Advice for Spring Grads

We cite Nate Silver's work here at COTTonLINE with some frequency. Today he gives excellent advice I'd suggest you share with any youngsters of your acquaintance who will be graduating from high school next month. The following is from a post on X reposted on Instapundit.

Just go to a state school. The premium you're paying for elite private colleges vs. the better public schools is for social clout and not the quality of the education. And that's worth a lot less now that people have figured out that elite higher ed is cringe.

All of my degrees are from public higher ed institutions. I then spent my entire academic career teaching in state colleges and universities. 

We graduated young people with human and intellectual skills, to whom the market was pleased to offer career employment. Especially for in-state students, public higher ed offers very good value.

Curious ... Very Curious

Power Line's Steve Hayward posts this chart sourced from an Economist/YouGov survey.

Interesting that "marriage" isn't mentioned, only parenthood. You gotta admit the current low birth rate works in Democrats' favor.

What do you suppose these numbers mean? That whites were already Trump voters and most of the cross-overs will be POCs? 

But why parenthood? I wonder if the phrasing of the YouGov question somehow excluded parents who are not involved with their children? Hat tip to Potterworld's Mr. Ollivander - the wandmaker - for my title.

Pondering Homelessness

The Supreme Court is now hearing arguments about homelessness, with the usual stuff trotted out by both sides. I don't know what SCOTUS will decide. I do know some of the factors I'd like considered. Here some of them are, in no particular order.

What percentage of the homeless are free from addiction, mental illness, and crippling physical disability? In other words, what percentage could hold a job and purchase some kind of minimal housing?

Everywhere I go I see signs indicating businesses are hiring. I presume most employers demand not drunk, not stoned, sane, and minimally healthy employees. 

What percentage of the homeless are unhoused because they are insane or addicted to drugs or alcohol to the point of being unemployable? Presumably many of these could get treatment that would include housing but prefer being unhoused and stoned, drunk, or delusional. Is our society required to tolerate their preferences and the consequent eyesore it creates?

Time was, counties had "poor farms" where those down on their luck could get a roof, a bed, a shower, and some chow in return for laboring on the farm. I'm not sure what happened to those institutions, probably subdivided and developed.

Much of the homeless problem we face is the result of shutting down state mental institutions which once housed many of these same damaged individuals. Now they live on the street and self-medicate with booze and street drugs until they OD fatally.

Successful Presidencial Styles

I started reading John Judis' "Why Are Voters Worried About Biden's Age?" with the notion I would be turned off by the content. I assumed it would be a defense of Slow Joe. Don't be scared off (as I almost was) by the blog's title: The Liberal Patriot, 

Instead, what I read was a very interesting analysis of the various styles of presidential behavior that have worked, that attracted public support. It also points out why what Joe Biden has done has not worked. I recommend the article to you.

Antarctica Getting Colder

 The journal Climate Change Dispatch headlines an article thus:

Antarctica Is Colder, Icier Today Than At Any Time In 5,000 Years.

Whew! That doesn't support the global warming hypothesis at all. Somebody tell Al Gore and Greta Whatshername.

West Antarctica’s mean annual surface temperatures cooled by more than -1.8°C (-0.93°C per decade) from 1999-2018 (Zhang et al., 2023).

Not just West Antarctica, but most of the continent also has cooled by more than 1°C in the 21st century. See, for example, the ~1°C per decade cooling trend for East Antarctica (2000 to 2018).

Hat tip to Power Line for the link. 

A Forlorn Hope

In the run-up to November's election Democrats will do their level best to convince you, if elected, President Donald Trump will destroy the United States. I don't believe they will succeed.

We all experienced four years of a Trump presidency and the US wasn't destroyed, was it? Did he do everything perfectly, of course not. No president does.

Did he do darned well in spite of Covid? I say he did, that's how I remember it and I'll bet you do too. Is he stylistically to everyone's taste? No, he's not ... so what? 

I am convinced I don't want an additional minute of Biden presidency, beyond noon on Jan. 20, 2025. Biden has been a tool of the left-most part of his party, and is deteriorating into dementia as we watch. 

When he was elected a lot of folks thought "Biden won't be an embarrassment like Trump sometimes is." Man, oh man, was that prediction completely off the mark. He is literally doddering through those duties that can't be ignored, mumbling about cannibals and other mental fluff.

Biden is a yuuuge embarrassment.

More Progress

The snow pack is almost gone in our WY mountain valley, we should be there in just under three weeks. We normally plan to leave NV before the weather here goes over 100 degrees. 

WY usually looks a little bare when we first arrive. I'm guessing the aspens will not have leafed out yet. That process is magical to experience. 

It will be hot as we pack up to head north, but bearable. Once there we'll get to experience spring all over again. 

Indeed one of the pluses (or minuses) of the migratory lifestyle is experiencing two springs and two falls each year. A downside is the spring hay fever sniffles last longer.

Tell God, Trump Says Hi

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-MS) has a favorite Trump-as-President anecdote he sometimes tells, and here it is from a RealClearPolitics article on his speakership in these tough times.

The call came one morning as Johnson was finishing his devotions in his office (where he lived). The president wanted him to vote yes on the bill. The congressman stubbornly explained why he had to vote no.

His Bible was open to the Book of Daniel at the time, Johnson was once fond of telling friends, specifically the passage where Daniel interprets the dreams of Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar. And the congressman felt compelled to tell Trump that, once their call ended, he would pray for the president. The line went quiet. Trump broke the silence: “Tell God, I say hi.”

Saturday Snark

They left "independent women" off the hate list.

Only seniors will get this one.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

After Battle Analysis

Yesterday we wrote about Israel striking back at Iran after Iran sent hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. Today comes the information that the Israeli response was much smaller than the provocation. 

The latest news is that the response may be spaced over several days and deal with a variety of targets. Doing it this way forgoes the "shock and awe" impact the Iran attack had, but keeping Iranian assets on edge against an attack that may or may not come on any particular day may be more demoralizing.

One thing is clear. Having been attacked directly by Iran with no proxy to hide behind, a red line was definitely crossed. Now Israel is freed up to directly attack whatever target in Iran seems fruitful, whenever it chooses. There’s no denying a state of war exists between the two nations, the former fig leaf is gone.

Friday Snark 2.0

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Democrats Prefer Hamas

Steve Hayward's chart for today's Power Line concerns voters net sympathy for Israel, calculated by Gallup as "% more sympathetic toward Israel minus % more sympathetic toward the Palestinians." This is cross-tabbed with party affiliation. Note a majority of Democrats are more sympathetic toward the Palestinians, hence a negative result. 

Historically, American Jews have nearly been as reliable Democrat voters as blacks. An election under current conditions creates interesting dilemmas for them and for the party's policy makers.

Friday Snark 1.0

 Susan Vass, a retired stand-up comic who posts at Power Line as Ammo Grrrll, recalling what she asked a group of teachers who’d just been lectured half to death about the achievement gap between various student racial groups.

I’ve heard a lot of concern today about how some students are not keeping up with others. Couldn’t you just solve this by asking the white kids to do WORSE?

As you might guess, she got a good laugh. She adds that today, unlike 15 years ago when the quip was delivered, nobody would dare laugh.

My take: Cancelling gifted programs, isn’t that asking the white (and Asian) kids to do worse? If you haven't read the Kurt Vonnegut short story Harrison Bergeron, understand he didn't mean it to become a how-to for DEI programs.

Breaking: Israel Strikes Iran

Various sources are reporting on Friday morning Israel began retaliatory counterattacks on Iran itself and on Iranian proxies in Syria. Information is quite preliminary, some call what arrived on-target "missiles." 

Other sources say these were "stand-off" munitions launched by Israeli planes flying outside Iranian airspace. My understanding is that, to civilian observers near the target, these two types of munitions would be indistinguishable. 

Two cities hit in Iran both house major aspects of the Iranian nuclear program. Iran claims their nuclear sites are unharmed. 

An interesting outcome will be assessing the effectiveness of Iranian anti-missile/antiaircraft defenses. Iran has Russian systems that have an hyped reputation, how those will perform in combat will be a good learning. 

Nobody believes the Iranian air defense systems are anywhere near as good as Israeli systems. Those are touted as perhaps the world's best.

A Simple Improvement

Not all new technology is mind-bogglingly complex, some quite simple things make everyday life easier. The particular innovation I have in mind is the microwave-in-the-unopened-bag spinach we recently began purchasing.

Presuming you like spinach (we both do) it is quite as tasty as the older frozen block of spinach you cooked in a sauce pan. It dirties nothing, requires no cleanup, and contains the perfect amount for two spinach lovers to have alongside our grilled steaks. 

I add a dollop of butter and a sprinkle of black pepper to my half. It vanishes in no time. And, yes, I do sometimes think of Popeye while eating it.

Cue the Cannibals

Joe Biden claims his uncle Ambrose, who died in a plane crash at sea off New Guinea, was in fact eaten by cannibals. For a boring guy, Biden has certainly imagined for himself a fascinating pseudo-biography. 

A parodist would be hard pressed to come up with allegations exaggerated enough to surpass what Joe routinely claims for himself. He's been making these claims for decades.

Sad to say, never the brightest guy, our POTUS has senile dementia. So many go gaga before they shuffle off the mortal coil. I hope for our sake, dear reader, we can dodge that bullet.

Avoiding Conflict

It is widely reported the University of Southern California cancelled a valedictorian's speech by Asna Tabassum - a Muslim - when her online comments supporting the Palestinians in Gaza and calling for the "abolition" of Israel were uncovered. 

The school claimed threats to the safety of attendees were received after her speech was scheduled and her opinions on Gaza revealed. No specifics of these threats were given.

I suspect it is more likely the threats to the private university were threats to withhold large donations by wealthy SoCal alumni, a substantial number of whom are Jewish. For a private university dependent on gifts by successful alums, cancelling her speech is an entirely rational act, if also somewhat embarrassing.

About Lawfare

I haven’t written a lot about the Trump trials, viewing them as Lawfare against him. “Lawfare” being a neologism combining “law” and “warfare.”

Now they’ve begun and my opinion hasn’t changed. I continue to believe most of them would never have happened if he were not a presidential candidate, don’t you?

What we are witnessing, is an abuse of our legal system for political ends. What is alarming is that this sort of thing, once begun, is hard to stop. 

Both parties will now feel emboldened to utilize it against their opponents. Result: the “system” is coarsened, no good thing.

I think of this as the Harry Reid problem. As majority leader the late Sen. Reid (D-NV) got rid of a supermajority requirement for confirming judges, and got a few liberals through. 

Then the Rs got a Senate majority and proceeded to use the new rule to get an R majority on the Supreme Court, which is the ultimate goal in this game. If Ds are honest, they must blame Reid for that outcome. Rs used the rule against its instigators.

If you bet horses they way they’ve run in the past, you’d bet on Trump finagling his way through this legal briar patch, with at worst a few scratches. As he’s fond of saying, we’ll see what happens.

Confidence Lost

Related to the post below, Steve Hayward has a chart reflecting annual polling over the past 29 years on the question of whether people have a "great deal" or quite a lot" of confidence in newspapers and television news. 

It is hard to make elected governments work when trust in news sources is this low. So I do a bit of 'horseback' extrapolation as follows.

Roughly half the electorate votes for each major party. If zero Republicans trust papers and TV news, then something like 2/3 of Democrats don't trust them either. These Democrats must understand they're being lied to at the same time they're reading stuff designed by the legacy media to please them.

HRH Katherine, Queen of Karens

There has been much reaction to the critique of management at NPR by 25 year employee Uri Berliner. Writing for the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll describes Katherine Maher - the head of National Public Radio, aka NPR - as follows:

She’s a vegetarian. She hates cars. And white men flying on planes. She supports race-based reparations, rioting, and the Black Lives Matter movement. She believes “America is addicted to white supremacy.”

She doesn’t want to become a mother because “the planet is literally burning.” She uses phrases such as “CIS white mobility privilege” unironically. She admits to growing up “feeling superior … because I was from New England and my part of the country didn’t have slaves.”

And she has history with the humanity-hating World Economic Forum. I believe the title of Carroll's article describes her perfectly.

NPR’s queen of the Karens