Pundits unbound

The New Neo Posted on by

Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, among others, are spiraling off into new dimensions of awful. Ace has the details of the Carlson story well-covered, in this post and in this one. The title of the former, just to give you a taste of what he’s talking about: “Taqiyya Qatarlson: The CIA Is Preparing a Criminal Referral Against Me Just Because I Was Acting as a Foreign Agent for Iran.” The title of the latter: “Axios ‘Journalist:’ The White House Says That Everything Tucker Carlson Is Saying Is B******t.”

As for Megyn, she’s in a feud with Mark Levin in which she said he has a micropenis. I am not making that up; that’s the level at whcih she’s operating these days. Well you might ask, how would you know, Megyn?

But rather than get any deeper into the weedy details, I’ll just say that I think part of what’s happening is this (a quote from a response to Megyn on X):

Often happens to those who experience a very long and successful run. Something snaps and their ego’s invincibility trait goes haywire.

In other words, in the fight for clicks and without anyone setting external limits on them anymore, they get very full of themselves. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. For Carlson and Kelly, their previous employer Fox News used to act as the falconer and was a check on their wilder tendencies. Released from those constraints and wildly successful on their own terms, things fall apart, and those things are Carlson and Kelly. They’re not the only ones, either.

Over twenty(!) years ago I wrote about a similar phenomenon in connection with bloggers but also pundits in general:

But I think they (we) do need to be careful not to get carried away with the sheer brilliance of their (our) rapier wit and trenchant opinions.

Alone in front of the computer (or, increasingly less often, a pad of paper), the pundit/blogger sits. Inspiration strikes, and the need to be wittier, sharper (there’s that word again!), more opinionated–to be noticed–rises up in folks who tend to be pretty witty and sharp to begin with. “The pen is mightier than the sword” is a cliche because it has some truth to it–and the sharper the words the mightier they sometimes sound, especially in the solitude of the act of composition. And once put down and published, they can’t be recalled.

Then there’s the group aspect. Bloggers and pundits write in isolation, but they’re not really in isolation at all, except physically. Mentally and emotionally they are part of one huge mass shouting out at each other and at everybody else, the sounds of the exchange echoing and ricocheting and reverberating all over the country–and in some cases the world. As such, we influence each other greatly. It’s not even a case of following the herd, it’s more a case of being influenced by the opinions of others, a process we are all susceptible to no matter how independent we may think we are. We influence each other directly by our words, and also indirectly by the sense of competition that’s inherent in this pundit/blogger game–the need, for some at least, to try to outdo each other.

So what’s the result? Sometimes it’s wonderful–in fact, since I’m a fan of blogs, I’d say it’s often wonderful–a liveliness of writing and thinking and interacting that you just can’t get in the staid old MSM. There’s an energy here, and part of it is the energy that comes with a bunch of sharp (in several senses of the word) and verbal people mixing it up and trying to say intelligent things in a way that’s interesting to read. Sometimes it segues into a group of people trying to say outrageous things, either to amuse or to stir up or out of anger or the desire to call attention to themselves, or some of the above or all of the above.

When is the line crossed and it becomes a feeding frenzy? I don’t have the answer; each person has to decide that for him/herself. But when there’s a lot of blood in the water and people find that their own entrails, and those of their allies, are hanging out–that could be a sign.

The only thing that’s changed is that the ascendance of social media has made it worse.

ADDENDUM:

Still another update on the SAVE Act

The New Neo Posted on by

Is there still hope of its passing? Mike Lee says maybe:

“Okay, important update on the Save America Act and the effort to get it passed,” Lee said in the video. “Look, I am guardedly optimistic. We’ve turned kind of a corner. Over the last few days, there’s been some uncertainty about exactly what procedure we will be and will not be using. In the end, we’ve been working closely with Leader Thune and his staff, and they’ve been great to work with. What we’re coming up with is something that I think is best described as a hybrid version of the talking filibuster.”

I’ll believe it when I see it.

I think it’s important to pass the bill. Even if it’s tied up in the court system afterward, it needs to be passed. And even if SCOTUS rules against it, that could set a precedent to indicate that, if the Democrats come to power and pass their own beloved “For the People Act” to force states to relax their own voting rules for federal elections, that bill might be found unconstitutional as well.

I actually watched the Oscars last night

The New Neo Posted on by

Don’t exactly know why I watched it; first time in years. I suppose I did it out of curiosity, mainly to see if the abominable One Battle After Another would really win tons of awards. Which it did – although apparently its competition wasn’t much better.

I say I watched the show, but most of the time I was also reading and I would look up periodically when something interested me. So my attention was admittedly spotty. Nevertheless, I saw enough to take in the self-satisfied self-congratulatory virtue-signaling, the almost entirely unfunny jokes and bits, the “we women are soooo strong!” message, the occasional hackneyed leftist political remark, and of course the dresses.

Most of the political stuff was very well-covered in this post, if you care to read about it.

A guy named Javier Bardem caught my attention with “No to war – Free Palestine!” Quite the oxymoron. This mental and moral giant has been accusing Israel of genocide since at least 2014, according to his Wiki entry. He’s Spanish, by the way, and here’s another of his brilliant quotes from this year’s Oscar festivities:

“I’m wearing a pin that I used in 2003 with the Iraq war, which was an illegal war,” Bardem told reporters on the red carpet, “and we are here, 23 years after, with another illegal war, created by Trump and Netanyahu with another lie.”

The only film I’ve seen this year – other than a half-hour of the execrable aforementioned One Battle After Another – is the animated musical movie K-Pop Demon Hunters, which I saw twice because my grandchildren love it. It’s kind of cute and that made it tolerable, by the way, but maybe I’m biased because of them. They know all the songs by heart and periodically sing them, especially the one that was nominated for the Oscar, which it won. After a big production number, a group of people – most or all of whom were Korean, because the song is K-pop genre – came onstage for their thank-yous. The occasion was apparently “historic” because this is the very first K-pop song to win.

So what did the “diversity is our strength – and our requirement” Oscars do? Cut them off prematurely, after having let others drone on and on, and after some seemingly endless “comedy” bits such as a tribute to the 15-year anniversary of the movie Bridesmaids. They had time for all of that, but cut off the Korean guy who stepped up with a little piece of paper after the comely female singer-songwriter had said her not-so-very-long acceptance speech. The group was left standing there, confused, while the orchestral bye-bye music played and the mic power dimmed.

I guess Koreans don’t stand very high in the intersectional hierarchy.

As for fashion, I’ll just comment on Demi Moore’s get-up, shown here:

I am puzzled by the fact that many people are saying this was a peacock dress. Are they at all familiar with peacocks? Different color, different feather type as well. No, this was a rooster dress:

And lest you think I’m picking on Demi Moore, I’m not. I suppose over the years I may have seen a few of her movies, but the only one I remember is Ghost. It’s one of my favorite films, and although Moore’s role was less attention-getting than that or Swayze or of Whoopi – she was basically the grieving woman who lost her man and was being stalked by a killer – Moore did a remarkable job. Dewy-eyed and vulnerable, she was impressive in scenes like this one. If you haven’t seen the movie, it may look over-the-top, but in context it’s extremely moving, and a goodly part of that emotional wallop is due to Demi:

One movie after another

The New Neo Posted on by

The Oscars are tomorrow, and about a week ago I watched the first half hour of the movie One Battle After Another, nominated for Best Picture and several other awards. I was visiting a friend who lives at one of those large complexes for older people, and they show a movie for free every week. She wanted to take a look at that one, and so I went too.

But after a half hour of the movie we both left.

Simply put, it was the worst movie I’ve ever seen, bar none. Let me count the ways in which it was bad – no, maybe that’s impossible, because it was awful in every way. Its terribleness was absolutely astonishing.

Since then, I’ve searched online for people who agree with me on this. There are many, but they seem to be outnumbered by those who loved the movie (at least, online). The movie’s box office hasn’t recouped its cost, and it’s considered a flop in that sense, although it’s gotten rave reviews from critics, and a slew of awards and nominations:

At the 31st Critics’ Choice Awards, it won three awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It was also nominated for nine awards at the 83rd Golden Globes, receiving the most nominations of any film that year and winning four, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy. The film also became the most-nominated film in the history of the Screen Actors Guild at the 32nd Actor Awards, with a record-breaking seven nominations. At the 79th British Academy Film Awards, it led the nominations with fourteen overall, winning six, including Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, the film received thirteen nominations at the 98th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and four acting nominations (for del Toro, DiCaprio, Penn, and Taylor), the second-most of any film that year.

Let me repeat that it wasn’t just that I didn’t care for the film. It was that it was deeply offensive, stupid, chaotic, ugly, and boring all at once. It made me and my friend recoil in a combination of revulsion plus embarrassment that anyone would write such a thing, film such a thing, direct such a thing, act in such a thing. It was repellent within the first five minutes, with a sexual scene so outlandish and distasteful and preposterous that it seemed the goal was to offend everything and everybody.

Before I saw the film I had looked it up and learned the very general outline of the plot although no details. I knew it was about 60s-style revolutionaries but set much later in time, and that after the first forty minutes or so it advanced about sixteen years into the future – which would bring it more or less to today’s present. But when I saw the opening minutes I couldn’t figure out what the makeup department was going to do when these characters are supposed to be sixteen years older, because they already looked long in the tooth (DiCaprio is now fifty-one – a bit old for a revolutionary – and Sean Penn is sixty-five, past retirement age for a colonel, which is the role he plays). I didn’t end up sticking around to see the part of the film where they’re supposed to become sixteen years older, but I’ve read that the movie makes no attempt whatsoever to age them.

I guess that’s one way to deal with it. But it’s a very minor quibble indeed in a movie so very bad.

Prior to seeing the movie I had also read that one of the main characters, a black female revolutionary, was scripted in a demeaning and cliched way that was aggressively hyper-sexualized. I figured this was just one of those overreactions by the politically woke. Well, I’m here to say that it was not an overreaction. If anything, the criticism was an understatement.

The acting seemed ludicrous to me although it’s been highly-praised – over the top except for DiCaprio, who looked to be on tranquilizers (at least during the portion I watched), and cartoonish and cliched, and yet without a satiric edge that would make that approach all right. I read that the film is supposed to be some sort of satire, some sort of comedy, but there wasn’t even a hint of that perspective in the part I saw.

It was as though the denizens of the future world of Idiocracy had made a movie.

One of the things that struck me almost as soon as the Sean Penn character appeared was that he was supposed to make the viewer recall the Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper character in Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove. And sure enough – at least, according to Google’s AI – “The character Colonel Steven J. ‘Lockjaw’ (played by Sean Penn in the 2025 film One Battle After Another) is described as a deliberate homage to Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper from Dr. Strangelove.”

That doesn’t even begin to redeem the film. All of the characters are offputting and deeply unlikable, whether they’re on the political left or right, although of course this being today’s Hollywood the ones on the right are even more evil and awful (and white) than the ones on the left. But who on earth wants to watch a two hour and forty minute movie with such characters and such action?

And it stands an excellent chance of getting the Oscar for Best Picture. Consider yourselves warned.

Just for fun, though, here’s one of my very favorite scenes from Dr. Strangelove. It features the Jack D. Ripper character, played by Sterling Hayden. He’s good, but it’s the brilliant Peter Sellers who shines here in one of his three roles in the film, that of RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake. The ever-growing panic in Sellers’ eyes combined with his efforts at exquisite British politeness in the face of the utterly mad and terribly dangerous Ripper never fails to get me with its edgy humor:

[NOTE: Here are some people who agree with me about the film.]

Mamdani and the leftist mayors

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the plan, according to this NY Post article:

The motley crew of capitalist-crushing Democratic mayors includes Chicago’s Brandon Johnson, Boston’s Michelle Wu, Oakland’s Barbara Lee, Seattle’s Katie Wilson and Los Angeles’ Karen Bass.

“Right now, we are the process of forming sort of a mayor’s coalition, much like district and state’s attorneys have formed to fight back against federal overreach,” Johnson said of the socialist sextet.

Mamdani “expressed a desire and commitment to work with the city of Chicago, Boston. We have Seattle on board. We have Oakland, Mayor Lee, Mayor Bass in Los Angeles as well,” added Johnson in a video posted Monday on X. …

“Nothing says ‘terrible idea’ like six cities famous for sky-high taxes and persistent crime deciding the solution is to compare notes,” said Bruce Blakeman, New York’s Republican gubernatorial nominee.

Mamdani’s reps said he’s in regular contact with many other mayors and governors across the country but insisted he’s yet to decide whether to join new coalition.

That would be quite the force multiplier.

One of Mamdani’s recent proposals is this humdinger, just one of many he’s considering:

The socialist mayor wants to drastically slash the estate tax exemption threshold from the $7 million limit to just $750,000, a drop of more than 90%, according to a memo City Hall recently circulated to Albany lawmakers. …

In addition to dropping the estate tax exemption — to what would be the lowest in the US — Mamdani is also pitching increasing the top rate to a whopping 50%, from the current 16%, in what he said would raise $4 billion combined, the outlet reported.

“This is a prime example of how the ‘tax the rich’ movement is actually all about taxing the middle class and those struggling to put food on their tables for their families,” Assemblyman Michael Tannousis (R-Staten Island) told The Post of the proposal.

Staten Island is the only Republican borough of New York, the only one that voted for Trump (about 65% in 2024) and for Mamdani’s opponents (23% for Mamdani). But I would imagine that quite a few people all over New York City who did vote for Mamdani would not be pleased if such changes were ever enacted. Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars does not go very far in New York City.

Of course, many of Mamdani’s supporters have no estates to pass on and probably no hope of having any. Plus, many are young and a long way away from even thinking about leaving to descendants whatever money they do have or ever will have. They might be interested in inheriting their parents’ estates intact, though, if their parents have much of anything and live in New York state. But I think most of Mamdani’s young voters would be only too happy to confiscate the money of others through an estate tax of this magnitude. “From each according to his means, to each according to his needs.”

Trump’s message on Kharg Island and the Strait of Hormuz

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s Trump’s statement:

Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East, and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island. Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision. During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World. Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it! Iran will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World! Iran’s Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

It bears the stamp of his distinctive style. It remains to be seen how it will play out, but for now he has chosen to preserve the country’s oil capacities because its people will need them in the future.

The left and the NeverTrumpers on the “right” (I don’t think they’ve been on the actual right for quite some time, for the most part) have been claiming – among other things – that Trump and his advisors had no plan for the Strait. Tom Cotton has tried to set them – straight:

As Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, let me make clear: whoever leaked this lied. CNN should do some fact-checking. The U.S. has planned for Iran to try to close the strait for decades.

Because the left’s narrative is (among other things) that Trump and his military advisors are hopelessly, abysmally, stupid, they can claim that Trump has never planned for this very obvious thing. And many people will believe it.

Whether the plans will work is quite another thing. I certainly hope they will.

However, I came across this startling bit of history:

While promoting his book The Art of the Deal in the United Kingdom in 1988, Trump discussed U.S.-Iran relations following the 1979 Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis. Mulling hypothetical military actions, Trump told The Guardian at the time, “They’ve been beating us psychologically, making us look a bunch of fools. One bullet shot at one of our men or ships, and I’d do a number on Kharg Island. I’d go in and take it.”

Seems he has become somewhat more cautious since then. But he was already thinking about the Strait and Kharg Island.

Another roundup

The New Neo Posted on by

(1) I recommend this article by Data Republican on the state of the Iran operation. Very comprehensive.

(2) This sort-of answers a question I was wondering about earlier today, when I wrote about the fact that Israel was destroying some of Iran’s IRGC and Basij agents by using drones, after Iranians informed them where the agents were. My question was: how does Israel verify the identifications? I still don’t know how, but apparently they do verify the information:

The [Israeli] official said Iranians on the ground have been transmitting information in Persian through Israeli social media accounts. According to the report, the information is first verified and vetted by Israeli authorities, and action is taken only after it is found to be accurate.

(3) There’s a lot of chatter online today about this judicial opinion:

Note that that was a dissent. The majority said it was perfectly okay to allow nude biological men into nude women-only spaces. In the intersectional hierarchy, declaring oneself trans trumps being a biological woman.

(4) DHS re-opening still hasn’t passed despite all the recent terrorist attacks:

A motion to proceed to a House-passed bill to reopen DHS failed Thursday when 46 Democrats voted against it. The lone person in favor of funding the department was Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA).

A few Democrats are starting to relent, however. Perhaps they’ve been hearing from irate constituents?

(5) Hegseth’s remarks on Khamenei Junior:

We know the new so called, not so Supreme Leader is wounded and likely disfigured. He put out a statement yesterday, a weak one, actually, but there was no voice and there was no video. It was a written statement. He called for unity. Apparently killing tens of thousands of protesters is his kind of unity.

Iran has plenty of cameras and plenty of voice recorders. Why a written statement? I think you know why.

His father dead. He’s scared, he’s injured, he’s on the run, and he lacks legitimacy. It’s a mess for them.

Who’s in charge? Iran may not even know.

But since Iran’s system of repression and missile launching is somewhat decentralized, it can go on for a while without a Supreme Leader in sight.

Regime change maybe

The New Neo Posted on by

There are terrible regimes all over the world. Most of them are in nations that confine the suffering to their own people. It’s sad, but we’re not about to start military action to change anything. The risks are too high, the costs too expensive, and the possible benefits to us too remote.

After 9/11, we realized that some people in far-off places wished to hurt us very badly and had actually done so. The rationale for invading Afghanistan was not the Taliban themselves, although they were theocratic tyrants. It was that they harbored al Qaeda and would not surrender them. We invaded but failed to get Bin Laden for a long time, and somehow the mission turned into regime change. However, attempting regime change made sense in at least one way: without getting rid of the Taliban government, wouldn’t the same thing just repeat itself?

Afghanistan proved very resistant to fundamental change. One big reason was cultural, although it wasn’t the only reason. To effect that sort of change was probably impossible, and it was certainly impossible without an enormous and long expenditure of time, money, and troops. We finally gave up, in particularly ignominious and costly fashion under Biden (or his controllers).

Iraq was somewhat different. There was a strongman tyrant who seemed to be developing nuclear weapons in defiance of an agreement for inspections post-Gulf War. It apparently was a pretense of Saddam Hussein’s, although we have argued about what the US knew and didn’t know in the leadup to the war. The Iraqi people were more sophisticated than those in Afghanistan (a low bar) and some pundits in the US argued that there was more appetite for democracy there and that it would be successful and Iraq would become an ally. Again, we can argue – and we certainly have – about to what extent the war had achieved at least some elements of success before Obama’s pull out, but I don’t think we would disagree about the fact that it left the vast majority of Americans on both sides with a strong aversion to wars with “boot on the ground” in order to effect regime change.

Which brings us to Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran. And Trump.

Trump had criticized the Iraq War greatly. So far, he seems to have approached things differently. He determined that Venezuela not only was headed by a tyrant, but by one that hadn’t been properly elected, and – this point is key – the regime was a sort of linchpin in a current axis of evil.

Trump’s approach to Venezuela was and is creative; I don’t need to describe it here except to say it involved a single audacious raid which brought Maduro here to stand trial, and a way to make his successor dance to our tune, for now. The plan is also to institute fair elections that will lead to better things for the people there, but for now that’s not happening. It has led, however, to a domino effect that has effected the energy supply of other problematic countries.

In Cuba, nothing new seems to have been done except the disruption of Venezuelan oil shipments, but this may be having the desired effect on the rulers of a country that was already having severe economic problems:

Cuban President Miguel Di?az-Canel on March 13 confirmed his government is holding talks with the Trump administration, in the latest sign that the communist-run nation is open to signing a possible historic economic deal with the United States.

Di?az-Canel made the announcement in a video broadcast on national television and he also spoke in a subsequent press conference, where he addressed Cuba’s energy needs amid a U.S. oil blockade, saying no fuel has entered Cuba in three months. He said the talks with the U.S. have reached initial phases only.

Iran is very different. The mullahs have been at war with us for 47 years and shout “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” It’s an enormous country under the rule of clerics who believe it’s their duty to start an Armageddon that will end with their triumph over the Muslim world and ultimately the rest of the world, and the coming of the Mahdi (I wrote about this belief system in this post). They are deadly serious about this.

Trump has decided they were too close to obtaining weapons that could further hurt Israel, Europe, and the US, and that something had to be done about this. He worked alongside Israel to degrade some of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and air defense system last summer, but some capacity remained and the mullahs got right back on that nuclear/ballistic horse. Negotiations to change this situation failed completely when the mullahs made it clear they would abandon none of their goals.

And so the joint US/Israel air campaign began. A huge number of Iran’s regime leaders have been killed – with no US boots on the ground – but there are others willing, for now, to take their place. Trump says their weapons, launchers, and nuclear capacity have been further degraded. We could declare victory and leave – except for the regime change question. If the mullahs stay in place, the Iranian people will continue to suffer, but the leaders will also set about trying to re-arm. Again and again, like some Terminator horror movie. It will take longer than before, and they are weaker and poorer than before. But their belief system does not allow them to be practical and give up.

Is regime change therefore necessary? Is it possible? What would effect it? I’m not going to tackle that in this post, which is already long enough. But I think everyone agrees that if it could happen and something better were in place, it would be a good thing.

Another thing on which we can probably agree is that Iran is a big country with a somewhat decentralized system of tyranny in which the IRGC and the Basij (their enforcers) are the main mechanism by which the crackdown on the Iranian people is accomplished. These two entities must be defanged, and at the moment there are many reports that a program of drone attacks is starting to do that. I hope they’re true, because this is of the utmost importance in further weakening the regime: