Iran. Deal. Again.

The New Neo Posted on by

If you can make sense of this, please be my guest. Don’t ask anyone to agree with you, though. I’ve got my theories about this back-and-forth behavior, and have stated them. But that doesn’t mean I’m correct either.

But here goes:

We reported earlier how President Donald Trump lit up the Iranian state media for leaks that they were claiming about the deal that is about to be finalized.

As we noted, the regime’s foreign ministry spokesperson confirmed the deal was close to being finalized.

Now, in what has to be a first, the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, scolded the Iranian media for what they had reported about the deal, indicating they were getting things wrong. Then, Trump quoted Araghchi, probably another first.

Get it?

This is the rumored deal:

1. Nuclear material will be destroyed and removed

2. Nuclear program will be dismantled

3. None of their money released until they perform

4. Strait of Hormuz will be open

5. No Iran funding of terrorist groups

I’d like to add, “stop killing your own people.” Or even better, “step down” and have free and fair elections. I know, that’s not happening. But will those five points happen? How will all of it be enforced? It’s a nice wishlist, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

And then what? If a Democrat gets elected president, will everything go out the window? Isn’t that what the Iranian regime – which plays the long game – is counting on? How would the Trump administration be able to guarantee a deal would last long enough to matter? I don’t think they’re unaware of the problem. But I hope they’re very creative about the solution.

Then again, the deal may fall through again, and the war resume.

Update on the “too many requests” error message

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been hard at work trying to find the culprit. Along the way I’ve tweaked the site several times in several ways and the problem seemed to get better. For the last few days, no error messages at all. I thought maybe I was home free, and then about a half-hour ago: BOOM. It happened again.

And so although I don’t think I’m all the way back to square one, the problem seems to be persisting at least somewhat. One tip – if you happen to get the error message – is to wait about a half-hour and it should clear up. It also doesn’t seem to happen to everyone all at once, because when I’m getting the error message, I can see by my site traffic meter that some people are still getting through.

Hope they’re not bots.

Now my host has escalated things and supposedly the higher-ups are working on fixing the glitch. We’ll see. I hope they don’t tell me to just get a much more expensive hosting service.

I’ll keep you posted.

Enoch Powell: on immigration to Britain

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday several people asked, in the comments of this post, what reason (or excuse) was initially given for the Western Europeans letting in so many third-world immigrants, and whether there had been any explicit reference at the time to the falling birthrates of native Europeans. I don’t know the answer. But I believe the phenomenon of increased immigration was starting to occur before falling birthrates were explicitly an issue. However, as I wrote previously, one of the arguments for immigration advanced at the time was that the immigrants were needed for labor. So there’s at least some implied element involving the local populations’ not being present in great enough numbers.

A week or so ago I had come across an interview with Enoch Powell, he of the famous “rivers of blood” speech given in 1968. I’d heard of Powell quite a while before that, and had read the famous speech for which he became a pariah (although a hero to some) by warning about the growing pace of immigration to Britain from third-world countries that were part of the British Commonwealth. The term “rivers of blood” came from this quote from the speech:

Here [referring to a proposed anti-discrimination law] is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organise to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.” That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch with horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.

Because the speech was made in 1968, the specter he was raising was of the widespread race riots and unrest in the US at the time.

Here’s more from the 1968 speech that stirred so much controversy [emphasis mine]:

We must be mad, literally mad, as a nation to be permitting the annual inflow of some 50,000 dependents, who are for the most part the material of the future growth of the immigrant-descended population. It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre. So insane are we that we actually permit unmarried persons to immigrate for the purpose of founding a family with spouses and fiancés whom they have never seen. …

In the hundreds upon hundreds of letters I received when I last spoke on this subject two or three months ago, there was one striking feature which was largely new and which I find ominous. All Members of Parliament are used to the typical anonymous correspondent; but what surprised and alarmed me was the high proportion of ordinary, decent, sensible people, writing a rational and often well-educated letter, who believed that they had to omit their address because it was dangerous to have committed themselves to paper to a Member of Parliament agreeing with the views I had expressed, and that they would risk penalties or reprisals if they were known to have done so. The sense of being a persecuted minority which is growing among ordinary English people in the areas of the country which are affected is something that those without direct experience can hardly imagine. …

Now we are seeing the growth of positive forces acting against integration, of vested interests in the preservation and sharpening of racial and religious differences, with a view to the exercise of actual domination, first over fellow-immigrants and then over the rest of the population.

That was followed by a quote about Sikhs not assimilating but rather wanting to be granted “special rights”; that reminds me, on reading it now, of the killing of Henry Nowak by Vickrum Digwa, the knife-carrying Sikh.

Powell’s speech certainly describes with some accuracy trends which have only increased. He seems to have foreseen not only the growth of third-world immigration to Britain, but describes the phenomenon of the reaction of native British people feeling like third-class citizens, the desire of the immigrant groups for power, and the fear of reprisals and censorship native Britishers felt for speaking out against the immigrant influx. These are not recent trends; they were already present over fifty years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I’d come across some interviews with Enoch Powell from the 1960s and 1970s in which he further discussed the reasoning in Britain of those encouraging immigration at the time. But when I tried to find one interview in particular just now I couldn’t locate it, although I’ll continue to look. Instead, I found the following fascinating segment from a 1971 Dick Cavett Show in which Powell and Jonathan Miller debate the two sides of the issue. It is absolutely fascinating how Powell states the nativist side and Miller states the globalist side, the same battle that goes on today. Note also how eloquent they both are, although I think Powell is the more impressive in that regard:

That clip makes me sad. It not only shows how long these problems have been with us and how long the sides have been at loggerheads, but it also shows how public discourse has degenerated over the years.

[NOTE: I’ll post the other Powell video – the one I was originally searching for – if I find it.]

Europe’s changing demographics

The New Neo Posted on by

Astounding facts can be found here about the demographic transformation of Western Europe. An excerpt:

Between 2010 and today, in only 16 years, the number of foreign-born residents in Europe rocketed from 40million to more than 64million. In other words, Europe’s ruling class added 24million foreign-born residents in only 16 years, with nearly three-quarters coming from radically different cultures and nations.

It’s that last bit that’s of great import: “from radically different cultures and nations.” Not just “radically different,” either, but a significant number of the newcomers are also uninterested in assimilating to their new cultural surroundings and in some instances they hate them and actively wish to change them.

The US does – or used to do – somewhat better at assimilation, but Europe historically has been much less interested in that process. Perhaps that’s because European nations are more based on a shared physical (genetic) and historical heritage and less based on shared principles (or at least overtly stated shared principles rather than subtly understood ones), whereas the US has always been composed mostly of people “from away” who have come because they are interested in liberty and opportunity.

The advent of the welfare state, both in Europe and in the US, has diluted that motive.

More from the essay:

Between 2015 and 2024, Germany’s immigrant population exploded from 11million to more than 17million. In Spain, it surged from 5.9million to close to 10million.

As in the UK, immigration is now the only reason Europe’s population is growing. Why? Because Europe’s people are no longer reproducing themselves naturally. Europe has now recorded more deaths than births every single year since 2012, with Latvia, Bulgaria and Lithuania suffering the sharpest falls. …

These trends will only accelerate unless Europe finds a way of encouraging its native population to have more children, which looks unlikely. The average fertility rate across Europe has slumped to 1.34 children per woman, sharply down from 1.46 in 2004 and well below the ‘replacement rate’ of 2.1 at which a population is considered stable. Europe’s fertility rate today is now broadly the same as the rate in the UK, where it’s dropped to 1.39, and where 40 per cent of all children now have one or two foreign-born parents.

This is a worldwide phenomenon in developed countries, and I don’t believe there’s a country so far that has successfully reversed it to any degree once it gets going.

More:

Between 2010 and 2024, in just 14 years, the share of foreign-born people in Germany rocketed from 12.9 per cent to 21 per cent. In Austria, it is 22 per cent. In Ireland, it is 23 per cent. In Sweden, it is 21 per cent. In the UK, thanks to the ‘Boriswave’, it is 20 per cent. In Spain, it’s 19 per cent. These are all record highs and point to a continent that’s being transformed in terms of both its demography and culture.

In Vienna, for instance, 42 per cent of all pupils at state schools are Muslim, while in Berlin, Hamburg, and other parts of Germany more than half of all school pupils are migrants or the children of migrants (like parts of the UK).

What was that Siege of Vienna thing about, so long ago?

It’s no wonder that politicians in such places cater to the newcomers, and elections reflect the opinions of the newcomers. For example, Mamdani’s election in New York is said to have been at least in part the result of the demographics of a city in which, according to Google AI (citing this report):

While the foreign-born population accounts for nearly 38% of New York City’s overall residents (including non-citizens), foreign-born naturalized citizens make up about 25% to 30% of the city’s eligible electorate.

More from this article:

… Europe’s ruling class has clearly decided that mass immigration is no longer just a temporary policy: it is now permanent. In effect, Europe, like other Western nations, is using large-scale immigration to compensate for the demographic collapse of its native population.

And millions of ordinary Europeans can now sense and see what this means. Entire cities set to be transformed within just one generation. A growing gulf between metropolitan elites in the rapidly diversifying cities and ordinary Europeans who live outside them. A growing sense among millions of voters that they were never properly consulted about any of these changes. And a creeping awareness that migration is not just adding to Europe’s population but is replacing it, too.

The awareness isn’t so creeping anymore. And the disdain of the “elite” rulers in Europe for the native population – especially in Britain, or maybe Britain is just the place I hear about more often – is obvious and blatant.

I think the article leaves out something I think is also operating: the virtue-signaling motive on the part of those in charge in Europe. It’s certainly not the only motive, but it’s part of it. The idea that the masses who object to their countries being transformed are racist bigots whose objections are invalid and who must be policed for those objections, and silenced harshly if necessary, is quite rampant among the government officials in Europe. The gulf is wide and the condescension is palpable.

We are a bit behind Europe in these trends, but they are present here as well. And it is quite certain the trends will accelerate if the Democrats get back into power.

The reaction to the Karmelo Anthony verdict: he’s the victim!

The New Neo Posted on by

Some people consider Karmelo Anthony the innocent victim here. My sense is that the people reacting this way to the Anthony verdict are a relatively small group, but they’re very vocal and getting a lot of media attention. The group is composed of extremely angry black people and virtue-signaling white “progressives.” But even one person reacting this way is one too many.

One of these people is Karmelo Anthony’s grandmother, who spoke to the pro-Anthony demonstrators after the trial:

Karmelo Anthony’s grandmother riles up the crowd by REPEATEDLY screaming “RACIST, BIASED, PREJUDICED” as she left the courthouse

“They sent a MESSAGE that a white person can hit a black boy and get away with it! They can do whatever the F—K they want!”

So Austin Metcalf “got away with it”? Being murdered wasn’t punishment enough to satisfy this lady? What else would she have liked to see happen to Austin Metcalf and his family? Perhaps she’d prefer something of this sort?:

Twisted Karmelo Anthony supporters are bombarding the family of slain high school football player Austin Metcalf
with sickening death threats, including a disgusting message saying Austin’s twin brother, Hunter, should have also been killed.

It’s almost irrelevant to point out that Austin Metcalf is not reported by witnesses to have hit Karmelo Anthony, because even if he had done that it wouldn’t have given Anthony license to kill him. It used to be that just about everyone understood that. But for some, the rule is now, “if you lay a hand on me, even if I’ve been asked to leave a school tent because it’s not my school, and then I refuse to do so and insult and curse at you, I get to kill you.” Or maybe just, “if you lay a hand on me I get to kill you.”

At least this was Anthony’s grandmother saying it; she is expected to be understandably upset at the fact that he’s going to prison. But people deal with upset in any number of ways, including apologizing to the real victims – the Metcalf family and anyone who witnessed the killing – and looking inward rather than deflecting blame outward. That this woman chose the latter route is telling.

But then there are people who are supposed to be leaders. For example, there’s Jasmine Crockett, who made a series of extraordinary statements on the case, including this one:

Pure intersectionality. Black women rank very high on the all-important victimhood ladder, according to Jasmine Crockett.

Also see this from Crockett about the size of the knife wielded by Anthony, although that’s irrelevant, and about motive and the self-defense justification. This woman is a lawyer and knows better, but her need to whip up racial anger is strong:

Some of Karmelo’s crazed supporters are now reportedly randomly punching white people. Do the white people get to stab them in the heart? Assuredly not.

ADDENDUM:

This Legal Insurrection post features a number of comments by black people who agree that Karmelo Anthony is clearly guilty of murder and needs to pay the price. I think their position represents that of the majority of black people, despite the attention-getting behavior of those who consider Anthony a victim.

The Belfast stabber and his victim

The New Neo Posted on by

Absolutely horrific.

The man who was viciously stabbed on a Belfast street by a man from Sudan has lost an eye. He’s fortunate he didn’t lose two – at least, that hasn’t happened yet:

The victim of the stabbing remains in serious condition and the court has heard he lost his left eye and has severe damage to his right eye in the attack as well as deep cuts to his head and face, and long lacerations on his back.

The attack was only stopped by some brave onlookers, including this man:

Among the heroes was Maitiu Mág Tighearnán, known as Matt, who stumbled upon the scene after returning home from a night out.

Grabbing a wooden hurley stick – used in the Irish sport of hurling – the young dad charged towards the knifeman.

Police later said the actions of courageous members of the public and responding officers had “undoubtedly” saved the victim’s life.

I originally thought, from the name, that Maitiu might be from the Pacific Islands or some other foreign place. But then I realized that no, the spelling of the name is a Gaelic thing. Here’s some information:

Speaking to the Daily Mail, Mr Mág Tighearnán said he had just returned from hurling practice with his son, when he noticed a car in the area reverse as “if to get away from something”.

He then exited his vehicle with his friend, named as Andre, when the pair noticed the attacker stabbing the man.

Mr Mág Tighearnán said “instinct took over” as he confronted the man.

“Andre was a few seconds behind and he came running in and tried to subdue the attacker with an ankle-hold so he could free the victim,” he added.

“I hit this guy again, hard, but it didn’t seem to phase him. He did stumble back, though and dropped the knife. I think another man who’d been watching came in and kicked the knife away.”

He also told the newspaper the victim appeared to “scream” but couldn’t due to stab wounds to his neck.

“I’m glad we intervened when we did. It was pure chance that we’d gone that route to the petrol station,” he continued.

“People have called us heroes but to be honest I’d like to think most people would’ve got stuck in and helped if they could. I just hope the victim pulls through and manages to recover as best he can.”

Heroes nearly always claim they’re nothing special. But they’re very special.

As for the perpetrator, he had nothing to say for himself when he appeared in court (via videolink):

Hadi Alodid has appeared before the city’s magistrates’ court on Wednesday morning.

The 30-year-old, with an address at Duncairn Avenue in Belfast, is charged with the attempted murder of Stephen Ogilvy, threatening to kill an NHS radiographer on the same day and with the possession of a knife.

He appeared in court via videolink. He refused legal representation and made no reply to charges which were put to him through an Arabic interpreter.

He was refused bail. The threats against the NHS worker have not been further explained as far as I can tell. My guess is that this happened first, and was the beginning of the perp’s frenzy that culminated in the stabbing. Why was Alodid interacting with an NHS radiographer? Was he being worked up for some problem?

I’ve read a few other things from sources I don’t think are necessarily trustworthy, although I don’t know. For example, some are saying that Ogilvie had helped Alodid move into a flat just a few days earlier. Others say that Ogilvie is developmentally disabled. Each of these things may or may not be true.

The event sparked riots, and of course the riots were condemned by people like Starmer. It really does seem that he’s more upset about the riots than about the attack, although he did condemn the attack. But Starmer will not sympathize with the rage of people who feel their country has been invaded by a large number of newcomers who are culturally incompatible and many of whom are not assimilating. Nor will he sympathize with the rage they feel towards people like Starmer himself who have encouraged the huge number of third-world newcomers.

Starmer said:

“The scenes in Belfast last night were shocking and completely unacceptable.

“There is no justification for the violence and disorder that we saw threatening our communities, nor for those who encouraged it, online or elsewhere.

“It is clear that people were targeted last night because of their background and I will not tolerate it. Those responsible will feel the full force of the law.”

Oh, that’ll calm them down.

NOTE: On the rescuer’s name, Google AI has this to say:

Yes, the name Maitiu (often spelled Maitiú) is distinctively Irish. It is the traditional Gaelic/Irish form of the English name Matthew, which traces its ultimate origins to Hebrew.The second part of the name, Mág, is a traditional Gaelic prefix (a variant of Mac) meaning “son of.” It is typically combined with another Gaelic word, such as Tighearnán (meaning “lord” or “master”), to form a full Irish surname (e.g., Mág Tighearnán, Anglicized as McKiernan)

So we might call him Matthew McKiernan.

Karmelo Anthony has been sentenced to 35 years

The New Neo Posted on by

As I wrote yesterday after the verdict but prior to the sentencing:

Anthony must pay the price. But what will the price be? It really depends; he was 17 when he killed Metcalf and perhaps the jury will be lenient for that reason. …

I have a hunch, though, that … Anthony will get less than the maximum sentence.

The maximum was life or 99 years. The crime was a heinous one. And the carrying of the knife to a school track meet, plus witnesses saying Anthony kept his hand in his bag (apparently at the ready with the knife) during basically a verbal spat, indicates the murder was not a sudden “heat of the moment” thing. Premeditation can involve a short time; it doesn’t have to be hours or days. Also, a knife plunged that deeply into the chest would almost certainly be known to be a mortal blow, so it would be very difficult for Anthony to successfully claim that he didn’t mean to kill Metcalf.

Therefore there was a very good argument that Anthony should have gotten life. The death penalty is not allowed if a perpetrator is under 18 and without other special circumstances, and since Anthony was 17 at the time of the murder and the requisite special circumstances were not present, life in prison was the maximum allowed.

Why did Anthony not get a life sentence? The jury didn’t deliberate long, and I don’t think they explained their sentencing decision; at least, I haven’t found an explanation. But I think – as I wrote earlier – it was his youth. Also his baby face. He will have a long time in prison to think about what he did, especially if he ends up serving most of it. But even if he only serves half of it (the minimum, because he would be eligible for parole then), when he gets out he would be around 34 because he’s 19 now. That will have to do.

Meanwhile, the scene in the courtroom during the penalty phase was absolutely heart-rending. I’m not primarily referring to the fact that Anthony himself was weeping during the sentencing phase. Was he weeping mostly for himself? Probably, but I’m not a mind-reader and perhaps the intense sorrow voiced by Metcalf’s family may have moved Anthony. It’s nice to think so, anyway:

Anthony sat with his head on the table moments before the sentence was delivered and appeared to be sobbing, NBC DFW reported.

He stood when asked, but still kept his head angled down, NBC reported.

Metcalf’s mother, Meghan, delivered a powerful statement calling her slain son their family’s beloved peacemaker.

“There was a part of him you can never take from me, the strength I still get from him every day, because I know what it was like to be loved by him. My son was murdered. He didn’t just die. He was taken from us. Just as he was starting to live,” Meghan said.

“You may have just been given a sentence of 35 years, you should feel lucky because I’ve been sentenced to a life without my son.”

Meghan’s sister imparted a poignant question that has haunted Metcalf’s loved ones since his murder.

“One question will always be with me. Why? Why could you not have just left?” she asked.

Anthony kept his head down the whole time – even when Metcalf’s father, Jeff, ordered him to look up, according to the report.

Jeff smacked the podium while reading his statement, telling Anthony that he doesn’t “belong in this community” and detailing how Metcalf’s murder “destroyed the person I used to be.”

Anthony finally raised his head when Metcalf’s twin brother, Hunter, asked him to look him in the eye.

“You took a son, a brother, a friend, and my best friend, from this world. You took someone from me who was supposed to be an uncle, godfather to my kids. Now I want everything taken from you,” Hunter choked.

Hearbreaking.

Meanwhile, Anthony’s family did not behave well:

After the hearing, Anthony’s mother, Kala, and his brother blasted the killer’s conviction and sentence as “racist and biased” to cheering supporters who chanted “free Karmelo.”

Were these the sort of values Anthony was taught by those who should have been guiding him? Apparently. And yet, of course, they are suffering too.

Here’s some background information about the Anthony family:

By all appearances, the Anthonys look like a typical family. Karmelo has several siblings and the family’s social media showed a comfortable life like vacations, a lavish home and expensive cars, per Distractify. Three years before the incident, they had relocated to North Texas. “Three years ago, my family moved to North Texas, searching for a better life,” Kayla said in a press interview after Karmelo’s arrest, she described their family as loving and said they had provided their children with opportunities to succeed.

The emotional toll of the trial on the family was visible in court. On Monday, Anthony’s parents were summoned into the courtroom for a private visit with their son during a two-hour delay. His mother came out of the courtroom alone and sobbing and had to be escorted to the restroom by security. His father followed shortly after, also in tears. It was not clear what was said during the private meeting, Daily Mail reported.

Did they ever teach Karmelo a sense of personal responsibility? Or was everything bad that happened to him due to racism? I simply don’t know enough to come to any conclusions. But the behavior of his mother and brother now, inflaming crowd passions and calling the verdict racist, may give us a hint.

[NOTE: This Daily Mail article contains more of the victim’s family members’ statements. Very sad.]

So, Graham Platner will be the Democrats’ Senate nominee from Maine

The New Neo Posted on by

Anyone surprised? I doubt it. Platner’s nomination is shocking but not surprising in the least, since he ran basically unopposed. He also fits the current profile of the Democratic Party in the political sense: very very far to the left.

Platner has a history containing just about everything the Democrats say they hate – Nazi symbols, misogyny and mistreatment of women, elite background while pretending to be just a working class guy – plus a few things they hadn’t thought of being against yet, such as a habit of masturbating in port-a-potties.

Whatever, they say now. He’s our guy to get the all-important Senate majority which will remake America to our liking.

Platner was very pleased with himself last night. His message is that the incumbent, Republican Susan Collins, is old and corrupt. Well, she is 73, which used to be thought of as old in politics but these days doesn’t seem all that geriatric. But Platner is 41 years old, and he was chosen in part for his relative youth, much like AOC and Mamdani.

Platner’s way of dealing with his murky past is to say he’s seen the light. It’s a tale of redemption, and he credits his wife – although he was reportedly sexting with other women after he married her:

“If you believe, as I do, that we can change our politics, and change our country, then you must also believe that people can change,” Platner said, speaking at a YMCA in his hometown of Blue Hill. “And the reason I believe that is because I have lived it — and the reason I have lived it is because of my wife.”

He added: “To all those who feel let down, disappointed, or disillusioned. It is my job to earn your trust, your faith, and your support. And I will spend every day of this campaign, and if I have the privilege, every day in the United States Senate, doing exactly that.”

As for Collins, he said that she is “just as spineless and corrupt as the establishment she now serves.” “Corrupt” is a funny word for the corrupt Platner to use, but he used it in the populist sense of being supported by money interests.

Note this as well:

“The truth is, Susan Collins does not serve us. She serves Donald Trump,” Platner said. “She serves the Epstein class. She serves her corporate donors and the corrupt political system that has rigged the economy against us. She does not serve us, and so we will defeat Susan Collins.”

“The Epstein class” is the newest catchphrase. It refers to a shadowy and ill-defined group that supposedly runs the world, is completely corrupt, and coalesced around the figure of Epstein. Sound familiar? Platner will be hammering this message home and directing it at Susan Collins.

News roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) A near-beheading on the streets of Belfast – by a Sudanese “migrant”:

A Sudanese man has been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder after a knifeman appeared to try to behead a man in Belfast.

The suspect has been taken into custody after the victim suffered “significant injuries” to his face, neck and back in what police called a brutal attack.

The injured man, a resident of the area in his 40s, is being treated in hospital, where his condition is described as serious.

Footage shared on social media – which is too graphic to publish – appears to show the knifeman, in his 30s, pinning the man to the ground before repeatedly stabbing him in the head.

The video shows three apparently local men intervening, one hitting the attacker with a wooden hurling stick as others kick him to try to force him to release his victim.

Note that the three rescuers didn’t seem to have conventional weapons. Fortunately there were three of them.

(2) Steve Hilton will be on the ballot in California for the governorship. I guess his total was too big to surmount, since that particular primary is statewide (compared to the LA mayor’s primary, which was only in LA). So, to coin a phrase, for the post of governor California will have “a choice, not an echo.”

(3) Todd Blanche is nominated for the post of AG. Until now, he was the acting AG. I think Trump liked the job he was doing.

(4) The cellphone and fertility rates:

Caitlin Myers, an economist at Middlebury College, and Ezekiel Hooper, her student, used the spotty early rollout of the iPhone as a way to isolate the effects of the phone on fertility. The first iPhone was released in June 2007, they wrote, and was available only on the AT&T network until February 2011. The study compared fertility rates in U.S. counties that had near-universal AT&T coverage with counties that had little or none.

Their paper, published in the National Bureau of Economic Research, found that the iPhone caused as much as half of the fertility decline between 2007 and 2011. The most pronounced effects were among young people aged 15 to 24.

What happened in the counties with iPhones? One theory, Professor Myers said, is that young people began to socialize more on their phones and less in person, and consequently were less likely to have sex and become pregnant.

Professor Myers said iPhones may also have made pornography more accessible, which led young people to substitute it for sex, or young people may have used them to obtain better information on avoiding pregnancy, including contraception and abortion.
Researchers not involved in the study said the results were persuasive.

Makes sense. The lockdowns didn’t help, either. And, as Ace writes:

And what messages did they get over their cellphones 24/7? Constant crisis, constant fear, constant messaging that the world was ending and it was all due to human births, constant messaging in favor of hook-up culture and abortion and, for the boys, pornography, and constant messaging against marriage, the family, and humanity itself.

(5) Another horrible murder, this time on a Bronx bus. Jonathan Pettigrew, 41-year-old father of 7 was shot and killed by a teenager – as yet at large – whom Pettigrew had asked not to talk so loudly on a cellphone. There were plenty of witnesses. The news reports don’t mention the races involved, but Google AI said that Pettigrew was black. My guess – and it’s only a guess – is that both victim and perpetrator were black. This fits the pattern of an out-of-control teenager, armed and ready to kill any time he perceives anyone as insulting him or telling him what to do.

RIP Jonathan Pettigrew.