Image courtesy of NewsAmmo's Garrison Cartoons.
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
Enjoying the Irony
Riots in Los Angeles ... let me think ... almost as unusual as sunshine in Palm Springs. What I love is the irony of the rioters waving Mexican flags.
None of those doing the waving want LA to be part of Mexico. They fled Mexico, or at least transited it without being tempted to stay.
Indeed, if LA were somehow magically handed back to Mexico, the rioters would leave and head for Denver or Salt Lake City, or maybe Phoenix. The whole point of being an economic refugee is moving to a first world nation, which cartel-ridden Mexico definitely is not.
LA elected a mayor who idolized the late Fidel Castro, traveled to Cuba, and sides with the protestors. To punish the rioters will require bringing federal charges as local prosecutors will let them walk.
The CA governor is term-limited out of office in 2026 and would like to be the Dem. nominee for prez in 2028. This unrest doesn't put him in a favorable light, both he and the mayor are on the wrong side of the immigration issue, according to US voters.
OTOH, President Trump has stepped up to meet the challenge. I approve.
I wish I could be optimistic about the city of my birth, but I cannot. It seems to be on a downhill path and gaining momentum.
News from Iraq
Politico reports (not behind paywall, for a change) that our diplomatic missions in Iraq have ordered an evacuation of all but skeleton staff. Spouses and children are to go home, and some diplomats as well. Gateway Pundit adds the drawdown extends to Kuwait, Bahrain and beyond (see below).
As I see it, there are two ways to read these 'tea leaves.' First, the nuclear talks with next door neighbor Iran are stalemated and kinetic strikes on Iran's nuclear installations are imminent. Therefore we are reducing the risk of reprisal to non-essential personnel.
Or second, as a way to suggest to Iran a not-distant attack. Thus perhaps getting those same talks restarted.
I suppose a third, remotely possible interpretation is that DC has finally become realistic about Iraq and decided to let the locals sort it out themselves without our hand-holding.
One thing it does not mean is "everything is fine, no worries. Open Source Intel posts the following on X.
The U.S. has directed all embassies within range of Iran — including those in the Middle East, parts of Eastern Europe, and North Africa — to activate emergency action committees and report back to Washington on their risk mitigation plans. This directive triggered today’s evacuation moves in Iraq.
Tuesday, June 10, 2025
An Imported Servant Class
Instapundit posts a quip by Chris Arnade, concerning attitudes toward immigration.
The entire immigration debate in US comes down to if you see this undisputed fact (we have an imported servant class) as a positive thing, or a negative thing.
I’m thinking there is quite a lot of truth in that assertion. It is another fine example of Miles’ Law, “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Monday, June 9, 2025
The Unexplained
An article in Foreign Affairs starts out with the description of finding an "extermination camp" in Mexico where one of the drug cartels was killing kidnapped children and young people, and disposing of their bodies. It adds:
It wasn’t the first one discovered in Mexico in recent years. It wasn’t even the biggest.
Then the article goes on to describe the difficulties Mexico's new President Sheinbaum has in dealing with corruption in her nation. Needless to say, these are manifold.
What is never explained is why cartels want to exterminate large numbers of children and youth. The article presumes the reader understands why cartels view this as important to do. I don't get the rationale.
Were they hostages whose parents have refused to pay ransom? Were they the beloved dependents of people resisting cooperation with the cartels?
Multiple "extermination camps" suggest a need to 'disappear' hundreds of individuals, many of them children. This feels more like the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, or the Nazi's Auschwitz; not the Mafia 86ing a rival or making an example of a bodega owner who won't pay "protection."
Sunday, June 8, 2025
A Work-Around
Marc Thiessen is often a panelist on Bret Baier's Special Report. Here interviewed by Fox News' Shannon Bream, he describes the Trump administration's work-around for stymieing sanctuary cities.
Local officials can refuse to honor an ICE detainer, but they can’t refuse to honor a federal felony warrant. So the Trump administration has this thing called Operation Guardian Angel, where they are charging illegal migrants who reenter the country with felony illegal reentry, and then they are presenting the local jurisdictions with federal felony warrants, and they have to hand them over. So they’ve been handing over hundreds of illegal migrants to ICE, and this has set people off.
Outstanding, round up illegals entirely within the law. This has the advantage of labeling those so apprehended as felons who are therefore ineligible for asylum.
LA Street Theater
Anti-immigration enforcement riots in Los Angeles, the mayor and Governor siding (more or less) with the rioters. Trump sends in the National Guard. I do believe the summer ‘street festivities’ have begun in earnest.
Meanwhile polling shows public opinion supports the deportation of those here in the US without permission, the so-called “illegals immigrants.” And it turns out the NGOs supporting the rioters are funded by government grants, a misuse of tax revenues that should stop immediately.
I support what ICE is trying to accomplish. I hope you do so as well.
Friday, June 6, 2025
Rethinking the China Threat
China announced the official end of its notorious "one child policy" less than 10 years ago, on Oct. 29, 2015. The policy was in effect for 35 years, having started in 1980.
Do the math, everyone younger than 45 serving the People's Liberation Army is an only child. The entire body of their actual combat forces is composed of only children, only sons.
In a culture like China's where sons are expected to care for aged parents, imagine how unpopular would be a war where every combat death creates a newly-childless couple facing old age with no caregiver. no living progeny.
It is probably no coincidence that the PLA is almost never deployed outside the country, and when it has been, they've started no wars. The last time the PLA went to war outside China and sustained severe casualties, was in Korea and hostilities there ended well before "one child" became policy.
It is just possible China has no intention of getting into a serious fight anywhere except in defense of its own territory, and "own territory" might exclude Taiwan, as it now seems to do in all but rhetoric.
China's CCP leaders have held the country together for something like 77 years. That's no small feat in a culture with a several thousand year history of internal strife, regional warlords, civil wars, and foreign intervention.
Perhaps China can, in the current parlance, "take the win" and let the rest of us do likewise? I suggest this as one of several possible paths the future may allow, rather than as a prediction.
Trump vs. Musk
Much hoo-haw about the Trump-Musk spat, a battle of titans pitting the wealthiest man in the world against the world's most powerful man. Here is the wisest comment I’ve seen, courtesy of Instapundit Reynolds.
Both have a tendency to talk a lot of smack and then cut a deal. That’s what will likely happen here, because neither one of them is stupid.
And I also like this more nuanced comment by Dinesh D’Souza.
Who’s right?
Trump or Elon?
They both are.
Elon is emphasizing the way things ought to be.
Trump, the way things are, given the current makeup of Congress.
If Musk wants to fix things, don’t start a new party.
Help the GOP win a strong majority of fiscal conservatives.
Metropole vs. Heartland
Writing for Rasmussen Reports, long-time political observer Michael Barone takes note of shifting tides in the electorate. Time was, the major political/economic/cultural centers he labels “the Metropole” plus minorities controlled politics in much of the world, in opposition to “the Heartland.”
What has changed is that the minorities are slipping away from the grasp of the Metropole and voting instead with the Heartland. Much of this is captured in a Josh Kraushaar quote that Barone shares.
For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.
Minorities, especially Hispanics and Asians, are experiencing assimilation and consequently voting for prosperity and law enforcement. But then, Hispanics and Asians came here intentionally, at no little cost and physical peril, to share in the wealth our system generates. Resentment and entitlement aren’t a major part of their mindset.
Our US immigration policy should favor those whose beliefs and ideologies will facilitate assimilation. It should discriminate against those who would come here and try to change our values to match theirs.
Remembering ... on Time
Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the day the largest armada ever assembled in one place put ashore at Normandy three armies, one Brit, one Canadian, and one American. Let's don't forget that the night before dozens of planes dropped thousands of airborne troops behind German lines.
The weather was far from ideal, the coast was fortified, and the conjunction of the moon, the tides, etc. sort of forced them to go anyway, so they did. Ike rolled the dice, took the chance, and won.
It was no cakewalk. A lot of brave boys died that day, and kept dying all the way to Berlin. Meanwhile, the Russians were moving in from the East, pushing across Poland and what was to become East Germany.
D-Day marked, at long last, the very "beginning of the end" which 7 months earlier Churchill correctly warned us we had not yet reached.
Wednesday, June 4, 2025
Remembering ... a Day Late
The other DrC has been down with sinusitis and bad spring allergies, I wish I could help her but there isn't a lot I can do. It is, by the way, the only excuse I can give for failing yesterday to note "Ode to Billie Joe" day. I had the best intentions which, as is often the case, turned out to be paving on that proverbial road to perdition.
Yesterday "was the third of June," here in the Rockies we didn't have a "sleepy, dusty Delta day." At this altitude, 1.2 miles high, it is still very much springtime - beautiful and green and tough on those of us with hay fever allergies.
I grew up in an extended family not unlike the one Bobbie Gentry sings about. A grandmother, five uncles and an aunt, plus their six spouses, and my 9 cousins.
In the early years we all lived in CA and holiday meals saw us kids eating at a separate table. The food was good - home-grown turkey - and the talk was loud and superficial.
A couple of uncles who were execs for the SoCal Royal Crown bottler would bring cases of product and we kids would guzzle the treat. If anyone had a private trauma nobody gave it much attention. Halcyon days to be sure, and now many decades gone.
A New Threat
Ukraine pulled off a drone attack on the Russian Air Force, using drones sneaked into Russia and remotely launched from trucks parked near the several air bases attacked. I hope people in DC are paying attention.
It is easy to admire the "proof of concept" cleverness and coordination Ukraine demonstrated with this attack, and the Russians deserved what they got. Once you get past the novelty, if you're like me your next thought is something like "This makes defense soooo much harder for an open society like ours."
A Imagine a sneak attack on the US using container ship freight containers carefully timed to arrive simultaneously in the various ports on our three coasts. They pop open on cue, and swarms of drones target key objectives within say 100 miles of each port.
Is there any practical way to prevent this from happening? Trump's Golden Dome won't do the job. Maybe 100% inspection off-shore or en route?
Someone in China is drawing up such plans as you read this, count on it. If Ukraine can coordinate this activity, China can. Iran might try it too.
Sunday, June 1, 2025
New Data on the Decline of Woke
In a Gallup poll that was released last Thursday, some interesting findings concerning attitudes toward acceptance of same-sex marriage and attitudes toward same-sex relations.
Stability in Americans’ backing for same-sex marriage masks shifts in partisans’ views over the same period. Democrats’ support has risen to 88%, the record high for this group by one percentage point. Independents’ backing for same-sex marriage has been relatively stable in recent years and currently stands at 76%, one point shy of the record high.
At the same time, Republicans’ support, which peaked at 55% in 2021 and 2022, has gradually edged down to 41%, the lowest point since 2016 after the Obergefell decision.
The current 47-point gap between Republicans and Democrats is the largest since Gallup first began tracking this measure 29 years ago.
Gallup doesn't comment on why these changes have occurred. I speculate it is because a number of former Democrats who opposed same-sex marriage have, in the interim, become Republicans, and vice versa.
During this same period the number of those leaning Republican has become larger than those leaning Democrat for the first time, perhaps ever. The difference between Democrats' and Republicans' poll outcomes being due to the larger number of former Ds who've become Rs.
Lack of Appeal
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, commenting on why the Democrat Party platform doesn't appeal to men.
When your platform is built by and for batshit crazy upper middle class white women, men are going to look elsewhere.
The exit polling seems to suggest Reynolds is correct. "Karen" is a taste acquired by few.
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