On ending aid to Israel

The New Neo Posted on by

I started to notice serious talk about the US cutting aid to Israel not long after 10/7 – and this was on the Israeli side. They realized that depending on the US for Israel’s arms was dangerous, although it might have been an okay idea back when US support for Israel was bipartisan.

Now US support for Israel no longer is bipartisan, and that became obvious during the Biden administration – or actually it started to be obvious with Obama. Now it’s even more true, because there is significant anti-Israel sentiment on the right as well, although nowhere near as much as on the left.

So it’s in Israel’s interest to become even more militarily self-sufficient.

No more aid to Israel would seem to rob the Israel-haters and Jew-haters of a talking point, but not really. First of all, they will lie, and second of all, they have plenty of other anti-Israel talking points to lie about. There’s an almost insatiable appetite for such things.

But anyway, Trump made this announcement today:

“We give them more than anybody else, and they no longer need it. We’ve been doing it for years. I’ve been doing it, but Israel is a very thriving country. They don’t need it. If they did need it, I would say keep it going.”

The president said the idea came from Netanyahu himself, suggesting that the agreement was also made to stop Democrats from using US funding to Israel as ammunition to criticize Republicans. …

“Why should we suffer the slings from lunatics like El-Sayed?” he asked, referring to Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed. who has made Israel aid a flagship issue of his campaign.

“You take that off the table,” Trump said. …

Netanyahu has been publicly pushing to end the aid since at least January, when he told The Economist he hoped Israel could stop relying on American military funding entirely within a decade. By May, he was telling CBS’ “60 Minutes” that he didn’t “want to wait for the next Congress.”

Days before Israel’s Oct. 27 election, he went further, telling Israel’s Channel 10 that the aid “won’t keep coming because America has changed, not because Israel has. It’s over and it will be over; it’s just a question of time.”

That conforms to what I recall in the post-10/7 world. But of course, as I said, it won’t stop the haters.

NOTE: The bulk of that four billion comes back to the US anyway because it has been used to buy our arms (the haters conveniently leave that out). There’s a long post at Ace’s today on the entire subject that I recommend reading.

Election Day thoughts on stupid voters

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I plan to put up a new post after the polls in the east close, one for Election Night.]

Here’s food for thought – “Stupid Voters Are the Biggest Threat to America”:

What worries me are voters. Sadly, many of them are stupid. And angry. …

We have millions of Americans heading to the polls who believe socialism will make their lives more affordable. That price controls and government takeover of private industry will ease inflation and cure what ails capitalism, so abhorrent to their central planning sensibilities. …

“If a majority of Americans think that socialism is the right path, well the American experiment is over in a sense. It would be very, very difficult to recover from that. That’s a multi-generational recovery kind of thing,” Charles Steele, director of the Center for Commerce and Freedom at Hillsdale College, told me on a recent episode of The Federalist Radio Hour.

Yes, of course there are plenty of stupid voters on the left. And there are also many stupid voters on the right – for example, a significant number of those who follow and admire Tucker Carlson and are bona fide isolationist Buchananite “conservatives.”

As I said, plenty of stupid voters – but there are also plenty of misguided voters (who tend to land on the left) who’ve been fed a steady diet of leftist propaganda all or much of their lives. They are not necessarily stupid at all. Some are actually very smart, and I know plenty of Democrats in the latter category.

The author of that piece I linked goes on to acknowledge this:

How did we get here? Ignorance. Willful ignorance.

From pre-K through grad school, America’s education system has failed America and the American Dream in many ways. None more so than in sweetening socialism and poisoning capitalism in the minds of the last few generations of voters. Marxist critical theory — oppressors vs. the oppressed — dogma has indoctrinated millions to believe that socialism can work if only done right, failure after failure notwithstanding.

The media and social media are right up there as agents in this, with some foreign players in the mix (for example those behind TikTok).

But are the stupid more susceptible to this sort of indoctrination? That’s not what I’m seeing out there. Orwell’s famous remark in his essay “Notes on Nationalism” was this:

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

It’s often been misquoted/paraphrased as something like “Some ideas are so stupid only an intellectual would believe them,” which captures more or less the same idea.

But remember something. Orwell was a brilliant man, and an insightful one. But to his dying day he was a socialist. I wrote about that phenomenon in this 2014 post. An excerpt:

Orwell was a brilliant man, and he struggled to reconcile his wish for a certain type of world with his knowledge that such a world could probably never come to be as he wished it. Much of his writing was devoted to the horrors of failed attempts to achieve that world. …

It is my opinion that Orwell came very close to understanding that his vision of a planned economy plus freedom could not come to pass, that the contradiction was basic, and that socialism would always sow the seeds of its own destruction. I just think he couldn’t fully face and embrace that knowledge because to do so would have meant renouncing a lifelong dream. So he clung to some notion of a kinder gentler socialism without the totalitarianism, while at the same time he wrote tirelessly about the evils of Communism.

Also, in this 2008 post of mine I quote Orwell in 1937’s The Road to Wigan Pier:

One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words “Socialism” and “Communism” draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker. nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist and feminist in England.

Was Orwell a time-traveler?

But yes, he remained a socialist anyway because the dream dies hard.

What happened to Oakland?

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a City-Journal piece on that topic, in case you’re interested.

An excerpt:

But Oakland’s problems are extreme even by California’s dismal standards, and it’s worth understanding why. The most important factor is Oakland’s dysfunctional police department, which has been neutered by a combination of decades-long adversarial oversight, internal mismanagement, and pervasive low morale. Until it ended recently, federal oversight of the Oakland Police Department had been in effect since 2003—the longest-running federal police monitorship in U.S. history—following a settlement of its “Riders” scandal, in which four officers were accused of beating suspects, planting evidence, making false arrests, and falsifying police reports.

Under this regime, the OPD’s internal hires (including its chiefs), use-of-force policies, and officer-discipline protocols were all subject to the approval of a nonresident federal monitor, Robert Warshaw, who had overseen the department since 2010. His monitoring operation, paid for by Oakland, for years cost the city roughly $1 million annually, though that figure fell recently as the department moved closer to ending federal oversight. Warshaw, who set the OPD’s compliance goals and determined whether the department was meeting them, took a direct role in the firing of several police chiefs.

The OPD is also subject to the Oakland Police Commission, a civilian oversight body with substantial authority over department policy. Among the most controversial policies adopted under this system was Oakland’s restrictive rule on police pursuits, which generally permitted officers to chase suspects only for violent crimes. The policy proved so problematic that, in 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom took the extraordinary step of deploying state police to patrol Oakland’s streets and catch criminals who “flee with impunity because it’s common knowledge that OPD [pursues] in only very limited circumstances,” as he put it in a letter to then-Mayor Sheng Thao.

Much more at the link.

Oakland should be a lesson for other cities in what not to do. But I doubt they’ll heed the warning.

[NOTE: I wrote about the federal oversight problem back in 2022, in this post.]

I am extremely apprehensive about tomorrow

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve felt this way for at least a year. It’s not just the prospect of the Democrats taking control of Congress, although that’s definitely a big part of it. It seems to me they offer nothing but empty slogans (“affordability” with no history of achieving it, for example), Trump- and GOP-hatred, and promises to achieve permanent power through radical changes in the structure of the federal government.

But it’s also some of their candidates this year. It’s El-Sayed, Troy Jackson, Talarico, and others too numerous to mention. I cannot believe the polls that favor them, and yet I cannot disbelieve those polls because I’ve seen seemingly-unbelievable things happen, such as Mamdani’s becoming mayor of New York.

When I get this way I find it very hard to follow election results in real time. Usually I just wait till 11 PM or so and then tune in.

How about you?

Haley Stevens of Michigan endorses Rogers the Republican and becomes a pariah

The New Neo Posted on by

Haley Stevens is a Democrat member of the House who ran against El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate primary and lost by just a hair. So there probably wasn’t a lot of love for him on her part to begin with.

But she was willing to endorse him – if:

Stevens has pressed El-Sayed to condemn an outside group’s ad linking U.S. support for Israel to higher grocery prices, which she called antisemitic.

El-Sayed said the ad was not produced by his campaign and that he disagreed with its contents.

Then El-Sayed disinvited Stevens to a planned “unity rally” at a church, and said she shouldn’t attend any of his other election functions. At which point she endorsed Rogers, his GOP opponent.

There’s also this:

Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., who helped organize the planned appearance, said Stevens was asked to skip it after the dispute became a distraction and upset the church’s bishop.

I’d be very curious to know what aspect of this upset the bishop. There are many possibilities.

Haley also is engaged to a Jewish man who had previously said publicly that he will vote for Rogers because of the Israel question.

Not all that long ago (pre-Obama, anyway) that would have been a mainstream Democrat position. No more. Absolutely no more. And endorsing a Republican is a bridge too far, although when it happens in reverse (Liz Cheney, anyone?) Democrats of course applaud it.

Stevens’ stance has been widely condemned by the party regulars. This isn’t just about Stevens, either. It’s to show others what happens when you break ranks. It’s not a pretty sight.

James Carville just might be the worst:

“If you think that these Republicans are going to treat you as anything other than what they view you as…a used condom,” he fumed, addressing Stevens in a low-quality video. “The Democrats don’t even think you’re worth a used condom.”

“You made your bed, sleep in it; you sh*t in your mess kit, eat it,” he sneered. Carville then made a fat joke about Stevens and Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) maybe needing to open up a cheeseburger restaurant. As always, putting the a** in classy.

Bill Kristol was milder, saying that Stevens had suffered a ‘breakdown,'” and Axelrod and Van Jones and Debbie Dingell said the same thing. Must be the approved talking point for those not willing to go as far as Carville.

Schumer called it a “despicable betrayal.” . As we used to say as kids, it takes one to know one, because Schumer is the king of despicable betrayals.

There’s also the argument – presented here in a USA Today opinion piece – that Stevens is merely a sore loser whose feelings got hurt when El-Sayed disinvited her from events.

Hakeem Jeffries – who is poised to become Speaker of the House if the Democrats gain control as expected, says there is more trouble in store for Stevens:

“Haley Stevens made a terrible decision, blindsided everyone and isolated herself from the House Democratic Caucus,” Jeffries told Politico on Monday. “We will have a discussion about appropriate next steps upon our return.”

Warning to all who would fail to support a candidate like El-Sayed, or who actually endorse a Republican: beware.

I read over and over that Stevens has ended her political career with the Democrat Party. But it turns out she may have been finished anyway – she is not running for re-election to the House, and of course she lost in the Senate primary. Stevens has had four terms in the House, but when she announced her Senate primary run she also said she wouldn’t be running for House re-election. My guess is that she wanted out of politics for a while.

I mentioned that Stevens is engaged to a Jewish man, and here it says that she has been contemplating converting to Judaism in connection with her marriage. That certainly indicates that she is defending a principle here, although Democrats don’t seem to credit her for that at all. In addition, Stevens had a previous short marriage and divorce, and she is forty-three. I wonder if her contemplation of political retirement for a while has to do with a desire to try to have a child before it’s too late.

None of this matters to the Democrats who are enraged at her. Whether her endorsement of Rogers will hurt El-Sayed is anybody’s guess. He has cast his lot with the Israel-haters and Jew-haters and cannot afford to offend them even if he wanted to (which I doubt he does). He believes this is a winning position.

El-Sayed’s campaign says that after the Stevens endorsement of Rogers he had his biggest fund-raising day:

Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed’s campaign says it raised more than $2.4 million in a single day, setting a fundraising record in the final stretch of the Michigan race.

The Democratic candidate’s campaign said Sunday’s haul came from more than 65,000 donors, who gave an average of $36.74. Nearly 29,600 people contributed to the campaign for the first time.

I wonder where they’re from and what motivates them. Could even be Tucker Carlson fans.

Potemkin: the Odessa steps scene

The New Neo Posted on by

The movie Potemkin came up in the comments recently. It’s a film I recall seeing when I was in college or grad school, shown by one of those film societies that specialized in famous old films. Potemkin qualifies as both famous and old, having been made in 1925.

But although I know I watched it, the only thing I can remember from the movie is what I think of as the baby carriage scene. It turns out it’s usually referred to as the Odessa steps scene. I have no recollection of the plot, a summary of which you can find here, and where I learned (or re-learned?) that the movie is actually called Battleship Potemkin:

Battleship Potemkin is a 1925 Soviet silent epic film produced by Mosfilm. Directed and co-written by Sergei Eisenstein, it presents a dramatization of the mutiny that occurred in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin rebelled against their officers.

The film is a prime example of the Soviet montage theory of editing, such as in the “Odessa Steps” scene, which became widely influential and often recreated. In 1958, the film was voted on Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. Battleship Potemkin is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made.

As I said, I remember nothing of it except that scene. And of course, YouTube being YouTube, I was able to refresh my memory by watching that segment. It’s still very disturbing and powerful, and represents pretty much the invention of the montage technique by Eisenstein. See what you think:

Eisenstein was a fervent Soviet supporter at the beginning of Communist rule, but not a Stalin fan later on. This particular Odessa steps scene apparently never happened that way in real life; it’s basically propaganda:

The massacre on the steps, although it did not take place in daylight or as portrayed, was based on the fact that there were widespread riots in other parts of the city, sparked off by the arrival of the Potemkin in Odessa Harbour. Both The Times and the resident British consul reported that troops fired on the rioters; deaths were reportedly in the hundreds. Roger Ebert writes, “That there was, in fact, no tsarist massacre on the Odessa Steps scarcely diminishes the power of the scene … It is ironic that [Eisenstein] did it so well that today, the bloodshed on the Odessa steps is often referred to as if it really happened.

Odessa was a mess at the time, with a great deal of political turmoil and violence. There was also an anti-Jewish pogrom a few months later in Odessa that killed even more people [my emphasis]:

Most modern-day historians argue that pre-1881 pogroms [in Odessa] were “largely the product of frictions unleashed by modernization”, rather than a resurgence of medieval antisemitism. The 1905 pogrom was markedly larger in scale, with over 500 casualties (80% Jewish), 300 injuries, and over 1600 homes and businesses damaged, and with heightened antisemitism spurred by economic and political turmoil.

Historians believe the police and hospital figures were likely an underestimate, with a range of estimates from likely over 800, to over 1000 killed, and approximately over 2000 or even up to 5000 wounded. Even the pre-20th century incidents were incited by perennial antisemitic tropes such as rumors of Jewish desecration of the church, conspiracy theories of Jewish complicity in assassinating the tsar or the patriarch, and blood libels.

While most modern-day historians do not believe there is credible evidence that the tsarist state actively sponsored or centrally planned the pogroms, the tsar and his advisors created an environment of sanctioned antisemitism, toleration and leniency toward pogromists, and blamed Jews themselves for the events. Local authorities often failed to intervene, or in some cases actively abetted or perpetrated further violence.

What was the connection – if any – between the 1905 Potemkin killings in June and the anti-Jewish pogrom later that year? See this:

Yet fear of an impending pogrom resurfaced in June in the aftermath of a general strike and disorders occasioned by the arrival of the battleship Potemkin. On 13 June Cossacks shot several workers from metalworking and machine-construction factories who had been on strike since the beginning of May. Workers retaliated on 14 June by engaging in massive work stoppages and attacking the police with guns and rocks, but the arrival of the Potemkin that night diverted the workers from further confrontation with their employers and the government. On 15 June instead of intensifying the strike, thousands of Odessans jammed the port district in order to view the battleship and rally behind the mutinous sailors. By late afternoon some members of the crowd began to ransack warehouses and set fire to the harbor’s wooden buildings. Although available sources do not allow a precise determination of the composition of the rioters, partial arrest records reveal that non-Jewish vagrants, dockworkers, and other day laborers comprised the majority. To suppress the unrest, the military cordoned off the harbor and opened fire on the trapped crowd. By the next morning well over 1,000 people had died, victims of either the soldiers’ bullets or the fire which consumed the harbor.

Not on the Odessa steps – but still, the above paragraph seems to be describing what the Odessa steps scene in the movie was trying to convey (minus the ransacking of warehouses and the fire set by members of the crowd, and minus the deaths caused by the fire).

More:

During these disorders rumors of an impending pogrom once again surfaced, as right-wing agitators attempted to incite Russian workers against the Jews. On 20 June, only a few days after the massacre, a virulently antisemitic, four-page broadside entitled Odesskie dni appeared. The tract blamed the Jews, in particular the National Committee of Jewish Self-Defense and secondary school students, for the recent disorders and the tragedy at the port.

Accusing the Jews of fomenting the unrest and enlisting the support of unwitting Russians, the author of the broadside stated that Jews initiated the shootings on 14 and 15 June and were responsible for setting fire to the port.

Further events at the time are described at the link. It’s long and complex, but the whole thing culminated in a terrible 10/7-style pogrom in Odessa in November of 1905. There is no doubt that Jews were well-represented among the political agitators involved in the leftist (anti-Tsar) side of the initial and ongoing unrest (about a third of Odessa’s population at the time was Jewish). But the pogrom killed uninvolved Jews indiscriminately and viciously.

Watching the movie clip on YouTube, I’m struck by both the operatic style of the close-ups as well as the realistic feeling of the violence. It’s hard to believe people weren’t really hurt creating that scene, but there’s no record of any problems of that sort.

Pelosi walks the tightrope on Mamdani and El-Sayed

The New Neo Posted on by

Shorter version of what Pelosi said: Mamdani and El-Sayed are awful and they are wrong on Israel. But be sure to vote for them anyway.

Excerpt:

[Interviewer] “When you say Israel doesn’t have the right to be a Jewish state, that’s antisemitic as far as I’m concerned with all that,” Deutsch told Pelosi.

When Deutsch pointed to Mamdani and El-Sayed as examples, Pelosi didn’t mince words.

“No, it’s more than concerning,” she responded. “It’s wrong. It’s wrong. And it isn’t a reflection of the Democrats in the Congress of the United States.”

Oh no? It has become standard for Democrats at this point, although Pelosi doesn’t want voters (especially Jewish voters and most particularly Jewish donors) to notice.

But hey, vote for El-Sayed anyway or the big bad Republicans might win:

Nicholas Martin, spokesperson for Pelosi, however, told The Post Friday that Pelosi still “urged everyone in Michigan and across America to support Abdul El-Sayed.”

No glaring contradiction there, right? Because Democrats will be doing great things:

“While they may disagree with [El-Sayed] on some issues, [Pelosi] is united with him in the fight to lower costs, protect healthcare and defend our democracy,” Martin said in a statement.

None of which the Democrats have any intention of doing or any recent record of doing.

That sort of thing explains why Pelosi didn’t support Omar recently, either; I mentioned that fact in this recent post. I strongly doubt her stance is about principle, it’s about retaining Jewish votes in the midterms.

Speaking of El-Sayed:

That second guy is, at least for the moment, a political changer. Let’s hope he is not alone.

NOTE: And then there’s El-Sayed supporter Hasan Piker, who recently said:

Abdul El-Sayed surrogate Hasan Piker crashes out over El-Sayed’s canvassers knocking doors in West Bloomfield, Michigan.

Piker compares it to “going to that like Klan KKK neighborhood to stump for like a Black candidate.”

“It’s racial supremacy. It’s Jewish supremacy. What do you think it is? Yeah, clip it and post it.”

Piker, a dual citizen who grew up in Turkey, then rages at a Jewish Democrat in Oakland County who says she is voting for Mike Rogers: “If it’s so dangerous, go live in Israel… You f*** ing idiot. You f*** ing moron… You f***ing psycho.”

The Polish conflict seems to be about control of the nation’s high court

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m not any sort of expert on Polish politics, so I’m relying on newspaper stories to fill me in. It’s not easy to sort out, but here’s a summary:

A long-running political dispute over the Constitutional Tribunal has effectively paralysed the institution, with the pro-European government and the nationalist president refusing to recognise appointees put forward by the other side.

Tusk, writing on X, said his government was ?seeking to restore the rule of law, which the European Union had accused his predecessors — the Law and Justice Party — of subverting.

Tusk is the Polish prime minister, and the conflict is with the Polish President Karol Nawrocki. European designations of “left” and “right” are so different from ours that I hesitate to use the terms, but I’ll tentatively say that Tusk is more to the left and Nawrocki more to the right. Not-always-helpful Google AI calls Tusk “center-right” but adds that he is allied with progressive and “center-left” parties. As for Nawrocki, he is called “far-right” here, but in Europe that seems to be applied to most people on the right who want to limit immigration. But Tusk is in agreement on limiting illegal immigration; perhaps that’s why he’s called “center-right”?

So, what is the dispute about besides power? The party that controls the high court controls the country? Perhaps to a certain extent – also true of the US, which is why the Democrats wish to pack the Court, and if they control the Senate and any SCOTUS judge dies or wishes to retire in the next two years, they will not approve his or her Trump-appointed successor.

More on the Polish crisis:

Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal (TK) was plunged into chaos on Friday evening as one group of judges, backed by the government, moved to take control of the court from its chief justice, who is aligned with the right-wing opposition and President Karol Nawrocki.

One of the government-backed judges said that she had suspended the chief justice, Bogdan Swiczkowski, from his duties. Police have surrounded the court and were seen preventing Swiczkowski from entering the grounds after his supporters had cut through the fence with a power tool.

Swiczkowski and the opposition claim that an illegal “coup d’état” is underway. Nawrocki, who had been flying to Senegal for a state visit, ordered his plane to turn around and return to Warsaw.

But what led up to the present situation?:

The dramatic events follow a years-long crisis surrounding the TK. Since the current government – a coalition ranging from left to centre right led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk – came to power in 2023, it has refused to recognise the court’s legitimacy.

That is because three of its judges were unlawfully appointed under the former national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, which was widely seen to have brought the court under political control.

As a result, Tusk’s government has ignored the TK’s rulings and, until this year, refused to even nominate new judges to fill vacancies that arose on the court’s 15-person bench.

The article goes on and on in that vein, but try to figure out who might be acting correctly and you might run into trouble, as I did. Suffice to say it’s a nasty power struggle and has been going on for a while, with each side accusing the other of lawlessness.

However, if I were forced to choose a side, it wouldn’t be Tusk’s.

I wouldn’t want Bari Weiss’s job

The New Neo Posted on by

Which is fortunate, because it will never be offered to me.

But what a thankless task, to tell biased leftist “journalists” they need to cover an important story that reflects poorly on Democrats:

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss faced “significant resistance” from staff at Thursday’s 9 a.m. meeting about the growing Alaska ballot controversy, network insiders told Fox News Digital.

“This is a scandal,” Weiss declared to staff.

According to multiple sources on the call, several CBS News staffers pushed back at Weiss’ enthusiasm over the bombshell New York Times report alleging Democrats schemed to find a Dan Sullivan to run against incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan, in hopes of aiding Democratic opponent Mary Peltola.

My question is quite simple, though: why did The New York Times cover it? What’s going on there?

And here the Ruthless podcast guys try to answer that question. They provide a fair amount of detail, but the gist of what they say is that the Democrat operatives in charge of the ploy had previously lied to the Times reporters, and the reporters got angry about having been duped: