: how about those “experts”?

The New Neo Posted on by

It was momentous when it happened thirty years ago: the fall of the Wall.

No one quite foresaw exactly what it meant, and yet it seemed a day of great hope and optimism:

By the time the Wall came down, the Communists had already lost their grip on Poland and Hungary. Before 1989 was out, Soviet-style regimes would surrender power in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. Within the next couple of years, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union itself would throw over their Communist leaders and break up along the lines of nationality…

For those who had lived much of their lives since the Second World War in a bipolar global configuration, and under the constant threat of “mutually assured destruction” in a nuclear holocaust, the fall of the Wall was an event they never expected to see. Both sides had long made clear their intention to give no ground along it, after all, and their armed forces glared at each other in high states of readiness day in, day out, around the clock, across its crude divide.

I certainly had not expected to see the event; it caught me unawares. But as I wrote previously:

If the experts – academic, governmental, and media – had been unable to foresee this, then how could I trust them to guide me in the future? In retrospect, it was probably the first time I began to distrust my usual sources of information, although I certainly didn’t see them as lying – I saw them as incompetent, really no better than bad fortunetellers.

What they seemed to lack was an overview, a sense of history and pattern. Newspapers could report on events, but those events seemed disconnected from each other: first this happened, then that happened, then the other thing happened, and then the next, and so on and so forth. In the titanic decades-long battle between the US and the USSR, there had been a certain underlying narrative (yes, sometimes that word is appropriate) that involved the threat of Armageddon, and the necessity to avoid it at almost all costs, while stopping the spread of Communism. Although T.S. Eliot had said the world would end “not with a bang but a whimper,” who ever thought the Soviet Union would end in such a whimpery way, and especially without much forewarning? It seemed preposterous, something like that moment in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy throws the bucket of water on the Wicked Witch, who dissolves into a steaming heap of clothing, crying “I’m melting, melting.”

I realize that if I’d been more aware, there were signs that this was happening, and there were people – precious few – who planned and foresaw it. But in general:

Predictions of the Soviet Union’s impending demise were discounted by many Western academic specialists, and had little impact on mainstream Sovietology. For example, Amalrik’s book “was welcomed as a piece of brilliant literature in the West” but “virtually no one tended to take it at face value as a piece of political prediction.” Up to about 1980, the strength of the Soviet Union was widely overrated by critics and revisionists alike.

In 1983, Princeton University professor Stephen Cohen described the Soviet system as remarkably stable.

The Central Intelligence Agency also badly over-estimated the internal stability of the Soviet Union, and did not anticipate the speed of its collapse. Former DCI Stansfield Turner in 1991 wrote in the US Journal Foreign Affairs, “We should not gloss over the enormity of this failure to forecast the magnitude of the Soviet crisis . . . Yet I never heard a suggestion from the CIA, or the intelligence arms of the departments of Defense or State, that numerous Soviets recognized a growing, systemic economic problem.”

More background about the Wall itself:

Before the Wall went up in 1961, hundreds of thousands of East Germans had availed themselves of unhindered access to the West through Berlin to gain the precious gift of freedom. During the 28 years the Wall was in place, scores of mostly young people, trying to escape the prison encased by its concrete and barbed wire, died from East German bullets.

On Nov. 9, 1989, when East Berliners once again acquired the liberty to pass through the inner-city partition, it seemed as if all was somehow right with the world. The strains of Beethoven’s immortal Ninth Symphony soon filled one of the great Berlin concert halls, with the word for “Freedom” substituted for “Joy” as the focus of celebration in the choral text of the final movement. And, as subsequent events cascaded toward the reunification of Germany, the end of the Cold War, and the more widespread collapse of Communism, many of us allowed ourselves to believe that world peace was at hand.

I was not one of those people who believed any such thing. But I knew a big change had occurred, and I celebrated.

I also knew I had no idea what a change such as this ultimately might mean. But we go forward into a future that’s ever-evolving, and ever-surprising us – even (or maybe especially) the “experts.”

Posting is a bit late today: reflections

The New Neo Posted on by

Posting is a bit late today. One reason is that this morning I heard of the death of an old friend I hadn’t really seen in many years. The death was expected – I already knew this person was very ill – but the event stirs up memories and thoughts about the passage of time.

Getting old is no joke. Right now, I’m not even what I ever thought of as “old,” because when I was very young I had relatives who were well into their eighties but never seemed old to me. At this point, I’ve come to think that “old” starts around 95. And I keep revising that turning point upwards as I inch upwards myself.

But the truth is that more and more people I know are ill or are dead. That’s inevitable and yet sobering, very sobering, when it happens.

Growing old isn’t psychologically easy, and that’s in addition to the physiological changes. I’ve been wrestling with it in various ways myself. For now I’ll just add this, from one of my favorite poems:

Overhead, overhead
Rushes life in a race,
As the clouds the clouds chase;
And we go,
And we drop like the fruits of the tree,
Even we,
Even so.

[ADDENDUM: Please see this previous post for more ruminations on the subject, plus another poem).

Bloomberg: I suppose I should mention…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that Michael Bloomberg seems poised to enter the presidential race as a Democrat.

A few observations:

—Bloomberg only recently became a Democrat about a year ago. However, he actually did what Churchill called “reratting”– that is, changing his political affiliation once and then changing it back again, because he’d been a lifelong Democrat until 2001.

—Bloomberg is short, which seems to matter in a politician (it’s not an advantage). He is usually reported as being 5′ 7″, but my guess is that he’s a mite shorter. This would make for an interesting juxtaposition with Trump, who has already nicknamed him “Little Michael.”

—Bloomberg is another old white guy (a Jewish one, at that). He is now 77 and would be 78 by Election Day 2020. He was born on Valentine’s Day, for what that’s worth.

—Bloomberg is another mega-rich man from New York City, although he grew up in Massachusetts.

—Bloomberg is considered a centrist, and compared to the group of Democrats running this year, he is.

Christopher Steele is at it again

The New Neo Posted on by

It worked so well the first time, he figures he might as well have a rerun, this time in the UK:

Christopher Steele became famous in the United States as the author of a “dossier” that claimed Russians had been “cultivating, supporting, and assisting” Donald Trump “for at least 5 years.”

Now Steele is back, claiming that the Russians have been cultivating the Tories and Boris Johnson for . . . five years.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Ah, but Steele can. And despite his preposterous claims, he nearly brought down a president – or at least it looked for a while as though he might do so:

…[T]he whole shooting match should have ended once the world got a chance to read Steele’s reports. Any sane person’s Malcolm Gladwell-Blink reaction to these memos would be that they were lunatic conspiratorial horseshit…

No part of this Clintonian 9/11 Truth tale of a world riddled with plotters united by the same statistically rare urge to treason (and the same strategic instinct to create unnecessary layers of felony witnesses) has ever been proved: not the “moles in the DNC and hackers in the U.S.,” nor any of the sleeper émigré conduits, nor the sophisticated Russian hackers in Prague who for some reason needed the direction of the medallion taxi owner/Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.

Trump aides Page and Paul Manafort, named as key conduits, managed to keep their conspiracy to act as intelligence go-betweens hidden even from secret FISA monitoring, the vast Chinese swindles never emerged, and no one ever found those cutout consular officials, whom Steele in an interview with a State Department official seemed to have believed were being paid out of a nonexistent Russian consulate in Miami.

And yet Steele is back for another go-round.

It’s the one-year anniversary of the Camp Fire…

The New Neo Posted on by

…that destroyed the town of Paradise:

The Town of Paradise will hold several events Friday to honor the people who lost their lives.

At 11:08 a.m., 85 seconds of silence will be held for the 85 lives lost. That’s for anyone to participate in no matter where you are at.

At noon there will be the groundbreaking of Hope Plaza off the Skyway.

Later in the afternoon around 2 p.m., World Kitchen will host a free community meal at the Paradise Alliance Church.

New drone video shows what Paradise looks like today. The Camp Fire destroyed 14,000 homes in Paradise and the surrounding communities of Magalia and Concow. Approximately 12 homes have been rebuilt in this last year.

People find a place hard to abandon completely, if it’s been home – even if it’s built in a very vulnerable place. But most of the people of Paradise seem to have moved to Chico, perhaps permanently, a town of about 90,000 which has increased by about 20,000 people after the fire.

Here’s a drone video showing how much cleanup has occurred in some areas of Paradise:

“Whistleblower” credibility

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a post at RedState entitled, “If Ciaramella is the Whistleblower, Democrats Have Made a Major Blunder and Their Credibility Will Evaporate.” An excerpt:

When the American people fully understand that Ciaramella submitted his complaint for the sole purpose of triggering an impeachment inquiry, and learn about his activities and close associations in D.C., the limited credibility the Democratic Party still retains will evaporate. Especially if the Durham investigation turns up criminal or merely unethical behavior on the part of Obama Administration officials.

One observation I have is that the repeated use of the term “whistleblower” gives Ciaramella (or whosever it is) much too much credit. He is not an actual whistleblower, a term with a precise legal definition that this person does not even begin to meet, and that’s true whether it’s Ciaramella or not:

As I first explained in a column six weeks ago, the so-called “whistleblower” is not a whistleblower at all. The complaint he filed against President Trump does not meet the two requisite conditions set forth in the ICWPA. That is, the alleged wrongful conduct must involve intelligence activity and it must be committed by a member of the intelligence community.

This was meticulously explained in an 11-page opinion by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) when it issued the following opinion: “The president is not a member of the intelligence community, and his communication with a foreign leader involved no intelligence operation or other activity aided at collecting or analyzing foreign intelligence.”…

To put it plainly, there is no whistleblower statute that permits an unelected and inferior federal employee to blow the whistle on the president, the most superior officer in the U.S. government.

Article II of the Constitution gives the president sweeping power to conduct foreign affairs, negotiate with leaders of other nations, make requests or solicit information.

In addition, even for a bona fide whistleblower, there is no guarantee of anonymity.

And yet you will find that virtually every liberal – and nearly all the MSM coverage – proclaims that this is a whistleblower and that it is wrong to “out” him. So much for facts, or law. The stakes are too high for the Democrats and the MSM to pay attention to such niceties.

So why would they care who Ciaramella is or what his motives might be, or even whether he is trustworthy? Will Democratic credibility collapse even more as a result of what we learn about him and how biased he is, and how connected to the major coup planners? It really depends, as so many things do, on what the vast (or maybe not-so-vast) middle-of-the-road group of Americans manages to learn about it, and what they ultimately come to believe is true.

The Democrats’ plan is ultimately to marginalize the “whistleblower,” and make him a person who served merely to jump-start a huge investigation in which biased witnesses attempt to corroborate (mostly through their own opinions rather than factual knowledge) what the “whistleblower” said Trump had done and how alarming it was. The idea was (and still is) to hammer home the same message from various other sources and hope that sheer repetition and numbers will make the public forget that there is no actual evidence of wrongdoing.

Another hope the Democrats have is to discover an actual smoking gun if they search long enough and hard enough. If that were to happen, who the “whistleblower” is will then become relatively unimportant.

Those are their hopes. So far it doesn’t seem to have happened. And of course, there are the looming Horowitz and Durham investigations, breathing down their necks.

[NOTE: For much more on who Ciaramella is, please see this.]

Schiff rules

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I wrote a post about impeachment in which I mentioned that they are about to hold public hearings. The post ended like this:

If this report is correct, Republican counsel will be allowed to ask questions. Fancy that.

Note the sarcasm. I could not imagine that Schiff would be allowing Republicans free rein to point out the flaws in what the witnesses would be saying.

And indeed, my skepticism was warranted:

Just a little earlier today, House Intelligence Committee Chairman and de facto leader of the House impeachment caucus released a directive in which he identified the only three areas potential public witnesses would be allowed to testify about…

Schiff is also requiring Ranking Member, CA Republican Devin Nunes, to submit a list of all the GOP’s potential witnesses no later than “Saturday, November 8” (apparently calendars are not available to the House Democrats) and he must provide “detailed” justification of each witness.

The three questions are as follows:

1. Did the President request that a foreign leader and government initiate investigations to benefit the President’s personal political interests in the United States, including an investigation related to the President’s political rival and potential opponent in the 2020 U.S. presidential election?

2. Did the President — directly or through agents — seek to use the power of the Office of the President and other instruments of the federal government in other ways to apply pressure on the head of state and government of Ukraine to advance the President’s personal political interests, including by leveraging an Oval Office meeting desired by the President of Ukraine or by withholding U.S. military assistance to Ukraine?

3. Did the President and his Administration seek to obstruct, suppress, or cover up information to conceal from the Congress and the American people evidence about the President’s actions and conduct?

Schiff wants to present a semblance of fairness without actual fairness at all. The real question is – as it has been all along – how many of the people can Schiff fool how much of the time?

[NOTE: This may be parenthetical – but I don’t think Schiff is an especially popular figure, even among Democrats. There is something shifty (pun intended) and repellent about him.]