MAGA Fun

John at Power Line posts a link to the following AI creation, and it is big fun. Check it out.

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTp892zDKER/?utm_source=ig_embed&utm_campaign=loading

Crime Is Down?

It is widely reported that murders were down perhaps 20% last year, compared to 2024. If that few people met violent ends, it's wonderful news. I wish I was certain the statistic is believable.

Another possible explanation for the reduced number of reported murders is that Soros-funded liberal prosecutors are charging fewer perps with murder, instead choosing some lesser offense or none at all.

Many other forms of crime are also reported to have declined, which makes me suspect prosecutorial reluctance is the underlying factor in these otherwise cheerful statistics. Officials who don't wish to give violent criminals long sentences do not have this society's best interests at heart.

Not Cozy

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaking to the assembled WEF poobahs at Davos, about his evolving Weltanschauung.

The new world of the great powers is founded upon power, strength and when necessary, force. It is not a cozy place.

My reaction to Herr Merz? Welcome to what is sometimes referred to as "adulting." Post-war Europe has had a greatly protracted 'adolescence,' symbolically living in America's 'basement' and sponging off us. It should have ended 25 years ago, if not earlier.

No Skin in the Game

Concerning the post immediately below. Perhaps the movement to have no children actually interferes with solutions to the "birth dearth." Individual humans are ephemeral. Whatever a shrinking population will do to humankind's long-term prospects, none now living will last long enough to see those consequences.

Asking the people without children to worry about the eventual consequences thereof is like asking a fruit fly to worry about winter. Both are too far in the future to be of much concern. I fear one must have children and grandchildren and care about them to worry much about the world after one's death.

The Birth Dearth

Economist Noah Smith writes a Substack entitled Noahpinion. Today his topic is the human fertility decline, which he observes is world-wide. 

If it cannot be reversed, it will cause civilization to collapse over the next century or two. He begins with six commonly expressed coping reactions to the problem, and debunks each in turn.

1. “The only thing that matters is per capita living standards, so a shrinking population is fine”
2. “Productivity improvements will compensate for shrinking populations”
3. “Robots will make human workers unnecessary anyway"
4. “Concerns about low fertility are racist and sexist”
5. “We can just pay people to have more kids”
6. “Immigration will solve the population problem”

Smith suggests research aimed at solving the problem, which is logical, except maybe fertility isn’t the problem. I particularly liked this comment to his column, written by Professor Hollis Robbins (U. of Utah).

Call it "child rearing policy," not "fertility policy," because the real problem is the daunting task of child rearing. "Fertility" doesn't get at the actual labor. Ask any grandparent who is doing substantial child-rearing work. (My hand is raised.) Everyone I know who is not having kids will tell you: parents fear the grueling, 18+year long task of doing a good job, when the world is watching, when once you're in you can't back out.

For those of us lucky and talented enough to be successful adults, there is a substantial risk of raising children whose lives will badly disappoint us. I’d estimate half of our friends’ children have fallen far short of their parents’ accomplishments or expectations. 

Lake Wobegon is a myth, half of all children are in fact below average. After doing all the work Robbins correctly describes, being disappointed with the results is not a encouraging prospect.

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Plot of a science fiction short story explaining the lack of ET contact. Intelligent species tend to discover how to make reproduction elective long before they discover practical interstellar travel. As a consequence they dwindle to small, planet-bound colonies. 

Will humans be an exception? Unlikely, although Elon Musk is doing his well-financed best to evade the first and accomplish the second.

Student Self-Censorship

City Journal reports a study which finds that college students with moderate or conservative views feel the need to self-censor to fit in and avoid controversy on campus. Having the data is good, but I think we already knew it to be true.

During my 35 years as a professor with mostly conservative views, I know I self-censored in interactions with colleagues and to some minor extent in the classroom. “Minor” because politics was not central to what I was teaching. 

If my students noticed anything, it was probably that I didn’t harp on political issues peripheral to my subject matter as liberal faculty did. If they inferred from that I wasn’t liberal, I was okay with the inference. Nobody complained.

More to the point, business students aren’t often among campus radicals. My self-censorship was more in hearing faculty colleagues say flaming liberal things and not telling them how f-ing ignorant I found their comments. 

Decades ago we had a colleague whose assigned subject matter was quant analysis in business, but who spent most of his class time harping on nuclear disarmament. He was even too off-topic for my liberal colleagues, and we let him go for ignoring his subject matter. 

Trump Does Davos

President Trump spoke at the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland. While there he worked out a deal whereby we locate bases on Greenland and possibly produce rare earth minerals there too, details to follow. Apparently the Danes keep ownership, and the whole thing is done under the aegis of NATO. 

The threatened tariffs are no more, and ditto the threatened invasion. Apparently they were just Trump getting Europe's attention, making them feel better about the deal they ended up with. After the fact, wise heads are describing this as classical Trump bargaining rope-a-dope.

Seemingly, everyone except Trump underestimated how absolutely crucial the US market is to exporters the world over. Faced with a threatened tariff, nation after nation has caved and given him more-or-less what he wanted.

Back to the "deal" he declares himself happy with, we already had the right to locate military bases in Greenland, almost at will. What is new is that the other key NATO nations have signed onto the need to defend the high Arctic against hostile moves by either Russia or China. 

Northern European nations already recognized the need; whether Southern Europe feels it or is just paying lip service is still unclear. Canada talks a good game but their diplomats are writing checks their half-hearted military is unable to cash.

Side note: the DrsC overnighted in Davos on a summer trip (WEF is in winter). There is a ski run but it was no Sun Valley, Vail, or Jackson Hole, in our view. I believe we bought a rare souvenir there, a bright red piggy bank with a white Swiss cross on each flank - our "Swiss bank."

Second side note: If you get the chance see video of Treasury Secretary Bessent at Davos describing CA Gov. Gavin Newsom as a cross between two fictional characters, one a serial killing sociopath (Patrick Bateman) and the other Barbie's boytoy Ken, adding that Gavin knew less about economics than Kamala Harris.

*** An Anniversary ***

One year ago today Donald John Trump was (re) inaugurated as our 47th president. It has been a whirlwind first year, and I am certain he has been having the time of his life. The adrenaline high he's on has to be amazing.

Since he was a young tycoon developing real estate in NYC, Trump has had fairly clear ideas about how this world should be run and has said as much to a variety of interviewers on-camera. He tried to operate within the system during his first term, and fell far short of his goals.

During the first year of his second term, we learned he had put the intervening 4 years to good use, planning for his return. Once back in the Oval Office, he seemingly hasn't let a single day go by without moving his agenda forward. If he doesn't work 24 hours a day, he for sure works seven days a week, regardless of where he is.

While I've not loved everything he's done this past year, nobody bats 1000. I have liked most of it a lot, and look forward to another great year of winning and libtard breakdowns.

Monday Snark

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, 1/20/26.

Meet Waifu Amelia

If you are an Anglophile, and enjoy things British, go see the new poster girl for Brits who want to preserve their culture and limit immigration. Her name is Amelia, sometimes known as Waifu Amelia.

"Waifu" by the way is "wife" pronounced with a Japanese accent, as the character is drawn in an anime style. The term's meaning:

Waifu is a term used to refer to a fictional female character toward whom one feels romantic or sexual attraction.

Hot Air has a nice, long column describing the phenomenon, and its ties to Reform and Brit nationalism. I particularly like her hugging Paddington Bear.

Over-the-Top Trans

An article at American Thinker deals with a television program I actually have viewed. It is a segment of Landman on Paramount+ in which the main character's air-head daughter goes off to college and gets saddled with a trans roommate who is a total wacko. 

What puzzles the column's author is that the person playing the non-binary roommate - actor Bobbi Salvor Menuez - is an actual trans person, playing to type. The "type" being an absolute self-centered jerk, the proverbial "roommate from hell." Did 'she' realize the character was a putdown of trans? 

Landman is a good yarn, full of bigger-than-life Texans, played by an excellent cast, set in the West Texas "oil patch." It is raw in places, and the language often appropriately crude. Growing up maybe 10 miles from an oil field in SoCal, I went to school with oil workers' kids, who could be less than genteel.

Imperial Dreams

My current favorite foreign policy analyst - George Friedman - writes about Trump's actions vis-a-vis Greenland, admitting he is puzzled thereby.

I must confess that I do not understand the reasons or forces behind Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on European countries that are not willing to cede Greenland to the United States.

He explains in detail why the US can have all the access to Greenland it could want without having actual ownership, and his analysis seems spot on. But Trump's motives elude his decoding.

I have a hunch why Trump is acting in a punitive fashion toward NATO allies. I'm guessing he has long felt that, since they recovered from World War II, the allies have treated us shabbily, believed our generosity was their due, and have not tugged the forelock while doing it. 

In medieval terms, they are satraps who show insufficient deference to their emperor, and he's letting them know he has noticed their insolence, and is punishing it.

Understand, I am not defending his punitive tariffs, merely guessing at his motive therefore. I can imagine future historians viewing NATO as an empire of sorts, with the US being the imperial nation. It isn't much of stretch to see it this way, and you have to think it's a view that appeals to Trump's grandiose streak.

Sunday Snark

Images courtesy of According to Hoyt's

Waiting for the Other Memes to Drop.

AWFUL

Tyler Durden writing at his Zero Hedge website identifies the latest acronym for the women leading the fight against ICE in Minnesota and, to substantial degree, elsewhere. The acronym for these individuals is AWFUL, standing for Affluent White Female Urban Liberal. 

I must say I find it rather descriptive. Of course it is also deeply pejorative, a large part of its charm.

I've been seeing it as AWFL, but the addition of Urban makes it both more descriptive and more accurate. Not a lot of rural women among the protestors, I'll warrant. Countrywomen have productive things to do with their time.

Saturday Snark

IYKYK

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

A Modest Proposal re Greenland

Trump has said Greenland would be valuable to the US, and he’d like to acquire it. Denmark, the current owner has said “no.” Several authors have noted the way the US has mostly acquired territory has been by buying it.

Instead of bullying NATO and Denmark, I suggest an approach to the voters of Denmark, over the heads of their government. Greenland is currently a drag on Denmark’s economy, which Danes pay taxes to cover. 

Offer to relieve them of that burden plus a cash purchase price paid individually to each Danish citizen. There are roughly 6 million Danes. If Greenland is worth $6 billion, that would be $1000 each. If it is worth $60 billion, the payout would be  $10,000 each. For a couple with one child, $30k could be a car, a home down payment, or seed money for a start-up.

It is likely that offer might attract interest among the many Danes who have little interest in the rarely visited and very lightly populated, ice-coated colony. In brief, make the Danes a offer they won’t want their government to refuse.

Looking North ...

It is widely reported that Canadian PM Carney has snuggled up to China’s Xi, trying to get even with Trump for past slights. This wasn’t wise. The U.S. cannot have a Chinese ally across our mutual 5500 mile undefended border. 

I’d think this recent action has moved the notion of a U.S. invasion of Canada from “inconceivable” to “remotely possible.” Further Canadian involvement with China conceivably could make it "likely," as Ukraine discovered.

I wonder if Carney's notion is for Trump to experience empathy with how Putin felt about Ukraine, before invading.

Closer to home, imagine how Canada's Hong Kong Chinese immigrants feel about their new government making nice with the CCP, the tender mercies of which they fled. Might they choose to vote Conservative?

Later ... Trump, at least on the surface, says he has no problem with Canada's China deal. The Hill quotes him thus,

That’s OK. That’s what he should be doing. I mean, it’s a good thing for him to sign a trade deal. If you can get a deal with China, you should do that.

One possibility: Carney did what he did to p*ss off Trump, and Trump was robbing him of that pleasure by not showing irritation. 

The alternative is that Trump deals with China, and feels other national leaders should do the same. That Carney praised Xi is no more than what Trump does when two meet to deal.

It's in DJT's negotiating style to praise the other party in a negotiation, he appears to believe it nets him better terms and he may be correct. Perhaps he views Carney's praise of Xi in that highly transactional (i.e., insincere) light.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of Real Clear Politics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Self Defense

We all know CBS News historically leaned left, favored Democrats. Since Bari Weiss took it over, there has been some shift towards the center. For example, CBS posted the following on X today, according to Revolver.

BREAKING: The ICE agent who fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, Jonathan Ross, suffered internal bleeding to the torso following the incident, according to two U.S. officials briefed on his medical condition.

That puts paid to the idea the ICE agent misread the situation. Good's car hit Ross hard. In a confrontational situation he was attacked with a deadly weapon and responded appropriately.

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Did Good get what she had coming, you might ask? Quoting actor Ian Richardson playing the stylish villain Sir Francis Urquhart in the British House of Cards, "You might very well think that, I couldn't possibly comment."

Ignoring Antecedents

Bill Scher writes a long column comparing the world view of Trump insider Stephen Miller to that of the film Starship Troopers. For all I know (or care), he might be correct about Miller. 

Scher goes on to explain how the film is a misunderstood anti-war piece. Ironically, he never mentions it is based on a 1959 science fiction novel of the same name by Robert Heinlein who, when he wrote it, wasn’t being anti-war at all. 

Heinlein was a graduate of the Naval Academy and served for several years, achieving the rank of lieutenant, the equivalent of an army captain. Medically retired, he served the Navy as a civilian employee during World War II. Along with Asimov and Clarke, Heinlein is one of the “big three” of English language science fiction.