RIP Chuck Norris

The New Neo Posted on by

Norris has died at 86. It sounds as though he was quite healthy and active until an extremely recent hospitalization:

Norris, who had just turned 86 earlier this month, is best remembered for his martial arts and action movie roles in the 1980s as well as for his role on the TV show “Walker, Texas Ranger,” which was one of my mother’s favorite shows. He served in the Air Force, which was where he learned karate and became a karate teacher. That’s how he met people like Steve McQueen, who encouraged him to get into the movies. He had a critical role in Bruce Lee’s “Way of the Dragon,” and his career was off and running.

I confess that Norris’ films and TV work weren’t the genre I generally watch, and so I’m not really familiar with him although I certainly knew who he was. But I thought I’d put up this thread for those of you who were fans of his – he certainly had many.

RIP.

Joe Kent casts his lot with the Carlson/Owens wing of …

The New Neo Posted on by

… of some group or other. I don’t know exactly what to call them, because they’re certainly not conservative. “Far right” indicates they actually are on the right, and I think they really merit their own designation because the actual right disowns them (rightly). We could call them neo-Nazis, but they don’t have the tattoos or other regalia.

At any rate, Joe Kent, who’s enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, appeared on Carlson’s show yesterday. That’s no surprise; he’s been allied with Carlson for years and appeared on his show as early as the Fox News days (see this).

Some tidbits from the interview; it’s astounding this guy was in US government intelligence till just the other day. And I bet he’s not alone in these sentiments:

After resigning this week over what he said was Israel’s manipulation of President Donald Trump into war with Iran, former national counterterrorism director Joe Kent is now insinuating Israel may have also killed Charlie Kirk as part of its pressure campaign.

Kent made the comments on a Wednesday evening appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, as the FBI launched an investigation into whether Kent shared classified material. He is also scheduled to appear Thursday evening at a “Catholics for Catholics” gala featuring podcaster Candace Owens, who has promulgated antisemitic conspiracy theories and praised Kent.

“When one of President Trump’s closest advisers, who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and for us to rethink, at least, our relationship with the Israelis, and then he’s suddenly publicly assassinated and we’re not allowed to ask any questions about that, it’s a data point,” Kent told Carlson about the 2025 murder of the right-wing pundit. “It’s a data point that we need to look into.”

He’s going to be appearing with Owens, too, which makes perfect sense considering his views.

Carlson has also taken it upon himself to defend the British Fascist Oswald Moseley. I think one of the things he’s doing is exploiting the historical ignorance of the young.

Lastly, I wonder – with zero evidence, so this is truly just a thought – whether the investigation of Kent for leaking (an investigation which started prior to his resignation) has to do with leaking information to Carlson or Owens or both.

Somaliland corroborates the charges against Ilhan Omar

The New Neo Posted on by

Let’s see – it’s been close to seven years since I wrote my first post on the subject of Omar’s marriage to her alleged brother. I deemed the evidence very plausible although unproven. The Powerline bloggers had already been on the case for quite some time and were quite convincing. But it was still treated as a wild and nasty slur.

Now we have the breakaway country of Somaliland saying that yes, it’s true – and also that her father was one of the oppressors, not the oppressed. I had started hearing that charge more recently; maybe a year or two ago?

I don’t think anything will come of this. One reason is that, even if there was fraud involved on Omar’s immigration application, it would have been on the part of her family, since she was about thirteen when she came to this country (at least according to Wiki). Even if proven, her immigration fraud in marrying her brother to help him would not invalidate her own status, according to my understanding of the law.

Nevertheless, it’s not a good look. Somaliland posts some documents here:

There’s also this. Somaliland has some scores to settle with Omar’s father:

Between 1981 and 1991, the Somali military in which Colonel Nur Omar Mohamed, Ilhan Omar’s father, served as a senior officer executed a brutal and systematic campaign of genocide targeting the Isaaq people of the modern day Republic of Somaliland.

This dark chapter in Africa’s history, which was known as the Isaaq Genocide, was a merciless military campaign that resulted in the killing of over 200,000 Isaaq civilians. It also involved widespread forced displacement, scorched?earth destruction of the second and third largest cities (Hargeisa and Burao), aerial bombardement of almost every other single city, town and village in Somaliland, and two decades of large?scale red-terror style tactics against the civilian population of Somaliland.

It was carried out through relentless aerial bombardments – planes repeatedly strafed fleeing refugees – summary executions, burning of entire villages, deportations, land?mining of water sources and homes, Holodomor style government enforced man-made famines (the Dabadheer Drought) and the use of paramilitary units such as the Somali Armed Forces’ “Dabar Goynta Isaaqa” (The Isaaq Exterminators), composed exclusively of non-ethnically Isaaq soldiers, to enact mass killings under Somalia’s military direction.

Unless they can pin the carnage on the Jews, most of the world doesn’t care.

Governor Hochul pleads with the former “captives” to return to NY so they can have their assets confiscated

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Quotes from Hochul:

I need people who are high net worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state. Now, there are some patriotic millionaires who stepped up. OK, cut me the checks if you want to be supportive, but maybe the first step should be go down to Palm Beach and see who you can bring back home.”

I think many “high net worth” people are immune to Hochul’s guilt-tripping. If you make taxes too high for the wealthy, a significant number will leave. They are rich, and it’s relatively easy for them to do. Why not try to attract them instead? It might even raise more revenue if you more of them at a lower tax rate rather than fewer at a higher tax rate.

More from Hochul:

There were people who could only work in an office in Manhattan and work in New York state. And they were captives to our state, they were going to stay. We saw that that’s not the case. Wall Street businesses looking at Texas, they’re not going there because they have a nicer governor. They’re going there because of the tax rate.

Love that word: “captives.” And what freed the captives from their chains? The extreme response to COVID and the accommodations to it are what made going to the office less necessary. So Hochul is at least partly responsible for that, too – she became governor in August of 2021 after Cuomo left; prior to that she’d been Lieutenant Governor since 2014.

As far as “nice” governors go – who cares? Plus, she thinks she’s “nice”? I seem to recall this from Hochul in August of 2022:

“Trump and Zeldin and Molinaro – just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong. OK? Get out of town. Because you don’t represent our values,” added Hochul, who raised eyebrows last week for a dig against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a Manhattan event commemorating the Holocaust. …

… [T]he first female governor in state history has a message for political opponents who don’t share her believes on issues like abortion rights have no place in the Empire State.

“You’re not New Yorkers, because we come from a long line of people who fought for women’s rights that happened here first,” she said Monday.

You kept telling people to leave, and now you want them back because you want their money for the special interest groups of the Democrat Party. And you’re not even hiding it.

Who is Joe Kent and why was he the director of the National Counterterrorism Center?

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s been some chatter about Joe Kent’s resignation letter:

Joe Kent, a top aide to Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard, took to X Tuesday morning to announce his resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), writing, “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran.”

Kent, an Army veteran who has two failed congressional runs on his resume, also posted his official resignation letter, and tweeted, “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

I don’t think the Kent letter means much to anyone who didn’t already agree with it – such as the left and the Tucker wing of the ex-right. In it, Kent parrots the Tucker line. The government and the military disagree, as does Trump:

Trump was more than happy to show Kent the exit. “When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat, we don’t want those people,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “There are some people, I guess, that would say that, but they’re not smart people or they’re not savvy people. Iran was a tremendous threat.”

Who is Kent, and why was he appointed in the first place?:

Joseph Clay Kent (born April 11, 1980) is an American politician, former United States Army warrant officer, and former Central Intelligence Agency paramilitary officer who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center from 2025 to 2026. …
Kent enlisted in the 75th Ranger Regiment and applied for the Special Forces before the September 11 attacks. He served eleven combat tours, primarily in Iraq, and retired in 2018, becoming a paramilitary officer with the CIA. In January 2019, Kent’s wife, Shannon, was killed in a suicide bombing in Manbij, Syria. He became involved in political advocacy after Shannon’s death.

In 2022, Kent was the Republican nominee for Washington’s third congressional district.

He wasn’t elected, but he supported Trump back then because Trump said he didn’t want to start wars. Later, Trump chose him for the intelligence job in February 2025, very early in his second term.

Kent claimed in his resignation note that Israel had pressured the US into starting the Iraq War, although Kent wasn’t in the government then and had no special knowledge of what happened. In addition, those who did have such knowledge say that the Israeli government at the time warned the US not to start the war because Iran should be the focus instead.

More about Kent’s run for office in 2021 [emphasis mine]:

In September, Trump endorsed Kent. His prominence was bolstered by Tucker Carlson, who had frequently had Kent as guest on the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight (2016–2023).

So – surprise, surprise – Kent was a Tucker Carlson protege. I wonder whether Tucker recommended him for the government position in 2025.

Kent didn’t last long in the administration’s good graces. For months before his departure there were problems:

In October, The New York Times reported Kent had obtained access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s files on the assassination of Charlie Kirk, alarming the bureau’s director, Kash Patel. According to The Wall Street Journal, Kent had been sidelined from the team responsible for producing and delivering the President’s Daily Brief in the final months of his tenure.

Kent has been against military intervention in general after his Iraq deployment:

Kent is a non-interventionist, citing his military experience and the death of his wife. He began to question the management of the U.S. military during the Iraq War, when officials sought to eliminate members of Saddam Hussein’s government. According to Mother Jones, Kent read David Hackworth’s memoir About Face (1990), a book critical of the “clerks at the top” directing the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War. He defended Trump’s pardons of two Army officers convicted of Uniform Code of Military Justice offenses, Mathew L. Golsteyn and Clint Lorance, and his intervention in the case of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL involved in a high-profile war crimes case; in an interview with The New York Times in November 2019, Kent compared Gallagher’s case with that of Chelsea Manning.

During the early days of the Ukraine War Kent quickly aligned with the pro-Russia anti-Ukraine wing such as Carlson:

He stated Russian president Vladimir Putin’s demands for Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts were “very reasonable”. His comments on Tucker Carlson Tonight denouncing support for Ukraine as deterring a peace deal were repeated by TASS, a Russian state-owned news agency. In September 2023, Kent described the Biden administration’s strategy as immoral, arguing that the U.S. is fueling a prolonged war that is “unsustainable” for Ukraine. Kent has specifically stated that the policy uses the Ukrainian civilian population as “cannon fodder”, describing drafted Ukrainian soldiers—whom he characterizes as formerly everyday workers and students—as being sent to die in a “muddy ditch” in a war he believes they cannot win. He has argued that by providing continuous aid, the U.S. prevents a necessary, albeit likely painful, peace deal from being brokered.[

So he’s consistent on this. He doesn’t have any special or new information, nor has he experienced some sort of soul-searching political change. Au contraire.

The real question isn’t about Kent’s resignation – it’s about why he was appointed in the first place, and why he stayed in his position as long as he did.

David Boies on the Iran War: the way we were

The New Neo Posted on by

Five days ago I read this piece. It was in support of Trump’s actions in Iran, and because it was published in The New York Post – which is a paper on the right – it didn’t seem surprising.

But when I noticed the author’s name – David Boies – I was very surprised indeed. I immediately recognized the name as that of a prominent Democrat attorney. But the content was so unlike what I would expect these days from any Democrat not named Fetterman that I looked Boies’ history up, just to make sure. Yes, he had represented Gore in Bush v. Gore, and represented the plaintiff’s side in the case that successfully invalidated California’s Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage.

But now he’s written this:

Every past president since Bill Clinton, Republican and Democrat alike, has declared that Iran couldn’t be permitted to develop nuclear weapons. Not one acted to prevent it.

Every president since Ronald Reagan has condemned Iran’s role in terrorism against American citizens, interests and allies. Not one acted to stop it.

Instead each president left his successor with a more dangerous Iran and a more complicated threat to address. …

I understand some of the hostility to Trump’s action. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party and the pacifist wing of the Democratic Party each are wrapped in the fantasy that we can afford to ignore the capabilities and intentions of enemies because they are thousands of miles away. Two hundred years ago that view was credible. One hundred years ago it was plausible. Today it takes only one missile carrying a nuclear or dirty bomb to get through our defenses, or one such device smuggled into this country, to devastate a city.

I also understand — and deplore — the fringes of both parties that apparently hate Israel and Jews so much that they oppose any action to neutralize Israel’s enemies.

What is harder to understand, and particularly troubling for our country, is opposition rooted simply in antipathy toward Trump himself. We used to say that politics stops at the water’s edge. …

Those of us who generally oppose Trump but who recognize the threat Iran poses need to support the military action not because we owe anything to Trump but because we owe it to ourselves, our country and our children.

If we opposed the war and succeeded in pressuring Trump to curtail it before the mission is accomplished, we would have the satisfaction of defeating someone we generally oppose, which might help ourselves politically.

But America would be worse for it.

The whole thing is worth reading.

Boies is eighty-five years old, so I see him as a throwback to an earlier time when many Democrats would have been willing to support such a war despite a Republican president being in charge. Now there are few.

The New Yorker interviewed Boies on the subject; the text of the interview seems to be available although TNY is usually behind a paywall. To get the tenor of some of the questions asked of Boies, take a look at this one, which seems designed to tell the reader just how wrong Boies is:

This war was started by a President who frequently seems unstable, who can’t lay out a clear reason for the war, and who makes vague threats against our allies. We have a Secretary of War who seems to delight in death and destruction. The White House X feed is putting out fascistic video edits of military attacks that delight in violence. How do you synthesize all that with the point you’re trying to make?

The questioner assumes the New Yorker readership is naturally in agreement with such propositions as that Trump is “unstable,” has not laid out a clear reason (although he’s laid out many, actually), that Hegseth “delights” in death and destruction, and that videos of the war are “fascistic” ones that also “delight” in violence.

Boies answers that question by basically ignoring all that editorializing and sticking with logic:

I think you’ve got to begin by asking yourself, Do you believe that this war is necessary or not? And I think you’ve got to begin by asking yourself, first, Do you believe it’s acceptable for the Iranian regime to have nuclear weapons and the capacity to deliver them? If you believe that, then the next question you have to ask yourself is: Could we have achieved that goal of eliminating the threat that Iran poses by some other means?

Ah, but that’s absolutely not where most people on the left begin. They begin by hating Trump and Hegseth and automatically opposing everything the administration does; their “logic” is retrofitted to conform with that conviction.

A bit later in the interview Boies reveals he was not a fan of Obama’s Iran deal when it was negotiated because he doesn’t trust the Iranian leaders. So this goes back quite a ways with him; he is consistent. He also says the following when the interviewer tries to point out inconsistencies in what Trump has said:

But see — my view is I don’t support [Trump] in this conflict because he says it’s the right thing to do. I support him because I think it’s the right thing to do.

The interviewer cites the girls’ school bombing as though it’s been proven the US did it, although it has not been, and then asks another question more to guide the reader than for Boies:

Sir, you’re a very, very smart guy. You don’t think Donald Trump actually cares about casualties, do you?

He simply can’t believe the answer can be “yes.” That disbelief is astounding and shows the strength of TDS, considering the war’s focus on the Iranian leadership rather than civilians, the inevitability of collateral damage in any war, and Trump’s longstanding opposition to most wars.

Boies’ answer:

Look, I actually do, O.K.? In his first Administration, in 2019, when he turned back the bombers from hitting Iran, I think he did that because I do think he genuinely cares about human life. Now that doesn’t mean that he respects human life the way I would.

He had to add that last sentence, but I forgive him, considering the “Look, I actually do, O.K.?”

And he adds, for good measure:

I do understand that in wartime people say a lot of things that are untrue to support their side. We’ve done that repeatedly in every war we fought. Now, with respect to civilian casualties, it is a terrible cost of war, and it is an inevitable cost of war. And, by my count, the civilian casualties that have been incurred are far less than the civilian casualties that this Iranian regime caused in suppressing the protests.

Later in the interview Boies gives another hint at why he’s willing to give Trump the benefit of the doubt – in other words, why he seems relatively free of TDS [emphasis mine]:

Well, I don’t know. I do know Donald Trump some. I’ve known him for decades. And I think that he would be better served by being willing to recognize some of the costs here, but I believe he respects human life. And I think this is a President who, despite renaming the Department of Defense, really doesn’t like war.

Boies is to be lauded for refusing to demonize someone he knows is not a demon. It takes some courage these days for a Democrat to take such a position. Yes, he’s old, and that may help. But probably many of his friends and associates will now shun him.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Nobody wants to get this kind of call from the Mossad. Is the story for real? I don’t know. But I do know the Mossad seems to have some extraordinary intelligence capabilities, especially in Iran. That’s probably based on many things, but one of them could be that many Iranian Jews fled to Israel around the time the mullahs came to power 47 years ago. They, and perhaps their children, would be native Farsi speakers.

(2) Citizenship of fraudster revoked:

A Haitian-born fraudster has been stripped of his U.S. citizenship after defrauding COVID-19 relief programs of millions of dollars and concealing his criminal conduct during the naturalization process.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith entered an order revoking the citizenship of Joff Stenn Wroy Philossaint, 25, of Fort Lauderdale, after determining that Philossaint illegally procured his citizenship by making false statements to immigration officials.

Note that his citizenship wasn’t revoked because of the crimes he committed. It was revoked because he’d already started the criminal conduct before his citizenship hearing but concealed it from authorities during a sworn naturalization interview.

In addition, I’m wondering what happens now. Does he get deported back to Haiti?

(3) Iran’s intelligence minister Esmail Khatib has been killed by a targeted Israeli strike.

“Khatib played a significant role during the recent protests throughout Iran, including the arrest & killing of protestors and led terrorist activities against Israelis & Americans around the world,” the IDF said in a post on social media.

“Similarly, he operated against Iranian citizens during the Mahsa Amini protests (2022–2023),” they added.

The Iranian president – (rumored to be trying to resign and asking that he not be killed, since he has no control of anything anyone) announced the death.

(4) Chinagate – not. There are allegations that Trump was not told by US intelligence that there was evidence China had interfered in the 2020 election on behalf of Biden:

A nalysts inside the U.S. intelligence community sought to conceal evidence of Chinese influence efforts from President Donald Trump during the 2020 election, with analysts saying they didn’t want their intel used by “that vulgarian in the Oval Office” to pursue policies toward China they personally disagreed with.

The revelation is found within a January 2021 report written by — and never before reported upon comments by — analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf, who conducted a review of the spy community’s handling of Russian versus Chinese meddling efforts during the 2020 election. Among his conclusions was that intelligence analysts downplayed China’s actions because they had disdain for the “vulgarian” Trump and did not want to support the policies and priorities of the Trump administration toward China with which they “personally disagree.”

It’s a sad thing that at this point most of us are so cynical that – if true – it doesn’t surprise us, and we doubt there will be any significant negative consequences for those who did this.

(5) An elderly Israeli couple were killed by an Iranian cluster bomb. Cluster bombs are banned by international treaty. Amnesty International actually noted back in July that Iran had been using these banned weapons. But it’s not as though the international community cares very much.

(6) Perhaps Trump’s pressure is working? I certainly hope so:

Nick Shirley visits California

The New Neo Posted on by

And it’s been a working vacation:

You remember Nick Shirley, the brave young investigative journalist who reported on the Minneapolis Quality “Learing” Center and exposed widespread fraud in Gov. Tim Walz’s Gopher State. …

He next set his sights on California, and on Wednesday, he released a 40-minute video showing what he’s found so far:

“Here is the full 40 minutes of my crew and I exposing California fraud, Minnesota was big but California is even bigger… We uncovered over $170,000,000 in fraud as these fraudsters live in luxury with no consequences. Like it and share it, the fraud must STOP.

“We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening. These fraudsters have been able to defraud American taxpayers for years without any pushback from the public and politicians.

“It is time to EXPOSE IT ALL and end America’s fraud crisis.”

Apparently Governor Newsom was not especially pleased, because his press office countered with an AI-generated image that implied Shirley’s motive was some sort of unhealthy interest in children. I kid you not:

Newsom’s clever little witticism didn’t get a whole lot of favorable responses, however.

Is Iran approaching a tipping point?

The New Neo Posted on by

I don’t want to be counting too many unhatched chickens, but there are some promising signs in Iran.

A few days ago Ali Larijani was trash-talking Trump and Netanyahu. No more:

A senior Iranian leader who warned President Trump last week to “watch out for yourself — lest you be eliminated” was killed in an overnight strike, Israel’s defense minister said Tuesday.

Ali Larijani, head of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, was hit days after joining Iran President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in the streets of Tehran at a Friday rally marking the pro-Palestinian Quds Day holiday.

“It’s clear they’re running out of steam,” Larijani told a TV interviewer in reference to Operation Epic Fury. “Trump’s problem is that he doesn’t understand that the Iranian nation is mature and determined.”

He was one of the most powerful men in the Iranian government, widely thought to be the current head – if the Iranian government can be said to have one.

He’s not the only Iranian higher-up to have met his death recently:

In a separate statement, the Israel Defense Forces announced it had killed Gen. Gholam Reza Soleimani, head of the Revolutionary Guard’s all-volunteer Basij force, in a “targeted strike” on Tehran.

This Soleimani was unrelated to Qasem Soleimani, killed by the US in 2020. But no doubt a lot of people in Iran have had reason to rejoice at his death. He was the one giving the orders to shoot demonstrators.

When I read that both men had been killed, I wondered why the recent public appearance and bravado statements from Larijani. Saving face right up to the end? Or have the leaders come to believe in their own invincibility over the years? I don’t know whether we can take the following at face value, either:

A regular user of social media, Larijani responded Sunday to the $10 million reward offer by the US by quoting Hussein Ibn Ali, an early Shia Islam leader: “I do not see death as anything but happiness, nor life with the oppressors as anything but torment.”

Well, he got his wish. Iran has officially confirmed his death.

Now it comes down to how many in the Iranian government and enforcement police are true believers and how many are pragmatists who will abandon the cause. I don’t know the answer, but I hear rumors of more defections. For example, the president of the country is said to be considering resignation – although I think his power wasn’t all that great to begin with. Meanwhile, titular Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei is nowhere to be seen and is still unheard, although he keeps “issuing statements” read by others; Iran keeps pounding the Gulf States; and the IDF intelligence chief says Iran is “in distress” but the prospect of regime change is uncertain.

Well, we already knew that.

NOTE: The intelligence on these guys’ whereabouts is truly impressive. I would love to know how the Mossad – I think it’s mainly them, although US intelligence may have some role as well – does it.