ANNOUNCEMENT: new comments system is now operating [scroll down for newer posts]

The New Neo Posted on by

[I’m planning to pin this post to the top of the page for at least a few days, so scroll down for newer posts.]

I’ve turned on the new comments system and I hope it goes smoothly. I’ve already tested it out in various ways and it appears to be operating pretty well, as far as I can tell. But if you have any problems with it, please let me know in an email. You can find my email address underneath the photo at the top of the blog (the apple, books, and pointe shoes on the table). Click where it says “Email.”

If you’ve been commenting here already you shouldn’t experience any changes when you try to comment. As long as you use the username you’ve been using right along, and the email address you’ve been using right along (even if it’s not a real one), your comments should post without any problems and you wouldn’t even notice anything new if I hadn’t posted this announcement.

However, new commenters – that is, people with new usernames and/or new email addresses – will find that their first comment goes into moderation. It will not appear until I approve it. When I see it – which would be the next time I check the moderated comments, so there might be a time lag of a few hours – I will either approve it or disapprove it. If I approve it, you become a regular commenter and your future comments should post smoothly without going into moderation again.

So, in summary: old commenters no problem. New commenters, the first comment is moderated and after that no problem.

At least, that’s the way it’s supposed to work.

Mamdani and violence against Jews in New York

The New Neo Posted on by

Two men were stabbed near Central Park by the same perpetrator, without warning or previous interaction. One of the victims was visibly Jewish (wearing a kippah) and the other Asian, and the perpetrator is alleged to have shouted “Allahu Akbar!” as he stabbed one in the back with a knife, and one in the chest with a screwdriver. The suspect is in custody:

Investigators were probing whether the suspect Raul Morales, 51, was motivated by hate, though Tisch also said “the initial investigation suggests that mental health may have been a factor.”

I don’t doubt both were possibly true: that the perp was indeed motivated by “hate” and that “mental health may have been a factor.” The questions are really legal ones: will this be charged as a hate crime and is there enough craziness to have caused diminished responsibility under the relevant laws? One especially strange element of the stabbings is that the perp yelled the Arabic phrase but does not seem to be either an Arab or a Muslim.

Ah, but not so fast:

[In the shared apartment of Raul Morales] … writings of Marx were found. New York Post reported New York Post reported that two Qurans, a Jehovah’s Witness Bible and a book on Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara were also found.

I suppose he had roommates who might be able to shed some light on things. That article also indicates that he was charged with this: “two counts of second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime and one count each of first-degree assault as a hate crime, second-degree assault as a hate crime, and attempted first-degree assault as a hate crime.” So apparently they’ve decided that yes, “hate” was a motivation.

I’m not keen on “hate crime” as a separate category, by the way – in general, not just for this particular crime. But as I said, I have little doubt that hatred was part of it. There’s an atmosphere of hatred towards Jews in New York, although for this particular perp, who also targeted an Asian person, it doesn’t seem to have just been towards Jews. I’ve noticed that some of these random killings have targeted Asians as well, and that’s been going on for quite some time.

More:

Language in the criminal complaint says that a witness saw Morales near a synagogue West 83rd Street saying “justice for Islam” …

He also has a criminal record for drugs in the 1990s.

Mamdani had a few perfunctory words to say after the crime, but it’s pretty obvious where his own heart is. And it’s not with the victims. His entire stint as mayor so far has featured a subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle fanning the flames of Jew-hatred, and for those inclined in that direction (and/or having mental problems) it acts as a releasor for aggression. See this:

Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a “no room for hate” hypocrite: His obsessive Israel-bashing — and the ravings of his rabid pro-Palestinian besties — encourages antisemitic violence.

Tuesday night, he released an incendiary video repeating (again) a litany of lies about Israeli’s war of self-defense against the Hamas terrorists and urging mass demonstrations when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu next comes to town.

Thursday, an attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed two men — a Jew in a yarmulke and an Asian — on the Upper West Side; the mayor responded with noises about hate and mental illness.

But it’s not generic hate that encourages such targeted bloodshed, however unstable the perp might be: It’s very specific incitement that points the violent at a chosen class of victims.

And in the comments to that article I see something I very often see when such topics are discussed: “Maybe they shouldn’t have voted for him. Crazy, huh?” But the Jews of New York voted overwhelmingly for Cuomo in the primary and in the election as well.

Spambot of the day

The New Neo Posted on by

This piece of writing posted at this website is genuinely fastidious.

If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a piece of writing that’s inauthentically fastidious.

Those California mail-in ballots

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw this headline today, “Nearly 150,000 mail ballots rejected in California’s primary despite efforts to count every vote.”

That doesn’t tell us much. Were they ballots that should have been counted and somehow were missed? And if so, why? Or were they ballots that were not legal and uncounted for that reason? And why so many – or so few? In other words, was this just the tip of the iceberg of the number of ballots that shouldn’t have been counted in that state? Or should many of these have been counted and were they unfairly excluded?

The article doesn’t say.

I was also hoping it would deal with the situation in Los Angeles in which the vast majority of the late-arriving ballots were for the third-place candidate, Nithya Raman, which ended up eliminating Spencer Pratt from the running. But it doesn’t.

This is how the article begins:

Nearly 150,000 California voters had their mail-in ballots rejected for the state’s June primary, a spike from recent elections even as the state attempts to make voting easier with the goal of boosting participation and counting every ballot.

Let’s rewrite that a bit:

Nearly 150,000 California mail-in ballots were rejected for the state’s June primary, an increase from recent elections even as the state attempts to make voting easier with the goal of boosting Democrat votes and relaxing the rules so that every mail-in ballot is counted whether it’s valid or not.

Here were the figures:

Every voter receives a mail-in ballot that can arrive at an election office seven days late and still be counted, provided the envelope is postmarked by Election Day.

Yet even with that generous weeklong window, the primary driver of the higher rejection numbers is late-arriving ballots, according to data compiled by the secretary of state’s office. Voting experts suspect the main problem is postmarks on ballots that came after Election Day, making them ineligible to be counted. The culprit could be U.S. Postal Service changes that might affect the timing of when postmarks are applied.

Left out is the question of how “voter” is determined, who is on the rolls, whether there’s any attempt to verify citizenship or residency and what those attempts are, and what “voting experts” are being interviewed and what their politics and evidence might be. Are they just guessing about the post office changes being the supposed culprit? Or might it be that a lot of ballots actually are mailed late? And if the latter, why? Might it be because it’s not until rather late that the fraudsters can guess how many ballots they need to make up the difference?

More:

According to state data, 148,241 mail ballots were rejected in the June election, or a rate of 1.73% of all mail ballots.

In raw numbers, that’s up from the 2024 primary, when 108,982 mail ballots were rejected, or a 1.56% rate. In 2022, 105,818 mail ballots were voided during the primary, or a rate similar to 2024.

But guess what? If you go to this site, you’ll find a chart that tells you that, way back in ancient times – the 2010 and the 2014 primaries in the state, to be exact – the rejection rates were much higher, 2.53 and 2.86 in the respective primaries. Since then – also described at that site – there have been major court victories to institute policies that lessen that number.

There are some very simple fixes for the late-postmark problem. One is to reduce the number of mail-in ballots as a whole by making the system more like the old absentee-ballot system. That won’t be happening while the Democrats are in charge. Another is for voters using such ballots to mail them in significantly ahead of time. That would not only reduce the number of late-postmarked ballots, but it would make it more difficult to engineer fraudulent late-ballot dumps to sway a close election.

In addition:

Nearly 44,000 ballots were set aside because the voter’s signature didn’t match the one on record with county officials. Over 8,300 ballots were rejected because there was no signature on the returned ballot envelope.

In 743 cases, the voter had already cast a ballot, so the mail ballot was voided. Other reasons for rejection included a ballot being missing from the return envelope, or multiple ballots were sent back in a single envelope.

Not reassuring.

More:

After the June primary, President Donald Trump seized on California’s reputation as the national slowpoke in vote counting to renew his long-standing criticism of the state’s elections …

There goes that Donald Trump again, seizing.

More:

There is no indication of any widespread problems with mail voting, which has gained in popularity among Democrats and Republicans alike. A report by the Brookings Institution published in 2025 found that the number of cases of mail voting fraud was minuscule — about four cases per 10 million mail ballots.

Three things about that paragraph are of interest. The first is that the common implication now from the left is that fraud must be widespread to be worth concern. And yet they don’t define “widespread.” The second is that they imply that all the fraud that’s been found and proven is all the fraud that occurs. This is preposterous. The third is that both parties support mail-in voting in some bipartisan fashion. But they don’t. It’s become more “popular” with Republicans because they know they must use it to counter the Democrats’ heavy use of it.

[NOTE: There’s also this news about voter eligibility in Pennsylvania.]

Ortega of Nicaragua decides to become official dictator

The New Neo Posted on by

The idea is to save democracy, or some such blah blah blah, by ending elections in that country:

[Ortego said] There won’t be any more elections here. There won’t be any more elections for them [the opposition factions] to try to seize the government, to seize power.

And we are going to work with the national assemblies and the corresponding organizations on the laws because laws need to be made.

Let them build a wall, a blockade against the coup plotters, the traitors and no matter how much money the Yankees give them, they won’t be able to.

The polls must not have been looking so good.

If you’re wondering how long Ortega has been around, he’s 80 years old now and was the country’s head from 1979 to 1990, was voted out, won again in the 2006 election and has been in power ever since:

In June 2018, organizations such as Amnesty International and the Organization of American States reported that Ortega had engaged in a violent oppression campaign against anti-government protests. The violent crackdown and subsequent constriction of civil liberties have led to waves of emigration to neighboring Costa Rica, with more than 30,000 Nicaraguans filing for asylum in that country.

His government jailed many potential rival candidates in the 2021 general election, including Cristiana Chamorro Barrios. Ortega’s government also imprisoned other opponents, such as former allies Dora María Téllez and Hugo Torres Jiménez. In August 2021, Nicaragua cancelled the operating permits of six US and European NGOs. Many critics of the Ortega government, including opposition leaders, journalists and members of civil society, fled the country in mid-2021. In his fourth term, Ortega ordered the closure of several NGOs, universities, and newspapers, and resumed his repression of the Catholic Church after a brief rapprochement, imprisoning prelate Rolando José Álvarez Lagos.

Nice guy.

Now he wants the Nicaraguan legislature to abolish elections. Apparently, they have the power to do that. It’s not quite the Enabling Act in Nazi Germany – by which the Reichstag effectively dissolved itself. But the Nicaraguan legislature has been cooperative with Ortega’s accumulation of more and more power, and it will continue down that path:

Ortega and [his wife] Murillo expanded their authority through sweeping constitutional changes that took effect in 2025. The reforms included extending the presidential term from five years to six and placing the legislative, judicial and electoral institutions under the authority of the presidency.

The pair now exercise control over nearly every branch of government, including the armed forces, police and judiciary.

Ortega, Nicaragua’s longest-serving leader, is scheduled to remain in office until early 2028, although his statement on Sunday effectively canceled Nicaragua’s next elections, which had been scheduled for November 2027.

Critics say Ortega had already effectively eliminated meaningful electoral competition during elections in 2011, 2016 and 2021.

As Rubio says:

“Daniel Ortega’s declaration that, under his family’s dictatorship, Nicaragua will never again hold elections lays bare their true authoritarian nature. Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have abandoned even the pretense of popular consent,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday.

The US had already imposed some sanctions and visa restrictions on government officials. The international community has been condemning Ortega for quite some time. But they are powerless to do anything. I doubt Trump will pull another Maduro caper, although I suppose it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

As Turkey’s Erdogan once said, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.” Ortega stepped off a long time ago, but now he’s telling the world in no uncertain terms. And, in the usual way of Newspeak, he says he’s doing it in order to save democracy.

It looks like Troy Jackson will be replacing Graham Platner

The New Neo Posted on by

And the new Democratic nominee for Maine senator almost certainly will be: Troy Jackson. He’s older than Platner (58) and has been a state politician for about 25 years, currently president of the Maine Senate. He’s not a fake oysterman but has been a real logger.

Jackson started out his political career as a Republican but fairly quickly became a Democrat and has become more and more “progressive” as time has gone on. For example, he has done pretty much an about-face on abortion in recent years. Same for LGBTQ rights. By 2016 and 2020 he was a Bernie Sanders guy, and he now says ICE should be abolished. As for Israel, he spouts the current garbage required of Democrats:

Jackson is critical of Israel and its role in the Gaza genocide, stating in July 2026 on social media that “anybody with eyes and a heart knows the Israeli government is committing genocide in Gaza.” He added that as a senator, he would never vote for U.S. military aid to Israel.

Israel’s role in the Gaza genocide attempt is as its victim, but of course that’s not what Wiki means by the above quote.

Jackson supported Platner’s candidacy but bailed when the rape allegations came out. Jackson himself has some baggage, but it seems it’s significantly lighter than the huge steamer trunk of his predecessor:

Jackson shares Platner’s progressive ideology but none of his charisma. …

Then there’s Jackson’s personality, which can be abrasive, according to former colleagues who report tantrums and outbursts involving thrown water bottles. When a campaign’s best defense is that he wasn’t throwing things at any one person, it’s a sign that the stories being spread are more than just axe-grinding.

For its part, Jackson’s team is trying to put its best spin on his sudden return to the arena. His advisers seem to resort to a single word to describe his leadership style: “passionate.”

“Passionate” might not be the best choice of adjectives.

The five-minute Odyssey

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been reading and listening to many reviews of the Nolan film The Odyssey. The spread of opinions is extremely wide – everything from a great masterpiece to a piece of horse manure, with plenty in-between. The film is doing well at the box office, probably because so much controversy has been generated and perhaps because people are hungry for films that tackle larger themes than the usual.

I probably will write more about the film in another post, although I don’t think I’ll be seeing it. Despite my curiosity about what it looks like on the large screen, the reason I don’t think I’ll go is that almost every single reviewer mentions something that’s a deal-breaker for me: painfully loud music above dialogue that’s hard to hear. I find such a combination awful, even though I’m interested in the large-screen spectacle of a classic story. I might not like it, but I’m intrigued enough to want to make up my own mind. But not at the cost of painful ears and losing at least half the dialogue.

This post is not about that movie, though. This is about a short video I encountered along the way. It’s AI-generated, and despite that I think it’s very fine. It tells the story of the Odyssey in about five minutes, using classic artwork as its basis. From the description at YouTube:

The whole epic in one breath: the apple, the wrath, the horse, the wandering, the homecoming, the film revealed at last as a Bosch triptych swinging shut on a world in a glass sphere.

Ten years of war and wandering, told in one breath. This is the whole Odyssey compressed into a single unbroken descent — the apple rolling down a god’s banquet table, a thousand ships dissolving into Claude Lorrain’s gold, Achilles playing one note while the war burns without him, and the Cyclops rising out of Goya’s black. From the sack of Troy to the bag of winds, from Circe’s melting sailors to the shades spiraling out of Hades, every trial arrives as a living painting, then gives way to the next.

Five images carry the current all the way through: the eye, the orb, the fire, the sea, the thread. Watch for where they return — the apple that becomes a star, the wound that becomes an empty beach. It ends where all of it has been pointing: a beggar at his own gate, an old dog’s last recognition, a bed rooted in a living olive tree, and a triptych swinging shut on a world held inside a glass sphere.

The longest voyage in literature. One take. No landfall until the final frame.

And here it is:

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Kamala Harris, the gift that keeps on giving:

Democrats and their national apparatus, namely the Democratic National Committee (DNC), have been hampered this entire midterm election cycle by a debt incurred during the last election cycle. … Democrats became severely cash strapped when they elevated Kamala Harris to be their presidential nominee in July of 2024. Her campaign, which famously lasted only 107 days, spent more than $1.5 billion to get an electoral thrashing from Donald Trump.

Who’s the frontrunner for 2028? According to Polymarket, it’s Newsom, with AOC and Ossoff more or less tied for second and Harris third. This article says that CNN’s “data guru” believes that Ossoff is gaining on Newsom. All of this is, of course, very very early and subject to enormous change.

(2) Maricopa County seems to be doing better with the process of counting votes.

(3) Israelis – especially pro- and anti-Netanyahu politicians and pundits – don’t usually unite to defend him. But who has accomplished the feat of getting them on the same page as Netanyahu? Why, Mamdani has:

One of Netanyahu’s political rivals, Naftali Bennett, a former prime minister, wrote on X, “Mayor Mamdani, your antisemitic libels against Israel’s prime minister, its commanders, and its soldiers place you on the wrong side of history – alongside those who deny October 7th and protested on campuses on October 8th in support of genocidal Hamas. You’re continuing a long tradition of attacking Jews and condemning us for defending ourselves.” …

Another person running against Netanyahu for prime minister, Gadi Eisenkot, said, “The remarks by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are a reckless distortion of the truth. They are pure antisemitism, with no basis in fact. They are dangerous, inflammatory, and have no place anywhere – certainly not in 2026. … The IDF operates according to clear values and in accordance with international law, with a deep conviction in the justice of its cause.”

Another of Netanyahu’s political rivals, Benny Gantz, declared, “Mayor @ZohranKMamdani — political theater at the expense of every day New Yorkers is one thing. But parroting Hamas lies on starvation, sympathizing with terrorist[s] who murdered and raped innocent Israelis on Oct. 7, libellously claiming IDF targeted journalists and aid workers, and deceitfully repeating calls of ‘genocide’ are not only blatant lies — but a moral stain on yourself and the office you hold. Focus on New York, Mayor.”

(4) Speaking of Mamdani, a group of landlords in NYC are suing to stop his rent freeze, calling it an abuse of power:

“If allowed to stand, Order #58 will impose severe, irreparable harm” on the plaintiffs “and similarly-situated landlords (who stand to lose their properties), while setting a dangerous precedent that the RGB’s [Rent Guidelines Board’s] independence can be cast aside by Mayoral fiat,” the suit states.

One landlord who is part of the suit, Violet Zharku, said the amount of money she makes from renting her 50 units will no longer keep up with the costs of running and repairing the apartments, forcing her family to look for other income streams to keep the three fully stabilized buildings in minimum shape.

“Freezing the rent does not freeze my mortgage, property taxes, insurance, water and sewer bills, utility costs or the cost of repairs,” she said.

That, of course, is the point – to drive them and kulaks like them out of business. There’s always the possibility that Mamdani and the Board members flunked math, as well.

(5) Republican House member Brandon Gill strikes again:

Unlike many colleagues on both sides of the aisle, Gill isn’t high on theatrics. The 32-year-old politician simply reminds far lefties of their own words or the policies their organizations have promoted.

(6) Here are the four military members who were killed recently in the Middle East. RIP. One man was killed by a “controlled detonation” rather than enemy fire, and an investigation into why this happened has been launched:

The use of controlled detonations is a common practice among trained explosive ordnance disposal teams to neutralize hazardous devices. Those procedures were refined over two decades of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, where roadside bombs were a persistent threat to coalition forces. While the disposal of munitions is inherently dangerous, one U.S. official explained, fatal incidents are relatively rare.

(7) Evidence of Act Blue donation fraud:

In one notable example, an 88 year old woman who lives in a trailer and has no computer is listed as having donated over $150K to Dem campaigns. Including 47 times to @AbdulElSayed‘s Senate campaign.

Where is this money really coming from?

Remember those non-citizen voter registrations in New Jersey?

The New Neo Posted on by

There may be more.

A lot more:

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin on Tuesday warned that the number of non-citizens registered to vote in New Jersey could be much higher than the 6,660 to which Gov. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., admitted on Tuesday.

Sherrill confirmed that a software glitch had led to the erroneous registration of non-citizens who confirmed they were not citizens while applying for driver’s licenses. …

New Jersey could have as many as 35,152 potential non-citizens registered to vote,” he posted on X.

But that’s not all, folks. There’s also this. The governor of New Jersey had blamed a “glitch” by the software company. But the software company says not so fast:

IDEMIA, the software vendor for the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, issued a statement saying it was the responsibility of the state government, which is completely controlled by Democrats, to verify eligibility to vote.

“IDEMIA works with the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, and has for more than 40 years, to support the process through which eligible individuals may indicate their interest in registering to vote when applying for or renewing a driver’s license or state-issued identification card. IDEMIA’s role is to transmit information through the motor vehicle system,” IDEMIA said in a statement to Just the News.

“The voter registration information is transmitted to the New Jersey Department of State, Division of Elections, which is ultimately responsible for verifying eligibility to vote. Information submitted by IDEMIA must still be validated and adjudicated by the Division of Elections.”

The buck stops nowhere.

Will new British PM Andy Burnham be less awful than Keir Starmer?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s very hard to say.

Here’s one viewpoint:

The uncertainty arises because Burnham is a rare figure in British politics: a genuine political veteran who refashioned himself as an insurgent. Born in 1970 in Aintree, a suburb of Liverpool, he was first elected as a member of parliament (MP) for Leigh in 2001. He served under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary, and, from 2009, Health Secretary. His signature achievement from that era—launching the Hillsborough Independent Panel into the 1989 stadium disaster—established his reputation as a politician who takes on institutional cover-ups on behalf of ordinary people, a theme he has cultivated ever since. …

As mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017, Burnham won three consecutive elections by widening margins, earning him the sobriquet “King of the North.” He built a policy record on buses, housing, and homelessness that made him Labour’s most popular politician in the polls. He belongs to the party’s so-called “soft left:” to Starmer’s left on economics and public services, but no Corbynite.

To Starmer’s left, eh? I suppose this is what that refers to:

Burnham promised in his first speech outside 10 Downing Street to “build a new economy where we put life’s essentials back under stronger public control.”

What could possibly go wrong?

More:

Burnham has pledged to reverse nearly two decades of low growth since the 2008 financial crisis by harnessing public and private capital for transport, housing, and infrastructure. This, in essence, is his mayoral playbook scaled nationally. His signature gesture is a “No. 10 North” in Manchester to coordinate devolution, alongside an ambitious social housing program, taking back control of public utilities, nationalizing steel, and expanded social care. …

… He has committed to the government’s existing borrowing limits, pledged fiscal discipline, and promised to reduce the welfare bill. Much of the substance is continuity with the Starmer-Reeves agenda—industrial strategy, self-sufficiency in sectors essential to national security, directing procurement toward domestic production—but wrapped in a more compelling political story. Burnham’s talk of “sovereign capabilities” in shipbuilding, energy, AI, and quantum would not sound out of place in Paris or Brussels.

Sounds rather magical, doesn’t it? Expanded social services along with fiscal discipline? Financed by shipbuilding, AI, etc.? More details can be found here.

Even the Guardian is wondering.

By the way, Britain has had seven prime ministers in the last ten years.