Don’t Cry … Cryo

A very professionally done video purporting to offer a solution to all those experiencing agonizing angst from the recent election. It’s humor on YouTube, hat tip to Steve Hayward at Power Line for the link.

Why Mess With Success?

The pseudonymous Bonchie who writes at Red State, authors a satiric X (formerly Tweet).

The risks of picking Peter Hegseth to head the Pentagon are too great.

I mean, we could end up with spy balloons flying over the country, disastrous pull-outs from warzones, Russia invading Europe, Iran expanding, and a recruitment crisis.

Best go with another DoD insider.

Not to mention the military paying for troops to transition sexually, and a Navy which slowly builds badly designed ships that break down immediately. There is a lot wrong with the Pentagon. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

How Voter Subgroups Changed

Chart courtesy of Steve Hayward at Power Line. It appears Harris’ appeal was (irony alert) “highly selective.” Translation: she turned off nearly everyone to some degree, and some to a great degree. 

My apology for a small part of the chart falling outside the frame, it needed this much enlargement for you to be able to read the categories.

Travel Blogging XIII

Noumea, New Caledonia: We are moored in this port city, the capital of this French colony. The last time we were here was in October of 2017. We hear there is unrest as some locals want independence from France. 

A possible motivation: to take advantage of Chinese largess, which several other island nations have gladly accepted. This latter-day successor to the “cargo cult” makes sense here. 

I was just outside on the balcony and noticed that the air did not feel “tropical,” which is to say not soupy-humid. The hills up behind the city are not jungle-clad either. It appears Noumea is a micro climate area that is semi-arid. 

In the days when colonies were being established this relatively dry area would have been healthier - less malaria, fewer mosquitos - as well as more comfortable in those pre-air conditioning times. I haven’t a clue how such a place can exist in the tropics. The Kona coast has some of these same characteristics.

—————

It was just my luck to be on a cruise while the most fun election in a decade or more was happening. To make it worse, four of our 8 table mates at supper are nice Canadians who can’t be expected to be more than mildly interested in our US elections. Add the US couple with whom we are traveling having a Trump hating wife so politics has been off the agenda at supper. 

The other DrC and I mostly agree on politics so we’ve celebrated in private. Meanwhile I have spent many hours on the iPad reading about the election, the returns, and Trump’s appointments. It looks like he has made a good start on filling the “serves-at-will-of-POTUS” positions.

I was struck with the Senate choosing John Thune as the new soon-to-be-majority leader. The MAGA favorite Rick Scott was washed out on the first round of voting. The Senate has its own culture, shaped to a large extent by Mitch McConnell who’s been grooming Thune as his replacement.

Owning It

Ron Brownstein writing for CNN and echoed by msn.com, quotes UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck.

People struggle to find explanations for what is going on with Hispanic men, or with young people, but the most common explanation [to all of them] is the right one. Nobody thinks things are going well, and if you are the incumbent you own that.

Biden/Harris had 4 years at the helm and didn’t fix what was wrong. That becomes a steep hill to climb; most can’t climb it, Harris certainly failed.

Travel Blogging XII

Easo Beach, Lifou Island, New Caledonia: It would seem this is Holland America’s beach island of choice in the Western South Pacific. The DrsC are not beach enthusiasts and as such, will remain onboard. 

Something I read, can’t remember where, cautioned against mosquito-borne illnesses and mentioned Dengue, Zika and Chikengunya. None of that sounds like any fun at all, more reasons to stay onboard. The tropics aren’t the healthiest places on the planet. 

The cruise is starting to wind down, we just got the notice that tomorrow is the last day to put in laundry. I know the blog says I’m writing this on the 12th but in truth it is the 13th here, I’ve left the iPad on west coast daylight savings time which was what we were on when we embarked. 

We disembark in Sydney on the 17th and board a flight to SF around midday. During which flight we will recross the date line and land on the same day at roughly the same time we took off after flying for 15 hours. 

Datelines and time zone changes are amazing and weird. We had several 25 hour days as we crossed the Pacific going west, setting clocks back an hour each time. Going home we will experience all of those at one time and discombobulate our internal “clocks” a lot.

The Difference

Writing at The American Mind, Isaac Simpson makes an interesting observation, and gives an interesting example.

The major difference between what middle-class people teach their kids and what elites teach their kids—what state schools teach their students versus what the Ivys do.

Normal people teach their kids how to express themselves to get what they want. Elites teach their kids how to express what others want to hear, so that they can rule over them. (Italics in original)

I remember once asking a Harvard friend to look over my resume. He went to great lengths to explain the importance not of my job history, but of the personal interests section: you must have one sport, one intellectual pursuit, one cute reference…this is how Ivy Leaguers think.

Majoring in manipulation … being a ruling caste is an ugly business, one better tolerated if not examined too thoroughly. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

Rubio the New SecState

Various sources reporting Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) will be appointed Trump’s new Secretary of State. He was recently asked if he would call for a ceasefire in Gaza. 

Go here to watch video (with subtitles) of his answer, he’s very much opposed to a ceasefire before all Hamas are dead. For what it’s worth, that would have been my answer too.

Republicans Have House Majority

Fittingly, The Hill reports that the Republicans have won the House of Representatives although RealClearPolitics doesn’t report a 218th seat being called. To be fair to The Hill, they don’t name a 218th House member but indicate that it is a safe call as several of the seats still to be called have the GOP running ahead and thus at least one will in fact win.

Assuming TH is right, Republicans have pulled off the hat trick or trifecta; having swept all three elective categories. This doesn’t happen often but here we are, looking at it in wonder.

Assuming the Rs act with alacrity, much can be accomplished in the next two years. The remaining roadblock is the Senate’s requirement that filibusters require 60 votes to be bypassed. 

This suggests that funding for the Department of Education be in a separate bill which won’t pass the House, and thus can be “starved” to death for lack of appropriated funds. Also, fire all ED political appointees and name no replacements.

Later … RealClearPolitics is now reporting the GOP has 219 House seats, that’s one more than the minimum necessary for a majority in the 435 seat House. I consider RCP to be the “gold standard” in reportage of electoral statistics.

Travel Blogging XI

At sea, en route to New Caledonia: The sea is calm, our speed is half that it was, and much of the time you’d have no idea you’re on a moving vehicle. Sailing under these circumstances is good duty.

I am surrounded by old people, except for the crew and entertainers. Out of the perhaps 1900 pax all but a handful are somewhere in the young-old to old-old range. 

You very nearly have to be retired to take a 23 day cruise. And that is just the part we’re doing. Some fraction of our fellow pax will continue for a circumnavigation of Australia and some few will stick around for a continuation that sails around New Zealand - those doing the whole enchilada will be aboard for 73 days.

I’ve been doing this sort of thing - serious cruising - for 21 years. That tells you I’ve aged into the old-old end of the age spectrum. Getting up out of low chairs is darned difficult without an assist. No cane or walker yet, but I foresee the day when they become necessary. I’m doing fewer shore excursions than formerly as walking longish distances is hard.

I’ve sailed all the major oceans and more than a few of its seas and rivers. It has been a hoot, I’ve no regrets. We have another couple scheduled for next year.

Science Fiction → Reality

Science Fiction often predicts the future. In 1940 Robert Heinlein wrote about conveyor belt highways in the short story “The Roads Must Roll.” It has taken nearly 85 years but now it appears the Japanese will build one, between Tokyo and Osaka. The motivating factor - a shortage of truck drivers. And according to the article:

Japan isn't the only nation planning such a project, notes Fast Company, which details potential conveyor belt roads for cargo in Switzerland, China, and the Netherlands. One difference is that these would be underground.

”Underground” doesn’t seem practical in the Netherlands where the water table is near the surface. Digging it would be a muddy business.  Hat tip to Sarah Hoyt blogging at Instapundit for the link.

N.B., Robert Heinlein was one of the very best sci fi authors, particularly in the early years. His later works - post Stranger in a Strange Land - are something of an acquired taste, one which I never developed.

Meeting a Need

From a Substack column by Robert F. Graboyes, a quip about colleges offering counseling and play therapy to students upset about the election. It is a candidate for “quote of the day.”

If you need psychological counseling and care because your candidate lost the election, it’s a fair bet that you’ve needed psychological counseling for quite some time.

The left truly is “loony,” a statistically proven observation, marked by an inability to accept reality.

A Fellow Pick-up Owner

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, Nov. 10, 2024

Travel Blogging X

We are moored in Suva, the capital of Fiji today. It looks like it might rain and is both warm and humid. Yesterday we were in much smaller Lautoka at the other end of Fiji’s rather large island. 

The roadstead at Suva is a busy one, I counted 7-8 ocean-going ships moored offshore. It is no Singapore, but relatively busy for a Pacific island. We’ve been here before and aren’t going ashore. 

The Fiji population is a mixture of indigenous Melanesians and East Indians whose ancestors were brought here as indentured labor to work the sugar cane fields and factories. They subscribe to different religions and have different cultures.

The other DrC was in a market in Lautoka and noted the butcher shop had good looking lamb, probably from New Zealand, but no beef. Thus catering to the sensitivities of the largely Hindu Indian population. Presumably the indigenous Melanesians who are Methodist eat beef but buy it elsewhere, at a market catering to their culture.

The Indians work harder and are better merchants, so they ended up with most of the wealth, such as it is. They were also gaining political control when the Melanesians rose up and overthrew the government. 

For the last 20 years the government of Fiji has been in turmoil, coups and countercoups aplenty. Multiculturalism has been no blessing for Fiji, quite the contrary.

Hypocracy

Have you noticed that public figures who two weeks ago were claiming Trump was worse than Hitler have now congratulated him on winning and stated their intent to cooperate in a smooth, no-snags transition come January? I’m certain that, at a minimum, Biden, Harris, and Obama have done this.

If you really believed Trump was Hitler, wouldn’t you fear being killed and sent to the ovens? Wouldn’t you be booking one-way overseas travel? Liquidating your holdings and sending money overseas? Sewing jewelry into your clothing? Doing all the things German Jews in the 1930s should have done, and a lucky few actually did? In the immortal words of Matt Dillon, “Getting out of Dodge.”

None of the famous people making those claims believed what they were saying; their subsequent behavior makes this clear. They did hope you’d believe enough of it to vote against Trump. If you let yourself be conned, shame on you.

They complain about him exaggerating and bloviating … have they no self-awareness? No realization the election returns make them look absolutely foolish? If an almost-Hitler does someday come along, will their repeated crying “wolf” have deadened the public to a real menace? The three mentioned above and two dozen more are effing pathetic.

Weird Physiology Research

A blogger reports some extremely tentative findings concerning liver size and calorie utilization without gaining weight. It turns out having a larger liver, presuming the cause is not disease or damage, may be associated with being able to consume more calories and burn more calories without gaining weight.

While a number of things will cause a larger liver, most of them are bad for your health, if not fatal. The one thing the author identifies that you can do in pursuit of a larger liver while remaining healthy is eating more protein. She suggests that something called “exercise science” could run tightly controlled studies to see if this (a) works, and (b) has the desired effect of burning more calories while resting or otherwise not exercising.

While we await the findings, order up a medium-rare 16 oz. rib eye and dig in! It will be delicious and could be good for your health as well. Maybe skip the baked potato with sour cream, chives and bacon bits just to be on the safe side. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

How Each County Voted

Take a look at the county map of the U.S. See how your county voted. Any surprises?

Two states - OK and WV - have no counties voting for Harris. Two more have only one county won by Harris - WY and NV, the DrsC live in these latter two states. Incidentally, both impose no state income tax.

In WY only Teton County was carried by Harris. In NV only Clark County was carried by Harris. We don’t live in Teton County, we do live in Clark County, but far from Las Vegas.

The Wrong Women’s Issue

Thinking about the election just conducted, and explaining the pro-Trump outcome, has become a mini-industry. One interesting rumination on this topic is an article in The Free Press which argues the Dims picked the wrong women’s issue to emphasize, while the GOP picked a women’s issue with real political “legs.”

This time around, abortion was the wrong issue for the Dims. The only people realistically angry about abortion were women in red states who had no feasible way to travel to a blue state for an abortion, should they need one. This was not a huge group.

The GOP picked instead the issue of biological men claiming to be women in women’s sports, locker rooms, and restrooms. And the obvious craziness of providing sex change operations for convicted male felons who claim to be women. These issues had relevance in all 50 states, and with women and men everywhere. 

Travel Blogging IX

We were in Samoa yesterday, not the American colony but the former Brit colony, now independent. The other DrC went ashore, I did not. 

We passed the day tied up alongside in the harbor at Apia, the capital. I spent a fair bit of the afternoon sitting in air conditioned comfort at a near floor to ceiling window overlooking the port and city from our observation deck some 120 feet above the water. 

The city and its port resemble the Hilo of two decades ago. Similar harbor, similar development thinning inland as the city grows up the shoulder of an old shield volcano. Similar mix of industrial and recreational along the coastline, similar palm trees, etc. 

Apia has a beautiful Catholic Church - two-tone blue and white, with dark brown trim. The other DrC got pix of the ceiling done in mahogany marquetry. She noted Apia looked too clean to be a tropical city and learned the Commonwealth leaders had recently held a meeting here and everything got spruced up to put Samoa’s best foot forward.

We are at sea today en route to two stops in Fiji. Both Fiji and Samoa have benefitted from Chinese investment and infrastructure projects. A local lady in Apia told the other DrC that these come “with strings attached,” expectations of support in UN votes, etc. China is ‘buying’ friends in the region, using funds earned by selling cell phones, TVs and Temu trinkets to developed nations.

The Verdict Is In

The largest ‘grand jury’ ever convened in this great land had upwards of 140 million members. They considered the charges against Donald J. Trump; both prosecution and defense had three months to make their case. 

A clear majority of ‘jurors’ found him not guilty. Moreover, they designated him their preferred choice for President of these United States. 

It is time to end the prosecutions. We need to allow our President-elect to get on with the business of staffing the policy side of our federal government.

I believe they also rendered a verdict on DOJ Lawfare … they don’t like it, and want no more of it. 

The Presidential Map

Apparently the final map will look almost exactly like the one below. We Republicans ‘own’ most of the country. Democrats ‘own’ about half of the coastal property, less if you count all of Alaska’s coast, and four outlier Midwest/Southwest states. Map courtesy of a post at Instapundit.

Trump the Better Candidate

Richard Porter writes for RealClearPolitics and his topic is the election just ended and the two candidates.

Despite two impeachments, two assassination attempts, four criminal indictments, 34 felony convictions, and coverage from the big three networks that was 85% negative (as opposed to 78% positive for his opponent), Donald Trump triumphed over all the hate and the haters to win his second term in the Oval Office.

Why? Trump was a better president than Joe Biden and a better candidate than Kamala Harris. Ordinary Americans enjoyed measurably more fruitful lives under Trump than Biden. And Trump is noticeably more authentic, relatable, charming, clever, convincing, insightful, intuitive, and fun than Kamala. Trump won on both policy and personality.

Trump’s win is more than an epic personal and policy success story, it’s a vote of “no-confidence” in institutions and governance by authoritative experts. Institutions fail when they do not focus on their core mission. Consider all the institutions in America and Europe that have lost their way, focusing on the politically fashionable and fringe issues.

That’s the explanation for the election outcome we see before us, in three paragraphs I wish I’d written. 

CA Does the Right Things … for a Change

Longtime readers know I’ve devoted untold column inches to documenting the sins and sorrows of my native state, California. When its voters show some evidence of sanity, fairness moves me to note that as well.

In the election just concluded the state as a whole passed Proposition 36, which undoes many of the sins of Prop. 47, backed by Harris. Prop. 47 decriminalized some offenses and reduced others from felony to misdemeanor. Prop. 36 makes penalties more harsh, particularly retail theft or shoplifting.

In addition, the voters of Los Angeles refused to reelect soft-on-crime DA George Gascón and elected in his place a law and order man. Taken together, these two acts suggest the voters remaining in CA are beginning to understand coddling criminals begets more crime … an obvious truth.

With the reminder that one robin does not suggest spring has arrived, and one wise act does not signal a renaissance of sanity in CA, we should applaud any moves in the sensible direction. I hope you liked the wordplay in my title.

Winning BIG

Donald Trump won his second term. He didn’t just win it, he won BIG or as he would say, yuuuuge - far and away more Electoral College votes than the 270 he needed. 

Just how many more remains to be seen as three states have yet to report their winner. Over 300 for certain. He has so far swept all the “battleground” states which have reported, and at this point is ahead in most of the remainder.

Right now the MAGA Republican Party is as much Trump’s as the 1930s Democratic Party was FDR’s. You can’t imagine anyone else running it, although inevitably someone else will eventually do so. J.D. Vance is very talented, perhaps he will.

Now the Dims have to figure out what set of fixes will enable them to be competitive again. When you lose the presidency and the Senate in a single election, introspection is definitely in order. 

From our point of view on the right, a move toward the center seems the logical, if painful choice. Plus a repudiation of some sort of the Squad and its hangers-on like Sens. Warren and Sanders. 

I actually voted for Bill Clinton when he first ran for president, hoping to encourage the Dims to move toward the center formerly occupied by the likes of Sens. Sam Nunn and Scoop Jackson. Those were serious people who knew how to govern.

Fixing the Dims is someone else’s problem, I propose to enjoy being on the winning side for a change. Four more years of “The Donald” lie ahead, if he can close the border, deport criminal aliens, eradicate DEI, and roll back transgenderism, I’ll be happy. I’d love it if he could shrink the FedGov by a third, but that may be a bridge too far.

More Looking Good

As I write this Donald Trump has just been declared the winner in Pennsylvania. This gives him 267 electoral votes, where he needs 270 minimum. Several states remain to report, still counting their votes. 

Bret Baier concludes there is essentially no feasible way for Harris to win all those still outstanding. It is likely his Electoral College total votes will be substantially greater than 270. 

Thus Donald John Trump will be the 47th president, baring the black swan of all times. Hip, Hip, Hooray! As someone on Fox News just said, we’ve seen our Republic “repairing” itself, mending the misstep that was the Biden presidency.

Democrats need to do some serious soul-searching about how and why they screwed up so bad, losing to a guy many thought a boor and a roue’. I’ll have thoughts about what this means tomorrow, after I’ve slept on it.

Later … They just called Wisconsin for Trump, taking him to 277, making his win official. At this point only MI, AZ, NV, and AK remain to be called.

An analyst on MSNBC said “Trump did better among every demographic except college educated women.” I wonder if less partisan outlets will agree? If true, that is a heck of an endorsement.

Instead of being gracious and calling Trump to congratulate him, Harris sent her campaign staff home and went to bed. This is a “no class” move if ever I saw one. The news media are unimpressed and now feel free to say as much.

Last Poll of the Cycle … Looking Good

The poll with the best track record in 2020 was AtlasIntel and their poll taken over the last two days has just dropped. Are they accurate this time? Who knows? Their accuracy last time at least gets them a serious look.

They have Trump ahead 49.2 to 48.1, with the balance going to third party candidates. They predict Trump will take all of the so-called swing states or battleground states with the exception of Minnesota. They predict the Electoral College will go 312 for Trump vs. 226 for Harris.

Their prediction shouldn’t keep anyone from voting, but I like their scenario. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if it proved accurate. 

—————

It is already Nov. 5 - Election Day - here on this side of the International Date Line but that means little as it is still Nov. 4 where the election is yet to happen. We’ll start getting results about 3 p.m. local Samoan time tomorrow after the polls close on the East Coast. I know what I’ll be doing tomorrow p.m.

It is fingers-crossed time, boys and girls, time to think positive thoughts.

Weird Gerontological Science

UPI reports results of a study in the U.K. which followed 8400 older people for 10 years. It found the following:

Folks with more money and better education are at less risk for developing dementia as they grow older, a new study shows.

They found that aging folks with a college education are 43% less likely to have mild cognitive impairment, results showed.

Further, being in the wealthiest third of the population is linked with a 26% lower risk of advancing from mild cognitive impairment into full-blown dementia, researcher said.

Results also showed that advantaged people are more likely to recover from mild cognitive impairment and regain their wits.

The findings are correlational, that is, they do not prove causality. I’d argue that starting out with a better brain and not having to worry about money both help in keeping dementia away from one’s door. 

But the cause could actually be that the more educated and affluent are more likely to be married and that helps with mental health too. As I’ve written too many times in an academic career, “More research on this topic is needed.”

Squirrel Power

For God’s sake, painter Bob Ross had pet squirrels, sometimes in his shirt pocket, while he painted happy little trees. Nobody bothered Bob.

On Tuesday, let’s get vengeance for the late squirrel Peanut and his raccoon pal. Both murdered by faceless NY bureaucrats. Vote for less government interference in our daily lives. Vote Trump/Vance.

Travel Blogging VIII

Sometime in the next 24 hours we cross both the equator and the international date line. We will go from Saturday directly to Monday without ever experiencing Sunday. That is the date line.

We will also go from mid-autumn to mid-spring in the southern hemisphere. That is the equator. Of course here near the equator the seasons don’t mean a lot, but by the time we get to Sydney we’ll notice the difference.

For the last day or so the ocean has been almost dead calm, which makes cruising more pleasant. The air is warm and humid, welcome to the tropics. In the days of sailing ships they’d call what we’re steaming through “the doldrums” and they’d be becalmed as there is no wind.

Experienced mariners in sailing ship days would try to plot routes that avoided the region of little wind. We have no such problem, we burn fuel and keep on truckin’.

The ship we’re on - the Westerdam - is 20 years old, christened in 2004. More modern ships have several specialty restaurants while this one has only two, and one of those tucked in a corner of the Lido deck buffet restaurant. The ship is well maintained, doesn’t look shabby, but does lack some of the modern features. I wonder if she’ll be stationed in Australia/New Zealand for the next several years?

Self-Indulgent

Power Line’s John Hinderaker catches Trump making a “chicken hawk” attack on Liz Cheney and responds thus.

Why on God’s green Earth was Trump talking about Liz Cheney? He should be laser-focused on the border and the cost of living, not petulantly pursuing his personal grudges. This kind of blunder threatens to undo much of the good will he gained with the masterful McDonalds and garbage truck episodes.

This criticism of Trump led me to an insight. Trump is talented for sure, but he is also self-indulgent in his life and in feuds with others. Not for him the steely discipline of sticking to the campaign message regardless, which makes more self-controlled politicians tiresome to listen to. 

He is interesting and entertaining because he follows his whims where they take him in public speaking. Hearing him, you know you’re hearing the real Donald Trump; not some rehearsed ‘improved’ version of him.

Not Far East of Suez….

I just read a RealClearWorld critique of our policy vis-a-vis the Houthi rebels who are attacking Red Sea shipping. It notes that the additional costs associated with their attacks are much less than the cost of our military response. The author makes a valid point, that the U.S. should let them do what they will and ignore it.

I have another take on this, the Houthi acts cost us little. By dramatically cutting traffic through the Suez Canal they cost the Egyptian government plenty, and the nations of the EU quite a bit.

Our interest in Houthi acts is minor, Egypt’s interest when they cut Egyptian income from canal traffic is major. At the end of the day, the Suez Canal isn’t worth much if using it subjects ships to attack.  Egypt will find dealing with them politically difficult, but that is an Egyptian problem.

Why shouldn’t Egypt and the EU deal with the Houthis? By negotiation if possible, or militarily if need be. The world tends to ignore one group of Arabs fighting another group of Arabs. I envision an Egyptian attack on Yemen funded by the EU.

Hat tip to Rudyard Kipling for the inspiration for this title.

Travel Blogging VII

At sea, south of Hawaii:  We’ve left Kona behind and will be sailing for the next six days until we reach  the nation of Samoa, not to be confused with its neighbor American Samoa which we’ve visited. We’ve not been to Samoa so we add another country to our life list.

You know birdwatchers keep a “life list” of the birds they’ve seen, plus where and when? The DrsC have no such formal list but we joke about the number of countries we’ve visited. The other DrC maintains it is currently 140, I’m certain it’s over 100. 

The main places we’ve not visited are in Central Asia, a cluster mostly of former SSRs with -stan in their name. Those and sub Saharan Africa are places we’ve not been and are likely to never reach. Anyway, visiting the nation of Samoa will be +1 to our phantom life list.

In any event, we are abroad on the bosom of the briny and will be for most of a week. This group of experienced travelers won’t have trouble entertaining ourselves. We will read or listen to books, watch films, attend lectures and musical performances, eat too much, lie by the pool, go to the spa and trade travel yarns with other much traveled folk. The time will pass. 

We are now four time zones west of the Pacific coastline. It suggests we have sailed west approximately the distance from New York to California which encompasses four time zones. 

I’ve no idea how many more we’ll cross but everyone of them is more jet lag we have to overcome after flying home. I’m guessing a week of feeling hung over - that’s how I experience jet lag, like a medium hangover, basically the blahs.

Marriage Is a Republican Thing

The Institute for Family Studies is clearly in favor of marriage as an institution. A fair amount of data suggests they are correct in doing so. They’ve published a compendium of research findings. I’d share a few with you.

Republicans continue to be markedly more likely than Democrats to be married—and this is true for several subgroups in the population.

Republicans continue to enjoy significantly happier marriages and somewhat more stable families with children than Democrats.

At the same time, compared to Democrats, Republicans are slightly more likely to have ever been divorced, and, if ever divorced, are markedly more likely to be remarried.

Most progressives today do not think that “children are better off if they have two married parents,” even though the science points clearly in the other direction.

Democratic support for the classic fidelity norm—that having sex with someone besides your spouse is “always wrong”—has fallen about 30 percentage points, especially among college-educated Democrats, even as Republican support for the norm remains high.

There is much more at the article which I found interesting, perhaps you will as well. Full disclosure: the DrsC have been married for over 50 years. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

About Nevada

Nevada is largely desert of one sort or another, a place that must be crossed to reach the coast if headed west, or to reach the more fertile parts of the country if headed east.  So a wonderful place to make a home wouldn’t be your first thought.

Nevertheless it has managed to develop two sizable cities with suburbs - Las Vegas and Reno. What has it had to offer to draw people and capital here? Several things, beginning with no state income tax.

If any state can be labeled “libertarian” Nevada would have to top the list. For many decades the ethos in  Nevada has been, “whatever adults want to do alone or with other consenting adults is their business.” 

I grew up in CA knowing NV was a place of quickie divorces, bars that stayed open 24 hours a day if there was patronage, gambling halls, sex for sale, and high speed limits. I still remember the first time I saw a commercial building in NV labeled “The Shamrock Brothel,” a degree of openness I hadn’t believed existed.

People came from all over the country to do in NV what they chose without some government nosey parker telling them “no.” They still do, hence the current motto “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.” It might be more accurate if altered to read “Money brought to Vegas, stays in Vegas.” 

Within five miles of my winter place there is a large factory growing, processing, and packaging marijuana. Yes, there are on-site sales though I’ve abstained. 

In recent years firms have taken advantage of the reasonable prices asked for sun-blasted desert land to build gigantic tilt-up warehouses from which hundreds of semi trucks haul merchandise of all sorts to retail establishments west of the Rockies. Nevada obligingly refrains from taxing merchandise in transit, which is a big incentive. There are a couple of these distribution centers just down the road a mile or less from the dope plant.

CA Expats in NV

 Politico Magazine has an article about Californian expats who could “flip” Nevada.

Since 2020 alone, over 150,000 Californians have moved to Nevada — California expats today make up over 20 percent of Nevada’s population. County to county migration flows from the last census show that of the top 16 counties supplying new residents to Reno’s Washoe County, 11 of them are in California.

The gap between registered Republicans and Democrats in the state (NV) has shrunk from 111,000 in 2020 to 71,000 in 2023, and the number of nonpartisan voters has exploded. In a state that was decided by less than 34,000 votes in 2020, a bloc of highly motivated, California-hating ex-Californians with an axe to grind could play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome this year.

As long-time readers may be aware, the DrsC moved their winter residence from CA to NV about 3 years ago. A bunch of my neighbors in a new 55+ development moved there from CA . Unlike the DrsC, many of them are year-round residents who will vote in NV and I’d guess a lot of those will vote for Trump. 

The article quotes a guy who’s saving $200K a year in CA state income tax as NV has no such tax. Our household isn’t saving that much but, by living in WY which also doesn’t tax income, we save enough every year for a nice trip to Europe or a nice cruise. 

Most of us who fled CA found its state governance repulsive. One would hope most of those are smart enough to avoid voting for a second helping of the nasty mess they chose to leave behind. 

P. R. Genius

The mainstream media don’t want Trump to win, and don’t want to provide him free media coverage, unless it is negative. I believe we can agree to take this assessment as a given.

Trump and his handlers are absolute wizards at dreaming up what one pundit called “cosplay stunts” that are so eye-catching the mainstream media virtually have to cover them. I have in mind both the McDonalds visit with him in an apron passing food out the drive-in window, and his more recent drive of a new, shiny garbage truck, wearing an orange vest. 

This is P.R. genius at work. And unlike Michael Dukakis in the tank or Tim Walz with the shotgun, Trump has the chutspah to pull it off and make it work for him. His time in TV taught him what works and what doesn’t. 

One of my favorite Donald Trump stories is of him decades ago sitting in the green room after a TV interview watching the replay with the sound off, studying what worked for him and what didn’t.  In some ways he’s been studying for this role most of his life.

Travel Blogging VI

In the previous post I used the terms “Polynesia” and “Melanesia,” because I love geography. It occurs to me you may not be into Pacific geographic terminology so I’ll take a stab at definitions. 

Not counting the big archipelagos (Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia) hugging the Asian landmass, the Pacific islands are roughly grouped into three categories: Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia. Micronesia is the small islands north of the equator and west of Midway Island. These include the Marianas plus Guam, the Marshalls, Palau, and FSM.

Polynesia includes French Polynesia (Tahiti, etc.), the Cook Islands, Easter Island, Samoa, Tonga, New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands. Melanesia includes New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Fiji, and New Caledonia.

In the opinion of the DrsC, Rarotonga in the Cook Islands may be the nicest of the bunch. Polynesian charm with a bit of New Zealand order. In French Polynesia, I prefer Moorea and Tahaa; Tahiti and Bora Bora are overdeveloped. On Tahaa buy the vanilla liqueur … as smooth as silk.

From the Kona Coast of the Big Island, happy Halloween.

Name Callers

Hello there fellow ‘garbage’ people, fellow ‘Nazis,’ fellow Trump supporters. A large group of the neurotic and psychotic (plus their enablers) have been calling us these names lately. 

In a reasonable society many of these name-callers would be inpatients in mental hospitals, under the stern-but-therapeutic care of Nurse Ratchet and her order-enforcing clones. We don’t live in a reasonable society.

You have a week remaining in which you can cast a vote for a return to reasonableness, or you can endorse the anything-peculiar-goes status quo. If enough of us vote for the reasonable, maybe we can increase its presence in our society.

I write this alongside the Aloha Tower in Honolulu harbor. It is just after 9 a.m. local time, the sun is shining and the humid air feels silky. Tough duty, but someone has to do it, why not me? By the time we know the election result our ship will be somewhere in either Polynesia or Melanesia, probably the latter.

No Personal Stake

Charles Lipson writes for RealClearPolitics, today about the serious differences between our two major parties.

Cleavages are prominent in issues freighted with social and cultural meaning. That’s certainly true for disputes surrounding abortion and transgender rights. Both issues have practical consequences, but the disputes go further. They are fights over cultural symbols that matter to many people who have no direct, personal stake in reproductive rights or gender changes.

”No personal stake” but vitally important nevertheless, isn’t that a strange state of affairs? 

A ‘Dog’ That Didn’t Bark

Piers Morgan in the New York Post, writing about the Trump rally at Madison Square Garden which he attended.

A Secret Service agent told me that just 150 protesters turned up to express their dismay at Trump holding a rally in the very heart of New York City, when they’d been expecting thousands.

In 2016, vast armies of foaming-at-the-mouth liberals took to the same streets to howl their rage about him.

If they really believed he’s the new Hitler, they’d have probably found the strength to get off their lazy backsides and come and protest.

Their absence said it all.

Absolutely…. 

Travel Blogging V

The other DrC has a great photo taken looking aft from our balcony, we’re located forward on the starboard side. The line of life boats and tenders begins just aft of our room, as the photo shows. 

As is typical, the dining rooms are located low and aft so it is a long walk to supper or to lunch. We get exercise that way, it’s more walking than I normally do ashore. 

The fifth day at sea and we’ve finally gotten far enough south to get warm weather. At lunch by the pool today it was positively sultry, and the overhead that can roof over the pool deck has been retracted so fresh air is circulating. 

Tomorrow we dock in Honolulu, probably by the Aloha Tower if past cruises are any indicator. We will be there for a bit over 11 hours. Having been here many times, we have no touring agenda at this port but will probably do some minor shopping.

Later … We get another time change tonight, it appears that Hawaii is three hours separated from the West Coast, at least while the mainland is on daylight savings. Hawaii opted out of time changes as its location somewhat near the equator means winter and summer days are of nearly equal length. I conclude that means in winter there is only a 2 hour difference.

Process Note

I just noticed the apparent posting time on the previous post and it seems to be “zero dark thirty” or some such. Please ignore this, my actual posting time was two hours earlier. 

In cruising across the Pacific, every 2-3 days we set our clocks back an hour. We’ve done so twice so far and will do it multiple times before reaching Sydney. There is little point in me continually resetting the time zone on my device, so I won’t. 

We live on ship time but I’ll leave the IPad on Pacific Daylight Time and some strange ‘times’ will be affixed to various posts.

Maybe Bad Policy

I wonder if Democrats are going to regret leaving behind the Kamala Harris’ “joy” campaign and switching to beating up on Trump. The decline in Harris poll ratings largely coincided with that change in tone. 

The whole “Trump is too awful to elect” thing asks voters to ignore what they experienced living through a Trump presidency and conclude that in a second term he’d be an entirely different guy. Actually, he probably will be somewhat different in that he’ll be on his guard against efforts by the federal bureaucracy to stymie his initiatives.

If you were an adult during Trump’s first term he is a known “commodity” to you. About him you’ve formed an opinion which various announcements and claims by opponents are unlikely to change. 

Democrats probably fear Trump will try to do to them what they tried to do to him. When he is in their shoes why won’t he make the same lawfare efforts they’ve made? He has their example to follow and to cite. 

Travel Blogging IV

At sea, substantially nearer Hawaii: The rough water finally calmed to a degree. One is still aware of ship movement, which is not the case in a dead calm. However, showering today was less perilous than yesterday, and that’s a good thing.

The other DrC has been taking advantage of the spa, and I may do so as well. In the years that have elapsed during and since the Covid pandemic, seagoing Internet has improved a lot. It works better than it did and costs less as well. 

The above was written yesterday and today the water is even more calm. Showering today was actually easy, not much hanging on required. I did a bit of wandering today exploring the ship. There’s a lady with a recently broken ankle in a boot cast who has an electric cart she is zipping around in, I’m envious.

Reputations Destroyed

Democrats don’t much like the institutional framework of our nation, the design for which is embodied in the Constitution. The lawfare attacks on former President Trump suggest an indifference to our legal system allows them to abuse it.

Their intent, as Mollie Hemingway makes clear was destruction of a man - Donald Trump.

The whole goal was to make sure that Donald Trump would be imprisoned, bankrupted, so discouraged, so distracted by being off the campaign trail dealing with these various examples of lawfare from Democrat prosecutors at the federal and state and local level, that he wouldn't win.

It hasn’t worked as planned, has it? If the portents are being read correctly, Trump will win the election that happens in just over a week. 

Instead, what has happened is that the public opinion of federal law enforcement has cratered, The FBI is no longer idolized, the CIA is no longer seen as effective, and the DOJ is now viewed as a political tool. 

In short, an enormous amount of institutional damage has been done. Repairing the reputations of the agencies involved will be the work of decades, and may never happen. 

Democrats perhaps could justify (to themselves) the damage if the ploy had worked, but it didn’t work. Instead they shot our government in the foot and accomplished no goals. 

I wish I could believe the guilty parties would spend decades in prison, but it appears unlikely they’ll even be charged. 

A Quote to Remember

Ed Driscoll, posting at Instapundit, has a Van Jones quote that rings true.

If progressives have a politics that says all white people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil it’s kinda hard to keep them on your side. If you're chasing people out of the party, you can't be mad when they leave.

Van Jones is one of the relatively few Democrats who occasionally say something sane. 

No Day After

People have been writing about “the day after” in the Middle East, as for example this. The thrust of these essays is to try to imagine what peace might look like in the region. 

Peace presupposes a willingness to stop fighting. Can you imagine the Islamic forces opposing Israel being willing to stop fighting while Israel remains in place? I cannot.

Can you imagine Israel’s Jews being willing to pack up and do the diaspora all over again? Again, I cannot. Therefore, for me at least, there is no imaginable “day after.” 

Have there been lulls in the fighting since Israel was founded? Certainly, normally after Israel has militarily defeated the Arabs there is a period of apparent “peace” while the Arabs recoup their battered societies and forces. 

Does this constitute a “day after?” Not in my mind, it doesn’t. Show me a place anywhere in the world where Muslims have agreed to live in peace with their non-Muslim neighbors and then actually done so for any reasonable period. I follow international affairs and I know of no such place.

Weird Nutritional Science

Good news gets around. Legal Insurrection reports that a Harvard-trained nutritional and metabolic psychiatrist has found that the human brain needs meat in our diet to attain optimal health. Why are we not surprised?

While animal products like eggs, meat, cheese, and Greek yogurt are high in protein, it can also be found in vegan options like lentils and broccoli. But many of the other essential nutrients are much more difficult if not in some cases impossible to obtain from plants.

The nutrients in meat are often more bioavailable than those in plant-based foods, meaning they are more easily absorbed and utilized by the body.

The article also notes that persons on meat-free diets are more likely to have mental health issues. Whether diet affects mental health or those with poor mental health are more likely to give up eating meat is unclear. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll blogging at Instapundit for the link.

Political Update

Taking note of the appropriate counsel of avoiding excess optimism, the political news appears to be trending in a positive direction. Kamala Harris turns out to be a petite, attractive lady with a pleasant manner who people have trouble envisioning as President. She is no Margaret Thatcher, no Iron Lady.

Like him or hate him, Donald Trump has stature. We’ve seen him as President and, most of us, didn’t hate the experience. We’ve seen him under fire … literally, unfortunately … and know he has courage.

Absent some unanticipated cataclysm Trump will be elected President and perhaps a quarter of our population will experience extreme angst. Many will consider emigrating, few will actually do so. Psychiatrists will reap the benefits.

Travel Blogging III

Still farther southwest of Seattle, en route to Hawaii: You’ll remember I wrote about rough water off the western coast of the US? Well, this isn’t the usual coastal roughness. We have been rocking and rolling now for at least 30 hours, with no end in immediate sight.

Taking a shower with the sea pitching and heaving is … challenging … to say the least. When you have to keep one hand free to hold onto a grab bar, and can only soap up with the other, compromises become inevitable. Falling isn’t a good outcome.

The view out my window could be mistaken for the North Atlantic. I’d estimate the swells out there are 12-15 feet trough to crest, and the Westerdam is rolling side-to-side up to eighteen inches in spite of the stabilizers. Compounding the problem is that the captain, having sailed maybe 6 hours late, can’t adjust the course and lower the speed to make it easier, things he would normally do. So, on we plow, rocking and rolling as noted above.

Days like yesterday and today are why cruising isn’t for everyone. Yes, you are resident in a luxury ‘hotel’ with meals and entertainment included, but said ‘hotel’ is at the mercy of the elements and out on the briny deep those elements can be uncomfortably energetic. 

It is no accident most travel for business or simply to “get there” is by air. We who cruise are volunteers who put up with the odd motions and have a good time in spite of it.

Virtually all cruise lines staff the “hotel” side of the crew mostly with youngish people from less-developed nations. Holland America, true to its Dutch beginnings, utilized mostly Indonesians as that nation is a former Dutch colony. US cruise lines utilize many Filipinos as that’s a former US colony.

When we first started cruising in earnest we’d meet a fair number of Eastern Europeans as crew, waiting tables and tending bar. That has become less common as those nations joined the EU and found opportunities closer to home.

Later … I am on deck five and I just saw sea-spray fly past my window. That isn’t trivial. I’ve seen rougher water on 3-4 occasions but today’s experience is one of those to be remembered.

Travel Blogging II

At sea, southwest of Seattle: It is true that the first cruising day out of a West Coast port often brings rough weather. This trip is no exception. We have rain and some wind and whitecaps today. 

Farther out into the world’s greatest ocean things normally calm down. I’ll be letting you know how we fare.

We sailed late, apparently slow deliveries of necessities held us up as we pax were all on board. The captain has been no end of apologetic, but assures we will dock on time in Hawaii. A late departure simply means we’ll have to average a slightly greater speed to regain our schedule. 

Meanwhile we pax are regaining our sea legs, trying to walk straight lines on a deck that is rocking somewhat. Turnout for lunch was excellent, suggesting no great amount of mal de mer. 

As very experienced cruisers, the DrsC each take an OTC meclizine hydrochloride tablet every evening of the cruise, including the night before boarding. We’ve had no side effects and next-to-no sea sickness. On the very rough water cruise to Antarctica we learned you can up the dose to one every four hours if needed, we didn’t.

This is a well-traveled bunch of pax, hardly anybody’s first rodeo. At 23 days ours is a longish cruise and newbies tend to do the one-week specials - Caribbean, Mexican Riviera, or Alaska. That’s smart, why commit to a long cruise if you aren’t sure you’ll love it?

Intolerance of Heretics?

Power Line’s Steve Hayward has a chart which shows how various generational cohorts (Z, Millennial, X, Boomer) agree with this statement:

I would end a friendship because my friend expressed a political view that I find inappropriate.

As I’m traveling I can’t show you the chart, but I’ll describe the findings. For all cohorts the liberals are more likely than moderates or conservatives to agree, and those differences are not trivial. Differences between moderates and conservatives are minor and appear non-significant. The number who would end a friendship is larger for the younger cohorts.

Steve’s guess about why liberals are outliers in this data set.

Why are leftists more likely to allow politics to drive their friendship decisions? A lot of reasons come to mind, but one of them is the extent to which politics has become the substitute religion for a large number of leftists. And when their god (or gods or goddess) has abandoned them—when the immanent replaces the transcendent—leftists become embittered.

Godwin’s Law

In 1990 Michael Godwin famously propounded what has become known as Godwin’s Law.

Whoever is the first to mention Hitler in an argument, loses the argument.

The Harris/Walz campaign has claimed Donald Trump is another Hitler, which suggests they are losing this election. The comparison they draw is laughable, and obviously not persuasive.

There have been other, subsequent ‘Hitlers’ like Pol Pot and Chairman Mao, and the contemporary Stalin, all of whom engaged in genocide. Today’s Putin is in the running to be added to the list, but isn’t there yet. In his most fanciful ramblings Donald Trump has never come close, nor will he.

My private suspicion, which I will share with you, is that Democrats calling Trump a Hitler is them projecting onto him what they would secretly like to do. Because they want to do it, they believe he must also share that wish.

I fully believe Trump wishes he could run the U.S. government the way he runs Trump Enterprises, as a normal private sector CEO. CEO ≠ Hitler, does equal “commanding officer.” I also understand Trump knows this isn’t possible, and probably not even desirable from society’s viewpoint. 

Travel Blogging I

The trip has begun! We got up at 4 a.m., were on the road by 6:30, and our plane left Las Vegas by 10:30. We arrived in Seattle around 1 p.m., got our luggage, and caught a shuttle to our hotel where we linked up with the couple we’re traveling with. We will travel together to the ship tomorrow.

Both of the DrsC have, of necessity, worn hearing aids for several years. An upside is listening to audiobooks checked out from the library and stored on our phones. 

I am currently listening to a rendition of Frank Herbert’s 1965 SF epic Dune. The audiobooks contain every word of the actual book, read by one or more voice actors. 

Aficionados know Dune is massive, it will take some 22 hours to hear it all. Then I will follow with the other 6 or so books in the original series. 

It is the perfect thing to do on a plane or ship as no WiFi connection is needed. Our otherwise unexceptional 2+ hour flight went by quickly as I listened to Paul Atreides go from Duke’s son to Duke when his father is killed by the evil Baron Harkonnen.

Death of a Celebrity

A famous grizzly bear - one could almost write “the only famous grizzly bear” - has died. That storied ursine lady called “399” was hit and killed by an automobile a couple of nights ago in western Wyoming. She was 28, old for a bear having cubs. She became famous for having four cubs in one birth, and raising them all to maturity in or near Grand Teton National Park.

She was known for grazing areas near but not right on roads. In this way the tourists who stop to stare and take photos tended to scare off the big male bears which are willing to kill her cubs. And it helped her to be famous as well.

It is easy to blame the driver but we live in bear country and if you do night driving you know critters can wander out in front of a car doing a lawful speed, and be unavoidable. Recently we just missed hitting an elk nearly the size of a horse who loomed out of the night. They are dark colored, don’t have reflectors on them and haven’t evolved a natural fear of autos.

A Master of Free Media

Image courtesy of Politico's Wuerker Cartoons.

Process Note

Tomorrow the wandering DrsC go traveling once again. We head for Seattle to catch a cruise ship repositioning from the Alaska run to “down under.” We will get to Sydney around mid November and fly home in time for Thanksgiving, jet-lagged something awful.

What this means to readers of COTTonLINE is that for the next three weeks there won’t be the weekly doses of snarky memes. In their place I will offer a variety of observations under the heading “Travel Blogging.” If history is any guide (it often is), these will include observations about cruise ship life, ports of call, plus the vastness and emptiness of our biggest ocean. 

While afloat on the briny, I will continue to reflect on matters political, scientific, and diplomatic. I anticipate continued access to my usual sources of information. 

Being elsewhere while the election happens is less than ideal but Holland America obviously didn’t consider that issue while scheduling this “repo” itinerary. If one is needed, a reminder that whoever wins November 5 much of life will go on unchanged.

The Effective Approach

An Instapundit quote where Glenn clearly has the current actions of Israel in mind.

One way of saving Western Civilization is to kill the people trying to destroy it. That approach was put virtually off limits for a while — through the efforts of those trying to destroy it, mostly — but it appears to be surprisingly effective.

Gotta love his irony here, expressing “surprise.” When people declare you anathema, and wish your death, the alternative of choice is always to turn them into compost, and keep doing so until the remnant surrender unconditionally and beg your forgiveness. Presidents Roosevelt and Truman understood this.

The View from PA

 “All politics is local” Speaker Tip O’Neill was fond of saying. It may be less true today than in Tip’s heyday but an article for RealClearPennsylvania (apparently a real thing) does a better-than-fair job of showing how it is still true in PA as far as Harris is concerned. 

Everybody is claiming PA will be the bellwether state in this presidential election. If they’re correct then Harris/Walz are hurting big time, according to this analysis. Who knew?

I Disagree

I normally agree with John Hinderaker of Power Line, today comes an instance where I don't agree. Hinderaker writes the following:

After all these years, Three Mile Island is going to be restarted. I assume this is because of the Biden administration’s campaign against fossil fuels, combined with the reality that, of the non-CO2 emitting technologies, only nuclear actually works.

Alleging that "only nuclear actually works" is simply incorrect. Hydroelectric works just as well, is equally reliable, and it too emits no C02. 

I spent the years 1987 - 2021 living downstream from several hydroelectric facilities on the south fork of the Feather River, utilizing power generated therefrom. I was never aware of any shortcomings in those installations or any outages attributable thereto.

Greens have made the installation of hydropower difficult because it interferes with natural stream flow. I am of the opinion greens should be entirely ignored; perhaps Donald Trump is the man to accomplish this feat.

Personality vs. Policy

A New Yorker article concerning why the billionaire class have largely swung behind Donald Trump, and put money behind those beliefs, has an interesting quote I recommend to those reluctant to support Trump. It was spoken to the author by an attendee at a donor lunch.

"A lot of the donors have just come to the conclusion that, when you add it all up, the risks with Trump are behavioral—personal behavior and what he says—versus the policies,” the attendee at the Fifth Avenue fund-raiser told me. It was a “rationalization” adopted by “even those who were initially very put off, very alienated, by his behavior at the end of his Presidency."

What turns people off about DJT is his sui generis impresario-like personal style. It’s a mix of business and show biz because his career has been a mix of business and show biz - some “Jack Welch” mixed with some “P. T. Barnum.” 

It drives Dims nuts because nobody has figured out how to run against it. Reagan had some of this quality too and it caused them some of the same problems.

Aside

With regard to the first image below, showing PM Netanyahu grinning. Among the hunting fraternity in my home state of Wyoming, the wall behind him is called "a head wall" for obvious reasons. Most WY heads are game animals, but the concept is identical - displaying hunting trophies.

When we built our present home 24 years ago, the project boss asked us if we wanted a wall in the living room reinforced with 3/4" plywood beneath the sheetrock. I asked why and was told for a head wall. 

After getting a definition, we declined with thanks. I don't suppose he was surprised, a couple of retired college profs aren't exactly the modal homeowners here or indeed most places.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark 2.0

-

Image courtesy of Politico Wuerker Cartoons.

Friday Snark 1.0

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists 

on the Week in Politics.

ICYMI

The best summary I’ve seen of the Kamala Harris interview on Fox News is this one at the U.S. edition of The Spectator World. Author Teresa Mull describes the interview I and millions of others watched. 

Mull gets the substance and feel of the interview just about perfect. The article is subtitled “Bret Baier politely took no prisoners” and that about sums it up. Harris did herself no favors with this appearance.

Homeland ... a Worthy Concept

Writing for Newsweek (yes, it still exists online), David P. Goldman aka ‘Spengler,’ defends Hungary’s Viktor Orban and plugs something he calls “Zionism for the nations of Europe.” It is a term he borrows from the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders. 

European “Zionism” holds that it is beyond okay to defend an ethnic homeland, where one’s culture is the dominant force. Doing so means controlling emigration to preserve that dominance. Globalists of the Soros/Kerry/Merkel variety totally disagree. 

Here at COTTonLINE we defend the predominant culture in the U.S. of A. No, it is not “white nationalism.” The U.S. is an idea, not an ethnicity, and is embedded in our Constitution. It is very much worth defending but not all of the world's various belief systems are compatible with it.

Millions of Lapses

Several times last night Kamala Harris claimed to Bret Baier that she would, as President, “enforce the federal law.” The federal law makes unlawful entry into the U.S. a federal crime. 

As border czar she did not enforce the law which enjoined the arrest and prosecution of its violators. Millions were turned loose as though what they’d done was a parking infraction.

If she did not enforce a law for which she’d been given primary responsibility, why should her claim to follow the law be believed? She very clearly did no such thing, not once but millions of times.

You could fairly claim she is one of history’s greatest scofflaws.

The Baier Interview

I forced myself to watch the Bret Baier Fox News interview with Kamala Harris. It was no picnic, two people talking over each other each trying to make themself heard. 

Harris maintained that Biden/Harris were unable to do anything for 3.5 years because Donald Trump - out of office and out of power - simply existed. While I recognize Trump has many followers, they and he together did not keep Biden et al. from doing their job, the blame rests with the White House and its current occupants.

Harris maintains a reelected Trump will do all manner of awful, unlawful things. She and Biden have been such failures they'd deserve it if Trump did unload on them, but he won't. 

Fortunately tonight's news included that the latest poll shows Trump pulling into the lead by a couple of points. Maybe he will just win and they'll go away and sulk.

Harris didn't totally blow the interview, but she also didn't convince anyone not already committed to her that she's up to being president. I wasn't impressed.

A Birth Dearth

Power Line's Steve Hayward posts a chart from Statista which portrays the birth rate in each of the world's countries. Given the scale, some are sort of difficult to suss out. 

The birth rate necessary to keep national population constant is 2.1 per woman. Much of the world - shown in pink or red - is below that level.

The four areas with the lowest birth rates (shown in red) appear to be South Korea, Hong Kong, Palau and Puerto Rico, but I am guessing on all but South Korea. 

Walz and Harris ... Rumors of Misbehavior

Andrea Widburg who writes regularly for American Thinker notes there are rumors about Tim Walz and underage boys. Do you suppose what happens in China stays in China?

Is there anything to these allegations? I have no idea. Widburg claims no personal knowledge either.  Walz does give off weird vibes, but a lot of Dims do the same.

Perhaps if some young men come forward and go public we'll know more.

----------

Kamala Harris, when running for Attorney General in California in 2009, worked with a ghost writer to publish a book entitled Smart on Crime.  In it she plagiarized an entire Wikipedia article without giving citation credit or using quotation ("") marks. The book contains several other lapses of giving credit where due. 

Unlike the sexual issues involving Walz noted above, where only the participants know for sure, this misdeed can be checked out.

How ironic that Harris could be guilty of the same infraction which took Joe Biden out of the presidential nomination race in 1988. Maybe most people don't much care about plagiarism, those of us who write do care. We consider it theft of intellectual property. Watch the legacy media ignore this story.

Hat tip to Lucianne.com for all of the links in this post.

Word Play

A wordplay quote attributed to Dilbert creator Scott Adams. Say it aloud and listen to yourself.

The more diverse government is, diverse it gets.

And it was bad enough already.

Family History

The other DrC has a neat story at her blog, about my mother as a little girl growing up in pre-World War I small town Oklahoma. She chronicles a trip to Dallas my mom took with granddad. It's a story she never told me, but did tell my wife. I think you'll enjoy it.

That same determined lady, as a young adult in the late 1920s, bought a Ford coupe, in which she and a girlfriend drove roundtrip from OK to VA and back to visit the other gal's relatives. It was summertime, school wasn't in session, and they camped on schoolyards so they could use the temporarily idled outhouses. 

I believe both were clericals for a federal agency and were on vacation. I guess many roads were unpaved. It was a gutsy thing for two unaccompanied young women to do.

Saturday Snark, a Day Late

 

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.