It’s a long long way to November of 2028, so don’t count AOC out …

The New Neo Posted on by

… despite her abominable performance at the Munich Security Conference, her first big appearance on a foreign policy stage. From Ace, who does not pull his punches:

If you took the day off yesterday, unlike me, you may have missed the story that Donkey-Chompers [AOC] went to the Munich Security Conference because she’s running for president and someone told her she had to show her “foreign policy chops” and so she read an issue of The Nation on the plane and figured she was all set.

She was not in fact all set. She embarrassed herself horribly — more horribly than usual, if you can believe that — and may have permanently damaged her ambition of becoming a Senator, let alone President of the United States. …

* She asserted that the next president must impose a “wealth tax,” and was embarrassed by a much better informed South American who told her to her face that Latin countries and repeatedly tried this and it had resulted in bankruptcy and immiseration every time. …

* She claimed that Marco Rubio was wrong that cowboys came from Spain. They did, because cowboys ride horses that only came over to America with the Spanish conquistadors. Some yesterday, Sean Davis I think, said, “How could someone with the last name Cortez not know that Cortez introduced horses to the Americas?”

* She claimed that Trump only thought he had the right to “kidnap” the dictator Maduro because Venezuela is “south of the equator” and you know those damn racist white Europeans think they’re smarter and better than the Global South. Pro-Tip: Venezuela is not in fact south of the equator. I guess if you want to be charitable to a Make A Wish Foundation Pretend Presidential Candidate, you could say she was close. I mean, it is a few hundred miles from the Equator.

* Asked a lay-up, no-surprise, you-knew-this-was-coming question about the US defending Taiwan from a hypothetical Chinese invasion, this idiot literally said “um” and “you know” for a full minute before finally speaking in a (more or less) grammatical sentence, stating, essentially, Well we’ll just have to hope that doesn’t happen.

All those things happened, and the press is covering up for her for the most part – of course.

Bloomberg claims that her only critics were “Republican commentators” who “claimed” — lied, that means — that she was “unprepared.”

Everyone with eyes and ears understands she was hideously unprepared. The analogy that occurs to everyone is that she looked like a third grader who was supposed to give a book report but didn’t read the book so she just “ummed” for a minute before saying “it was a very, very, very, very good book, thank you.”

Amazingly, Bloomberg claims that after she seemingly “flubbed” her answer, she came up with a “cogent” response, which was to say that we’ll just have to hope and pray that China never invades Taiwan so no I won’t answer your question about whether we’d defend Taiwan and I won’t even sound authoritative in refusing to answer.

But I have an observation to add: it won’t matter to Democrat voters, who will vote for her anyway if she’s the nominee. And she might be the nominee. She’s got all the qualifications, after all: she’s telegenic (despite the “donkey-choppers” nickname), she’s young, she’s female, she’s Hispanic, and she’s a leftist. What more could a person want?

Yes, Newsom (another telegenic stupidhead) will give her a run for her money. But stupidity and ignorance and the inability to answer questions cogently have not been a bar to the nomination recently: see the cognitively-challenged Biden and the word-salad master Harris.

Come to think of it, maybe by 2028 Mamdani will try to run [*see below]. He’s more able to – as Holden Caulfield would say – shoot the breeze and sling the old bull than the rest of them put together.

Alternatively, I think if AOC wants to be the next senator from NY (in 2028), it’s hers, and I don’t think this performance will matter.

NOTE: Contrast with Marco Rubio, who acquitted himself very well indeed at Munich.

[* A commenter pointed out that Mamdani isn’t a natural born citizen and therefore can’t run for president. Hey, but if AOC runs for president in 2028, Mamdani can run for the Senate.]

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) RIP Jesse Jackson, 84. Here’s an article that goes into the many facets of Jackson’s life:

He was a con artist and a “race pimp.” He was an opportunist, a race hustler, and a corporate shakedown expert who enriched himself by using funds earmarked for “the cause” for his own personal gain. He was an admirer of notorious racist and virulent antisemite Louis Farrakhan.

Jesse Jackson, who died on Tuesday at the age of 84, was all of that. He was also one of the greatest orators of the 20th century, a groundbreaking political figure, one of the best political strategists in American history, and a towering figure in local Chicago Democratic politics.

You can’t look at Jesse Jackson as a one-dimensional stick figure. Like all humans, especially those who have left their mark on history, he was a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly.

(2) Another transgender mass murderer. This time it was a man named Robert Dorgan, who also used the name Roberta Esposito. Dorgan killed his ex-wife and one of his children, shot two other of his children, and killed a family friend and then himself, all while they were watching a high school ice hockey game in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

The day before the murders, Dorgan – under the moniker “Roberta Dorgano” – had responded on X to a tweet pointing out that a certain transgender person presenting as a woman was actually a man. Dorgan replied, “keep bashing us, but do not wonder why we go BERSERK.”

Dorgan seems to have been many things: Nazi admirer (if you go by his tattoos), father of six children (one now deceased), and extremely angry. He had undergone sex reassignment surgery in 2020 and his wife had divorced him. He also seems to have critically wounded his wife’s parents. My guess is that he was taking female hormones. Another guess is that he was unbalanced even before he took on the trans identity, but the surgery and “treatment” didn’t help matters in the least and probably exacerbated the problems.

(3) I haven’t written about the Guthrie kidnapping because there’s so little news, but I will mention that DNA on the glove found recently doesn’t match anything in police databases. That doesn’t mean it can’t be traced using genealogy websites that are in the public domain (most are not, but some are).

(4) Washington DC is a cesspool. No, literally:

The Potomac sewage crisis is crossing into historic territory.

Reportedly approaching one of the largest wastewater spills in US history, the Potomac Interceptor collapse is now entering a pivotal stretch as DC Water ramps up pumping capacity to 114 million gallons per day, while E. coli levels near the collapse site remain staggeringly high.

According to Trump:

There is a massive Ecological Disaster unfolding in the Potomac River as a result of the Gross Mismanagement of Local Democrat Leaders, particularly, Governor Wes Moore, of Maryland. A sewer line breach in Maryland has caused millions of gallons of raw sewage to be dumped directly into the Potomac River, a result of incompetent Local and State Management of Essential Waste Management Systems. This is the same Governor who cannot rebuild a Bridge. It is clear Local Authorities cannot adequately handle this calamity. Therefore, I am directing Federal Authorities to immediately provide all necessary Management, Direction, and Coordination …

(5) Amplifying the Muslim call to prayer in New York City:

A tweet making the rounds this week shows video of the Islamic call to prayer, the Adhan, echoing through New York City streets at dawn. Five in the morning. Amplified. Projected over neighborhoods that still carry the scars of September 11, 2001. That date is not ancient history. It is living memory. …

The United States protects religious liberty. That includes Muslims. The First Amendment is not selective. And it should not be. But freedom of religion is not the same thing as forced participation in someone else’s religious proclamation.

The Adhan is not ambient background music. It is a declaration. The phrase “Allahu Akbar” means “God is greatest.” It is a theological claim. It is a call to submission. Practicing Muslims understand this. That is not controversial. That is simply fact.

RIP Robert Duvall, 95

The New Neo Posted on by

Duvall was the character actor par excellence. For a while there, it seemed he was in every movie, usually as some sort of tough guy. The list of his works is long, and most people would cite The Godfather as the most prominent. Maybe it was, but not for me; I don’t like the movie and have only seen it once. For me, it was The Great Santini where Duvall was most memorable. Here’s a scene:

I learned a few things from reading Duvall’s Wiki entry just now. He was married four times, the last time to an Argentinian woman about forty years younger than he. He also was adept at the tango. For some reason, that last fact surprise me:

In 2005, Duvall married his fourth wife, Luciana Pedraza, granddaughter of Argentine aviation pioneer Susana Ferrari Billinghurst. He met Pedraza in Argentina, recalling, “The flower shop was closed, so I went to the bakery. If the flower shop had been open, I never would’ve met her.” Both were born on January 5, though Duvall was 41 years older. They had been together since 1997. He produced, directed, and acted with her in Assassination Tango (2002), much of which was filmed in Buenos Aires. Duvall was known as a skilled Argentine tango dancer and maintained tango studios in both Argentina and the United States.

RIP.

[ADDENDUM: Please see this post on my own attempts to learn to tango.]

President’s Day poetry

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: Today is Presidents’ Day or Washington’s Birthday – or both – and this is a repeat of a previous post.]

I’m not that old, but pedagogical practices in my youth seem absolutely archaic compared to whatever passes for education these days. For starters, we had Washington’s Birthday and Lincoln’s Birthday, and they were on their actual real birthdays: Lincoln on February 12, and Washington on February 22.

Two days off! But they didn’t necessarily fall on Mondays; they fell whenever they fell, and sometimes – alas – they fell on a Saturday or a Sunday.

We also had to memorize terrible patriotic poetry back then, and lots of it. When I say “terrible” I’m not referring to its patriotism, I mean that it just wasn’t very good poetry. I suppose kids weren’t supposed to care about that aspect of it. Also, in those days I was very quick at memorizing poetry and so those early poems have tended to stick. Therefore I have a relatively large bank of memorized doggerel to draw on.

One of those poems was about George Washington. To give you an idea of the flavor of what I’m talking about, it started this way: “Only a baby, fair and small…” and then filled the reader in on all the stages of Washington’s life, verse by verse. I had never looked it up online and was skeptical that it could be found, but voila! Here it is; isn’t the internet great?

And I now present it to you as an example of what the New York City schoolchild used to have to memorize and recite. I seem to recall this was in fifth grade:

Only a baby, fair and small,
Like many another baby son,
Whose smiles and tears came swift at call,
Who ate and slept and grew – that’s all,
The infant Washington.

I’ll let you go to the site and see it for yourself. The next verse is for the schoolboy Washington, then we have the lad Washington, then finally man/patriot and a lot of generalities with the only specifics being “surveyor, general, president.” Why so much emphasis on Washington’s boyhood I don’t know; maybe to go with the cherry tree story. But still, at least we were taught to think highly of Washington.

And Lincoln had a poem for memorization, too. It was a better effort than the Washington one, I think, although still not very good and rather creepy at that. I see now that the poem was by Rosemary Benet, apparently the wife of Stephen Vincent Benet.

I have no idea why the poem they had us memorize about Lincoln was not about his accomplishments at all, but rather about the mother who died when he was nine years old. In the poem, she comes back as a ghost and inquires about him. But here it is:

If Nancy Hanks
Came back as a ghost,
Seeking news
Of what she loved most,
She’d ask first
“Where’s my son?
What’s happened to Abe?
What’s he done?”

“Poor little Abe,
Left all alone.
Except for Tom,
Who’s a rolling stone;
He was only nine,
The year I died.
I remember still
How hard he cried.”

“Scraping along
In a little shack,
With hardly a shirt
To cover his back,
And a prairie wind
To blow him down,
Or pinching times
If he went to town.”

“You wouldn’t know
About my son?
Did he grow tall?
Did he have fun?
Did he learn to read?
Did he get to town?
Do you know his name?
Did he get on?”

The urge that rose in me was to shout, “Yes, YES, don’t you know?” into the void.

Instead of that one, we might have been asked to memorize this poem – or at least the very last part of it, which I’ve always liked:

And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down
As when a lordly cedar, green with boughs,
Goes down with a great shout upon the hills,
And leaves a lonesome place against the sky.

Or what about this old chestnut by Walt Whitman? Schmaltzy, but it still gives me a little shiver when I read it:

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won,
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring;
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills,
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding,
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head!
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still,
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will,
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done,
From fearful trip the victor ship comes in with object won;
Exult O shores, and ring O bells!
But I with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.

Deregulating climate change policy and the war on cars

The New Neo Posted on by

Trump deregulates climate change policy:

This last week, the Trump administration reversed a 2009, Obama-era finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, thus effectively ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that, so the New York Times says, “is dangerously heating the planet.” …

… [T]he post-2009 regulations are not just about those ethereal “greenhouse gases,” a sprawling phrase that’s vague for a reason. Probably the parts of the regulations most perversely effective and annoying deal with what kind of car you can buy and how it runs.

That includes something called the “start/stop” feature, which turns the engine off at red lights and the like.

The article continues:

I’m not a scientist, but I don’t need to be to know that anyone’s estimate of what’s going to happen worldwide over the next 30 years is just so much baloney, and that this would be true even if the prediction were coming from a neutral source rather than a bitterly anti-Trump, scare-mongering advocacy group.

And at Instapundit today, more about the left’s war on cars. Coming to a state near you?:


Here in the U.S., blue states are pivoting toward mileage caps, which would establish maximum “vehicle miles traveled” (“VMT”) allowed for an entire state, with regulators then creating “incentives” to reduce individual driving so as to achieve the VMT objective. From News Nation: “Massachusetts bill aims to reduce driving to meet climate goals”:

A bill in Massachusetts aims to reduce how much driving occurs as part of the state’s climate strategy. The legislation, spearheaded by Democratic State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, would require transportation officials to set goals for “reducing the number of statewide driving miles.”

Because this is such an unpopular idea, Democrat politicians in Massachusetts are trying to hoodwink their voters by naming this legislation the “Freedom to Move Act.” There is just an amazing level of duplicity in the name of that legislation, since the specific intent is to limit individuals’ freedom to move about as they choose.

As Lauren Fix correctly notes about The Freedom to Move Act, “When reducing driving becomes a formal state objective, personal mobility inevitably becomes something to be managed.”

The freedom to drive isn’t in the Constitution, but most Americans believe it’s one of our most cherished liberties. More and more, the left uses “science” to rob us proles of our freedoms, from the implementation of COVID lockdowns to regulations that supposedly deal with climate change – while they feel free to defy the rules they’ve made.

Consorting with Epstein

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Niketas Choniates” makes a valid point:

… [T]he Epstein correspondence has shown that our “elites” are morally bankrupt clowns who exploit their connections. They don’t have to be in a pedo ring to be unfit for what they are trusted with. After Epstein was convicted in 2008 they were still sucking up to him, asking him for favors, wanting to party with him, asking for help with money or connections.

What they are showing us is that it doesn’t matter much what you do, when you’re in the big club (which we ain’t in) you’re in it forever, and they may pretend that they care about the morals of those they associate with but they really don’t.

[He then offers five examples] …

A lot of these people sucking up to Epstein were huffing and puffing about Trump’s low character.

Of course, we already knew that many people – and I’ll even amend that to most people – will make excuses for those on their side, and/or those of whom they’re fond or close, and/or those it might be advantageous to know. There are also many people who believe in forgiveness and believe that only those without sin should cast the first stone. I think most of those asking Epstein for favors, post-2008, were probably in one of those first groups rather than the latter. But I don’t think they’re unusual, nor do I think this is some special characteristic of elites – except for the fact that elites have access to other elites, and therefore are in this position more often.

Maybe I’ve become too cynical.

I also think that, rightly or wrongly, people differentiate sex with older teenagers from sex with pubescent children or children prior to puberty. It’s all offensive and it’s all a crime – and rightly so – but don’t most people consider the latter somehow worse than the former? And Epstein traded on that fact during and after his 2008 plea deal. From coverage in 2008 [my emphasis]:

One of America’s richest men, who holidayed with Prince Andrew and lent his private jet to Bill Clinton, has begun serving an 18-month jail term after pleading guilty to soliciting sex from girls as young as 14. …

Florida authorities began tracking Epstein in 2005, when a young girl told of being recruited for massages and sexual encounters with the financier. The FBI got involved soon afterwards, reportedly digging through Epstein’s rubbish and monitoring his lavish mansion to track how many girls were going in and out.

Although Epstein pleaded guilty on Monday to soliciting prostitution, he has maintained that he thought the girls were over 18.

That last part gave people on out to consider him not so very awful. Because it was a plea deal with fairly lenient punishment – plus an agreement not to pursue federal charges against him – it was possible they really did believe him. It certainly was in their interests to believe him.

Am I making excuses for them? No. I’m simply explaining what I think may have happened with many of them. In general, people tend to believe what they want to believe, and interpret facts in ways that allow them to make excuses for people about whom they wish to make excuses. The world of the rich, famous, and influential runs on knowing others who are rich, famous, and influential, and the old “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” principle. To give up their relationships with Epstein was too costly, and if there was a way to rationalize keeping the status quo, most people probably took it.

NOTE: Trump actually did sever any ties with Epstein, which is laudable.

On trying to understand higher-level science

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve long tried to understand the upper reaches of scientific thought, often to no avail. Even as a very young child, I tried reading books about cosmology or higher-level physics, and although every now and then I managed to absorb something, most of the time the ideas went tantalizingly over my head. But I kept trying.

At the age of eight or nine I was fascinated by George Gamow’s One, Two, Three … Infinity. I don’t know how it came into my hands – I certainly didn’t buy it because I wasn’t buying much of anything back then except the occasional comic book or candy bar. But I tried and tried to understand it, and although much of it was opaque to me, I got the general idea for other parts of it.

I was especially fascinated by the four color theorem, which at the time had not yet been proven (a proof came in 1976):

In mathematics, the four color theorem, or the four color map theorem, states that no more than four colors are required to color the regions of any map so that no two adjacent regions have the same color. Adjacent means that two regions share a common boundary of non-zero length (i.e., not merely a corner where three or more regions meet).

I can’t find my decrepit copy of the book right now, although I’m pretty sure I still have it. But my recollection is that Gamow wrote that, if anyone could offer a proof or could design a map that used more than four colors, that person would achieve fame. I didn’t even know what a proof was, but I tried to design such a map. That, I could understand.

I didn’t quite comprehend the assignment, because after much trial and error I thought I had it. But my map had some countries which resembled pie pieces – a no-no, although I don’t recall if that limitation was made clear in the text of the book. Somehow – how, I don’t recall – I managed to write a letter to Gamow at the university where he taught, and boldly offered my map. It must have been clear that the letter came from a young child of eight or nine; I didn’t even have the ability to type it.

But wonder of wonders, I got a response. I still have that response, which was a standard note sent to the many people who wrote to Gamow with this or that idea. The letter said he just didn’t have time for a reply. But someone – almost certainly not Gamow himself, but someone – was being very kind, and there was a handwritten part in red that explained the error I’d made.

Here is that part:

In case you can’t read that, it says:

P.S. The countries must meet on a line, not at a point. Your map needs only two colors.

Many years have passed since then, and I haven’t stopped trying to understand advanced science. But these days it’s mostly through YouTube videos. I listen when I’m exercising, or doing the dishes, or just vegging out in a chair. This was the latest, and although I think I got the basic idea (everything spins due to initial asymmetry, and continues to spin because there’s nothing to stop it), I simply don’t get the details. But here it is:

However, I’ve also read that the Webb has discovered that the majority of galaxies spin in the same direction, which was not predicted:

About two-thirds of the 263 galaxies studied in a paper published February 17 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society rotate clockwise, while the other one-third rotate counterclockwise.

“The analysis of the galaxies was done by quantitative analysis of their shapes, but the difference is so obvious that any person looking at the image can see it,” Lior Shamir, a computer scientist from Kansas State University and sole author of the study, says in a statement. …

The problem is that astronomers have long posited that galaxies should be evenly split between rotating in one direction or the other, astronomer Dan Weisz from the University of California, Berkeley, who was not involved with the study, wrote for Astronomy back in 2017. “This stems from the idea that we live in an ‘isotropic’ universe, which means that the universe looks roughly the same in every direction. By extension, galaxies shouldn’t have a preferred direction of spin from our perspective,” he added. According to Shamir, there are two strong potential explanations for this discrepancy.

One explanation is that the universe came into existence while in rotation. This theory would support what’s known as black hole cosmology: the hypothesis that our universe exists within a black hole that exists within another parent universe. In other words, black holes create universes within themselves, meaning that the black holes in our own universe also lead to other baby universes. …

Another possible explanation involves the Milky Way’s rotation. Due to an effect called the Doppler shift, astronomers expect galaxies rotating opposite to the Milky Way’s motion to appear brighter, which could explain their overrepresentation in telescopic surveys.

“If that is indeed the case, we will need to re-calibrate our distance measurements for the deep universe,” Shamir explains in the statement.

I’m not going to try to tackle that one.

Voters now prefer Biden??

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t want to be a downer – especially on Valentine’s Day – but what on earth is this about?:

Harvard CAPS/Harris (Jan. 28–29): Mark Penn’s polling firm found that 51% of registered voters say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, compared with 49% who say he’s doing better.

Rasmussen Reports (Feb. 2–4): The Trump-friendly pollster is fending off MAGA criticism after finding that 48% of likely voters say Biden did a better job as president, compared with 40% who chose Trump. Another 8% said the two presidents have performed “about the same.”

YouGov/Economist (Feb. 6–9): This survey found that 46% of U.S. adults say Trump is doing a worse job than Biden, compared with 40% who say he’s doing better. Another 7% said “about the same.”

I would ignore the polls except for the inclusion of Rasmussen, usually quite accurate and also usually quite fair to the right.

More:

That first result represents an 18-point swing since the same poll was taken last February and 58 percent said Trump was doing a better job than Biden, versus 40 percent who said Biden was better.

It’s one thing to hate Trump, but that sort of swing doesn’t represent NeverTrumpers, who tend to be a stable Trump-hating group. What it does represent I’m not sure. The comments to the article are not especially helpful on that score either – I read quite a few and then gave up because they were the usual reflexive ha-ha-ha MAGA-bashing junk.

What do I think this is about? My guess is that those who prefer Biden are a combination of the following: Democrats who’ve always hated Trump and always will, plus Independents who’ve been swayed by all the negative coverage (especially of ICE), some Tucker-type Republicans who think Trump doesn’t hate Jews enough and isn’t isolationist enough, plus independents and people on the right who are angry that Trump hasn’t just snapped his fingers and made the economy well-nigh perfect overnight. In addition, I think many people have very short memories.

It’s depressing, though. And yes, I think at least some of it is real. That doesn’t mean it’s set in stone, but it’s worrisome.

Update on the SAVE Act in the Senate

The New Neo Posted on by

Susan Collins of Maine says she supports the bill with its voting security safeguards, bringing the total probable Senate votes up to 50, with Vance able to act as a tie-breaking vote for the act if – and it’s quite an “if” – there’s enough GOP support for the so-called nuclear option to pass it.

And Collins doesn’t support the nuclear option. Catch-22.

Nor is she the only GOP member who doesn’t support the nuclear option (something similar happened to the Democrats at the hands of Manchin and Sinema during the Biden administration, when they tried to pass a national voting act that reduced voting security and the two senators wouldn’t support the nuclear option to pass it).

Is there a work-around to save SAVE? Maybe:

Lee and other conservatives believe that if they turn to the standing filibuster, rather than the “zombie filibuster,” they can barrel through Democratic resistance.

But some fear that turning to that tool could paralyze the Senate floor for weeks or even months, depending on Senate Democrats’ resolve.

Because most people think the Democrats will win control of at least the House in 2026, time is of the essence.