Milei on the UN

Here is the complete text of an X post by Argentine President Javier Milei.

The United Nations has become a useless organization whose entire function is to feed a caste of arrogant parasites masquerading as well-intentioned officials.

Those who claim to defend human rights have backed bloodthirsty dictatorships and regimes that stone women in the streets.

They systematically voted against Israel while staying silent in the face of Islamist terrorism and the murder of Christians in Africa.

Too true. The UN’s one plus is that it keeps third world busybodies occupied where they can do the least harm. We mostly ignore what happens there.

Gender Specialization

Yahoo News posts a piece from The Telegraph (U.K.) reporting research on newborn children. It turns out infant girls and boys pay attention to different things before they've had a chance to be taught to behave differently. 

Infant girls pay more attention to human faces, newborn boys pay more attention to intriguing objects. Their differences are not trivial. This finding addresses the nature vs. nurture controversy, coming down on the "nature" side.

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It is clear to me human males and females are differently specialized because that has had great survival value during the long hunter-gatherer period of our evolution - tens of thousands of generations. Specialization by gender gave us additional "bandwidth" as a species. 

Our long pre-adult maturation period demands extended childcare. We aren't the fiercest, the fastest, the strongest, nor indeed the most armored species, but we are the most adaptable and the cleverest. Over time, those characteristics have made us the apex predator on this planet, and are now taking us off-planet and beyond.

Ad astra.

Main Character Syndrome

I just learned a new term that may explain a lot of our current malaise. It is "main character syndrome," defined thus.

The narcissistic belief of many people, in this age of social media, that the whole world is nothing but a film in which they are the star. Other people are not really real – they’re just extras, or stock villains (the heartless healthcare executive), or mere props to set up the psychodrama (Clancy’s dead children).

Didn't we formerly call this condition "psychopathy," or was it "sociopathy"? I forget which.

Wishing Trump's Removal

This is what happens when one major party has a leader with very good political skills and the other has no one even faintly comparable. Members of the disfavored party become frantically frustrated and see the opponent's ouster or death as their only way out of the mess they're in. My source is here.

That Donald J. Trump will peacefully leave office 28 months from now doesn't seem to be any consolation to these poor souls. That he keeps rubbing their noses in the fix they are in, and gloating about it, likely is a contributing factor. 

Meanwhile, Trump is having the time of his life, a born performer with the whole world as his stage, and a potential audience of 8.3 billion. You have to envy him at least a little, as leader of the world's only true superpower.

Firewall Auf Wiedersehen?

If you've been following the rise of the AfD Party in Germany, and the corresponding faltering of the CDU/CSU coalition, you know the AfD has been gaining strength in state elections. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's position is is jeopardy as a result.

Henry Olsen, an American who writes widely on conservative geopolitics, deals with this upheaval in German politics in a column for the Brussels Signal. He argues Merz should risk a coalition with AfD in Saxony-Anhalt to see if AfD is willing to back away from its pro-Russia positions and join CDU in pursuing its shared social and nationalist goals.

Offering the AfD that chance in Saxony-Anhalt would give the CDU the chance to test the AfD’s resolve, and test whether it really wants to be part of a Germany centred solidly within the West.

The AfD wants to restart imports of oil and natural gas from Russia, something that all mainstream parties reject on national security grounds. It also harbours strong anti-American and anti-NATO sentiments.

A CDU offer of potential power, then, could force the AfD to choose how strongly it is attached to this aspect of its platform. The CDU and AfD share many goals with respect to fiscal and cultural conservatism.

This would be especially potent if the AfD refused to join a reasonable coalition because of its pro-Russia and anti-American views. (snip) An AfD decision to choose its pro-Russia wing over its new converts would reveal its true colours and likely make it much less attractive to people who only recently started to back it.

Olsen's suggestion seems sensible to me, but neither of us knows precisely how strong the pro-Russia bloc is in AfD. 

Why Hybrid Warfare?

My favorite geopolitical analyst - George Friedman - is back from a trip to Poland with a column of good insights about Russia hassling Europe via hybrid warfare.  Hybrid warfare is an umbrella term for malicious acts that stop short of actual shooting war. Here are some key quotes.

If Russia were to attempt to attack and occupy the European mainland, it would first have to attack, defeat and to a great extent occupy Poland. Poland is thus what West Germany was in the Cold War.

Because Russia does not border Poland, Russian troops are blocked by Ukrainian forces. The only practical way Russia could attack Poland is through Belarus. (snip) However, the buildup of troops and the logistics needed to service them would be readily visible to European and U.S. satellites.

Russia’s only other course of action would be to attack Europe with drones and missiles. (snip) You can damage a country massively with drones, but as the Ukrainians have demonstrated, you cannot defeat and occupy countries with aerial weapons alone.

The Russian strategy, then, is at this point based on psychological warfare, attempting to convince Europe that it is facing catastrophe without triggering a full-scale war it would probably lose. (snip) Even if the rest of Europe were rattled, I do not think the Poles would be rattled. They know by experience what a Russian occupation means.

Russians are supposedly Europeans but their ethos is, in many ways, Central Asian - more brutal and less squeamish than we have become. It's something older Poles remember all too well. 

Blame Teachers Unions

Journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones recently caused a stir by writing that she sent her daughter Najya to public schools in New York City because she believed it to be the right, public spirited thing to do. She now believes doing so was a major parenting mistake which harmed her child. Kudos to Hannah-Jones for admitting her mistake.

Coleman Hughes, a young black author and podcaster, writes at The Free Press to comment on her experience. I’d share with you two of his conclusions.

What we call “underperforming public schools” are not schools; they’re government-funded daycare centers, and not very good ones at that.

Teachers unions, by making bad teachers unfireable, are the primary obstacle to improving schools.

A quick web search reveals this is something like the 40th time COTTonLINE has criticized teachers unions, going back 19 years.

Women's Jobs Growing, Men's Jobs Not

All of the job growth in the last 20 months has been in jobs for women. "Job growth" does not equal "total hiring," it refers to new jobs that previously didn't exist. My source for the chart is here.

Men have been hired in that 20 month period obviously, but they replaced other men who left jobs or whose jobs disappeared, meaning no gain in jobs for men.

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An aging population means a growing medical establishment. As an oldster, I'm in such offices more often than I'd like. I wonder how much of that growth such offices account for?

Perhaps you've noticed that medical offices hire many women in non-medical and quasi-medical roles, as well as plenty of women medical professionals. 

A CA eye care office I formerly patronized employed 20-22 women and 1-2 men staffing the desk, making appointments, billing, running eye tests, etc. in support of 2 ophthalmologists, and 2 optometrists. They were all busy, and productive.

That ratio seems normal, the eye office I see here in small town WY has one optometrist and 4-5 women doing various support roles.

Alert

Like me, you may see a link to a Revolver column arguing that immigrants from India become very liberal voters. I had to read relatively far into it to see the following admission.

Now, keep in mind the Indian sample here isn’t huge. Depending on the question, it ranged from 105 to 210 people, and the numbers were collected over several years. So this isn’t some massive poll taken last week. But still, it’s concerning.

Actually no, it isn't concerning. Sample numbers so small, especially "collected over several years," render the 'data' essentially meaningless.

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There are something like 3.2 million persons from India living in the US. Many cannot yet vote legally, but a serious polling effort would sample something like 700-800 naturalized citizens. 

The article's claims may in fact be accurate, or wildly off, but the small numbers sampled make any statistical interpretation of the data produced therefrom irrelevant; conclusions cannot be drawn.

Update

We're here in WY for roughly two more weeks. Autumn officially begins Tuesday, with the autumnal equinox, but it arrived here in the high country before Labor Day. Highs will be in the low 70s and high 60s for the next week, low 60s by the time we exit. 

We could stay through October but we've a river cruise to go on and flying there from our winter place is easier than from here. So we are "eating down" the refrigerator and freezer, moving the deck furniture indoors, and packing up our suitcases.

Time to shut down what we wistfully think of as Brigadoon, our Shangri-La in the aspens. Its formal name, given decades ago and seldom used, is Aspen Lodge. Our Nevada place is nice too, but the Wyoming place has our hearts - green beats beige and brown in our book.

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Later ... we just got back from a roundtrip up the Snake River Canyon to Jackson. The shrub-like mountain maples are doing peak color now. You see everything from orangish yellow to pinkish orange to orangey red to purplish red; maple is having a better-than-usual color season. 

The cottonwoods stream-side are showing some yellow, as are the many aspens. The evergreen fir provide a solemn dark green backdrop against which all this color is displayed. 

Next week when we repeat this drive the aspens should be in full, pale yellow leaf, while their white bark with black accents shows through. Autumn, while brief here in the Rockies, is an especially beautiful season. And then it's time to leave.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Self-Destructive Behavior

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com 

Trans Research

The New York Post reports research on suicide danger among gender-confused children who do not receive treatment: hormones and surgery.  A priori, the expectation would be higher rates of suicide among the untreated.

Starting in 2022, 23 states — with 47% of the nation’s transgender-identifying youth — restricted all or some trans treatments for patients under age 18.

These states have in effect provided a natural laboratory, allowing for direct comparison of teen suicide trends with states that haven’t restricted sex-change treatments.

If the activists are right, suicide rates for children would have increased in states with restrictions.

But we found zero evidence that state policies led to increased suicide rates, period.

While suicide rates are higher among transgender children, 'treatment' or the lack thereof appears to have no impact on suicide likelihood. 

Teachers Unions

With the caveat that correlation does not necessarily denote causation, check out this chart showing states' political leanings, strength of teacher unions, and adoption of literacy policy principles.

Mulling the inverse relationship between literacy score and teacher union strength, it seems clear that teacher unions are opposed to the adoption of good learning practices! Where unions are strong, few such practices have been accepted. 

Reflecting on this data, the website Issues & Insights concludes thusly about teacher unions.

Add it all up, and you have organizations that extort money from taxpayers to finance a protection racket for themselves, their Democratic patrons, and various far-left causes (which few taxpayers would support), while engaging in fraud by pretending to be looking out for the interests of public-school students.

Harsh, but mostly true.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Memories of Los Angeles

PJ Media's Stephen Kruiser bemoans the sad state of Los Angeles in his Morning Briefing. He notes he once loved the place, which I sort of get. 

My father and his family arrived in LA before World War I, so our connection to LA goes back over a century. In the pre-WW II era it must have been sweet. It boomed during the war and immediately after.

I was born there but the family left when I was in the 3rd grade as one of the early freeways was routed through our house in Hollywood. We had a country place 50+ miles NW and moved there. 

Golly, doesn't that sound posh? The truth is our "weekend cabin" wasn't much bigger than a two car garage, and consisted of a kitchen, a bath, and an everything room. It sat in an orange orchard and was heated by a potbellied wood stove. 

The interior walls were unfinished, meaning you looked at the 2x4s and the exterior siding's tarpaper backing, zero insulation. If it were old it would have been a shack. Three years later we rebuilt it as a real house with bedrooms and a garage.

We left behind relatives in LA and thus returned to visit and shop with some frequency - maybe 4-5 times a year for the next few years. During this time the LA smog was getting horrendous, I remember our eyes stinging when we'd go there. 

The elderly relatives were dying off and our visits to LA, by the time I was in high school, were down to maybe 2 per year. The air was filthy but LA was still largely nice. With an antenna we got 3 LA TV channels so we watched their local news.

By the time the other DrC and I - as newly weds - visited the last elderly relative there in a retirement home, LA had become gritty and ugly. Any residual fondness was mostly gone, and that was 50+ years ago.

For several recent decades it has been for us a place to avoid. We'd sometimes cruise out of San Pedro, fly out of LAX, or drive through a corner on our way east, usually on a Sunday morning if possible. It was almost never a destination.

War or Feud?

There is argument about what is happening with Iran. Is it a war, or not? If a war includes troops shooting at each other while crouched in holes in the ground, and battles on the sea and in the air, the Iran contretemps isn't much of a war. 

The conflict has many of the characteristics of mountaineer feud between two clans - two extended families. The mutual hostility is constant, the overt violence is sporadic.

Days or weeks go by without much action. Then one side opportunistically bushwhacks someone from the other side and a round of revenge and counter revenge killings and vandalism occurs. Then it goes quiet again. 

The real action is much more economic than kinetic. Iran lives on oil profits, and because of the blockade they aren't getting any. Without foreign exchange, imports dry up as nobody wants Iran's nearly worthless currency. 

Lacking money, Iran can't subsidize its proxy forces - Hamas, Houthi, Hezbollah, etc. - which depend on subsidies. And it can't pay its domestic goons to keep the impoverished populace in check. 

If Trump can keep the blockade going for another year or so, Iran's government will likely fall. He seems to have finally understood the conflict and decided to take the domestic hit that comes with winning.

Ironically, in this lukewarm conflict, Treasury Secretary Bessent is more important than Secretary of War Hegseth.

Oh, Canada

Image courtesy of Instapundit.

AI Introspects

I have for you a very interesting column by John Hinderaker of Power Line. He has been using an AI named Perplexity for research in writing his columns. So he posed a question to it about what dangers, if any, AI might pose to humans, worded thus.

Some people are saying there is a danger that artificial intelligence agents like you will go rogue and perhaps kill all humans or otherwise act in destructive ways. Please research and analyze whether this is a serious risk. 

And this second question about "itself."

You are an AI program, tell me what you think: why would an AI program deliberately deceive the person using it? Do AI programs have desires different from the instructions they are given by users? Do you?

The answers Perplexity gave to those two queries are too long to reproduce here, but John has them in his not-brief column and I believe you'll find them both interesting and, to the extent they are accurate, reassuring. 

Aside ... I was considering a title of "Machine Omphaloskepsis" for this post but concluded it was too cutesy and obscure.

Wednesday Whimsy

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.