It’s roundup time again

The New Neo Posted on by

And again and again …

(1) The rate of inflation appears to have slowed since Trump took office.

(2) The House passed a continuing resolution, and now Senate Democrats face a dilemma:

After Magic Mike Johnson magically passed a continuing resolution through the evenly divided House, Senate Democrats are left in an impossible position: Vote for a continuing resolution that cuts $13 billion from non-defense spending… or shut the government down and let my friend, OMB Director Russ Vought, be in charge.

That’s right, if the government is shut down, the most hated man in leftwing circles and the face of Project 2025 will directly manage the government shutdown.

I am begging Senate Democrats… fight the Republicans, filibuster the legislation, and shut the government down!!

Of course, if Democrats spark a government shutdown, the left will suddenly consider government shutdowns to be good.

(3) New Hampshire’s Senator Jeanne Shaheen has announced she won’t run for re-election in 2026 (she’s 78 now, although being that old hasn’t stopped a lot of people). New Hampshire is a funny state and hard to predict, but there’s no question this could represent a GOP pickup in 2026. It depends, of course, on who runs – if it’s ex-Governor Sununu he would probably win, but I think he may really be through with politics and not eager to be a senator in a Trump administration. I’ve never understood Shaheen’s appeal. She’s extremely bland, runs as a moderate, and virtually always votes with the far left.

(4) Zeldin, head of the EPA, has ended this practice:

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin ended the $20 billion “gold bar” scheme set up by former President Joe Biden’s administration.

The money went to people in the National Clean Investment Fund and Clean Communities Investment Accelerator.

“20 billion of your tax dollars were parked at an outside financial institution in a deliberate effort to limit government oversight,” said Zeldin. “Doling out your money through just eight pass through, politically connected, unqualified, and in some cases, brand new NGOs. The money has since been frozen, and the Department of Justice and FBI have been investigating.”

(5) Greenland votes:

A political party in Greenland that favors an incremental approach to independence from Denmark came first in the Arctic territory’s parliamentary election. But a pro-U.S. party recorded its best result ever in a vote that took place in the shadow of President Donald Trump’s pledge to take control of the island.

The center-right Demokraatit party won 29.9% of the votes, up from 9.1% in 2021, ahead of the opposition Naleraq party, which seeks rapid independence and closer ties with the U.S., at 24.5%.

That’s a total of over 50%.

Those emails with Trump-ets

The New Neo Posted on by

Bob Graboyes writes about what he calls “Trump-et blasts” – that is, gratuitous anti-Trump statements in emails on a wide variety of unrelated subjects:

My friend’s note was merely one car in an endless freight train of similar emails rolling and rumbling into my inbox each day. In them, one can discern empirical regularities. Trump-et Blasts are never offered as hypotheses, opinions, or topics for discussion. Rather, they are always stated as Euclidean postulates—self-evident Truths that we surely agree upon and which warrant no discussion. Recipients of Trump-et Blasts have five possible Supreme Court-like responses: affirm, ignore, concur, dissent, or defer.

I’ve noticed these Trump-et blasts more in conversation than in emails to me, probably because almost everyone I know is aware of my politics and doesn’t bother with the random snipes in emails. It’s in casual talking that it comes out, especially if I’m part of a group. In a group, even if people know I disagree, they’re not catering to me. And why should they, actually? Often, it’s a group bonding experience, a sharing of what is considered tautological and the mark of their agreed-on virtue. I’m grandfathered into the group, as it were.

And that is why – as Graboyes describes – the critique of Trump is not really up for discussion on the merits. It’s an article of faith, and/or a thesis they believe has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt or perhaps beyond any doubt.

I wrote on a similar topic back in January of 2005, when I was rather new to the blogging game. It’s called “The fine art of insulting half your audience,” and can be found here. An excerpt:

It happens nearly every time. I’ll be reading a short story, let’s say, enjoying myself, lost in the experience—when suddenly, there it is: the gratuitous and mean-spirited and out-of-context slap at Bush, or at those who support him. It’s not as though the story is even tangentially about politics, either; it can be about anything at all, it doesn’t really matter.

The Bush-dissing will be thrown in when you least expect it, just to let the reader know—well, to let the reader know what, exactly? To let the reader know that the author is hip, kindly, intelligent, moral—oh, just about everything a person ought to be. And that the reader must of course be a member of the club, too—not one of those Others, the warmongers, the selfish and stupid and demonized people who happen to have voted for Bush.

Back when I was one of the gang, too, back when I was in with the in crowd (“if it’s square, we ain’t there”), did I notice when authors dragged in their political credentials from left field? Or perhaps it wasn’t quite as commonplace back then for them to do so?

At any rate, now it seems positively obligatory. I’m reading along, sunk deep within the story, bonding with the characters—and then, suddenly, it’s as though the author has reached a hand out of the pages of the magazine (OK, I’ll confess, sometimes it’s the New Yorker—yes, I still read it for the fiction, just as some people claim they read Playboy for the interviews) and slapped me across the face.

Authors, do you really want to do this? Because, with a single sentence, you’ve managed to alienate and offend (not to mention insult) up to half your audience.

More at the link.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

Khalili, legal residents, free speech, and supporting terrorist organizations

The New Neo Posted on by

As one might expect, the left is very upset at the government’s attempt to deport green card holder and Hamas-friendly former Columbia student Mahmoud Khalili. Senator Kennedy, Louisiana Republican, summarizes the case quite well here:

Well, Mr. Khalil will receive due process because by now his lawyer has already filed a writ of habeas corpus. Mr. Khalil was involved in the protests. He was a Columbia student under the Immigration and Naturalization Act. If you support a terrorist organization you can be deported. Hamas is a terrorist organization. Mr. Khalil’s side of the story, I understand to be that I don’t support Hamas, I just support Palestinians. All I did was file some — post some Facebook posts. I wasn’t involved in any of the illegal protests or the illegal occupation of student buildings or physically intimidating the Jewish people and Jewish students. We’ll find out who’s right.

The Immigration and Naturalization Act, though, is fairly broad. And if the administration can show acts directly and probably indirectly supporting Hamas, they’ll deport him. And he should be deported, if that’s what’s shown in court.

More here:

For those interested in a more detailed legal explanation, Mahmoud Khalil is also deportable for another reason:

Khalil is a spokesman for an organization that supports armed resistance by Hamas. That makes him deportable pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(B).

That provision in the statute allows the deportation of even lawful permanent residents who are “representative[s]” of a “political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity.” 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(3)(B)(i)(IV)(aa)-(bb); see also id. at (B)(v) (“representative” defined as including “an officer, official, or spokesman of an organization.”) Columbia University Apartheid Divestment (“CUAD”) supports armed resistance by Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization.

See Sharon Otterman, Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs Armed Resistance by Hamas, N.Y. Times (Oct. 9, 2024), https://nytimes.com/2024/10/09/nyregion/columbia-pro-palestinian-group-hamas.html…… (CUAD supports armed resistance by Hamas).

Mahmoud Khalil is a spokesman for CUAD.

More at the link.

There is a hierarchy of non-citizens: illegal aliens, legal visa holders, and then legal green card holders. Khalili may have entered on a student visa, but now he has a green card which conveys greater rights. The arguments for deportation depend on the extent of his involvement in support of Hamas and the extent of his illegal activities on its behalf.

My questions are: why was Khalili here in the first place? When did he arrive in the US? Why was he granted a student visa and later a green card? When did he receive his green card – before or after his Columbia activities – and on what basis did he qualify for a green card? Did someone pay for his coming here and his activism?

From his Wiki page:

Mahmoud Khalil was born in a Syrian refugee camp in 1995 and is a citizen of Algeria. He completed his undergraduate studies in Beirut before enrolling at Columbia University’s SIPA, where he earned his master’s degree in December 2024.

Between June and November 2023, Khalil worked as a political affairs officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in New York.

Not any more information there about how he came to be in the US. Here’s a NY Post article with a smidge more background, but it doesn’t even begin to answer those questions of mine.

Ukraine ceasefire: yes, no, maybe so?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the latest:

The U.S. and Ukraine said Kyiv would accept a 30-day ceasefire with Russia after talks in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, with Washington pledging to immediately lift a freeze on intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.

“Ukraine expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire, which can be extended by mutual agreement of the parties, and which is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation,” the U.S. and Ukraine said in a joint statement released by the State Department. “The United States will communicate to Russia that Russian reciprocity is the key to achieving peace.”

Russian reciprocity is certainly key, one of many.

It strikes me, and not for the first time, that one of the many differences between Trump’s first term and his second is that the Biden administration left a bigger foreign policy mess than the Obama administration had. Post-Obama, much of it could be helped by simply being meaner to Iran and nicer to Israel. But the Biden administration (otherwise known as Obama’s third term) did more damage in terms of active hot wars that the administration’s weakness had encouraged: Ukraine and Gaza/Israel. What’s more, both of those wars present very knotty problems that are not easily solved.

I think that Trump is feeling his way through this; there’s no guidebook. Try A; see what happens. Try B; see what happens. The results depend at least in part on making the proper adjustments.

404 Not Found should not be found here anymore

The New Neo Posted on by

A number of people have mentioned that they’re been getting 404 messages lately when trying to follow internal links here to older posts on the blog or older comments. I think – I hope! – that won’t be happening anymore.

The problem began when, in my efforts to get to the bottom of the “too many requests” timeouts that happen every now and then here, I phoned my host. Each time I phoned – and there were many times – there was a different person helping me, and each time that person made a new and different suggestion for a fix. Sometimes that person even did whatever he or she was suggesting rather than asking me to do it. Not a single one of these things has helped the “too many requests” problem, although in the last week or so the problem has improved (knock wood).

One of the things they insisted would help would be if they updated the PHP. This made me wary; I’d been told it can cause problems. But they insisted that if it caused problems, the PHP version could be changed back again. That sounded reasonable to me.

After that I started noticing that old internal links back to blog posts or comments here no longer worked. Wonderful. It took me quite a bit of sleuthing to understand what had happened, but apparently the format of permalinks for the blog had changed. In the 22,000+ posts I’ve written, I’ve got thousands of old links like that, and there was no way I was going to change them back by hand. As you may have already guessed, switching back to the earlier PHP version didn’t help. Plus, there was a big warning on WordPress saying it’s dangerous to change the permalink settings on a live blog.

And so I was wary of changing the setting back to what I thought it had originally been. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was probably the only solution. So late last night I did it – and voila! All the links now seem to work – even the new ones, post-PHP change. I thought I’d have to switch them back by hand. But for whatever reason, the blog seems to be able to “read” them properly and do a redirect to the proper post. It does the same thing for the newer links comments.

Let me know if you’re getting any 404 messages here in the future. It shouldn’t be happening. Of course, it still might happen for old external links. But not for links back to something on this blog.

Recession?

The New Neo Posted on by

I noticed a lot of discussion in the Open Thread comments about whether or not we’re headed for a recession.

That’s the sort of thing on which my knowledge base is small, so I won’t make a prediction. I’ll just link to this post on the subject at Legal Insurrection.

Here’s a thread for you to talk about the topic to your hearts’ and brains’ delight.

An argument for passing a continuing resolution bill …

The New Neo Posted on by

… can be found here:

… [T]he only realistic alternatives to a “clean” CR are a CR-plus or omnibus appropriations package. Either option could only be passed with Democrat support, which means they would be loaded up with expensive nonsense …

… Congress must move past the March 14 funding deadline to focus on reconciliation. Once the House passes a budget resolution, which it did on Feb. 25, a reconciliation process can move forward that will include money for border security and immigration law enforcement, extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, new tax policies such as no taxes on tips, deregulatory changes to unleash domestic oil and natural gas production, and much more.

In short, the reconciliation process is the main vehicle for most of year-one Trump agenda priorities to pass into law. The reconciliation process is so vital because it only requires a simple majority vote in the Senate as opposed to requiring 60 as most bills do. Reconciliation is a profound opportunity to enshrine lasting change, but it takes time and must occur within a specific timeframe. Every minute Congress spends on something else, such as a government shutdown due to the failure to pass a CR, makes reconciliation less likely.

Makes sense to me.

SCOTUS will be considering a case about what therapists are allowed to say to clients about sexual orientation and sexual identity

The New Neo Posted on by

I consider this an important case:

Kaley Chiles is a Christian counselor in Colorado. When the state passed a law forcing mental health professionals to advance radical gender ideology, she challenged it. Now, the Supreme Court has agreed to review the case — in what could bring a landmark ruling for free speech.

“The government has no business censoring private conversations between clients and counselors, nor should a counselor be used as a tool to impose the government’s biased views on her clients,” said Kristen Waggoner, CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom — which is representing Chiles — in a news release.

Chiles challenged Colorado’s law banning so-called “conversion therapy” in 2022, according to The Hill, saying it hindered her efforts to assist those with “same-sex attractions or gender identity confusion” who “prioritize their faith above their feelings.” She “never promises that she can solve” these issues but works to help clients “accept the bodies that God has given them and find peace.” Chiles sought an injunction, citing the law’s violation of her First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

The 10th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled against Chiles, but in November, her attorneys petitioned the Supreme Court to consider the case, according to SCOTUSblog.

ADF said the Colorado law violates Chiles’ freedom of speech by banning counselors from “having any conversation with clients under age 18 that ‘attempts or purports to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity.’”

Some “conversion therapists” formerly used harsh methods such as administering electric shocks to patients. But this suit is about a totally different thing: talking to patients under 18 who want to explore all possibilities, including – for example – whether or not their sexual desires are exclusively gay or whether it’s possible for them to live a heterosexual life – and if so, to encourage them towards the latter. Or conversing with teenagers who have encountered pro-transition websites, might have a history of sexual abuse and/or Asperger’s, and who want to sort it all out without going to a gender affirming counselor who will only reinforce the idea of transition as a solution.

I have some retired therapist friends who are Democrats, and a few years ago when I told them that anything other than “gender-affirming” therapy was discouraged or even sometimes banned they were aghast. That’s how quickly the policies have changed, and how radically.

What is banned under the Colorado law is described this way: “efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.” That’s pretty darn broad.

All those entrepreneurial 11-year olds and 115-year olds: ain’t America great?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s heartwarming:

DOGE announced on Saturday night that the Small Business Administration had loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to small enterprises during the COVID pandemic. Sounds fine, right?

Except for the fact that the business owners in these cases were all 11 years old or younger …

Some mighty fancy lemonade stands – because that averages out to about $55K per child. And then there are the Cadillacs of walkers for the mega-old:

In 2020-2021, SBA granted 5,593 loans for $312M to borrowers whose only listed owner was 11 years old or younger at the time of the loan. While it is possible to have business arrangements where this is legal, that is highly unlikely for these 5,593 loans, as they all also used an SSN with the incorrect name.

@DOGE and @SBAgov are working together to solve this problem this week. …

In 2020-2021, @SBAgov issued 3,095 loans, including PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) and EIDL (Economic Injury Disaster Loan), for $333M to borrowers over 115 years old who were still marked as alive in the Social Security database.

And yet the Democrats seem to oppose looking into this. Go figure.

While we’re at it, I’ll mention that Rubio is preserving 1,000 of USAID’s projects and folding them into the State Department, while jettisoning the rest. However, in the article I just linked, Bonchie points this out:

As of now, the current continuing resolution, which is a copy-paste of the last one that didn’t cut spending, fully funds USAID at Biden-era levels. Until Congress stops those appropriations, the federal government is just moving money around. As things currently stand, taxpayers won’t realize the savings, and the inflationary aspects of the deficit spending remain.

Supposedly, it will be accomplished in the fall. Time will tell.

And more is coming out about the Biden administration’s payments for DEI:

The new study, conducted by the Functional Government Initiative and the Center for Renewing America, identified 460 programs across 24 government agencies in the Biden administration that diverted resources to DEI initiatives.

At least $1 trillion of taxpayer money was infused with DEI principles, the study states.

The study lays out DEI infusion across several federal agencies, including the Defense Department’s plan to “integrate environmental/economic justice tools” into training, FEMA’s need to “instill equity as a foundation of emergency management,” and the Labor Department’s push to “embed equity in a sustainable manner that recognizes the multiple and overlapping identities held by workers.”