Philosopher as King and Teacher

The Washington Free Beacon posts a remembrance of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. It takes the form of a review of his Meditations, this edition newly translated by Aaron Poochigian (2026). 

For a book written nearly two millennia ago, Meditations is still in print in several different translations. Other than the Bible and Koran, there are few books with such staying power.

Marcus Aurelius is remembered as a successful philosopher king. If this review describes his philosophy accurately, it feels somewhat like my own. A coincidence, I admit. 

The review is good, without being heavy or overlong. It tempts me to go read his Meditations, at this very late stage in my long, interesting, and mostly successful life. 

Saturday Snark

In WY we call that a "headwall."

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Retraction

With regard to the claim made in the previous post about Esmail Qaani, it should be disregarded. I cannot find any corroborating source online. The source I cited - Power Line - has posted the following retraction-of-sorts.

UPDATE: Too stunning to be true, apparently. It now looks like this was a false rumor that existed only on Twitter. Sorry.

File under “too good to be true.” Rumors apparently started because Qaani was nearly the only top regime official to survive the initial bombing. 

Given the Mossad’s fearsome reputation and a Persian culture prone to conspiratorial thought, regime members suspected Qaani had prior knowledge of the attack that he obviously did not share. His actual current status is unknown, and subject to rumors.

The GOAT Mole [updated]

Wow! Amazing! It is reported that the top general of Iran's Quds Force* Esmail Qaani was a Mossad spy from the get-go. He was recently reported shot by the regime but is now said to be safe in Israel. 

I have long suspected that there are deep cover Mossad moles living in all of the Middle East countries, practicing Islam, married to locals with wives and children who believe their husband or father to be a devout Muslim. Some may even do the hajj or volunteer at the mosque. 

Israel routinely pulls off stunts like the pager bombs that require knowledge known to only a few insiders. They have to have people inside the deeply ideological circles of power - governments, the Muslim Brotherhood, al Qaeda, ISIS, etc. 

More evidence, if needed, that the Mossad is the world's top intelligence agency.

*Per Wikipedia,

The Quds Force is one of five branches of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It specializes in unconventional warfare and military intelligence operations.

Update: See Retraction above, which applies only to the title and first paragraph of this post. I stand by the balance, which reflects my view of Israeli intelligence.

Why China 🖤 EVs

As the main geopolitical competitor of the United States, China appears in our news with some frequency. We learn China domestically produces and burns a lot of coal. It produces almost no petroleum, but imports and consumes quite a lot. 

Current fighting in Iran compromises China's supply of imported oil, as much oil is shipped through the narrow Strait of Hormuz* which flows alongside Iran's western border. Ships passing through are within easy range of artillery or rocket fire, and the somewhat shallow waters also can be mined.

Separately, you'll also read that China is the world's leading producer of electric vehicles. I ask you to consider these two apparently separate factors are in fact quite related. 

EVs are less practical than ICE vehicles but they do work for short haul transport. For longer trips China has electric rail, also coal-powered. China generates most of its electricity by burning coal. 

If China can power much of its vehicle fleet using domestically mined coal instead of imported oil, they become less dependent on others. Autarky is attractive to China's leaders.

*As our cruise ship passed through en route to Dubai some years ago, I could clearly see both shores - each 6-10 miles away - the eastern shore being Iran. 

Friday Snark

 

Image courtesy of Power Line.com

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

The Need: Cheap Anti-Drone Defense

We are hearing a lot about the Shahed 136, a cheap drone designed by Iran and copied by Russia (and recently the US) that is causing a lot of damage. It is basically a small unmanned plane that carries an explosive charge and makes oneway trips to the target where it crashes, kamikaze style. 

Some models have a significant range, as much as 1200 miles. Cost estimates of the Shahed 136 range from $20k to $50k. By comparison cruise missiles and ballistic missiles start around $1 million each. 

Shahed flies low and slow and should be easy to hit, except the ground-to-air missiles which can hit it cost much more than it does. The idea is to fire many drones at once, so a few will get through to the target and knocking down the rest will cost your enemy millions he may not have.

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I think the ideal weapon to knock down this sort of drone is a modern day version of a World War II fighter with machine guns, whose ammo is truly cheap by comparison. Such a fighter cannot survive in 21st century contested airspace but shooting down drones mostly happens over one's own territory where high tech enemies aren't so prevalent and enemy AA fire non-existent.

Directed by ground-based radar, drones like the Shahed should be easy targets for quick, gun-slinging prop planes or maybe the A-10. These can loiter awaiting the arrival of drones, and pounce on them, no dog-fighting required. 

RAF fighter pilots had some success shooting down V-1 flying bombs in the latter stages of World War II. They were a similar target but faster. The V-1 was the world's first mass-produced jet powered aircraft.

Kurds and Way

A very interesting column in Asia Times concerning the potential role of Kurdish forces based in Iraq on the future of Iran. Recent reports suggest some Kurdish fighters have infiltrated across the shared border with Iran in hopes of supporting their ethnic cousins in Iran against what remains of the regime there.

The column suggest an entire cascade of potential outcomes resulting from a significant Kurdish involvement. It could trigger a major Turkish ground offensive and possible moves by the Saudis and the Pakistanis.

At least one outcome could be the balkanization of Iran into ethnic enclaves, either freestanding or attached to neighbors.

N.B., A web search finds the following about Iran's population.

Iran's ethnic composition includes Persians (approximately 61%), Azerbaijanis (16%), Kurds (10%), Lurs (6%), and smaller groups such as Arabs, Baloch, and Turkmen, each making up about 2% of the population.

Sources cited include the World Atlas and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Please excuse my pun in the title, apologies to little Ms. Muffet.

Thursday Snark

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Doing Fine

You can read that President Trump’s approval ratings aren’t very good. When you read that, you should ask yourself, "Compared to what?"

Here is the actual polling data for the most recent three presidents who had a second term, all done on March 5 of the second year of their second term.

🔴Trump: 43.3%
🔵Obama: 42.5%
🔴Bush: 38.7%

Looks to me like Trump is doing better than either of his two predecessors who had a second term, certainly not worse. 

A Good News Poll

Power Line has posted the tabular findings of a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. Many of them are very positive for the GOP. The print is too small to post them here. 

The poll finds widespread popularity of immigration control and illegal alien deportation. These are things people want from their government and should be good campaign issues for this autumn's midterm election.

Update

There is a webcam near our home in Wyoming that I check while we’re wintering in Nevada, and before that, in CA. It is normal to see the ground covered in snow from November to April.

This has not been a normal year for western WY. We’ve had snow but as much as half the time the ground has been bare, it is so now. Snow falls but no snow pack builds up, and it melts. 

Temperatures have been plenty cold enough but no serious snow. I fear we may have water shortages come late spring to early fall when we’re in residence. 

We’ve had dry summers before, I remember times twenty years ago when we weren’t supposed to water our landscaping, I hope this won’t be another of those.

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Meanwhile spring has come nearly a month early to the Mojave, which is typical. Monday in St. George UT we saw fruit trees in full bloom. The desert has taken on a faint green sheen, which lasts for maybe a month or two. Current weather approximates that in WY in June.

Our Mojave isn't a "cactus" desert, it is bare ground with low chaparral (waist high) and occasional Joshua trees. Both turn a bit green as this is their quite short growing season. By the first of May they'll be hunkered down to survive a ten month drought and withering heat up to 120℉ (49℃). The Mojave is said to be North America's driest desert.

Cactus and palm trees thrive here but they are imports, mesquite is local but not widespread, except where included in landscaping. Native plant life is relatively uninspiring, dreary even, hard to love. 

Cactus - saguaro, barrel, cholla, ocotillo, prickly pear - are native to the Sonoran desert around Tucson, and are imported landscaping hereabouts.

A Country with No Friends

Writing about China’s nonsupport for its supposed ally Iran, in the latter’s hour of need, PJ Media columnist Stephen Green shares this trenchant thought.

China doesn't have allies and it certainly doesn't have friends. China has rivals, trading partners, vassals, and chumps. Tehran might have thought they were Beijing's ally, but learned the hard way that they're just a source of oil.

Russia hasn’t been a lot of help either, tied down in Ukraine struggling unsuccessfully to defeat a country much less than half their size. Losing in combat hundreds of thousands of lives that, with Russia’s low birth rate, they will never replace.

Good News

The Supreme Court just struck a blow for parental authority in the education and treatment of their children. Basically at issue is a California law preventing school personnel from telling parents when their child chooses to transition to the opposite sex at school, w/o the parents’ knowledge or consent.

A Federal District court found the state law violated the parents’ rights under the first and fourteenth amendments to the Constitution and issued an injunction, the often-liberal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed the injunction, and the Supreme Court vacated the stay allowing the injunction to continue in effect as it is its majority opinion that full proceedings will likely find for the plaintiffs.

Bottom line, the Supremes found for the parents, and against the CA law. Parents have a right to be notified and to make most well-intended health decisions for their minor children, however much some others may disagree with their choices.

My opinion: delusions are mental illness, whether the person believes themself to be Napoleon or of a gender that doesn’t agree with their “plumbing.” The trans problem - like any delusion - is between the ears, not between the legs.

Sunday Snark

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt, posting at Instapundit.

Old Fashioned

With regard to the mass shooting in Austin, TX overnight, comes a wickedly efficient piece of snark. In one sentence, it skewers two groups that - in quite different ways - richly deserve ridicule.

Transgenders across the country breathe a sigh of relief as the latest mass shooter turned out to be just a good old fashioned Muslim terrorist.

Community Colleges Growing

 Headline at The College Fix.

Community college enrollment outpaced university enrollment this school year.

Community colleges are the main place young people can go to learn a trade - electrician, welder, carpenter, electronics tech, nurse, etc. Also where one can do the first two years of a baccalaureate degree at much lower cost, as CC students often continue to live at home.

Trades are much prized because they are not easily replaced by AI or automation, cannot be sent overseas, and provide opportunities to become one’s own boss. 

Don’t discount the “first two years of college” aspect either, I did this, then transferred to a state university, and it later proved no hinderance in admission to graduate degree programs (MS, PhD). Nor to employment as a professor.

A Clash of Cultures

We recently wrote about the grooming gangs of Pakistani men raping lower class white Brit girls.Today shows up a review of a 1980 (!) book by Prof. Alison Shaw, a Brit sociologist who studied the imported-from-Pakistan culture of the men who were the perps. 

Shaw shows how the perps explain their criminal behavior to themselves and to their families, where it is considered normal. She quotes a perp thus.

“The difference is, English people don’t care. The girls don’t mind; you tell them you can’t marry them, you’re just passing your time, and they don’t bother. They’re just passing their time too. If their brothers or fathers got angry, we would understand, but they don’t bother. Mostly, they are not even living in the same place. How can you respect men like that? They just say it’s the girl’s choice, it’s her life, and that’s what the girls say too.”

The British police have tended to take the same attitude, it is a class thing for them. Both the Asian men and the police consider the girls involved to be “other” which is to say, not good people like us. As those making bad choices and deserving of what happens to them. 

From the date of Shaw’s book you can tell the Brits have understood the roots of the grooming gangs issue for decades and have chosen to do nothing about it. So much for #MeToo.

Discerning a Plan

Glenn Harlan Reynolds (of Instapundit fame) does it again, this time with his Substack column. Of our current involvement in Iran regime change, he notes.

The foreign policy establishment, like the domestic policy establishment, doesn’t exist to solve problems. It exists to manage those problems in ways that keep its members cushily employed.

Trump, on the other hand, wants to solve things, even if it involves inflicting unacceptable violence on the enemy. Also, he regards our enemies as actual enemies, not as “foreign colleagues” or “partners in peace.”

Trump’s approach across the board, which has brought him success after success in his first 13 months back in office, is to solve problems the way the guys in the bar say they would do it.

Trump’s tactics typically have two characteristics: He goes after his opponents’ source of sustenance (usually that means money, but not always) and he accomplishes more than one thing at a time. In neutralizing Iran, Trump accomplishes a lot of things.

This feels like Reynolds has pretty good insight into Trump's model.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.