For what it’s worth, Senate polling …

The New Neo Posted on by

… is within the margin of error:

“That is what I actually tell people because when you look at all these polls, they’re all within the margin of error,” Penn told Fox News. “So we know that the last election was two points, but we also know that turnout for the midterms, if you look at it, typically falls off about 20%.”

Penn estimated that roughly 112 million people will vote this fall, compared to about 150 million in a presidential year. With close to 40 million voters staying home, the winner in a tight race is whichever side gets its people to show up.

“The polls here are neck and neck virtually everywhere,” he said. “So I wouldn’t say that you could pick a winner or a loser now. I think attitudes towards the economy in the next couple of weeks and turnout are going to be the two critical factors.”

Hard to dispute that.

Polls have become less valuable at predicting outcome these days.

Brazil will have a runoff election

The New Neo Posted on by

A surprise result of the Brazilian vote yesterday was that Bolsonaro is ahead, but neither candidate reached 50%:

Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, an ally of U.S. President Donald Trump, and Brazil’s incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will face off in a runoff Oct. 25 for the top job of Latin America’s powerhouse economy after neither won a majority in Sunday’s vote.

The country’s electoral court in Brasilia said neither the 80-year-old incumbent, seeking his fourth non-consecutive term, nor the 45-year-old son of former President Jair Bolsonaro would garner the majority vote needed for an outright win.

Another 80-year-old – what is it lately with these elderly politicians?

Lula, seeking to be encouraging ahead of an uphill battle to beat Bolsonaro in the runoff, said the result was “unexpected” as he had thought he could win in the first round.

“Tomorrow we start a new campaign,” Lula said. “I am very good in the knockout stage. We will see who has the best plan.”

Is fraud in the offing? Well, there’s this:

No significant fraud has ever been detected since Brazil adopted its electronic voting system in the 1990s.

The Organization of American States’ electoral observation mission reported Sunday that “the voting has been going smoothly and under adequate safety conditions.” Electoral authorities assured that electronic votes are secure and verifiable.

Voters appeared largely confident that the country’s voting system can’t be tampered with.

There’s also this, an article written in May indicating that the public has lost some trust in the system.

Bolsonaro is heavily favored to win the runoff:

Speculators on prediction market platform Kalshi now give Bolsonaro a more than 80% chance of winning the presidency. Before Sunday’s first round results came in, he had about a 60% chance to win. On Polymarket, Bolsonaro’s odds are now 85%, jumping from 63% before the first round count. …

While Bolsonaro was seen as a narrow favorite to win the presidency before Sunday’s first round, he was widely expected to trail the incumbent Lula in that initial tally, according to pre-election polls. This was the case even as Bolsonaro was favored to win a run-off. However, Bolsonaro secured more than 47% of the votes, and beat Lula’s first round total by nearly 2 percentage points.

If Bolsonaro does win, it would be part of a recent swing to the right in several Latin American countries.

Will Californians ever wise up?

The New Neo Posted on by

I fear the answer is “no.” Voting Democratic is a deeply-ingrained habit, plus the mail-in voting system solidifies Democrat control even further.

But news such as this should give people pause and let them know they are being ripped off, big-time:

The City Journal, a public policy magazine published by the right-leaning Manhattan Institute, recently investigated the striking array of entitlements available to illegal alien families in California. What they uncovered was staggering.

Perhaps their most disturbing discovery was that an illegal alien couple with two U.S.-born children and one illegal alien grandparent is eligible to receive benefits worth up to $100,000 in a single calendar year.

The authors, Christopher F. Rufo, Kenneth Schrupp, and Austen Hufford, call this extensive safety net California’s “Shadow Welfare System.” It includes “health care, rental assistance, college grants, tax credits, low-cost car insurance, and even smartphones.” And they’ve estimated the annual cost to California taxpayers to be nearly $11 billion.

I can’t recall when I first heard the term “virtue signaling.” I think it wasn’t long after I began blogging, more than twenty years ago. It has occurred to me more and more over the years that virtue-signaling is at the heart of the appeal to the Democrat voter. The idea is that one is proving oneself to be a good person, a kind person, a generous person, a non-bigoted person – and that those who vote otherwise are neither good, nor kind, nor generous, and that they are bigots.

This is also the source of the hatred many Democrats have for Republican voters. These convictions have broken up family and estranged old friends who should know better.

“Caught”

The New Neo Posted on by

This was one of the most amazing dance performances I’ve ever seen. The video doesn’t do it justice, so you’ll have to use your imagination. This is just a short excerpt:

Nothing says fairness like appointing Letitia James

The New Neo Posted on by

Governor Hochul apparently wants to make sure the Cornell frat men don’t get off:

Eiglarsh believes that the move to assign AG James to the case is not for her to conduct an investigation, but rather to indict the men.

“The governor is not assigning her for an independent investigation,” Eiglarsh said. “It’s, ‘Go bring justice,’ and justice is defined by indicting some of these kids. But keep in mind you can’t lump them all together. Each of these kids’ — their lives are precious. Same way the alleged victim is — each one. There needs to be proof beyond, and to the exclusion of, every reasonable doubt that meets the elements of the crime of a statute in New York. I think she’s going to find a way to bring charges.”

Banfield said that people should withhold judgment until “every scrap” of evidence has been reviewed, comparing the case to the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case, in which three men were falsely accused of rape.

Hochul and James are excellent examples of what happens when the left completely takes over a state, and there is no need anymore to even have a pretense of fairness or evenhandedness. Here’s an almost humorous statement by James (at the very end):

Reporter: “Attorney General, on your Facebook page three days ago, you wrote, ‘What this young woman has been forced to endure is horrific and unacceptable. I’m holding her in my heart and in my prayers. To her and to all survivors, you’re not alone. We stand with you.’ Why did you affirm her allegations as fact without doing your own fact-finding investigation? And to the governor, why did you appoint an official who made a public statement affirming those allegations as fact as someone who’s supposed to be doing an investigation?”

New York Governor Kathy Hochul (D): “I will answer that. I have every confidence in our Attorney General to do what she has always done. Look at the facts, examine the record, and draw the proper conclusions. That’s exactly what’s going to happen in this case. Attorney General, please.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James: “I will not comment on a Facebook post.”

“A Facebook post” – that’s her very own Facebook post that she won’t comment on – because she doesn’t need to.

Who hired the extremist co-pilot, and why?

The New Neo Posted on by

Curiouser and curiouser:

The Wall Street Journal is out with an exclusive alleging that the co-pilot who stabbed his captain on FlyDubai Flight 1073 as they flew between Dubai and Tel Aviv earlier this week, nearly downing the aircraft, had been banned from flying in his home country of Oman “over concerns he had adopted radical ideological views,” and that, despite the ban, FlyDubai hired the man anyway, “allowing him to pilot on the sensitive route connecting the United Arab Emirates and Israel.”

FlyDubai operates at two airports in Oman, Muscat and Salalah, but the aspiring terrorist co-pilot couldn’t fly those routes due to the ban. According to the Journal, whether the Omani government shared their concerns about the co-pilot’s radicalization with other countries or airlines is unable to be determined. But if he was hired by an airline that operated in a country in which he was prohibited from flying, it would seem that the carrier at least knew of the ban and would be curious as to the nature of the ban. Regardless, the route between Dubai and Tel Aviv is obviously subject to heightened scrutiny and security, and given that Israel doesn’t allow pilots whose passports are from countries with which it does not have diplomatic relations to land in the country — which includes Oman — that FlyDubai assigned this man to that route anyway is alarming and needs to be fully investigated.

Negligence, or malign intent on the part of the airline? Will we ever learn the answer? I doubt it. I think the tale will fade from view without our ever knowing.

The story itself, however, is one of feel-good heroics. So many brave heroes – the pilot and so many of the passengers – plumber, dentist, all.

We can celebrate, but the line between celebration and tragedy is often paper-thin, and that is true here. The plane could easily have broken apart from the forces that damaged the rudder. The new pilots might have had trouble landing it. The dentist who brought the plane out of a precipitous dive might not have acted properly or in time.

And yet, tragedy was averted and we can cheer.

Why was Christa Pike the only one of the three people involved in the murder who got the death penalty?

The New Neo Posted on by

Three teenagers brutally murdered another teenager over thirty years ago. The crime was especially cold-blooded and horrific. One, Christa Pike, received the death penalty. The other two did not.

The story:

Christa Pike, now 50, has been in prison since she was 18 years old over the murder 1995 murder of Colleen Slemmer. She wasn’t the only one found guilty — but she is the only one who ended up on death row.

According to the University of Tennessee Knoxville, Slemmer was a 19-year-old Job Corps participant when she was tortured and murdered behind the agriculture campus steam plant on January 12, 1995. Pike and two others — 17-year-old Tadaryl Shipp and 18-year-old Shadolla Peterson — were also involved.

Shipp – who was Pike’s boyfriend at the time – was found guilty but because he was 17 years old he was ineligible for the death penalty. Pike was 18 and received the death penalty. Peterson – also 18 – is alleged to have been the lookout, and agreed to testify against the other two:

However, Peterson, who was initially indicted on a first-degree murder count, cooperated with police and entered a guilty plea to an information charge of being an accessory after the first-degree murder, according to Knox News.

Where is Shadolla Peterson now?
In exchange for testifying against Pike and Shipp, Peterson received 460 days in jail and a six-year probation sentence.

Pike was the only white defendant; the other two are black. Did this factor into the decision? I have no way of knowing, but the differing sentences seem to have more to do with the different ages of Shipp and Pike, plus Peterson’s cooperation.

Does this differential treatment based on one year of age bother you at all? It bothers me. In addition, most of the coverage till now has maintained that it was Christa Pike who carved a tetragram into the victim. But this is apparently untrue; in a post-conviction hearing, Shipp confessed to doing it.

Legally, it doesn’t much matter. They could all be argued to have been guilty of felony murder, including Peterson, had the prosecutors wanted to treat the perps that way. But I assume they needed Peterson’s testimony to convict the others, and let her walk.

Slowly improving

The New Neo Posted on by

And I mean slowly.

I’m talking about my physical health, not my mental state. My grief is, if anything, worse, as it all sinks in more and more.

But at least my fever is gone. I’ve entered a stage where I’m still “off” in the GI sense, still coughing but not as much, still tired but able to be on my feet most of the day. That’s progress.

Even though my son had a negative COVID test, our symptoms have been so perfectly COVID-like that I decided to test myself today. I would have bet a significant amount of money it would be positive. But I would have lost that bet: negative.

I don’t know the exact name of what I’ve got, but I can tell you I never want to get it again.

Not-so-lethal injection

The New Neo Posted on by

The attempted (and failed) execution of Christa Pike is grisly and extremely disturbing on almost every level. It starts with the 1995 murder itself, segues into the long delay before carrying out the sentence, and then the failure of the lethal injections to work.

Something is very rotten in the state of Tennessee:

Christa Pike was in critical condition Thursday and receiving “lifesaving care” at a hospital, her lawyers said, a day after a failed attempt to execute her pushed Tennessee’s governor to halt further executions this year and order an independent review.

Pike, who was sentenced to death for a 1995 murder, was taken to a hospital Wednesday night after surviving a double dose of the drug Tennessee uses to execute prisoners.

“We don’t have a sense of her prognosis or much update on her health at the moment,” attorney Randy Spivey said during a news conference. “But we know she is alive right now.”

The failed execution, which one death penalty expert described as unprecedented, led Republican Gov. Bill Lee to order a review, calling what happened “deeply disturbing” and indefinitely postponing Pike’s execution and another one that had been scheduled for this year. It also reignited the debate over the state’s execution procedures, including its single-drug lethal injections.

A horror show.

I guess voters have gotten tired of all the winning

The New Neo Posted on by

It makes no sense to me, but all signs are that the US voting public is poised to put Democrats in charge of Congress. As time passes, I become more and more convinced that voters operate through pique and illogic. Things aren’t perfect? Turn the bums out and put in the far greater bums.

I guess they want to see endless and meaningless impeachment theater again.

Meanwhile, the economy is doing rather well, although you wouldn’t know it from the MSM:

Ah yes, the midterms.

As I’ve said, you can make a case that the economy is great or that it’s bad.

You can bet that between now and November, the Democrats and the media — but I repeat myself — will be focusing on the bad.

It’s an old playbook, one that Bill Clinton’s pollster Mark Penn wielded to defeat President George H.W. Bush in 1992.

The economy had actually recovered from a brief recession in 1991, but voters thought otherwise — because the media told them so.

“There is often a huge disconnect between belief about the economy and the true economic state of affairs,” Penn wrote in his 2007 book “Microtrends.”

“Until the statistics are actually published, people tend to assess the economy through the eyes of the national media.”

During the 1992 election, Clinton repeatedly told us we were experiencing the worst economy in 50 years.

The press echoed that message dutifully.

But as Penn recounted with glee, “The statistics that came out after the election showed that the period leading up to November had actually been a period of record growth.”

Whether this is the best of economies, the worst of economies, or something in between, you can bet that for the next month-plus we’ll be told it’s the worst.

Then there’s the Iran War – in which very few Americans have died or even fought. It’s come down to an economic war at the moment, one we seem to be winning. And Hormuz is pretty much open.

Let’s see, what else? Crime way down. Border closed.

One fear I have is that, as older cohorts die off and are replaced by the young who’ve been steeped in decades of miseducation, the trend to the left will only increase.

In the meantime: