Could this be the most common method for living past 100?

The New Neo Posted on by

It’s rather grotesque. And who would have thought this practice would be popular in Japan, of all places?:

Fraud is rampant everywhere, it seems:

In 2010, welfare officials in Tokyo tried to visit Sogen Kato, a local man living in the city’s Adachi district, to congratulate him on his 111th birthday. Their records identified him as the oldest man in the city, but his family kept turning them away, saying he didn’t want visitors or had taken a trip somewhere five hours away.

When police finally entered the house, they found Kato’s mummified remains lying in bed, dressed in pajamas and covered with a blanket. He’d been dead for at least 30 years, although his family claimed he’d shut himself away to become a living Buddha.

His pension kept paying, and someone withdrew 2.7 million yen, about $31,000 at the time, after officials started asking questions. …

“This prompted the Japanese Ministry of Justice to check in on other centenarians: not just in Tokyo but across all Japan,” writes scientist Saul Justin Newman in his new book, “Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science” …

Across Japan, the audit identified 234,354 people still on family registers whose whereabouts couldn’t be confirmed. All would have been at least 100 if alive. Newman describes them as dead or missing and puts their share at more than 82% of the recorded centenarian population.

His findings have been disputed, however, and some researchers say there were only 600 such “missing” centenarians. That’s 600 too many, I’d say.

The whole thing reminds me of a bit of the Faulkner story “A Rose for Emily.”

Another changer heard from – plus, poll of Jewish voters

The New Neo Posted on by

For this woman and former Democrat, who had believed Obama would be a fabulous president, it was Obamacare that started her political change experience.

Does the following sound familiar?:

Changing your political beliefs is not easy. It’s especially difficult when you’ve invested years of your life believing that your side consists of the Good Guys. If your side is the Good Guys, then the other side must be the Bad Guys. And if the Bad Guys turn out to have been right about something important, you have a problem.

You can either reconsider your beliefs or construct an elaborate series of excuses explaining why reality is being unfair.

She made excuses to herself for a while. But eventually she had trouble doing that:

… I had to admit something. I had been wrong.

I had been wrong about enough important things that I could no longer pretend otherwise, and I changed my political allegiance. I could no longer pretend.

That was about eleven years ago. You might think this would be the end of the story.

HA HA HA.

No. Because the Democratic Party had decided that the Obama years were merely the warm-up act.

Well, yes. Then again, a great many Democrats seem to be able to either continue to make excuses for the party, or to embrace the changes.

And speaking of political changers, here’s a poll that might reflect something real (although as I’ve said many times, polls have gotten iffier and iffier):

Republicans lead Democrats by 31 points among Jewish voters on the congressional ballot, according to a McLaughlin & Associates poll that points to a potential shift among a group that has long favored Democrats.

The poll found that 64 percent of Jewish voters backed Republicans for Congress, while 33 percent supported Democrats, pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin wrote in an article published by the firm Monday.

The result would mark a major shift from the large margins by which Jewish voters have traditionally favored Democrats, though pollsters John and Jim McLaughlin warned that the sample of Jewish voters was small.

Of course, as I’ve written many times, the definition of “Jewish” in the case of US voters is not a religious one, it’s an ethnic one. The more religious a Jew is, the more likely to vote for conservatives. Or, as CBD at Ace’s wrote today:

When a Christian rejects his religion, does not follow its precepts, is openly antagonistic to those who follow Christ, we call him an atheist. When so-called Jews reject their religion, do not follow its precepts, are openly antagonistic to those who follow the Torah, we call them…Jews? Why? Because they have Jewish names and eat bagels and lox on Sunday mornings? I eat fish most Fridays…does that mean I am Catholic?

Well, being Jewish is different from adhering to Judaism, because Jews are also a people. I’ve written about this and related topics before, for example here.

Ilhan Omar’s problems seem to have reached critical mass

The New Neo Posted on by

So much so that some Democrats seem to be abandoning her, at least somewhat.

Funny thing is that people on the right – and particularly anyone who regularly reads Powerline – have known for many many years most if not all of the facts now coming out in the MSM about Omar (including her probable real name, but for simplicity’s sake I will continue to call her Omar for now). The evidence Powerline presented was really quite overwhelming. And yet it was ignored by the mainstream – till now.

Why have forty Democrats suddenly decided that Omar may not be worth fighting for?:

On Monday, 175 House Democrats signed a letter penned by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (WA-07) that accused the DOJ and DHS of weaponizing law enforcement. …

But take note of who did not want to be associated with the circus: 40 Dems, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA-11) and several lawmakers in the New York/New Jersey area. Why?

Those non-signers who are from New York and New Jersey might be abstaining because both states have many Jewish voters and signing it would have hurt their re-election chances. But Nancy Pelosi didn’t sign it either – why?

However, even if Omar is somehow removed from Congress, it’s virtually certain that she would be replaced by another Democrat – perhaps even another Democrat of Somali ethnicity. So I don’t see that there’s all that much risk for Democrats to abandon her; it ultimately wouldn’t affect Democrat totals in Congress.

And I don’t want to make too much of this. After all, the vast majority of Democrats in the House signed that letter.

[ADDENDUM: Also, an Obama-era investigation found that Omar had committed fraud but decided not to pursue the matter. Fancy that – a completely nonpolitical decision, I’m sure.]

Israeli election results: reports of Netanyahu’s political death seem to have been premature

The New Neo Posted on by

Netanyahu’s party has done better than expected, but not well enough to win an outright majority.

It’s interesting, isn’t it? – the “better than expected” part. The not reaching a majority part was completely expected. It had been widely predicted that neither coalition would reach a majority in the election.

The results so far: It seems that the Netanyahu bloc has 53 seats and his opponent Eisenkot’s bloc has 48, with the Arab parties having 19.

If Eisenkot were to form a government it would need to include the Arab coalition. Would he and his allies do so? I don’t think it’s likely, although it depends on how nakedly ambitious they are and how strongly they’re dedicated to stopping Netanyahu. Several of them have gone on record prior to the election as saying they wouldn’t agree to a coalition with the Arab parties, but will they adhere to that? The other alternative would be a coalition government with Netanyahu.

In an opinion piece by an Israeli – in the Netanyahu-hating Guardian – the headline reads, “A bitter night in Israel for all who craved a fresh start. Netanyahu survives for now – and we are more divided than ever.”

An excerpt:

At 10pm Jerusalem time, three television stations published their exit polls by veteran pollsters showing a stinging loss for Netanyahu’s current government. In all three, his current coalition won just 50 out of 120 parliamentary seats, with 70 for the opposition. It was small consolation for Netanyahu that his Likud party held a slight lead over the main challenger, the Yashar party led by former IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot.

Millions of Israelis who voted for opposition parties felt exhilarated. Together, four Zionist lists within the opposition ran a two- or three-seat lead over Netanyahu’s bloc, though neither of those groupings was close to a 61-seat majority. Eisenkot gave a passionate speech about the defeat of the “coalition of failure”, by a “larger and stronger Zionist majority”. ….

Then the counting began. Within hours, Netanyahu’s bloc staged a reversal, pulling significantly ahead of the four opposition Zionist parties many hoped would replace him. The Arab parties retained a strong showing but lower than the original heady projections. But three of the four Zionist parties preferred to exclude them for coalition-building purposes. As a result, even if the total opposition vote outweighs support for the outgoing government, Netanyahu might have done it again.

It is not yet clear if any one group of parties can reach a 61-seat majority. Negotiations to form a coalition will take dizzying twists in the coming weeks; maybe a minority government or a stalemate will be the unsatisfying result.

More here:

Parties opposed to Netanyahu have a clear majority … But they are fractured and divided between right, left and center, and between Jewish and Arab parties.

Eisenkot’s Yashar party is the largest in the opposition, projected to win 21 seats, but his path to power runs through cooperation with the Arab parties, … a scenario not all the party leaders in the opposition are willing to accept.

We’ve seen this sort of thing (or something like it) before in Israel. Netanyahu often has managed to pull out a coalition but in 2019 he failed to do so:

Israeli lawmakers have voted to dissolve parliament after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu failed to form a coalition government.

The vote triggered a fresh election, which will be held on 17 September.

Mr Netanyahu was unable to reach a deal for a fresh right-wing coalition following last month’s election.

At the heart of the impasse was a military conscription bill governing exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students.

The upshot was that no one could form a government, and the Knesset once again dissolved itself and there was a third election in March of 2020. Here’s how that went:

The result was initially a stalemate, which was resolved when Likud and Blue & White reached a coalition agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, the premiership would rotate between Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz, with Gantz given the new position of Alternate Prime Minister until November 2021. …

Netanyahu and the new Israeli government were sworn in on 17 May. On 23 December, the Knesset again dissolved, resulting in the need for new elections.

In that next election in March of 2021, Bennet and Lapid took power by allying with the Arab parties So there is precedent for that, but the whole thing didn’t last very long; in November of 2022 there was still another election and Netanyahu won an outright majority.

The thirty-sixth government, a national unity government formed between eight political parties following the 2021 elections, held the narrowest possible majority (61 seats) in the 120-member Knesset. In April 2022, MK Idit Silman left the governing coalition, leaving it without a majority.

On 20 June 2022, following several legislative defeats for the government in the Knesset, prime minister Naftali Bennett and alternate prime minister Yair Lapid announced the introduction of a bill to dissolve the 24th Knesset, which was approved on 30 June. Simultaneously, in accordance with the rotation government agreement that was part of the 2021 coalition deal, Lapid became prime minister and led a caretaker government until a new government took office.

Within the context of the 2018–2022 Israeli political crisis, this was the fifth Knesset election in nearly four years,

After that experience, it seems to me that there will be a lot of pressure for the two sides to have a unity government and avoid seemingly-endless repeats. Then again, I don’t know that the spirit of compromise looms large.

Flavio Bolsonaro takes a Miami vacation

The New Neo Posted on by

It wasn’t a direct flight:

Sources earlier confirmed to CNN that Bolsonaro had left Brazil for the US after losing Sunday’s presidential election runoff against leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Brazil’s Federal Police canceled Bolsonaro’s passports after he failed to surrender them, affiliate CNN Brasil reported.

Speculation about his movements mounted after Argentine news outlet Infobae reported that Bolsonaro, a Trump-aligned candidate, had left Brazil via Argentina. The Argentine government initially said in a statement that it has “no record of Flávio Bolsonaro entering” the country.

But early Wednesday morning Argentinian time, the country’s immigration ministry said in a post to X that Bolsonaro and his family had entered Argentina from Brazil late Tuesday local time, and shortly after had boarded a flight to Guayaquil in Ecuador, according to its flight plan.

It added they had entered Argentina with “valid documentation” and without any “legal impediment.”

And now he’s landed in Miami with his wife and two daughters. The article also points out:

In leaving Brazil for the US, Bolsonaro joins a large community of Brazilian conservatives in exile — including his own brother Eduardo, former Brazilian intelligence chief Alexandre Ramagem and podcaster Paulo Figueiredo.

And you can bet more are following, if they can manage to do so.

Flavio is the son of Jair, a previous president of Brazil and rival of Lula. Jair’s history is instructive. Among other things, it features a J6 semi-equivalent that was used by Lula to successfully do to Jair what the left previously attempted and failed to do to Trump – and still fantasizes doing to him.

Here’s some of the story of how Jair ended up with a 27-year prison sentence (although he’s under house arrest now for health reasons). He lost an election to Lula and then:

On 30 December 2022, one day before the end of his term, Bolsonaro arrived in the US state of Florida and resided in Kissimmee for several months. On 8 January 2023, his supporters attacked the buildings of the Supreme Court of Brazil, the National Congress, and the Planalto Presidential Palace to instigate a military coup d’état and reinstate Bolsonaro as president. While the riots were going on, President Lula blamed Bolsonaro in a press conference. Bolsonaro condemned the protesters in a Twitter post on 9 January, and denied responsibility.

In February 2023, Bolsonaro announced that he would return to Brazil in March. This would be the first time Bolsonaro had returned since December 2022. Bolsonaro had entered the United States on a diplomatic visa, which expired on 31 January, but the family applied for tourist visas to extend their stay in Florida.

Bolsonaro returned to Brazil in March 2023 for the first time since his supporters stormed the Supreme Court, Congress, and the presidential palace two months before. Bolsonaro stated that he returned to the country to help his party and intended to campaign for the 2024 elections. On 14 April 2023, Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered Bolsonaro to submit himself for questioning with the Federal Police over the storming of the Congress. …

On 30 June 2023, the Superior Electoral Court barred Bolsonaro from running for public office until 2030 as a result of his attempts to undermine the validity of Brazil’s 2022 democratic election, as well as for abuse of power with regard to using government channels to promote his campaign. … He was prosecuted on several fraud charges in the 2022 elections and events linked to the 8 January attack on federal government buildings. The decision came after a 5–2 vote in favour of conviction. …

In November 2024 he and 36 others were formally charged with plotting a coup d’état, violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, and criminal organisation. In February 2025 Bolsonaro and 33 others were formally charged with plotting to assassinate Lula da Silva and Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes. …

On 11 September 2025, the Supreme Federal Court sentenced Bolsonaro to 27 years and 3 months in prison over the coup plot.

Also, it was the same judge, Moraes, who had ruled against the father who recently ruled against the son:

Flavio Bolsonaro lost the October 25 runoff to [Lula] by more than 4.4 million votes — 48.2% to Lula’s 51.8% — yet federal police stopped him in the street the next morning and stripped him of all three passports on the order of Justice Alexandre de Moraes.

Moraes — whose wife’s law firm is at the center of a leaked R$131 million contract with jailed banker Daniel Vorcaro, with metadata showing Moraes himself edited the final draft — had previously been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury under the Global Magnitsky Act in July 2025, though those sanctions were lifted in December of that year.

As for the judge who extended the voting hours in the first place, which apparently helped Lula pull out the win against Flavio:

He gained notoriety as a personal attorney of [Lula] in lawsuits related to Operation Car Wash.

On 1 June 2023, Zanin was appointed by president Lula da Silva as Justice of the Supreme Federal Court, replacing retired Justice Ricardo Lewandowski.

Not too suspicious, right?

Did you know that Israel is responsible for the high price of your groceries?

The New Neo Posted on by

That’s one of the Democrats’ approaches. And who knows, perhaps enough voters are stupid enough and hateful enough to believe it.

At any rate, the Democrats must think it’s a winning approach. It’s worked in the past in many parts of the world, after all:

Furthermore, America spends far more on welfare fraud and illegal aliens than it does on Israel, and Democrats are the ones who deliberately fuel inflation and fraud. All of that is information that Jew-hating Muslims and lefties in Michigan hope voters don’t know.

The US also spends far far more on many many other countries; nor does any of that affect the price of our groceries.

More:

Without transcribing the whole ad (you can watch it if you have a very strong stomach or want a Halloween horror film), I’ll say that it features a couple sadly discussing how they can’t buy bananas or eggs because America sent some $60 billion to Israel. The ad ends by disclosing that pro-Israel PACs spent over $220,000 to boost Republican Mike Rogers over jihad-loving Muslim Brotherhood asset El-Sayed. Incidentally, El-Sayed has received many hundreds of thousands of dollars from literal terrorist affiliates, in addition to money from evil billionaires and plutocrats like the Soros family.

The Democrats rely on lies, ignorance, hatred, and envy. Is it a winning combination?

Comey again

The New Neo Posted on by

Comey seems to be in a bit of legal trouble. Again:

The Department of Justice has charged former FBI Director James Comey with transmitting national defense information to an unauthorized person and conspiring to spread it.

The charges fall under 18 U.S.C. § 793, which is known as the U.S. Espionage Act …

The DOJ has now charged Comey three times.

And nothing has come of it. I predict nothing will come of this, either.

Comey of course has clothed himself in his usual self-righteousness. He says:

Well, they’re back again.

It would almost be funny if it weren’t such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice. One that we cannot become numb to.

Nothing’s changed with me. I’m still innocent. I’m still not afraid of these people. And I still believe in the independent federal judiciary.

Now, Comey himself would be funny if he hadn’t so badly abused the justice system.

One interesting fact is that, although the case was filed in DC District Court, the judge – Trevor McFadden – was appointed by Trump.

The defense says the statute of limitations has already run; the prosecution begs to differ.

Can you believe that Election Day is only a week away?

The New Neo Posted on by

I can’t. I’ve been dreading it for quite some time.

Don’t have a whole lot to say about it, though, that I haven’t already said. I know what the forecasts are, but I don’t know what will actually happen.

Polls seem more useless than ever, but even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Betting markets? They rely on polls, for the most part.

In other news, Israelis go to the polls today. The prediction is that no one will get a parliamentary majority and a coalition will be necessary. We’ve seen that before and it doesn’t always work out.

The election in Brazil: somehow the left manages to win

The New Neo Posted on by

And this was the way it happened: the polling stations were ordered to stay open two more hours. A judge in leftist Lula’s camp made the ruling, and it came too late for some areas where the polls had already closed and so it was apparently applied differentially.

The result was that Lula won a victory after having been behind in the original election (this was a runoff because neither candidate reached 51% in the first round). The Bolsonaro supporters are angry and contend that the two-hour election extension was unfair – although, by the way, Bolsonaro had also asked for it for different reasons (weather). The question is whether the judge had the authority to order it, and whether it gave the Lula areas an unfair advantage because more of the areas that ended up staying open were Lula strongholds.

It’s somewhat difficult to get reliable and detailed information on this, but it is highly suspicious.

More here.

Bolsonaro has asked for the results to be annulled.

Good luck with that. If fraud has indeed occurred, it’s almost impossible to change the results and have a do-over – and those who challenge the results are demonized. Thing is, sometimes fraud allegations are themselves fraudulent – and sometimes they’re true.

NOTE: Hugh Hewitt wrote a book in 2004 entitled If It’s Not Close They Can’t Cheat. However, many national elections these days seem to be quite close, so it stands to reason that they can cheat.