Meet Chris Rabb, who will be the House member from the 3rd District of Pennsylvania

The New Neo Posted on by

DSA member Chris Rabb will be representing the 3rd US House District, which is in Philadelphia. Why do I say he “will,” as though it’s already a fait accompli? After all, the election hasn’t happened yet. The reason is that Rabb is running unopposed; the GOP realizes it would be a waste of time and money to field a candidate there, it is such a deep deep blue area. In fact, it’s the bluest district in the entire House, according to this video.

You can see from the video that Rabb has a great deal of ambition for the DSA message, which he thinks can also resonate in districts that aren’t so deep blue:

Rabb’s story in the primary has been a familiar one. He beat out two Democrats who were not as radical as he and who had more name recognition. All three candidates were black and so I assume race had little to nothing to do with his win over his opponents:

Rabb, who ran an unapologetically progressive campaign, set himself apart from the initially crowded field of candidates by describing himself as the “anti-establishment” Democrat in the race.

His progressive stances – and allyship with leftist organizations, including the Democratic Socialists of America and Working Families Party – proved to be key to his winning the deep blue seat against a party leader in Sharif Street and a tough newcomer in Dr. Ala Stanford.

“A couple of months ago, I was on the precipice of withdrawing from this race,” Rabb said to supporters at his election watch party. “I was reminded that tough times pass, but tough people last.”

You can see, however, that Rabb didn’t get a majority, although he got a strong plurality.

Here’s a quote from Rabb for Independence Day:

Rabb is the Democrat nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District who thought it was a good idea to actually denounce the Declaration of Independence ahead of America’s semiquincentennial.

“Those screeds that were very lofty but were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples,” Rabb said at “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth.”

“It created distance from an empire to help very privileged people continue that privilege and ultimately institutionalize that through the U.S. Constitution many years later. But it certainly did not provide independence to indigenous and black peoples,” he claimed. “And we cannot talk about anything today without acknowledging that this is a nation born on stolen land & stolen labor.”

He hits every leftist note, master of the buzzword (“performative,” “privilege,” “stolen land”).

Rabb’s Wiki entry is interesting. In a familiar pattern, he is an Ivy League graduate (Yale in his case, with a Master’s in organizational dynamics from the University of Pennsylvania), and his father is both a doctor and a college professor. He is a descendent of many activist leaders in the black community:

Rabb was born in Chicago, to an ophthalmologist and professor father, Maurice Rabb Jr., and a politically active mother, Madeline Murphy Rabb. His maternal grandmother, Madeline Wheeler Murphy, was a Baltimore-based community activist, and his maternal grandfather, William H. Murphy Sr., was a judge in Baltimore. Rabb’s great-great-grandfather, John H. Murphy Sr., was born into slavery and founded the Baltimore Afro-American in 1892.

Rabb hasn’t gotten the same kind of publicity as some of the other DSA progressives. But it seems to me he could be a rising star in the Democratic Socialist movement.

How the new comment system will work – the idea is that there will be a minimum of disruption

The New Neo Posted on by

You may not even notice the change. At least, that’s what my research indicates.

For previous commenters, as long as you use the name and email address you’ve used here right along, you should be grandfathered in and have no problem whatsoever.

New commenters will have their first comment held in moderation until I approve it. After that, it should be smooth sailing for them, too.

I probably will make the switchover some time this weekend. I’ll announce it at the time. Let me know through an email if you encounter any difficulties when it happens. No regular commenter should have any trouble with the transition, but you never know with these things.

Open thread 7/9/2026

The New Neo Posted on by

The person who compiles this series of video interviews is excellent at what he does. The note he wrote for this video states that it went viral and that as a result the woman got gifts and cards from all over the world:

Platner says buh-bye

The New Neo Posted on by

His fifteen minutes of fame is apparently up.

The Democrats must have made him an offer he couldn’t refuse – or a threat he couldn’t defy. Or both.

First, the threat

He argued the real threat was never the allegations themselves, but what the political establishment plans to do with them. Cut off his fundraising. Cut off his voter data. Starve the campaign of everything it needs simply to function. He made his read on their real preference painfully clear.

“They would rather see Susan Collins win than have me be the next senator from Maine,” he said.

No, I don’t think so. They would rather have a different candidate than you, one they think has a better chance of winning. They knew the GOP had the goods on you and was going to wait till after the point of no return, July 13, to reveal it. So they finessed the GOP and revealed it themselves in order to force you out. Believe me, they want to win. This isn’t about you.

He added, about his victory in the primary:

“We went toe-to-toe with one of the most entrenched political systems in the history of the world, and we won,” Platner said.

“We beat them on June 9th in overwhelming numbers.”

But to the best of my recollection, his main (Maine?) opponent, Janet Mills, had dropped out by then. His rise was also promoted by major backers such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, hardly outside of an “entrenched political system.”

Let’s see; what else?:

“And I just want to make it clear this is all false,” Platner said.

“The things that have been claimed did not happen; it’s not real.”

He described the past few days as an ordeal no regular person should have to survive, a normal guy suddenly thrust into a spotlight he says he never wanted. He accused the media and the political establishment of skipping the investigation entirely and jumping straight to a verdict.

“I learned about this through press inquiries with no time to truly respond, no time for investigations before a corporate media system and the political establishment got to act as judge, jury and executioner,” he said.

“Accusations are supposed to be the beginning of things, not the end.”

I don’t know whether he’s innocent or guilty, but I do know that apparently Politico saw emails in which his accuser made the Platner rape allegations to friends very close to the time the rape supposedly occurred. Back then, he was not a political figure at all, but merely her ex-boyfriend.

Now the Democrats get to do what they do best: undo the will of the people and replace one candidate with another, in the nick of time. I wonder what Biden might say to all of this.

Who might be the new nominee? Here’s a report on the process:

Earlier Wednesday evening, the state party said it had decided to hold a nominating convention to pick a replacement candidate and plans to “announce the full timeline,” as well as details and requirements for contenders. It promised transparency.

The possible candidates:

[Troy] Jackson, who was a Platner ally before calling on him to step aside Monday, swiftly launched his Senate bid after Platner suspended his campaign. …

A logger with long ties to organized labor, he’s quickly attracted attention from many of the oysterman’s progressive supporters. Our Revolution, a progressive organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), has already thrown its support behind Jackson.

But already, some votes from his 20-year history in the legislature are resurfacing, such as his 2009 state Senate vote against a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, giving Platner’s base a bit of pause. He later called that the “worst vote I ever took.” His closeness to Platner during the primary may also give pause to some Democrats as they choose their next nominee. …

[Dan] Kleban also announced his bid Wednesday. The 49-year-old founder of Maine Beer Company had dropped out of the Democratic Senate primary earlier this year and threw his weight behind establishment-backed Gov. Janet Mills. …

[Nirav] Shah, a former public health official, is “evaluating” whether he will mount a Senate bid, he told POLITICO Tuesday afternoon. But he was already positioning himself as a candidate before Platner’s announcement. …

Shah oversaw the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. He mounted his first run for public office earlier this year, finishing second in Maine’s gubernatorial primary. He said in an interview that he is “very, very much aligned” with Platner’s politics. …

[Shenna] Bellows, who also ran unsuccessfully for governor, has been fielding calls about a potential run, according to a person familiar with her campaign, granted anonymity to speak about private conversations. The person pointed to her ideological alignment with Platner on progressive issues and compelling biography — she grew up poor in rural Maine and flipped a GOP-held state Senate district — providing an early glimpse of part of her pitch if she decides to enter the race.

There are a bunch of others, most of whom are previous Platner supporters.

Roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) Judge Hannah Dugan is guilty as sin, but free as a bird (as Bill Ayers might say):

Former Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan won’t face any prison time for her conviction of obstructing federal immigration officials.

In April 2025, the FBI arrested Dugan after video caught her directing agents away from a suspect, an illegal alien, whom they wanted to arrest. Her help allowed him to evade arrest temporarily.

A jury convicted Dugan in December 2025.

At today’s sentencing, U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman imposed a $5,000 fine on Dugan.

“I think this is a situation where an otherwise good person, upset by immigration policies in this country, made a bad decision in the moment,” Adelman said, according to The Associated Press.

The jury convicted her, but in this case the judge got to set the sentence and had a lot of leeway in doing so. And yet her violation made a mockery of the law; I guess the judge who sentence her wasn’t especially concerned with that aspect.

(2) The circle of political life:

On Wednesday, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) took to his official X account with a startling announcement; an investigation by Senator Grassley has uncovered that anti-Trump prosecutor Jack Smith and his team, in the course of investigating President Trump for alleged mishandling of classified documents, did in fact carry out precisely the infraction for which they were investigating the president: Mishandling of classified documents, and the possible compromising of national security.

Fancy that.

(3) Scott Jennings wonders why Democrats are bailing on Platner now. He doesn’t seem to have an answer. Jennings is a very very smart man, but I’m surprised that he – and many others – don’t seem to agree with me that it happened now because Platner was sinking in the polls.

The trend over time was clear: Platner’s lead over Collins in polls was getting smaller and smaller and she was even starting to lead. Collins’s opponents have a history of polling better than they deliver, and I’m pretty sure the internal polls were much worse even than the polls we see on the chart at the link. I strongly believe he was dumped for one reason only, as I’ve written before: they started to see him as a loser. That’s the only reason the Politico story about rape came out. It’s not the other way around – they weren’t reacting to the story, they were allowing it to go public.

(4) The Tyler Robinson preliminary hearing is happening in Utah. The evidence against him is overwhelming, and that’s been clear for a long time:

On the second day of testimony of the preliminary hearing, and after a battle by the defense attorneys claiming that it would be prejudicial to Robinson’s case, prosecutors were allowed to show video of him entering the Utah Valley University campus at least four times on the day of the shooting. Some of the video had never before been seen by the public.

And yet much of it had already been seen. The conspiracy theorists ignore that, knowing that their fans are ignorant. Or they just say – as Candace Owens has been busy saying – the videos and photos are of lookalikes dressed as Robinson in order to frame him.

Speaking of long time, is it not amazing that Charlie Kirk was killed less than a year ago? I was unsure enough of that that I had to check the date again, even though I pretty much knew it: September 10, 2025. It seems like he’s been gone for a very very long time, so much has happened since then.

(5) Nigel Farage has announced he’s resigning from Parliament:

“Today I will resign as a Member of Parliament for Clacton-on-Sea, thereby forcing a by-election, which will happen, I hope in short order,” he said in a press conference broadcast from the Reform UK YouTube channel.

“This will be a people vs. the establishment by-election. It’s a chance to stick two fingers up to the entire establishment, to frankly tell them where to go, and that is why I will be putting my name forward to stand in this by-election,” he said. …

Farage’s resignation followed a series of scandals surrounding gifts he received from wealthy donors while out of office.

Farage denied any wrongdoing, stating: “Let me be absolutely clear. I have done nothing wrong. I have not broken the law in any way at all. I have not misused public money.”

An investigation into Farage’s conduct by Parliament’s Commissioner for Standards is ongoing.

Details at the link.

Will Platner stay or will he go?

The New Neo Posted on by

He holds a lot of cards:

Micky Kaus pointed out that Platner “has the leverage. All he has to do to screw the Dem party is… nothing.” And my RedState colleague Bonchie described the Left’s “nuclear levels of cope” over their rapey Nazi: “He’s a mentally disturbed do-nothing who works for his mom. He doesn’t care about the party. Why would he? And there is no mechanism to forcibly remove him.”

You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.

Platner seems like the kind of guy who likes to throw his weight around, and not just with women. Right now he’s the nominee, although the Democrats would like to forget that inconvenient truth.

From Devon Murphy-Anderson, the Executive Director of the Maine Democratic Party:

“We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,” she noted. “We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November.”

No, neither Platner nor his “team” has a role in determining the next Democratic nominee from Maine for the US Senate. But he certainly as a role – a big one – in determining who is the present Democratic nominee from Maine for the US Senate, because at present he is that nominee and he can’t be forced out. Murphy-Anderson speaks of the “process” but acts as thought that process is that she will tell Platner what to do. But he’s not a party animal – that is, he’s not a Party animal. So he doesn’t need to do it – unless they make him an offer he doesn’t wish to refuse, whether it be money or status.

As I wrote yesterday:

… I think there’s at least a decent possibility that he’s such a narcissist, so tremendously full of himself and arrogant, that he might even refuse to drop out at all.

However, Platner doesn’t actually hold all the cards here. The Democrats have one huge card – at least, as far as I can tell – which is the threat of prosecution for rape. I looked up the statute of limitations in Maine for the crime, and although the law is fairly complex in that it depends on certain elements of the crime, it’s pretty clear that – since the incident is alleged to have occurred in 2021 – there is plenty of time to prosecute.

However, because this case rests almost entirely on the testimony of the alleged victim, she would have to agree to testify. That could be a stumbling block.

Trump says talks with Iran are off …

The New Neo Posted on by

… and that the Iranian leaders are “scum.”

But note the qualifiers such as “I think”:

There may be somewhat of a distinction between the people they’ve been talking to and the people in charge of decisions to attack, although Trump doesn’t say that in those remarks. But many of us have speculated that those two groups are not quite the same.

Trump also leaves some wiggle room for negotiations to continue. In other words, we still don’t know where this will go. Trump is highly motivated to keep oil prices down before the midterms, and the Iranians know it. That’s a huge factor in all of this. Note, also, that he’s not threatening to bomb them into the Stone Age (or even the Bronze Age).

Things heat up with Iran

The New Neo Posted on by

There’s a new wave of US attacks on Iran, in retaliation for Iran’s recently firing on ships in the Strait:

The U.S. strikes are in response to Iranian attacks on three commercial vessels that were transiting the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s demonstrated aggression was unwarranted, dangerous, and a clear violation of the ceasefire.

What’s more, there’s this:

President Trump is officially REVOKING the US license that allowed Iran to sell their oil, after the mullahs STRUCK vessels in the Strait of Hormuz — Reuters

The US says Iran’s actions WILL be met with consequences.

How does that get enforced? Does the US once again block Iranian ships from leaving the country and getting through the Stait?

On the expansion of the red-green alliance

The New Neo Posted on by

Those of us old enough to remember the Iranian Revolution and establishment of the mullahtocracy are old enough to remember the red-green alliance against the Shah that brought it about. These two camps, which in some ways seem like opposites, were able to unite against a common enemy and each were convinced they’d be the last faction standing. But in short order it became clear that the mullahs had devoured the leftists while they were still digesting their Shah meal. And now, nearly a half-century later, the mullahs are still in control.

And much of the left in this country is still with them. For example:

Tehran flew in hundreds of foreign social media influencers to participate in the regime’s orchestrated display of anti-Western hate. The Jerusalem Post, citing Iranian state media, reported “that around 400 foreign bloggers and influencers were brought in” by the regime to witness Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral.

Leading the pack were Jackson Hinkle and Max Blumenthal. Hinkle, who built his fan base by supporting Putin and bashing Israel, took the stage at a gathering in Tehran to lead the chants of “Down with the USA.” Standing on the stage, he waved a reg flag, symbol of jihad and vengeance in Shia Islam. …

Not to be outdone, self-styled journalist Blumenthal was literally seen drumming for the regime, flanked by the flags of the Iranian regime and its terrorist proxy Hezbollah.

By the way, although some on the left try to disown Hinkle and say he’s on the far-right, it’s pretty clear that he’s on the left – if he’s anywhere other than a grifting click-seeker. After all, he’s the founder of something called the American Communist Party and has described himself as an “American Conservative Marxist-Leninist” – that is, socially conservative, and an admirer of Stalin and Bernie Sanders. As for Blumenthal, he’s written for leftist media and is the son of Sidney Blumenthal, a highly Clinton-partisan writer. Son Max is also an extremely anti-Zionist ethnic Jew, not the first and not the last.

What unites Islamists and the left nowadays? It’s really pretty simple, and it’s the same principle it was in Iran in 1979. Back then they wanted to destroy the Shah and take power, and now in the US they want to destroy the 2-party system and the US government as we know it, they want to take power and block the ability of others to take power away from them, and they also want to destroy Israel and anyone who supports it (which would include most Jews, as well as most evangelical Christians and many other Christians as well). Many people sum it all up as the desire to destroy Western Civilization, or at least its basic principles of human rights, liberty, and the pursuit of truth.

The things that divide Islamists and the left are very small potatoes compared to the things that unite them. If they ever were to succeed in their goals, however, one would try to crush the other, as in Iran. Hopefully it won’t get that far. But they are growing more powerful, and the Tuckerite wing of what used to be the right – and now is a sort of hybrid – is in there with them.

Here’s Professor Jacobson on the subject:

This is a unique combination that I’ve never seen before. We know about what’s called the Red-Green Alliance, which is the Marxists and the Islamists coming together to hate Jews and to hate Israel. What people need to understand is that this is not really about Israel and Jews. This is about the United States. This is an attempt to destroy our country from inside.

And we now have a third element that was not seen until recently, which are some podcasters and influencers on the right who are Israel obsessed and spreading all sorts of conspiracy theories.

There is a real unity right now among these people, although they’re not united on every topic. But they’ll gladly work together for their common goals.

What’s up with Mitch McConnell?

The New Neo Posted on by

I guess we know where he is – he’s been in the hospital for about three weeks. We simply don’t know why, or anything about his condition:

Here’s some gossip on the subject, though:

Neighbors of Mitch McConnell’s Capitol Hill home in Washington, D.C. have said the house hasn’t seen anyone come or go since his latest health scare.

The former Senate majority leader had not been seen in public for weeks before he was found unconscious after an apparent heart attack at his home on June 14, according to EMS dispatch audio.

One of his neighbors explained to independent journalist Desirée Townsend that she saw him being taken to the hospital by paramedics, but has seen no activity at McConnell’s nearly $2 million Washington house since.

“I haven’t seen anyone,” she explained.

And his wife?

Chao, who formerly served as transportation secretary in the first Trump administration and labor secretary in the Bush administration, traveled to Beijing and met with Chinese Vice President Han Zheng just three days after McConnell’s hospitalization.

Curiouser and curiouser.

His Senate office has for days refused to answer basic questions about his health, and has only repeated that he is “working closely” with staff on Senate business while Congress is out of session. They have not answered questions about the senator’s treatment, prognosis, or timeline for his full recovery.

Far-right influencer and Trump confidante Laura Loomer alleged on Monday that the Kentucky senator was “brain dead” and would not be returning to Congress, citing a “high-level source close to the White House.”

Who knows? Not I.

[ADDENDUM: I just read a report here from Rasmussen, about McConnell’s wife’s trip to China:

Elaine Chao was already IN China when Mitch was getting CPR. The real question is, why didn’t she immediately fly back to DC instead of meeting with the Chinese VP 5 days later?

Don’t know what the truth actually is.]

The Platner rape story: all in the timing

The New Neo Posted on by

I was thinking yesterday of adding the following questions and observation to my post on Platner: what is he mulling over? Why not resign immediately? Not only is he mulling over what he’ll get from the Democrats if he drops out as they wish (as I stated in the post), but I think there’s at least a decent possibility that he’s such a narcissist, so tremendously full of himself and arrogant, that he might even refuse to drop out at all.

That would be quite something to see. After all, if you promote a scumbag, you have to deal with a scumbag.

So now I see this NY Post article. An excerpt:

Maine Democratic candidate Graham Platner appears to be holding the Democratic Party hostage — refusing to drop out after he was accused of rape unless he gets to approve his successor to run for the Senate, The Post has learned.

A source familiar with the campaign discussions said Platner, his campaign and political strategist Morris Katz are deliberating about the Maine Democrat dropping out but only if his replacement shares his left-wing values.

So the report is that he’s making demands and threatening not to drop out if they’re not met. Nice.

It certainly makes sense that the powers-that-be would like someone more moderate, in order to appeal to the somewhat purple state of Maine. Then again, Collins is pretty moderate herself. But my point is that Platner knows he has some power here and is loathe to give it up.

Needless to say, there’s been a ton of coverage of Platner in the last 24 hours, much of it about how the Democrats supported him till the current revelations about rape. Not date-rape, but what Whoopi Goldberg might or might not refer to as “rape-rape.”

Ace has a good summary of how the NY Times did a limited modified hang-out a while back by trying to get ahead of the rape and assault allegations without actually covering them truthfully. Rather, they mostly covered them up. It’s a long and involved post, but here’s some of it to give you the flavor:

The New York Times Knew All About Graham Platner’s Rape Allegation But Deliberately Buried It …

They also buried the allegations of non-rape abuse by Lyndsey Fifield — and she says she gave them the names of five friends who would corroborate the story (at least as far as her telling the same story contemporaneously).

Two of those friends, she told them, didn’t know about the abuse, but could corroborate the dates of their relationship. The other three could corroborate the abuse.

The New York Times chose to only contact the two friends Fifield expressly told them could not corroborate the abuse. They didn’t contact the three who could corroborate the abuse, deliberately.

Then the Times wrote that they contacted two friends “who could not corroborate” Fifield’s claims of abuse.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the people who write at the Times are stupid. They may be both knaves and fools in the classic sense, but they are not stupid and they know how to write exactly what they want to write.

There’s also a good piece in National Review in terms of a summary of what went wrong with Platner. But it has a flaw that I’ve noticed is present in just about every article I’ve read from the right about Platner, an omission that puzzles me.

For example, here’s a quote from that link:

If Platner fooled you [he’s addressing reporters on the left], maybe you should find something to do with your life besides writing columns about politics. Because the U.S. political landscape is full of creeps, cretins, con artists, crooks, and cads of every kind, and it always will be. If the media has any useful role to play in our system, it is to look beyond the spin and the campaign-crafted image and to tell the world who these candidates really are, warts and all, so the electorate can make an informed choice.

Talk about an idealistic vision! The point is that Platner did not fool them, not for a single moment. Nor will they ever “look beyond the spin.” They proudly create the spin. There is no devotion to the principle of truth. It’s about winning, period.

What’s more, this story did not come out now in the interests of truth. It came out now because Democrats and the MSM (redundancy, I know) realized Platner almost certainly would lose. So they had to torpedo him. They had held back the rape story not only to protect him till now, but to use in case they needed it in the future. Now they need it, so it’s printed. I think it’s just as simple as that.

And so you have a flood of people (take a look here) suddenly saying he has to go, people who defended him mightily till now. I repeat: it’s not the result of the story itself. The story being revealed is the result of the polls. The outrage at Platner’s behavior is the result of the polls. That’s all it is. Now, maybe they were outraged and worried even earlier, but they had to keep their mouths shut and pretend to defend him, all in the interests of winning. Once he no longer was a winner, they’re free to suddenly virtue-signal about him.

[ADDENDUM: The allegations have gotten worse.

How could that be, you ask? Here’s how:

One of Graham Platner’s ex-girlfriends alleged Tuesday that the embattled Maine Democrat repeatedly removed his condom during sex without asking permission.

“He would pull condoms off,” Lyndsey Fifield said in an interview with the Washington Post. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“I confronted him both during and after [sex] because he knew that I was not on birth control and how dangerous that was,” Fifield added. “He would act like cute about it, like ‘Oh sneaky me.’”

Actually, I’m not sure that’s worse than breaking and entering and rape. Then again, it’s pretty bad.

However, a caveat the left will no doubt point out is that this allegation is by the Republican ex-girlfriend, not the “progressive” one. So it’s more suspect, as far as they’re concerned.

My own question is why, after he did this, would anyone continue to see him or sleep with him? She said it happened six times. And he’s not so compelling a specimen; he’s a pretty repellent guy even without this kind of sleazy conduct, as far as I can see.

Then again, Sylvia Plath may have had it right – at least, about some women but certainly not all:

… I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.]