Their Inner Vladimir Putin

Carl M. Cannon writes for RealClearPolitics, today his topic deals with yesterday's Trump verdict and the Democrats who orchestrated it.

Deep down many of them know that they’ve weaponized the criminal justice system in a way that is unhealthy for a republic; that they’ve undermined their own plot line about “saving democracy”; and that in their zeal to get Trump, Democratic Party leaders and millions of rank-and-file Democrats alike have all indulged their inner Vladimir Putin. (emphasis added)

That analogy has to hurt ... a lot.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Bullet Points

So what does the Trump conviction mean for the election outcome? At his Silver Bullet site, numbers guy Nate Silver writes several wise things. 

This is an unprecedented circumstance, and there’s no good way to rigorously model the impact. Everybody is just guessing.

A fair number of voters had said they’d switch their votes in the event of a Trump conviction — but these probably should not be taken quite at face value. As I wrote last month, voters are generally bad at answering hypotheticals.

My expectation is that Biden will see some improvement in his numbers — perhaps something roughly equivalent to a mini convention bounce — and the question is mostly about how steep it is and how long it persists.

The poker term for being in a dicey spot but where your odds have a chance to improve is “having outs”, meaning that you might catch some good cards to redeem your position. The possibility of a criminal conviction was one of the best outs Biden had left — and if it doesn’t move the numbers, I’m not sure what will.

Nose Holders

Politico’s John Harris writes what could be the central fact of this 2024 presidential election.

Polls show a majority of Americans are dissatisfied with their options. The only way either can win is with the support of nose-holders.

Harris adds that chaos follows Trump, but misses that most of it is Democrats’ crazy reactions to him. 

Karma Comes Calling

The Federalist's Sean Davis posts this on X:

Biden and Garland should be indicted in Texas tomorrow for their ongoing criminal human trafficking conspiracy across the border and into the state of Texas, in direct contravention of state law.

Like I wrote below, what goes around, comes around. It's karma. A Texas jury might convict. 

Thursday Snark

The Babylon Bee captions this photo as follows:

Kangaroos Ask People To Stop Unfairly Comparing Them To U.S. Justice System. 

It Has Often Happened

Commenting about today's Trump conviction in Manhattan, Instapundit Glenn Reynolds writes:

The Roman Republic ended in no small part because of legal shenanigans like this, where no one could afford to surrender power for fear of political prosecutions.

You'll observe I made a similar comment in the last post before this one. 

Breaking: Trump Guilty on All Counts

Late today. the jury in the Trump hush-money case in Manhattan brought in a verdict of guilty on all 34 counts of document falsification. Presumably the case now goes to appeal.

The normal appellate route would be to a New York State appeals court, followed by the state's Supreme Court, and then to the US Supreme Court. Some have suggested the unprecedented nature of the case mandates an immediate appeal to SCOTUS.

In politics what goes around comes around. Expect Republicans to bring cases against leading Democrats in red states where the judges and juries are sympathetic to Republican viewpoints. 

This new lawfare precedent is unlikely to end well for our politics or our nation. We have just taken the first step toward having autocratic presidents-for-life as becoming an ex-president will be too dangerous to contemplate. 

Vlad Putin finds himself in this fix in Russia. He can't possibly leave office ... and live.

Puppets Without Strings

Much is being made of an attack on Donald Trump by actor Robert De Niro. It was harsh but I wonder why anyone thought his beliefs were more worth listening to or more informed  than those of any random pedestrian?

Actors are people who have the skill of being able to convincingly fake emotions they are not feeling, and many are physically attractive. The words they say on screen or stage are written by someone else, and their behavioral choices are made by a director. Effectively they are puppets without strings. 

Nothing about that description suggests they know more about politics than you do. I'd argue they very well may know less. Plus they exist in a subculture that has had Marxist proclivities at least since the 1930s, as demonstrated in HUAC hearings so long ago.

Admire the things at which they excel, their acting ability or their attractiveness. As for what they think, why care?

Demand Down for PhDs

The first among equals at Power Line - John Hinderaker - looks at employment for Humanities PhDs. He finds we are graduating many more of them than there are faculty job openings, and it has been like that since roughly 2010. In History, for example, there are twice as many graduates as jobs. He concludes:

The phenomenon at work here–a huge cadre of well-educated people who think they are entitled to make good money, be treated with deference, and play a significant role in public life, but who in fact are not very employable and whose expectations are doomed to be frustrated–explains a lot about the demented quality of our current culture.

The DrsC had the extremely good fortune to get our PhDs early enough to take advantage of the mid-1900s boom in higher education. It is unlikely anyone now alive will ever again see university conditions so favorable.

I believe the explosive growth in higher education was triggered by the post-World War II GI Bill of Rights. It was instituted to keep many ex-GIs out of the work force for 2-4 years and thus avoid mass post-war unemployment. 

The resultant greater supply of college degrees paradoxically created demand so that those of us graduating high school in the post-war era found we needed a B.A. to get a decent job.

An Iranian Nuke?

Writing for The Atlantic and echoed at the msn.com site, Arash Azizi asks the question, “What If Iran Already Has the Bomb?” As is often the case, the column’s title is more exciting than what follows. He believes the current Supreme Leader in Iran is too cautious to use nukes. 

Azizi ends up talking himself out of actually confronting the problem stated. I will take a stab at imagining a nuclear exchange between Iran and Israel.

Based on the flurry of rocketry and drones Iran aimed at Israel recently, and the small number which actually reached their targets, I conclude the following: Iran isn’t especially able to deliver explosives to strongly defended Israeli targets. 

That being the case, Iran doesn’t need “a” nuclear bomb. They would need quite a few in order to ensure at least one reaches Tel Aviv. 

Israel may want to move key installations to Jerusalem. It is unlikely devout Muslims would nuke one of their three "holy cities."

On the other hand, does anyone believe Israel has similar problems striking Iran wherever it chooses? They have a demonstrated ability to bomb targets inside Iran.

The Sound of Our Voice

Eight days ago I wrote about the DrsC going in search of a "celebrity" mama grizzly bear -  known as 399 - which frequents the Pilgrim Creek region of Grand Teton National Park. In passing I noted that one could argue humans, not grizzlies, are the apex predators of the North American continent.

Today Instapundit links to a study reported in ScienceAlert which found the sound of the human voice arouses more fear in animals than the vocalizations of other predators. Evidence, if more was needed, that we humans are the on-land apex predator of this planet. 

In the oceans the orca probably holds that honor, there are recent reports of them killing great white sharks.

Remembering Heroes

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com,  27 May 2024.

Fundamentally Trivial

Recently the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and the leaders of Hamas. The charge is war crimes. 

Neither Israel nor the US are signatories to the treaty establishing the ICC. In this context attorney Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame writes as follows:

A my International Law professor said, the World Court is a “fundamentally trivial body.” Now exposing itself as more trivial.

The Browncoat Legacy

As regular readers know, I'm a long time science fiction reader, though not as much as formerly. One of my all time favorite TV series was Firefly. 

The series was a sort of combination of hard sci fi and western, set in a future that followed a multi planetary civil war. Our protagonists were veterans of the losing side. The short-lived series spawned a spin-off film - Serenity - with the same cast.

What I didn't know, but this article reveals, is that there is a firm making rockets and spacecraft which has appropriated the name Firefly. The article indicates the firm is a NASA contractor. Hat tip to sci fi fan Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit for the link.

 Keeping the dream alive....

CA Our North Korea?

Writing for The Pipeline, a site which focuses on the problematic nature of much green energy policy, Power Line’s Steve Hayward draws an interesting parallel. He begins with noting that at the end of World War II two countries were divided into socialist and capitalist sections - Germany and Korea. The capitalist sections of both thrived, the socialist sections did not.

Today the United States is repeating a parallel controlled experiment, between “red states” and “blue states.” As was the case under Communism, Americans are voting with their feet, moving in large numbers from high-tax, high-regulation blue states to low-tax, business-friendly red states. The data show red states are experiencing faster economic and personal income growth, and better social performance on a number of key indicators, such as crime, affordable housing, and public education.

Among all the blue states intent on pursuing neo-socialist policy, one stands out: California. The once-Golden State is rapidly becoming the North Korea of the fifty American states.

One is inclined to cite the George Santayana maxim, here roughly paraphrased,  that those who do not learn the painful lessons history teaches are doomed to experience them again and again.

Afterthought: I imagine Gov. Gavin Newsom dreaming of a Berlin-type border wall to keep his taxpayers from fleeing CA.

An Interesting Analogy

Writing at American Thinker, M. B. Mathews observes a major characteristic of the progressive movement. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

What differentiates the radical left from conservatives is that leftists will die if they stop trying to change things. They, like sharks, cannot survive if they stop moving ahead. They call it “progressivism,” but it is studied destruction. It’s what physicists call “entropy” or disorder. Leftists must change things for the sheer thrill of exerting destructive and revisionist power over others.

Why do leftists need to destroy? It’s a narcissistic personality disorder. The intellectually idle, discontent with their own circumstances and with leaving good things alone, is so palpable that they cannot allow peace in the land. They must tear apart what offends them, which is everything that has worked in the past, probably because it had nothing to do with them.

With the caveat that “die” in the first paragraph mostly refers to the progressive movement collapsing, only rarely to the people physically dying, it isn’t a bad insight. 

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Getting Serious

Whether you love Donald Trump, have some reservations about him, or can't stand him, can we at least agree Joe Biden has been an extremely disappointing president? And can we further agree that we liked Trump's four years better than Biden's? I hope so, polls seem to show this is the near-consensus.

If you have to hold your nose to vote for Trump, shouldn't you go ahead and do it? Another four years of some combination of Biden and Harris won't entirely destroy our country, but it will clearly make it measurably worse.

It feels like I've voted for the lesser of two evils most of my long life, this fall won't entirely be an exception. It also is no excuse for not voting.

Update

Exactly a week ago I posted a nice picture of our newly greened forest, and a deer gracing our yard with her presence. This morning the view is more than a little different.

As I've noted before, here in the Rockies we can get snow almost any month except July and August. Locals claim those two are possibles as well, but in 30+ years of summering here we've not seen it.

The weather report predicted this snow maybe 3 days in advance. Meteorology is way more accurate than it was when I was young, too many years ago. The same weather prediction says it won't warm up a lot for nearly a week. We'll see.

Portland Dumps DA

The Daily Mail reports Portland, OR, district attorney Mike Schmidt has lost his bid for reelection to a tough-on-crime opponent, Nathan Vasquez. The job in question is actually DA for Multnomah County, which includes Portland.  

While votes are still being counted, Schmidt is losing to Vasquez 55-45. The Soros-backed, soft-on-crime loser has conceded. 

This outcome is important. It demonstrates that even in notoriously progressive Portland, voters can get fed up with a criminals-are-victims justice system that prioritizes the rights of criminals over those of people who behave.

Personal note: Oregon is an odd place, I did my PhD work there and am grateful for the opportunity. Everything west of the Cascades Range (which bisects the state north-to-south) lives under a rain cloud 7-8 months of the year. 

Gray skies and drippy leaves are very gloomy and depressing, as the Lewis and Clark party learned in the winter of 1805-6. The TV series Twin Peaks captures the ambiance of western OR reasonably well even though it was nominally set in WA.

Later ... Politico sees what happened Tuesday to Schmidt and earlier to San Francisco's progressive DA Chesa Boudin as indicative of a West Coast trend to oust soft-on-crime progressive prosecutors and start locking up malefactors. 

I ask, why limit it to the Left Coast? Even urban progressives can believe they and their property have the right to be safe. Those are rights that need defending.

Nikki Endorses Donald

The last of the would-be candidates for the GOP nomination - Nikki Haley - has endorsed Trump for President. She says she will vote for him even though she has reservations. 

On the other hand, she declares President Biden is "a catastrophe." In this assessment, she is absolutely correct.

By getting elected President, Joe Biden ruined his okay reputation as a noncharismatic, unimportant senator from a nothing state. Instead he will be remembered as the worst president in recent memory, a reputation that, if Carter is any indication, will last for several decades. 

It’s the Peter Principle in action. As president, Biden was finally in a position where he was incompetent, unable to perform the job. And the history books will group Jill Biden with Edith Wilson as presidential wives who abused their position while propping up dysfunctional husbands.

Forgotten, But Not Gone

When the Supreme Court decided Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954, it outlawed segregated public schools. You may remember or have read that so-called "segregation academies" sprang up across the South. 

Often located in church Sunday school classrooms, these private schools replaced the segregated public schools and thus education remained mostly segregated. Since you've not heard much about them in recent decades you may have presumed they vanished. They did not.

Late in our respective academic careers, the other DrC interviewed for an administrative job at a large state university in the Deep South. While there, she was taken to visit some local public schools where she would place teacher candidates for student teaching.

Even in the university town virtually all of the public school students were BIPOC. It was an eye-opener. She had the same admin job in California at the time, and classes in CA were thoroughly integrated and multi-racial. 

She asked and was told the white children were in "private or church schools." At the time home schooling wasn't yet common.

Several years later in retirement, we spent a year as visiting faculty in the greater Dallas area. Private schools were prevalent there, too. And a current news story makes clear that movement remains very much alive in today's Texas.

Tuesday Snark

Image courtesy of NewsAmmo, 5-21-2024.

Trende Picks Rubio

One of my favorite political analysts, the felicitously named Sean Trende, writes for RealClearPolitics. Today he looks at 10 of those being talked about as Trump's VP pick, and ranks them as he sees what they'd bring to the ticket.

I won't recap his entire list of 10, but  his top four are Sen. Marco Rubio, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Trende makes much of Rubio's ability to pull in Hispanic votes, writing:

Rubio makes so much sense. He takes Florida off the board (to the extent that it isn’t already) and probably ices Nevada and Arizona as well. He might put New Mexico into play.

The way things are going, Trump may not announce his pick until the convention. It's The Apprentice all over again, playing out the suspense for all it's worth.

Killed in the Street

President Joe Biden, giving the commencement address at Morehouse College, an HBCU in Atlanta, said in part:

You started college just as George Floyd was murdered. And there was a reckoning on race. It’s natural to wonder if the democracy you hear about actually works for you. What is democracy if black men are being killed in the street?

Biden is right about black men being killed in the street. He pointedly forgot to add that nearly all of their killers are their black neighbors. 

He could have noted that we had a policing technique which dramatically reduced the murder rate. It was called "stop-and-frisk" or "broken-windows" policing. 

We stopped doing it because it was unpopular with the black community which accurately felt targeted. The current policy could be called "feel free to shoot other blacks," though no one will say those words. 

Few such killings are solved but the black community mostly does not complain. Thus the politicians don't care.

"Stalking" the Celebrity Bear

We did a scenic Sunday drive yesterday, hoping to see the "celebrity" grizzly bear with the unglamorous name of "399." She's mostly famous for successfully raising quadruplet cubs a couple of years ago, very unusual for the big bears. 

399 is also known for being old and canny - she's in her mid-twenties - but still healthy. She has one cub this year and still looks to be in good shape. The other DrC has photos at her blog.

I write "looks" because grizzlies don't have annual check-ups. They are North America's (quite dangerous) apex predator, south of the permafrost. The polar bears rule up north, and the two species occasionally interbreed producing hybrid cubs that survive.

The grizzly is "apex predator" if you don't count us humans. By some standards we are the true apex predator anywhere on this planet's land surface. 

Sadly, the celebrity bear didn't honor the "room" with her presence, at least while we were in her neighborhood which is the Pilgrim Creek area in GTNP between Jackson Lake Lodge and Colter Bay Village. Better luck next time.

Fun fact: Jackson Lake Lodge is where the Federal Reserve Bank system holds its annual summer meeting. The view from the Lodge's enormous lobby window is spectacular.

What we did see was a very snowy boutique mountain range, the Tetons. Pictured below is Mount Moran as seen from the Colter Bay region.

We Were Right

There is a reason voters aren’t buying Biden’s claim the economy is doing fine. See  two charts from the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, posted by Power Line’s Scott Johnson, showing changes in household net worth.

Pay particular attention to the chart on the right showing “Adjusted for Inflation” data. It is clear our perceptions of doing less well are accurate.

About Migration

Writing at Discourse, David Masci looks at the migration from Democrat-dominated “blue” states to Republican-run “red” states and lays out why he believes it happens. A lot has been written about this migration but I believe you’ll like Masci’s calm, even tone.

What’s new about this analysis is his assertion that the red state model simply fits today’s economy better than the blue state model. The blue state model, he believes, harks back to the conditions prevalent in the mid-1900s, and he appears to be correct. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

Breaking: Iran's President Presumed Dead

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has crashed in heavy fog along the mountainous border with Azerbaijan. No survivors have been found at the site. 

The helicopter was returning Raisi to Tabriz after a visit to the border area, the BBC reports. Raisi was a favorite of the IRGC, his main rival in the succession to Supreme Leader Khamenei was Khamenei's son. In a country known for conspiracy theories, at least some will suspect a plot.

Not many in the west will mourn Raisi. He was a key figure in the arrest and execution of thousands of his fellow citizens, earning him the sobriquet "the Butcher of Tehran."

Paradise Paved

Fabulous quote about California from the satirical Babylon Bee.

"You guys were literally given everything! How do you even do that?" said a spokesangel for the Almighty. "You have perfect weather, beautiful coastline, great surfing, skiing in the mountains, fish tacos, rolling vineyards, the list goes on. How on earth did you manage to take the most beautiful stretch of land on God's earth and turn it into a huge dump? It doesn't make any sense.”

I share the angelic disbelief and disgust.

Latter-Day Valkyrie

Posting at Instapundit, regular Ed Driscoll looks at people comparing Taylor Swift to Hitler (really?), labeling her an icon of white supremacists who call her an Aryan goddess, and complaining her fans are “too white.”

I’ve seen plenty of photos of Swift performing and tried to listen to a couple of her songs on YouTube. I didn’t get what she was “selling” and gave up without ever hearing one through to the end.

I will say in photos Swift does have a distinct Valkyrie vibe. There’s nothing “sweet” appearing about that talented “young thing.” Her image is as steely as Charlize Theron playing mean queen - very intent, very focused.

Swift’s songs are said to deal almost entirely with the difficulties of the man-woman relationship today. Their popularity reflects widespread unease with current cultural trends and the resulting impediments to marriage in our society. 

The uproar over Harrison Butker’s commencement address is another manifestation of these concerns roiling our cultural waters.

Saturday Snark

Our precious

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

Corrective trend

Hiring needed skills

Tech's future

What's in a name?

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Deer in the Yard

A week ago our aspen forest was a zillion bare, white sticks. Today it is leafing out and, right on time, the deer have made an appearance. 

I suspect the deer come for the fresh, new leaves, but the fact the forest now provides cover that was absent a week ago could also be a factor. The other DrC has posted a photo she took today in our backyard, I've reproduced it below.

.

We've left the forest mostly as we found it so the deer are welcome to snack and hang out. We don't put out food for them, what grows naturally is what they are accustomed to. It won't hurt them, they don't hurt it.

The yard will be beautiful for the next five months, then it's back to white sticks, dead leaves, and snow for seven months. When that time rolls around, we head south.

Postscript: Did you know that all of the aspens in that forest above are all part of one gigantic organism? Yep, all the aspen trees in a forest are parts of one enormous plant, Wikipedia writes:

The largest organism in the world, according to mass, is the aspen tree whose colonies of clones can grow up to 8 kilometres (5 mi) long. The largest such colony is Pando, in the Fishlake National Forest in Utah.

Gender and Politics

Girl babies get pink clothes and toys, boy babies get the same in blue. But when they grow up it’s the boys whose politics trend Republican red, while the grown up girls trend Democratic blue.

Kay Hymowitz has written many interesting articles for City Journal, today’s example deals with the political divide between men and women. Men skew conservative, women skew liberal. In itself, that difference isn’t news, we’ve observed it in US politics as far back as the Reagan era.

What she reports that I didn’t know, and maybe you don’t either, is that this trend is prevalent across nearly all developed nations. She cites The Economist (U.K., behind paywall) which reports three trends.

First, it’s the women who’ve changed, they’ve moved leftwards. Second, the gap is several times wider than it was just four years ago. And third, the political gap leads to mistrust between men and women.

In addition to the gap in the US, examples are given of it in South Korea, China, Germany, and the U.K. And it has implications that go far beyond the ballot box.

That Gen Z is coming of age at a time of intense political polarization only further complicates the mating game. Fewer young people, particularly women and those identifying as Democrats, are willing to date someone who doesn’t share their politics. “No Republicans” warnings have become a common sight on dating apps; there are even apps explicitly designed to keep out undesirables from the other party. (links in original)

The gap she sees is certainly a factor in the declining percentages of young people getting married. And though she doesn’t cite it, married women tend to politically skew conservative.  

Perhaps only the shrinking group of women who are somewhat conservative are finding marriage partners. Do you suppose they could be the only subgroup of women who even seek marriage? Nah.

Peruvian Update

Gateway Pundit posts the following story, first appearing in The Telegraph (U.K., behind paywall). The conservative government of Peru has enacted interesting legislation.

A new decree, signed by President Dina Boluarte, has officially classified transsexualism, nonbinary, and intersex conditions as “mental illnesses.”

It further includes “dual-role transvestism, fetishist transvestism, egodystonic sexual orientation, and other gender identity disorders” in the same category. This groundbreaking decision by the Peruvian health ministry is seen by many as a bold affirmation of biological truths and a commitment to providing appropriate mental health care.

I can imagine this will cause heads to explode in some sectors of the US. Others will view it as entirely appropriate but, fearing accusations of harboring this or that unfashionable phobia, will likely keep those views to themselves. 

Ashley’s Diary

You may recollect there have been allegations President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley claimed in her diary she showered with her father at an age when that was “probably not appropriate.” This stated in the context of her claiming she was “hyper-sexualized” at a young age.

Karen Townsend writing at Hot Air quotes fact-checking site Snopes as now believing the diary has been proven to be hers. Ashley is reported to have admitted the “stolen” diary is hers in a letter to a judge. 

Of course the family’s reputation for truthfulness is in tatters, so Ashley may have imagined the showering. Or she may have been encouraged to ‘remember’ it by a psychologist looking for clues. What seems beyond question is that she wrote it.

In this context it is relevant to remember female Secret Service agents assigned to protect Vice President Biden complained that, at home in Delaware, he swam naked, making them uncomfortable.

Some very strange families end up in high office in our fair land. I’d include at least the most recent three presidents in that group, there may be more.

Friedman Recants

COTTonLINE’s favorite commenter on foreign affairs - George Friedman - writes that there have been large demonstrations in Hungary focused on government corruption. What he finds interesting about these is that the Orban government did not repress them. I have the same feeling.

Conventional wisdom in the WEF-hugging portion of the commentariat is that Viktor Orban is an authoritarian, a near-dictator in fact if not officially. Friedman writes:

Authoritarians govern by power and fear, so any demonstration that could appear to confer weakness on the regime must be put down. In such a government, when demonstrations like this take place, the police try to crush them through direct action and mass arrests. Orban has made no such move. I doubt he is relaxed, but he has done everything possible to show citizens that they have the right to speak their minds en masse. He has taken the view that the issue will resolve itself.

Orban’s reluctance to use force is partly due to the nature of his government and partly due to his desire to show that the European Union has misrepresented him – and that, importantly, he is correct to keep Hungary at a comfortable distance from the institution.

Friedman notes that the demonstrations were against old-fashioned “corruption,” politicians enriching themselves at the public’s expense. What they explicitly were not against were Hungary’s socially conservative values that conflict with those of Brussels and the EU.

I conclude from Friedman’s report that Orban’s Hungary is nationalist, favoring what is widely believed to be best for Hungarians, particularly when it differs from what the EU (aka “the institution”) wants for Europe as a whole.

I would add that a couple of years ago when the DrsC were briefly in Hungary we saw no evidence of a police state. Budapest street life looked absolutely indistinguishable from other European cities.

Showing the GOP Flag

The most highly placed elected Republican is House Speaker Mike Johnson. Today he is in New York to support Donald Trump at Trump's "banana republic" trial in Manhattan. 

Politico makes fun of Johnson doing so, I view it differently. If you remember, Johnson also showed up at Columbia University during the protests there and spoke out against what was happening. 

In both cases the Speaker, second in succession to the presidency and therefore the most senior elected Republican official in the land, is showing the flag. He is going where things are not as they should be and  putting the GOP on record as opposing what is there being done.

As such, I believe his behavior is entirely on target. That doing so also strengthens his position as Speaker is, as Cajuns say in his native Louisiana, lagniappe - a bonus.

White Elephant Sighted in TX and MO

Yahoo Finance reports something stunning concerning commercial real estate, check it out.

Burnett Plaza, the tallest building in Fort Worth, Texas, has been purchased via foreclosure auction for $12.3 million just three years after it was sold for more than $137.5 million, according to the Dallas Business Journal.

As well as being the tallest in Fort Worth, Burnett Plaza is also considered the largest, with over one million square feet of commercial office and retail space, according to its website.

Built in 1983, sold for less than 10 cents on the dollar! Another casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the work-from-home movement that now seems nearly irreversible. 

Also, the second tallest office tower in St. Louis, formerly the One AT&T Center, is considered a "blighted area."

In the latest sign of how lower demand is hitting parts of the U.S. office market, one of the tallest towers in St. Louis that sold for $205 million in 2006 has changed hands again this week — for about $3.6 million. (snip) On a per-square-foot basis, the tower’s value over 18 years dropped from about $140 to $2.50, according to CoStar data.

It may not be too radical to foresee urban downtowns becoming haunted high-rise slums. In hindsight, these stories may represent two of the tipping points. How long before empty buildings become squats for the unhoused, or for the Biden illegals? Hat tip to Stephen Green posting at Instapundit for the links.

Home State News

Instapundit posts Wyoming news concerning the state university. The legislature demanded the closure of the DEI office and UW is ‘complying’ reluctantly by renaming most of what the office did as “BIPOC opportunity” programs.

The good news is the following.

President Seidel: “We will not allow units of UW to require job candidates to submit statements regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. We will not have a requirement for employees to be evaluated on components of diversity, equity and inclusion in the performance evaluation process. These actions reaffirm UW’s commitment to merit-based employment practices including hiring and promotion.

Well, that is half a loaf. Seidel has a tough job, heading a liberal institution in a very conservative state.  

If the legislature really wants UW to get out of the DEI business, their actions will need to be more fine-grained and specific. We need a DeSantis-style governor to kick butt and take DEI names in Laramie. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Polls: Trump Leads in Battleground States

 The Daily Wire reports the following.

New surveys conducted by The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Siena College show former President Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden in five of six swing states.

In a two-man race between Trump and Biden, Trump leads 51-38% among likely voters; by a whopping 13 points 51-38% in Nevada; six points 49-43% in Arizona; nine points 50-41% in Georgia; three points in Pennsylvania 48-45%; and one point in Wisconsin 47-46%; while Biden clings to a one-point margin in Michigan.

“The margin of sampling error among registered voters is plus or minus 1.8 percentage points,” The New York Times noted.

Only in WI is Trump’s lead within the margin of error, the same being true for Biden’s lead in MI. With the usual caveat that much can change between now and when voting begins, given the choice you’d rather be in Trump’s shoes than in Biden’s. 

Plus Trump drew a crowd of 100,000 in blue New Jersey. Imagine how the White House feels about that. Not bad for an accused ‘felon.’

Worm in the Apple

There are so many things to dislike about the Biden administration that it is difficult to choose which is infuriating me most at the moment. Difficult but not impossible.

Given the war going on in Gaza and the sympathetic-to-terrorism demonstrations on campuses, I believe the Biden screw-up that is most up my nose is the Deputy Assistant to the President who coordinates defense and intelligence. His name is Maher Bitar, he is a Palestinian who studied at Georgetown and Oxford.

While at Georgetown he was active in the Students for Justice in Palestine, basically a front organization for Hamas. Can you imagine him having access to all sorts of top secret Intelligence data? You know he has in his current job, and those he held under Obama.

If you've wondered at Biden's lukewarm support for Israel, I don't think you need look much farther than Mr. Bitar for an explanation. He apparently is an acolyte of Jake Sullivan, Biden's National Security Advisor.

His presence in the White House is roughly analogous to FDR having a member of the Hitler Youth as his aide de camp, which is to say it is preposterous. Wikipedia has the following photo of Bitar and his family with President Obama.

Riskier Lives

NBC News reports research findings originally published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study of some 100,000 nurses looked at mortality rates for heterosexual, lesbian, and bisexual (women) nurses. There are, of course, also male RNs, who weren’t included.

Compared to participants who identified as heterosexual, the analysis found, those who identified as lesbian or bisexual died 26% sooner, with lesbian women dying 20% sooner and bisexual women dying 37% sooner.

The study’s authors claim the differences, which are substantial, are due in part to discrimination. They also allude to increased rates of alcohol and tobacco usage among lesbian and bisexual women, neither of which would be without healthwise costs. It is also worth noting that RNs have access to Rx drugs which others lack.

Saturday Snark

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