Melania Trump might be suing Hunter Biden …

The New Neo Posted on by

… for defamation. Here’s the story:

Hunter Biden, in an interview with British journalist Andrew Callaghan, stated, “Epstein introduced Melania to Trump. The connections are, like, so wide and deep.” He doubled down with “Jeffrey Epstein introduced Melania, and that’s how Melania and the first lady and the president met,” repeating these false remarks despite their glaring lack of credibility. These inflammatory claims hinge on assertions made by Michael Wolff, an author with a notorious reputation for fabricating stories.

Wolff gained some notoriety back in 2018 with a book on Trump; I wrote about him previously in this post as well as this one.

Hunter Biden is quite a piece of work. It occurs to me that one of his most salient characteristics is his utter lack of shame. The laptop revelations seem to have scarcely made a dent in his willingness to give public interviews and in his arrogance, and his previous protection from legal consequences have emboldened an already very very bold and very corrupt man.

As far as stopping the accusations against Trump and Melania go and apologizing, Hunter’s answer is succinct and characteristically profane:

Note especially that duping chuckle at the end, and the pseudo-charming smile.

If it does come to a lawsuit, can Melania win? She’s a public figure – and so is Hunter Biden. As such, she has a high standard of proof over which to hurdle, because of Sullivan. She would have to prove Hunter’s actual malice, or knowledge that his assertion was a lie, or reckless disregard for the truth. Hunter is overwhelmingly malicious, mendacious, and reckless. But proving those things were operating in this case might be difficult.

Then again, Trump has long held that he wants to test Sullivan. So this case would test it, I suppose.

The Trump-Putin meeting looms

The New Neo Posted on by

Do they use the word “summit” anymore?

And can you imagine Kamala Harris meeting Putin?

Trump is trying to lower expectations somewhat:

President Trump estimated Thursday there is a 25% chance that his Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin will end in failure — adding that a “more important” meeting could take place later with both Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

The dealmaker-in-chief insisted in an interview with Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade that he is the only reason the Russian dictator is coming to the table, and told reporters later in the Oval Office the sitdown in Anchorage would just be a first step.

Twenty-five percent chance of failure is Trump’s version of “pretty high chance of failure.”

There’s also this:

“I’m the toughest one that he’s ever had to deal with. He’s never had to deal with anybody like me.”

Whether or not Trump is the toughest person Putin has ever dealt with, it’s certainly the case that Putin has probably never dealt with anyone like Trump because Trump is sui generis. And it’s possible that Putin is the toughest person Trump has ever dealt with.

Trump is saying that this meeting with Putin is preliminary, and if it goes well there is likely to be a followup with Zelensky and Putin. If the meeting with Putin doesn’t go well, then “I’m not calling anybody, I’m going home.”

And indeed, some in the MSM are calling it a summit: here’s CNN with “Trump and Putin to meet in Alaska for historic summit,” and here’s The Hill with “New details emerge on Trump, Putin summit in Alaska.”

Why are the Democrats choosing to align with criminals?

The New Neo Posted on by

Isn’t that a losing game? Don’t the vast majority of US voters want to be safe from crime?

And after all, didn’t Democrats learn their lesson about this during the election of 1988, when one of the reasons Dukakis lost is that he was perceived to have been responsible for a prisoner furlough program that let a convicted murderer out for the weekend and the man then proceeded to commit assault and rape?

Well, 1988 was a long time ago and some things have changed – although not, I think, the fact that most people want to be free from violent crime. However, my guess – and it’s only a guess – is that Democrats are aligning with criminals for a reason, and the reason is that their constituency has boiled down to the following: actual criminals, aspirational criminals, the women who love criminals, rich people who have enough money to set up enclaves to protect themselves from criminals, people who hate the police for whatever reason, and virtue signalers for whom the perceived virtue of being forgiving towards criminals is more important than other considerations and whose own safety has never been seriously compromised (that is, they’ve never been mugged by reality).

Those groups added together may constitute the majority of the people in blue cities, and so this may be perceived by the left as a winning platform in such places. At the moment, Democrats seem to be concentrating on consolidating their power in blue blue areas and then hoping to fan out from there.

That’s the only explanation I can come up with right now.

Aiming towards evil: Lenin and music

The New Neo Posted on by

A while back I was looking up one of my favorite films, The Lives of Others, and I came across this quote at Wiki:

…Maxim Gorky [said] that Lenin’s favorite piece of music was Beethoven’s Appassionata. Gorky recounted a discussion with Lenin:

“And screwing up his eyes and chuckling, [Lenin] added without mirth:

“‘But I can’t listen to music often, it affects my nerves, it makes me want to say sweet nothings and pat the heads of people who, living in a filthy hell, can create such beauty. But today we mustn’t pat anyone on the head or we’ll get our hand bitten off; we’ve got to hit them on the heads, hit them without mercy, though in the ideal we are against doing any violence to people. Hm-hm—it’s a hellishly difficult office!'”

It’s not easy being a dictator. Apparently, one always has to make sure nothing soft enters the psyche.

And speaking of evil, the German police and SS men and soldiers who massacred unarmed civilians – including women and children – in Eastern Europe as part of the Einsatzgruppen had to be steeled to do their dirty dirty work. They didn’t start by murdering Jews; first on the agenda were the Polish leaders and intelligentsia. And in terms of “steeling,” this is how Hitler himself put it at that point:

As stated by Hitler: “… there must be no Polish leaders; where Polish leaders exist they must be killed, however harsh that sounds”.

“However harsh that sounds.”

They were given liberal supplies of alcohol. Later, after much brutal and barbarous killing of Jews including women and children, it was this way for the killers:

After a time, Himmler found that the killing methods used by the Einsatzgruppen were inefficient: they were costly, demoralising for the troops, and sometimes did not kill the victims quickly enough. Many of the troops found the massacres to be difficult if not impossible to perform. Some of the perpetrators suffered physical and mental health problems, and many turned to drink.As much as possible, the Einsatzgruppen leaders militarized the genocide. The historian Christian Ingrao notes an attempt was made to make the shootings a collective act without individual responsibility. Framing the shootings in this way was not psychologically sufficient for every perpetrator to feel absolved of guilt. Browning notes three categories of potential perpetrators: those who were eager to participate right from the start, those who participated in spite of moral qualms because they were ordered to do so, and a significant minority who refused to take part. A few men spontaneously became excessively brutal in their killing methods and their zeal for the task. Commander of Einsatzgruppe D, SS-Gruppenführer Otto Ohlendorf, particularly noted this propensity towards excess, and ordered that any man who was too eager to participate or too brutal should not perform any further executions.

During a visit to Minsk in August 1941, Himmler witnessed an Einsatzgruppen mass execution first-hand and concluded that shooting Jews was too stressful for his men. By November he made arrangements for any SS men suffering ill health from having participated in executions to be provided with rest and mental health care. He also decided a transition should be made to gassing the victims, especially the women and children, and ordered the recruitment of expendable native auxiliaries who could assist with the murders. Gas vans, which had been used previously to kill mental patients, began to see service by all four main Einsatzgruppen from 1942. However, the gas vans were not popular with the Einsatzkommandos, because removing the dead bodies from the van and burying them was a horrible ordeal. Prisoners or auxiliaries were often assigned to do this task so as to spare the SS men the trauma.

The Severity Order was issued to the army in October of 1941:

In this eastern theatre, the soldier is not only a man fighting in accordance with the rules of the art of war, but also the ruthless standard bearer of a national conception and the avenger of bestialities which have been inflicted upon German and racially related nations. For this reason the soldier must learn fully to appreciate the necessity for the severe but just retribution that must be meted out to the subhuman species of Jewry.

In other words, harden yourselves to the killing of innocent civilians, often women and children, not as unintended collateral damage but in cold blood. For some, this appears to have been rather easy:

British historian Hugh Trevor-Roper noted that although Himmler had forbidden photographs of the killings, it was common for both the men of the Einsatzgruppen and for bystanders to take pictures to send to their loved ones, which he felt suggested widespread approval of the massacres.

Few objected, very few.

Update on my ex-husband

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday my ex-husband did indeed manage to get out of the rehab hospital and come home, against their recommendations. Without going into details, I’ll just say it was a very stressful day.

I don’t know how it will ultimately go. But at the moment our son is visiting for a few days and helping out. He lives far away, so his presence here is a big treat. His visit doesn’t represent what the day-to-day reality will be, but it’s still great and we’re trying to get as much done as possible while he’s here. For example, that includes getting rid of at least part of a formidable accumulation of junk.

One pleasant surprise is that my ex-husband is eligible for some pretty good temporary benefits in terms of visiting nurses and visiting physical therapists, courtesy of Medicare. They came today – the day after his release – to do an evaluation, which I consider pretty speedy. They were extremely nice, too – we were all laughing and joking quite a bit.

So that’s today.

AOL dialup is ending

The New Neo Posted on by

Are you kidding me? Dialup? It was still around?

AOL dialup is sort of like the coelacanth, but its days are numbered:

AOL, the company previously known formally as America Online, is discontinuing its Dial-up internet service after 34 years.

The service will shutter on September 30, meaning “the associated software, the AOL Dialer software and AOL Shield browser, which are optimized for older operating systems and dial-up internet connections, will be discontinued,” the web service provider said on its website.

I know people who still have AOL email, which won’t be affected.

I bet most of you remember the tonal sound of dialup, and the wait. I certainly do, although I never used AOL. Hey, I remember search engines before Google.

I first got online around 1995, mostly to get information about my arm injury. I never thought I’d use the internet that much, and just look what happened. Hooked.

Minnesota fraud case: the perps are not diverse

The New Neo Posted on by

From Powerline:

The number of defendants charged in the massive Feeding Our Future fraud has now reached 73. Fifty have been convicted. Almost every defendant is a first- or second-generation Somali immigrant. In a case that has yet to be charged, Somalis figure prominently in a Minnesota Medicaid fraud that bears some of the hallmarks of the Feeding Our Future case, but nothing will ever top that one.

Somali Minnesotans are also featured in Minnesota’s apparent daycare fraud. In 2023 Deena Winter reported that about half of the defendants then charged in the Feeding Our Future case had been paid tens of millions more in state money for services such as providing child care and assisting seniors and people with disabilities.

I suppose some would consider it racist to point out this lack of diversity, even though Somalis are not a race. Somalia is a country. It also happens to be overwhelmingly Muslim, which is also not a race. But it’s a third-world country, a failed country, and one that even Somalis realize is the world’s most corrupt. The link goes to an article in The Somali Digest, which doesn’t pull its punches on the subject:

Somalia’s last-place ranking in the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index is a stark reminder of the challenges it faces in overcoming institutional corruption. This position, worse than that of Venezuela, Syria, and South Sudan, points to a deeply ingrained issue that transcends simple acts of bribery or fraud. Instead, it indicates a systemic rot that affects every layer of governance and public service.

The ranking is about corruption in “governance and public service.” In Minnesota, the Somali fraudsters were taking advantage of government programs to get money, so I’d say it comes under the heading of supposed “public service.”

I would bet that most Somalis who come here don’t participate in that sort of fraud, but there’s little question that many do and have brought their culture of corruption here.

ABC reporter mugged by reality

The New Neo Posted on by

The current Democrat line is that crime in DC is no biggee. But ABC news anchor Kyra Phillips begs to differ:

“We can talk about the numbers going down, but crime is happening every single day because we’re all experiencing it firsthand, working and living down here,” the “ABC News Live” host continued, as she reported on President Trump’s decision to place the city’s police department under federal control and deploy National Guard troops into the streets.

As I wrote yesterday, the reduced crime statistics in DC are very likely to be an artifact of purposeful minimizing and re-definition of crimes in compiling those numbers. But that probably doesn’t fool most of DC’s residents, who not only have their own anecdotal experiences, but those of their friends and acquaintances. It would be more informative to have valid statistics, but in the absence of those people will go by their own perceptions.

On the Gaza tunnels

The New Neo Posted on by

The Gazans are adept at three things: propaganda, killing, and digging elaborate and extensive tunnels. In fact, their tunnel system is almost certainly the most elaborate in the world. But in that, they are helped along by geography/geology.

Here’s an in-depth (pun intended, I guess) look at the tunnels and why they are so easy to build and difficult to eradicate:

The unique conditions of the Gaza Strip in this context are also well known: its soft sandstone allows for relatively easy subterranean digging, in contrast to the hard limestone terrain in Lebanon and the West Bank. As a result, the IDF’s operations in these areas have had a very different character.

In Lebanon, Hezbollah’s use of subterranean infrastructure was substantially more limited. … [M]ost of Hezbollah’s “strategic” subterranean systems were limited in location and scope, and were largely known to Israeli intelligence. As a result, when the offensive phase of the campaign against Hezbollah began in September 2024, the Israeli Air Force destroyed most of these systems within hours, days, and a few weeks. … Thus, in the Lebanese arena, a decisive victory was achieved relatively quickly, primarily through the combination of air power and intelligence, against an adversary widely regarded as stronger and more dangerous than Hamas.

Indeed, the prolonged campaign in the Gaza Strip, now approaching two years, stems decisively from the challenge of the underground domain. Beyond the issue of the hostages, which significantly restricts IDF operations, the vast underground space in the Gaza Strip enables Hamas to shelter, hide, and disappear. From there, small guerrilla units of the organization emerge from concealed shafts embedded within the built or ruined urban landscape, set up ambushes, launch RPG rockets, and deploy or attach explosive devices. Despite all the experience and skills the IDF has acquired on the subject, there is currently no simple, practical way to neutralize this mode of warfare. Moreover, not only the prolonged nature of the fighting in the Gaza Strip reflects the challenge but also the difficulty in achieving a decisive outcome and the massive scale of forces required—including both regular and reserve brigades and divisions. These stem directly from the limited ability to contend with the subterranean threat. Lacking an effective solution, the IDF is left with little choice but to flood the area with a large number of forces and advance slowly and methodically as the default course of action.

Thus, the long duration of the campaign in the Gaza Strip, the difficulty in achieving a decisive outcome, and the immense scale of forces involved all stem directly from the underground challenge. …

The Viet Cong were the first to use subterranean networks extensively against the United States, which struggled to find an effective response. However, the Viet Cong’s tunnel system was likely only half the length of Gaza’s and ran mainly through uninhabited jungle terrain and not dense urban areas. In this sense, Gaza’s network is unique in both scale and implications—not only compared to Lebanon and the West Bank, but also globally.

Much more at the link.

Since the post-10/7 war began, the nature and extent of the Gazan tunnel system has been discussed a great deal. But I think many people are nevertheless unaware of how exceptionally extensive it is, and how it continues to be used by Hamas as above-ground Gaza becomes rubble. It remains a huge problem in Gaza and an enormous factor in the duration and difficulty of this war, and the author believes that it would probably be a threat to any group that would take over postwar.