Image 01 Image 03
Sign In or RegisterLogout

Author: New Neo

Profile photo

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, 2016 5 Comments
A great many Germans seem angry with Angela Merkel and would like her out of office:
Merkel's premiership is hanging by a thread today as thousands gathered to call for her resignation while a key political ally dramatically withdrew his support over immigration policy. More than 5,000 protested in Berlin and thousands more throughout Germany over the 'open-door' policy that many have blamed for four brutal terrorist attacks that left 13 dead over the last month. The Chancellor faced a fresh wave of fury after it emerged that two recent terror attacks and a third killing were carried out by men who entered the country as refugees.

Posted by New Neo on July 13, 2016 12 Comments
Hillary Clinton has never adequately explained her decision to use an alternate and insecure email system. Her initial excuse (wanting to use one device) turned out to be untrue, and people have speculated ever since on the real reasons. But no one---not even Hillary herself---has ever offered a possible reason that was altruistic. Unlike the case of Jason Brezler, in which his motive was decidedly selfless.

Posted by New Neo on July 02, 2016 10 Comments
Even though his official campaign for the presidency is over, Ted Cruz isn't taking a vacation. Last Tuesday Cruz began conducting a hearing:
...investigating...“Willful Blindness: Consequences of Agency Efforts To Deemphasize Radical Islam in Combating Terrorism.”... This hearing will likely focus on which figures within the federal government worked to squelch any research connecting the dots between local Muslim Brotherhood officials, these individual terrorists, and foreign terror networks. Senators on the committee now have an opportunity to expose the Muslim Brotherhood influence within DHS and the FBI, their invidious “Countering Violent Extremism” Agenda, and their hand in covering up counter-terrorism investigations. They can demonstrate how the federal government has hamstrung local law enforcement by refusing to cooperate and share information regarding jihadists living in their communities.
One question is whether anyone's listening except those already disposed to be concerned about how the Obama administration is handling the problem.

Posted by New Neo on June 26, 2016 19 Comments
To be quite blunt about it, a great many people in Britain have just given a big middle finger to leaders who have ignored their concerns about national identity and autonomy, and their right to make decisions within their own country about the nature of that country. These principles used to be the bulwarks of a democracy such as Britain, with a long and proud tradition that has not yet died. Although the EU plan was designed to weaken that tradition---and probably has to a certain extent---the tradition is still strong enough, and the provocation great enough, to cause a majority of British voters to give a big resounding "no" to an EU scheme they've found to be increasingly intolerable, with diminishing rewards and increasing drawbacks. Anti-EU feeling among the people of member-states isn't limited to Britain, although it may be strongest there because Britain was a relative latecomer to the EU and retains some of its non-continental island identity. But nationalist movements are afoot in France, and Donald Trump represents the American version (although of course we're not in the EU and therefore have no need to vote to get out of it).

Posted by New Neo on June 22, 2016 61 Comments
It's not that Trump has never criticized Hillary Clinton before. But a speech Trump gave today focused on those criticisms. I've been expecting that to happen, because realistically speaking it's his best and perhaps only chance---to ramp up the already-existent dislike and disapproval of Clinton (and the Clintons as a duo), and to make people vote for him as a reaction to her. To me, the most powerful part of the speech---and a theme Trump should hammer home, because this is the sort of thing that could change the minds of people who are not already predisposed to vote for him, women and the LGBT community---was this:
I only want to admit people who share our values and love our people. Hillary Clinton wants to bring in people who believe women should be enslaved and gays put to death.

Posted by New Neo on June 15, 2016 18 Comments
In the wake of the Orlando attack, we have seen the revival of an old debate in which Obama and the left refuse to name this enemy. Either they can't even say the word "terrorist," or they can't use any modifier that implies that Islam has anything to do with it. After a large and deadly attack such as the one in Orlando, where it was clear almost immediately that the perpetrator was an Islamic (or Islamicist, or radical Islamic) terrorist, it is glaringly apparent that Obama is refusing to call the attack what it is. And this is a weakness that Donald Trump is determined to exploit, and rightly so. Does it matter what we call perpetrators such as Omar Mateen? Obviously, both Obama and Trump---coming from opposite sides of the question---agree on the fact that it does matter, or this rhetorical battle wouldn't be going on. By using the words he uses, Trump wants to signal his resolve to oppose Islamic terrorism, as well as opposition to PC leftist language. What does Obama want to signal? Deference to the Muslim community, emphasis on his underlying policy goal of increased gun control, and minimization of the hugely increased threat from ISIS that occurred on his watch while he poo-pooed it.

Posted by New Neo on June 13, 2016 11 Comments
Not long after being introduced to the internet about 20 years ago, I realized that despite the internet's many wonders, anti-Semitism was also rife online. The internet gave this old hatred with a long pedigree new and sturdy legs. Do a search for some topic connected with the Holocaust, for example, and pretty quickly you'll encounter the manifold Holocaust deniers and websites devoted to spreading anti-Semitic lies about all manner of Jewish things and all points of Jewish history. These sites are slick, numerous, and wide-reaching, and I have little doubt that they have increased the number of anti-Semitic people in the world who are firmly convinced that they are privy to the truth about Jews.

Posted by New Neo on June 04, 2016 13 Comments
Muhammed Ali's death is the sort of news that will be covered in the media for weeks, with tributes and reminiscences. He styled himself "The Greatest," and boxing aficionados say that he certainly was one of the greatest, or maybe even the greatest, just as he had always claimed. People like me, who never followed boxing and can hardly bear to watch it, still know a lot about Muhammed Ali, because he has been a huge celebrity and unique personality ever since he burst on the scene as Cassius Clay. Brash and talkative, he went through many transformations---his name, his women, his religion, the form his religion took (from racial- and anger-focused Black Muslim to more conventional Islam and a far more mellow outlook)---as well as the terrible transformation wrought comparatively early in his life by Parkinson's disease. Parkinson's is a progressive disease, and Ali's diagnosis came at the age of 42---although, looking back, his trainer Angelo Dundee thought he might have shown signs as early as the age of 38. It is commonly assumed that his Parkinson's was the result of his boxing career and all the blows he took, and although that may be true it is not necessarily the case for Ali:

Posted by New Neo on May 29, 2016 97 Comments
Ever since it became obvious that Trump would win the GOP nomination (and even before that), we've had the phenomenon of GOP officeholders and/or former rival candidates jumping on the Trump train. Ben Carson was one of the first, but he certainly isn't the last, and the list includes people whose previous criticism of Trump had been remarkably bitter. The latest to support Trump is Marco Rubio, and many people are excoriating him for it (for example, see this from Allahpundit and this by Philip Klein; there are others). Here's an excerpt from the Klein piece, so you can get the flavor of it:
It’s one thing to begrudgingly argue that as dangerous as he thinks a Trump presidency would be, that he thinks a Clinton presidency would be even worse. But to actually say that he would be “honored” by the chance to speak on Trump’s behalf at the GOP convention, and to downplay his previously stated problems with Trump as mere “policy differences,” is to prove the Rubio skeptics right.

Posted by New Neo on May 16, 2016 13 Comments
National Review's David French suggests that states should reject federal funding if they wish to remain free from executive actions such as the Obama administration's directive on school bathrooms [emphasis mine]:
Without an act of Congress, without a ruling from the Supreme Court, and without even going through the motions of the regulatory rule-making process, the administration issued a letter drafting every single public educational institution in the country to implement the extreme edge of the sexual revolution... ...We must fix our education system or slowly but surely lose our culture. Indeed, virtually every other conservative endeavor — whether it’s winning elections, transforming media, or infiltrating pop culture — will fail if the entire edifice of public education is arrayed against us. The system, however, can’t be reformed from within: It’s stacked top-to-bottom with progressive activists even in red states.

Posted by New Neo on May 08, 2016 21 Comments
Just prior to the Indiana primary and Ted Cruz's and John Kasich's suspension of their campaigns, I was contemplating Trump's "play fair" and "don't rig the process to deny me" assertions about the process of choosing convention delegates. It became apparent that this was a case of Trump following Alinsky Rule 4 of Rules for Radicals: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules." The "enemy," of course, being the conventional (in several senses of the word) Republican Party, the party whose standard bearer Trump is now poised to become. And then it occurred to me that there are a lot of Alinsky's rules that Trump follows, and has followed right along. In fact, when you refresh your memory on those rules, it's hard to escape the conviction that Trump is an advanced practitioner of the Alinskyite approach.

Posted by New Neo on May 06, 2016 43 Comments
Republican Senator Ben Sasse has written an open letter to America. I agree with a great deal of it, but I wanted to take issue with something. Here's an excerpt:
In the history of polling, we’ve basically never had a candidate viewed negatively by half of the electorate. This year, we have two. In fact, we now have the two most unpopular candidates ever – Hillary by a little, and Trump by miles (including now 3 out of 4 women – who vote more and influence more votes than men). There are dumpster fires in my town more popular than these two “leaders.” With Clinton and Trump, the fix is in. Heads, they win; tails, you lose. Why are we confined to these two terrible options? This is America. If both choices stink, we reject them and go bigger. That’s what we do. Remember: our Founders didn’t want entrenched political parties. So why should we accept this terrible choice?
Sasse goes on to suggest a non-Trump non-Hillary candidate (not himself, by the way), but he doesn't say who that person should be.

Posted by New Neo on May 02, 2016 11 Comments
Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind was published in 1987, which is now very close to 30 years ago. And yet its relevance has only grown in the intervening years. It describes the influence of the left on the university and what it teaches, and how it has affected subsequent generations of students and how they think about a host of things, including America itself. Here's an excerpt from the book that very much resonates today:
Contrary to much contemporary wisdom, the United States has one of the longest uninterrupted political traditions of any nation in the world. What is more, that tradition is unambiguous; its meaning is articulated in simple, rational speech that is immediately comprehensible and powerfully persuasive to all normal human beings. America tells one story: the unbroken, ineluctable progress of freedom and equality. From its first settlers and its political foundings on, there has been no dispute that freedom and equality are the essence of justice for us. No one serious or notable has stood outside this consensus...All significant political disputes have been about the meaning of freedom and equality, not about their rightness...

Posted by New Neo on April 26, 2016 28 Comments
This is depressing news:
Suicide in the United States has surged to the highest levels in nearly 30 years, a federal data analysis has found, with increases in every age group except older adults. The rise was particularly steep for women. It was also substantial among middle-aged Americans, sending a signal of deep anguish from a group whose suicide rates had been stable or falling since the 1950s. The suicide rate for middle-aged women, ages 45 to 64, jumped by 63 percent over the period of the study, while it rose by 43 percent for men in that age range, the sharpest increase for males of any age. The overall suicide rate rose by 24 percent from 1999 to 2014, according to the National Center for Health Statistics, which released the study on Friday
Rates increased sharply for girls 10-14 as well, and the ethnic group with the highest increase was American Indians, followed by white middle-aged women. Black men were the only ethnic group with a decrease.

Posted by New Neo on April 22, 2016 147 Comments
The anti-Cruz hype is that nobody likes him, everybody hates him, he has no friends. The anti-Republican hype is that they're racist bigots. Here's a story that could kill (or at least slightly injure) those two birds with one stone: the tale of Ted Cruz's best friend in college, law school, and beyond, David Panton.

Posted by New Neo on April 18, 2016 12 Comments
You know those hot air hand dryers found in almost all public restrooms? Time-consuming, don't really dry your hands thoroughly --- and now we discover that they throw a bunch of viruses into the air, particularly the newer design called the Dyson:
Researchers have long known that warm hand dryers can launch bacteria into the air—compared to dabbing with paper towels, which unleashes virtually none. But new jet air dryers, made by Dyson, are significantly more problematic—they launch far more viruses into the air, which linger for longer periods of time and reach much farther distances, researchers recently reported in the Journal of Applied Microbiology. This is particularly concerning because viruses, unlike many infectious bacteria, can easily maintain their infectiousness in the air and on surfaces, and just a few viral particles can spark an infection.

Posted by New Neo on April 11, 2016 167 Comments
Here's one plausible scenario for Cruz's prospects in a general election. It's worth reading the whole thing, but here's an excerpt:
...[T]he assumption is that Cruz cannot improve his image among the broader electorate, but that's hard to know for sure, because he's never had to do it. While opinions on Clinton are deeply entrenched after her decades in the public spotlight, Cruz isn't as universally known and has more of an opening to get a second look. Cruz would enter the general election campaign with a reputation as an extremist, which the Clinton campaign would do everything to play up. But the risk of such a strategy comes if Cruz is able to defy such a caricature during the election among voters getting to know him for the first time. To quote Shakespeare's Prince Hal: "By so much shall I falsify men's hopes/And like bright metal on a sullen ground/My reformation, glittering o'er my fault/Shall show more goodly and attract more eyes/Than that which hath no foil to set it off."
In other words, Cruz is much less of a known commodity to most voters, and he is therefore more likely to be able to improve his image if he can just soften up just a bit.

Posted by New Neo on April 08, 2016 9 Comments
On the face of it, answering the question as to what happened in the GOP primary in Wisconsin seems like a no-brainer. As Edward Morrissey writes, Trump shot himself in the foot---dissing popular governor Scott Walker, and flubbing abortion questions---and ended up losing by 13 points, 35 to Cruz's 48. To shore up this argument about a Trump reversal in Wisconsin, Morrissey cites a Wisconsin poll from late January and one from late February, the first of which had Trump leading by 6 and the second by 10. So the narrative seems to make sense---that is, until you actually look a bit deeper, when you find that something additional might have been going on.
Accessibility by WAH