Culling the Pool

I just read a headline posted to Instapundit by Sarah Hoyt, reporting perhaps as many as 450,000 Russian dead in the Ukraine war. Put this together with Russian policy limiting those fighting in Ukraine to volunteers, no draftees.

They are encouraging prisoners (and mental patients?) to join the army as a way out of jail, recruiting in minority-heavy regions, and offering enlistment bonuses to unemployed and impoverished men to enlist.

What that equals is both horrifying and fascinating. What Putin is doing in Ukraine is a gigantic social intervention: accelerating the Darwin effect in his society. Regardless of what he calls it, it amounts to culling the Russian gene pool. 

He is arranging the execution (by Ukraine in battle) of those members of Russian society who are misfits, losers, and trouble makers. And he is doing it in the name of Russian patriotism. Is this intentional or inadvertent, planned or a side benefit? History will decide.

Imagining the Future

A nifty quote from Stephen Green posting at Instapundit. File this one away for later “I told you so” moments.

Don’t be surprised ten years from now if Tesla is known as the android company that got its start making cars.

As the population declines I foresee Musk making replacement ‘people’ in his factories. Too strange, you couldn’t sell it to a publisher as speculative fiction. He is inventing and actually manufacturing our future.

The Lame Persecution of War

Power Line has a different “take” on the dissatisfaction that led to a big GOP loss in the election just concluded. Analyzing some fine grained poll data, they conclude that people weren’t unhappy with the Iran war - as VP Vance alleged - but rather with the protracted, tentative, and inconclusive way it was conducted after initial bombing success.

When the Fox News Voter Poll asked if going to war with Iran was the right or wrong decision, roughly 6 in 10 voters said it was the wrong decision. But the Harvard CAPS/Harris polls asked follow-up questions that suggest voters don’t want to abandon the war—they want to finish it the right way. Asked if the Iranians were negotiating in good faith, 65% of respondents said no. Should the Iranians be allowed to control the Strait of Hormuz? Sixty-seven percent said no, including a majority of both parties.

The poll also asked if Iran should be permitted to obtain a nuclear weapon, and 85% said no. People agree with the objectives of the conflict, and those objectives may not be achievable without conflict. Asked whether the U.S. is justified in using force if the Iranians refuse to yield on these key issues, 63% said yes. The war has dragged on when voters wanted it to be won—and they still do…. 

All of which makes me wonder if fear of being called a “war criminal” has kept the US from destroying the civilian infrastructure of Iran. Doing so could have caused the regime there to fall. It’s a squeamishness Putin has notably failed to exhibit in Ukraine.

Later … Gatestone Institute has an article which lays out in tiresome detail all the ways the US, fronted by VP Vance, gave back to Iran many of the gains our bombing and blockade had achieved. 

Kids A Luxury Good

I just read a very interesting article in Foreign Affairs, link courtesy of RealClearWorld. “The Luxury of Children” is about the world’s birth rate dropping below “replacement level,” normally said to be 2.1 children per adult woman.

The “news” in the article is that poor women’s fertility is dropping like that of more affluent women. In fact the only subgroups having more than 2.1 children per adult woman are affluent. 

This is ascribed to children changing from being an economic asset in agrarian societies to being a luxury “good” in urban societies and most of humanity no longer being agrarian but not yet affluent enough to easily fit the costs of child raising into their budgets.

Unmentioned is the factor of effective birth control becoming affordable even to poor women, something that was not always true. Being able to separate sexual drive and reproduction is what has brought us to the present state of affairs, pun intended.

A Pro Tip

It just occurred to me to share with you something I learned on the US island of Guam, when the DrsC spent a year there as visiting faculty. The Guam climate is tropical, humidity ranges from a low in the 70% range during the 'dry' season to a high near 100% in the truly wet season.

This is a pro tip one of the longtime haole residents shared with us, to prevent mold growing in the shower. Leave the light on until the walls and floor are dry. On Guam that sometimes meant you didn't turn it off for weeks. The theory is that mold only grows in the dark.

We followed the advice and it worked. So when we got back to the US mainland we kept doing it and we never get mold in the shower. Here, we live in two low humidity regions - WY and NV - so it usually means leave the light on till we go to bed.

BTW, Guam is a great base from which to see Asia. The flights are much shorter and cheaper. We traveled to Japan, China, Taiwan, Australia, and New Zealand on school holidays. 

Texas Californicated?

Texans are an interesting bunch, as the DrsC learned spending a post-retirement year living and teaching not far from Dallas. Friendly, outgoing, mostly Republican, and very church-oriented. Many of the natives might be comfortable with the hyphenated label "Texan-Americans."

In Texas you can drive all day east or west at interstate speeds and still be in the same state when the sun goes down. During the five decades we RVed all over North America, we actually had that unique experience more than once.

Mulling the surprising TX turn toward Democrats in the recent election, I've wondered if the switch to voting Democrat had anything to do with the tsunami of internal immigration Texas has recently received. I can imagine Texans feeling like they are strangers in their own state, and blaming the long-ruling GOP for not defending their culture.

I'm not claiming the above is a complete explanation, I think it might be a contributing factor.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt's

Pass the Memes and Buy More Ammo.

The DeSantis Boomlet

Following the recent election disaster, many Republicans are again talking up Gov. Ron DeSantis as our presidential candidate for 2028. Hands down, he is our most effective Republican governor. 

Unfortunately DeSantis isn't a dynamic speaker or campaigner. Both skills seem to be a prerequisite in most presidential election cycles (except 2020).

Until he demonstrates otherwise, my view of DeSantis is this: a great administrator, a poor salesman. Rubio, on the other hand, seems to do both well. For reasons I can't quite define, Vance leaves me uncomfortable.

Friday Meme Fest

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

The Lesser Evil

In Tuesday's runoff Los Angeles voters had only bad choices for mayor. It appears that Nithya Raman has defeated incumbent Mayor Karen Bass and will be the next mayor. 

The voters have spoken, and I halfway agree with them. In various ways Karen Bass has done such a bad job as LA's mayor that she deserves to lose her reelection bid, deserves to be punished. 

I don't believe Nithya will do a better job than Karen. Four years from now it is a near certainty that Nithya will deserve the same fate, the same ouster from office.

Still, Raman could surprise us and do a good job. For LA's sake, I hope she succeeds. The City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels could use a steady hand at the helm.

Doing the Difficult Things

At the New York Post Joel Pollak argues the electorate just punished President Trump for doing exactly what he promised to do. The argument is too long to reprint here, but I didn't find much to argue with in Pollak's list of accomplishments. He concludes thus:

Trump was elected to do difficult things. And while Republicans are paying the political price, Trump is correct to believe that history will remember his choices as the right ones.

I'd like to believe Pollak is correct, even if I can't quite get there yet. My disagreements with Trump have been largely stylistic. 

I find bombast, B.S., and hyperbole tiresome and unhelpful. His actions, as opposed to his comments, have mostly been what I expected and hoped for.

Adieu, Salon

I write to report the death of the publication Salon, which its staff just announced. Though irredeemably left-wing, it often had material I found worthy of comment, not always with derision.

My initial impulse was to celebrate Salon's death, but I quickly thought better of it. A quick web search found some 18 times COTTonLINE has referenced Salon in one context or another.

The left seeks to shut down conservative comment and opinion. On the right we put down leftish opinion without wanting it shut down. I celebrate that difference, and free speech generally.

MAGA

Image courtesy of today's Lucianne.com.

Blame the Iran War? Maybe So

Hashing over the GOP loss yesterday, many are focusing on the Iran war. VP Vance has made a point of it. I have my own beef about how that conflict was conducted by our side, though it didn't cause me to vote for the crazy Ds.

My personal beef with how Trump carried out that conflict had to do with him talking fierce and not carrying out his threats. Time after time he threatened civilization-ending hellfire, and delivered much less than that. 

After a couple of cycles of brave talk followed by not much "walk," I think it likely that the mullahs decided he was mostly bluster and began to ignore him. He was sounding just like them, talking big and delivering small, or often not at all. 

After yesterday's vote, universally seen as a slap down for Trump and MAGA, I hope he doesn't give up and end the blockade. It isn't hellfire and brimstone, but it will grind down Iran's economy in ways that don't create sympathetic enemies opposed to us.

VDH Brings Perspective

History isn't popular these days, isn't much taught in our schools. But history has many wise lessons for us, especially in understanding complex social phenomena like politics. 

Victor Davis Hanson is both a serious historian and a prolific observer of the current scene. Today he reflects on the yesterday's GOP wipeout election for the Daily Signal.

In the last 126 years since 1900, when the party in the White House faces a midterm—whether its first or second—90% of the time it loses House seats. Ninety percent.

And 75% to 80% of those administrations lose Senate seats, depending on how you count some independents. So, the odds were 90% against this administration avoiding House losses.

Consequently, he observes prior presidents to whom this kind of midterm shellacking was given.

Presidents [Barack] Obama and [Bill] Clinton had worse midterm losses in 2010 and 1994 than anyone except FDR in 1938. They came in with huge House and Senate majorities and held the White House. By the time of their last midterm, with two years left in their second terms, they had lost both the House and Senate, and dramatically so. And nothing happened.

But Clinton and Obama left office with 70% and 59% popularity, respectively. They were more popular than they’d ever been.

His point is that what happened yesterday is neither very unusual nor necessarily catastrophic. It is close to the norm; sackcloth and ashes are not called for. Certainly we'd rather have won, but that would have been the unusual event, yesterday's outcome is very nearly routine, albeit unpleasant.

In Support of the Filibuster Rule

It now looks like Senate Majority Leader Thune was right about hanging onto the rule that most bills need 60 senators’ favorable votes to pass the Senate. I understand why that filibuster rule frustrated lame-duck President Trump, but he was wrong in urging its removal.

We next get to see if Democrat senators are as smart as Republicans were. Will they similarly refuse to dump that rule, now that they have the votes to do so?

What long-time senators know: it is more important to forestall your opponent’s crazier plans than it is to pass every bill your own side likes. The rule exists to keep the ship of state in mid-channel, not veering overmuch toward either side. If it often impedes progress - slows change - it follows the physicians’ pledge: To do no harm.

The Midterm Sucked

Team GOP had a pi55-poor night, politically. I've experienced way more of these disappointing nights than I'd like in a long and mostly well-spent life. 

A priori, I expected to point to Trump throwing Sen. Cornyn under the bus in Texas, as an example of doing what feels good but was tactically stupid. Now I'll add supporting Lindsey Graham's sis as another such move, and forcing out Sen. Tillis as a third. 

Even if those three "own goals" had been avoided, it wouldn't have been enough. And while I'm sure the entertainer side of President Trump enjoyed the adulation of the crowds at his many rallies, that appears to have been the rallies' only upside.

Now we will have a jihadist senator from MI and a weirdo beta male senator from supposedly solid GOP TX. I hope the poor old ship of state is up to surviving the stormy seas that lie ahead, with the mutinous 'crew' in charge and the 'captain' barricaded in his White House cabin, firing vetos through the mail slot.

With hindsight as my guide, I will now make a prediction. The next couple of years won't be a lot of fun politically, not for either party nor for us who follow politics as a spectator sport.

Old Wisdom, Remembered

My father, who wasn't young when I was born, died in the early 1970s. He was a lifelong Southern Democrat who, I like to think had he lived, would have become a Republican when the South converted, en masse.

While I was growing up I spent the Eisenhower and Nixon years hearing him complain about how the darned Republicans were more likely to turn out to vote than would his Democrats. As I write this there are some tentative signs Republicans are turning out to vote in unexpectedly large numbers for the election that concludes today. 

Which has me thinking "Dad, I hope you are right, again this time." 

State-Fed Cooperation at Work

The effort to clear illegal immigrant truck drivers off the roads has taken an excellent new step. Officials in many Republican-led states are cooperating with ICE to apprehend (and deport) these dangerous guys. American Greatness has the story.

Officials in both Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas are among those participating. If my geography is correct, that means there is a solid wall of such states across the entire middle of the nation, making cross-country routes that avoid the crackdown impossible. 

Safe north-south routes may still exist although much of the South is also on-board with the effort. Readers who live in GOP-led states not yet a part of the effort should press their governors to join up.

Last Minute Advice

Image courtesy of News Ammo.