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Author: New Neo

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New Neo

Neo is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at the new neo.

Posted by New Neo on July 31, 2015 11 Comments
After all the false leads in the year and a third since Malaysian Flight 370 vanished, we now have a real possibility that a piece of it has washed ashore, a sort of cryptic message in a bottle that may have drifted thousands of miles from wherever the plane's gravesite---and that of its 227 passengers and 12 crew---lies. Unofficial reports are that the piece is indeed from a Boeing 777, the type of plane involved in the disappearance, and that there are no other 777s that are unaccounted for. Experts have been dispatched to identify it further and more exactly, aided by a number that was found on it which might be some sort of component number. The item appears from photos to be similar to a plane part known as a flaperon, which is a lightweight piece of an aircraft wing that "has sealed chambers, making it buoyant." The buoyancy could help explain how it ended up on an island. Notice that the place it was found is named Saint-Andre de la Reunion Island, otherwise known as Reunion Island---a fitting name for the site of a plane's re-entry from the land of the lost into the realm of human awareness.

Posted by New Neo on July 30, 2015 90 Comments
As a huge fan of the very articulate and forceful Carly Fiorina, I've been wondering why she continues to score very low in the polls for the Republican nomination. Here's my attempt at an answer. I believe Carly Fiorina scores low not only because she lacks name recognition, but because she has never held elective public office and she lost the one race she entered. Even though she did well (considering it was in bluer-than-blue California,) she still lost. Also, although she can explain her firing from Hewlett-Packard in a way that doesn't reflect poorly on her (see this and this), the firing still doesn't sound to the casual listener like a success story. But far more importantly, Donald Trump—-who naturally gains more publicity from his statements and his candidacy because he is flamboyant and somewhat outrageous---has taken the spot Fiorina would otherwise occupy, that of “business-oriented political outsider who has never held public office.” He is far, far more well-known than Fiorina via his long self-promoting stint in the public eye, and is therefore a magnet for the many protest voters on the right. Supporting Trump is a twofer for anyone who's angry at the establishment: he is not a member of the GOP establishment, and he really gets the goat of those who are.

Posted by New Neo on July 20, 2015 33 Comments
Obama's Iran deal has generated enormous anger, and some of that ire has been directed at the Republicans in Congress. One of the main accusations against them is that they have made Obama's task easier by passing Corker-Menendez, a bill that allows them to stop the president from lifting the Iranian sanctions unilaterally, but only with a super-majority because Obama could (and indeed would) veto the bill. Then Congress would end up needing a 2/3 majority of both houses to stop him. Why do it that way, critics ask, instead of the simple route of exercising the Senate's treaty power (under Article II Section 2 Clause 2 of the Constitution) to advise and consent? That would require a two-thirds vote before the treaty is approved rather than requiring a two-thirds vote to stop it. But what a great many critics fail to appreciate is how watered-down the Senate's treaty power has already become ever since FDR, and how much the de facto power of the executive to make international agreements without Congress' say-so has expanded. It's well worth your time to listen to an interview on the subject with Elizabeth Chryst, who is a former elected officer of the U.S. Senate and an expert on how Congress works in terms of rules and procedures. In this recording, she speaks on the subject of the Corker-Menendez bill and why conservatives are dreaming if they think there was ever any chance of blocking the Iran deal as a treaty. That's not a reality that Chryst likes, and she knows that her fellow conservatives are very unhappy to hear it; but she thinks it's a reality they need to face.

Posted by New Neo on July 16, 2015 11 Comments
A quote from Lenin that's been running through my head, post Iran deal: "The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them." There are economic ramifications of the Iran deal, particularly to Europe. Europe was chomping at the bit to get access to trade with Iran, and for many Europeans sticking it to Israel into the bargain would be a feature rather than a bug. Russia was already about to trade with Iran, as announced in April. But the reason Russia was going to do this was that the Iran deal was already in the offing, and Russia knew sanctions would be lifted and wanted to get the jump on the action before the West did. The missiles Russia proposed to sell Iran are defensive in nature only, but:
...[T]he Kremlin is lifting a ban on selling a powerful air defense system to Iran that would render an airstrike on Tehran’s nuclear weapons facilities nearly impossible. The delivery of the new weapon, called the Almaz-Antei S-300PMU-1—known as the SA-20 Gargoyle in NATO parlance—would effectively force the U.S. to rely on its small fleet of stealth aircraft to strike targets inside Iran in case the mullahs make a dash for the bomb. But even those aircraft might have a difficult time.

Posted by New Neo on July 09, 2015 20 Comments
As time goes on, and the Iran nuclear negotiations continue, it's hard to escape the thought that the Obama administration is becoming more and more desperate for a deal. Any deal. Here are recent developments: John Kerry, in his usual clear-as-mud manner, says that "We will not rush and we will not be rushed." On the other hand, negotiations “will not be open-ended.” What does that tell us about how close the parties are to an agreement? Nothing. He also said the agreement needs to “withstand the test of time,” and that “It’s a test for decades.”
ABC US News | World News

Posted by New Neo on July 04, 2015 5 Comments
I saw the film "Yankee Doodle Dandy" on TV close to 30 times when I was a child. Loved it, and in particular loved the idea that James Cagney (whom I already knew as a tough old gangster from other movies) could dance. His dancing fascinated me because it was so non-balletic and idiosyncratic---the strutting, graceful/ungraceful, artful/artless uniqueness of his movement: Cagney wasn't just an actor and hoofer, although he certainly was both. He was also a political conservative and changer. Here are some excerpts from his Wiki page:
He was sickly as a young child—so much so that his mother feared he would die before he could be baptized. He later attributed his sickness to the poverty his family had to endure... Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, "It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him."

Posted by New Neo on July 03, 2015 21 Comments
By now you probably know that George Takei, who played Sulu in "Star Trek" and who recently married his longtime partner in a same-sex marriage, had this to say about Clarence Thomas' declaration in his dissent in the same-sex marriage case that human dignity cannot be taken away by government, even by slavery, because it is a God-given attribute inherent in being human:
TAKEI: He is a clown in black face sitting on the Supreme Court. He gets me that angry. He doesn’t belong there. And for him to say, slaves have dignity. I mean, doesn’t he know that slaves were in chains? That they were whipped on the back. If he saw the movie 12 Years a Slave, you know, they were raped. And he says they had dignity as slaves or – My parents lost everything that they worked for, in the middle of their lives, in their 30s [he is referring here to the WWII Japanese American internment camps]. His business, my father’s business, our home, our freedom and we’re supposed to call that dignified? Marched out of our homes at gun point. I mean, this man does not belong on the Supreme Court. He is an embarrassment. He is a disgrace to America.
I'm discussing this issue not because of George Takei himself, but because what he says is emblematic of the approach of the left to argument, and to the presence of black conservatives, who are considered a special affront worthy of particular contempt. This is certainly not the first time Clarence Thomas has endured insults of a specifically racist nature. Most people have focused on the "clown in black face" remark. But that's almost a distraction from the rest. Here are some of the elements of leftist argument that Takei's attack illustrates:

Posted by New Neo on June 30, 2015 71 Comments
If you had asked me twenty years ago to predict what the 21st century would hold in store, “religious wars” probably wouldn’t have been tops on my list. But it should have been. Right now we're seeing many forms of religious war. The most obvious has raged between radical Islam and everybody else. Yes, radical Muslims are somewhat of a minority within Islam; but they’re a huge, activist, vocal, sometimes violent, determined, and ruthless minority, they’ve been fighting the fight for the better part of a century (centuries, that is,) and have really stepped it up since their victory in Iran in 1979. During Obama's time in office their threat has grown in numbers, in strength, and in barbarity. I wrote that it’s a war “between radical Islam and everybody else.” The war against the Jews has been going on for a long time, with Israel/Palestine as the epicenter (that war isn’t just a religious one, but it certainly is a religious one as well as a political one). The war against the Hindus also is of great antiquity. The ancient war against Christians took somewhat of a breather in Western Europe after the Siege of Vienna. In recent years, however, radical Islam’s revived war against Christians has reached a violent fever pitch.

Posted by New Neo on June 25, 2015 37 Comments
A dissent has no power except the power of its words and its logic. So Justice Scalia's dissent in King v. Burwell (joined by Alito and Thomas) is satisfying only in the rhetorical and intellectual sense. But it is so good that I'm highlighting it again anyway. Here are some excerpts:
[T]he plain, obvious, and rational meaning of a statute is always to be preferred to any curious, narrow, hidden sense that nothing but the exigency of a hard case and the ingenuity and study of an acute and powerful intellect would discover.” Lynch v. Alworth-Stephens Co., 267 U. S. 364, 370 (1925)...Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the Government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present Court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved... ...The somersaults of statutory interpretation [this Court has] performed (“penalty” means tax, “further [Medicaid] payments to the State” means only incremental Medicaid payments to the State, “established by the State” means not established by the State) will be cited by litigants endlessly, to the confusion of honest jurisprudence. And the cases will publish forever the discouraging truth that the Supreme Court of the United States favors some laws over others, and is prepared to do whatever it takes to uphold and assist its favorites.

Posted by New Neo on June 23, 2015 53 Comments
Here's an interesting article about how it might have been a good thing if the attendees at the Bible study meeting in Charleston had been armed. That's not just a fanciful thought. Mass murders, even mass murders at churches, have been thwarted before by a good guy wielding a gun and stopping the bad guy (and here I use the word "guy" in the completely non-PC sense that includes "woman"):
Murray had already shot and killed two people in the parking lot when he burst into the New Life Church in Colorado Springs. Before he could pull the trigger again, however, the 24-year-old shooter was gunned down by Jeanne Assam, a volunteer security guard with a concealed-carry permit. That was eight years ago, but even though Ms. Assam was credited for saving as many as 100 lives that day, a dozen states continue to restrict the carrying of concealed firearms in churches — including South Carolina.
There have been quite a few similar cases of a law-abiding citizen with a gun (often an ex- or off-duty police officer, but not always) stopping or even preventing a mass shooting. A list of similar incidents can be found here. That there are not even more is probably due to the fact that mass shootings are actually quite rare to begin with---despite our perceptions that they are common, and despite the fact that even a single one is too many---and so it is not surprising that there are not so very many cases where a witness pulled a gun and even tried to stop such a shooting. Another reason is likely to be that mass murderers understand that they will be more likely to achieve their goals if they attack people in a gun-free zone, and so many attacks occur in such places. But the shoot-em-up fantasy of someone like MSNBC's Bob Shrum appears to lack any real-world precedent:

Posted by New Neo on June 20, 2015 19 Comments
While thinking about Obama's comparison of mass murders in the US to the same phenomenon in Europe, it occurred to me that part of what Obama has done during his presidency is to capitalize on an already-existent attitude among many liberals that everything European is better than everything American. That's one of the reasons that Obama can get away with erroneously stating that mass murder by gun is practically nonexistent in Europe and linking it to enhanced gun control. Not too many liberals in this country are going to question that because of the pre-existing idea that Europe has gotten its act together in so many respects while we falter far behind, alone among developed (or, as Obama said, "advanced") countries in bitterly clinging to our troglodyte ways, our guns and our religion. Other things we cling to, and of which Obama would dearly like to free us, include our American exceptionalism, our nationalism rather than internationalism, our rugged individualism, our income inequality, and our idea that "we built that." Things he's already greatly improved about America (i.e. Europeanized, at least to the extent we have allowed him, which is not to the extent he would like) are health insurance and our relations with the Muslim world and with Israel.

Posted by New Neo on June 17, 2015 15 Comments
Who are the escaped murderers in New York, and why oh why were they given the prison privileges they appear to have been given? The answer to the first question is: they are probably among the most psychopathic, cold-blooded killers in the prison population, and that's saying something. Both of them became criminals in their adolescence, and have never looked back. What's more, the report of those who knew them is of relentless exploitation of other people and hardly a glimmer of anything you might call a conscience. Here's Sweat's story. It's not a pretty one. And Matt's is, if anything, worse:
Age: 48 Early life: He grew up in the small city of Tonawanda, New York, near Buffalo. Classmates told the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle that Matt was often in trouble as a child. "He would terrorise kids on the (school) bus," Randy Szukala told the newspaper. As a teenager, he ran away from home on a stolen horse. Eventually, Tonawanda police Capt Frederic Foels told the Democrat and Chronicle, he became a "small-time thug".

Posted by New Neo on June 14, 2015 25 Comments
As discussed earlier, the Obama administration seeks to transform neighborhoods of privilege by tinkering with their makeup and introducing more diversity, otherwise known as Section 8 housing. The way the federal camel gets its nose inside the tent is, as usual, through money. What seems like a largess at first almost never is. Not only does the money have to come from somewhere, but the inevitable price is an increase in federal government regulation of our lives. This particular directive would apply to communities that get HUD funds, which is an awful lot of communities (about 1250):
The agency is also looking to root out more subtle forms of discrimination that take shape in local government policies that unintentionally harm minority communities, known as “disparate impact.”... To qualify for certain funds under the regulations, cities would be required to examine patterns of segregation in neighborhoods and develop plans to address it. Those that don’t could see the funds they use to improve blighted neighborhoods disappear, critics of the rule say... Critics of the rule say it would allow HUD to assert authority over local zoning laws. The agency could dictate what types of homes are built where and who can live in those homes, said Gosar, who believes local communities should make those decisions for themselves rather than relying on the federal government.

Posted by New Neo on June 11, 2015 20 Comments
Atlantic writer Russell Berman wonders:
...[Obama's] decision to champion his signature achievement in such pointed terms just weeks before the high court’s ruling is due raised the question of whether Obama was trying to jawbone the justices at the 11th hour. ...“It seems so cynical,” he said, “to want to take coverage away from millions of people; to take care away from people who need it the most; to punish millions with higher costs of care and unravel what’s now been woven into the fabric of America.”... The speech came a day after the president, in response to a reporter’s question, commented directly on the case before the justices..."Under well-established precedent, there is no reason why the existing exchanges should be overturned through a court case," Obama said. "This should be an easy case. Frankly, it probably shouldn't even have been taken up," he added... [In 2012, Obama had] sharply warned the Court not to rule against his healthcare law the first time around. “I'm confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said then.

Posted by New Neo on June 04, 2015 21 Comments
Republicans are in a pickle, and have been since the moment Obamacare was passed. You might think they're in a good position, because the Supreme Court is considering overturning the state Obamacare exchanges and subsidies because of wording in the statute, and this would throw the entire Obamacare system into turmoil. The case in question is King v. Burwell, and it could be decided any day now. But there's one catch, and it's a biggee: if the ruling goes against Obamacare, the press and the left will rail at the Republicans for being the big bad meanies who took away a lot of people's subsidies. That was part of the beauty of Obamacare for the left, and one of the many many reasons they were so extraordinarily eager to pass it and pass it as quickly as possible: they wanted to create a dependence and an expectation, otherwise known as an entitlement, that would be tremendously hard to reverse. But what do the American people actually want if SCOTUS throws out the state exchanges and therefore the state subsidies? A substantial majority appear to want Congress to fix Obamacare rather than re-establish the state exchanges, according to this poll. But what would that actually look like?

Posted by New Neo on June 01, 2015 17 Comments
More Americans are finding certain behaviors morally acceptable that are nevertheless still widely considered unacceptable. In other words, approval (though still low) of these behaviors has been creeping up:
While a select few actions remain deeply taboo for much of the country, there has been an increasing shift to moral acceptability for some of these over time. Such actions include suicide (which 19% of Americans call "morally acceptable"), polygamy (16%) and cloning humans (15%).
Will they follow the route of once-disapproved-but-now-widely-approved behaviors such as premarital sex or gay/lesbian relationships? Or will they continue to remain in the dungeon like---and the low score of the following may surprise you, as it did me---adultery, which remains in the approval basement?:
On the other hand, "married men and women having an affair" has remained at the bottom of a list of 19 moral behaviors Gallup has measured, with only 8% considering it morally acceptable.
Not only is adultery at the bottom of the list, but I would wager it's the most highly disapproved behavior that is most widely engaged in.

Posted by New Neo on May 25, 2015 8 Comments
The story "The Man Without a Country" used to be standard reading matter for seventh graders. In fact, it was the first "real" book---as opposed to those tedious Dick and Jane readers---that I was assigned in school. It was exciting compared to Dick and Jane and the rest, since it dealt with an actual story that had some actual drama to it. It struck me as terribly sad---and unfair, too---that Philip Nolan was forced to wander the world, exiled, for one moment of cursing the United States. "The Man Without a Country" was the sort of paean to patriotism that I would guess is rarely or never assigned nowadays to students. Patriotism has gotten a bad name during the last few decades. This trend seems to have taken root (at least in this country) with the 60s, the Vietnam era, and the rise in influence of the left. But patriotism and nationalism were rejected by a significant segment of Europeans even earlier, as a result of the devastation both sentiments wrought on that continent during World War II. (Of course, WWII in Europe was a result mainly of German nationalism run amok, but it seems to have given nationalism as a whole a very bad name, a trend that began after the carnage of World War I.)

Posted by New Neo on May 24, 2015 16 Comments
If you were looking for a monument to supreme egotism, you would have to go far to beat Obama's statement in this interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg:
“Look, 20 years from now, I’m still going to be around, God willing. If Iran has a nuclear weapon, it’s my name on this,” he said, referring to the apparently almost-finished nuclear agreement between Iran and a group of world powers led by the United States. “I think it’s fair to say that in addition to our profound national-security interests, I have a personal interest in locking this down.”
I rack my brain to think of another president in our history---or another statesman or even another prominent politician---who would think to say "trust me, because my ego is riding on this." What on earth does ego have to do with judgment? In the calculus of what are the most important considerations about any Iran deal, the most important would be "our profound national-security interests" and those of the entire world. That's what's riding on it, that's the reason to "lock it down" (odd phrase for negotiations). The state of Obama's personal reputation ought to be so low on the list of things to think about that it shouldn't even be on his radar screen at this point, much less ours. Obama says he's got a special personal interest in "locking this down." But an agreement on nuclear weapons with Iran is not merely a question of applying oneself. Obama may think there's no limits to his powers, but sizing up Iran and negotiating with a country which is essentially an aggressive, repressive, fanatical enemy isn't just a matter of trying hard enough and thinking you're the smartest guy in the room. Even if it were true that Obama wanted and even needed to negotiate a good deal for the US in order to protect his precious reputation, that doesn't mean he has a clue how to get there from here, or that it's even possible to do so.
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