From an article in The College Fix, hat tip to Instapundit for the link.
Wichita State University is closing its women’s studies department, one of the oldest in the country, due to continuously low student interest.
This same fate should await all of the other "victims' studies" programs that have popped up like toadstools in the last 2-3 decades. They create 'products' for which there are no demands.
Defend color-and-gender-blind excellence.
If Trump really wants to stir the pot, he should announce today that if he is elected president, he will issue a blanket pardon to the entire Biden family for any and all crimes they may have committed. He can paraphrase Jerry Ford: let’s put this national nightmare behind us.
Frank Miele, a retired newspaper editor from Montana, writes opinion for RealClearPolitics. Today his topic is things he predicted wrong about the debate. I was struck by the following praise for CNN's moderators.
Jake Tapper and Dana Bash may well have been the best debate moderators in the last quarter century, if not in the history of presidential debates altogether. They asked tough questions of both candidates, but more importantly, they did not interject themselves into the debate as biased, erroneous fact checkers.
Good for them, I laud journalism done properly. Maybe there is hope for CNN's turnaround?
Full disclosure: I never watched a single episode of The Apprentice, a "reality" TV show starring and co-produced by Donald Trump. It survived 14 years in a tough market, which is no small achievement. The entire "reality" phenomenon has never interested me, or to be fair, the other DrC.
That said, what a fine learning experience that show - plus his walks on the wild side with pro wrestling and beauty pageants - must have been for a youngish real estate tycoon. Both were low risk ways to get in touch with the tastes of the American public outside NYC. They were his side gigs while still running Trump, Inc. - his "day job."
My favorite Trump story concerns him sitting in the Green Room after being on one or another talk show asking the techs to play back the tape with the video turned off. This busy guy spending an hour learning what shtick worked and which flopped minus the distraction of audio.
Somewhere along the route he got hooked on the "roar of the crowd," and an entertainment/political career was birthed. His campaign rallies draw thousands of fans much as Taylor Swift concerts do, and for similar reasons. He's a tough act to follow, or compete with, but Bill Maher does okay too, Joe Biden not so much.
Democrats complain that Trump lies. What he does often, is exaggerate for effect. Much as any comic will do. Was anyone in real life as overtly cheap as Jack Benny claimed to be? Likely not. Did Dean Martin exaggerate his drinking, Bob Hope his love of golf? Almost certainly. Like those, Trump fans know to take him seriously, but not literally.
For example his claim that he'd end the Ukraine war in a day. Nobody believes that to be literally true. They understand he'd likely tell Zelensky he should settle for what he has now, do a West Germany with it, and be so dang successful the lost eastern parts of the country will want to be reconnected with Ukraine. And offer the remaining Ukraine NATO membership as a consolation prize. It could work, and he could sell it.
We don't really believe he will deport all the millions of illegals now here, but we understand he will deport a large number and make conditions sufficiently unattractive for the remainder that many will self-deport and others will be dissuaded from coming.
The key to Trump, my learned friends, is this: take him seriously, but not literally. He understands "real Americans" better than his competition. And we "get" him.
By at least one measure, today ends the first half of the year 2024 ce. June ends today and tomorrow is July 1, the first day of month seven.
I'm far from young and what oldsters have told you about time racing by subjectively as you age is absolutely true. The weeks go by like pickets on a fence, as seen by someone on skateboard, close to a blur.
Imagine a TV series set in a small Colorado mining town near a Ute reservation. All of this is near the site where an ET crashed his "flying saucer." The very non-human pilot survived and has gone to ground impersonating a local recluse physician whose cabin overlooked a lake and who he killed soon after landing.
The vibe is part Twin Peaks, part Northern Exposure, part X Files, and part Longmire, with more than a hint of Stranger Things. There are several seasons, perfect for extended binge watching.
The Sheriff is a black guy doing his best Cleavon Little imitation who asks to be addressed as "Big Black." The mayor is a wuss snowflake, there are several loose women who call each other "whore," at least one of whom was formerly a world class skier before shattering her leg and foot pretty much disastrously.
The series is called Resident Alien and it stars Alan Tudyk as the alien who takes the human form of the doctor he killed, also played in flashback by Tudyk. Tudyk played the pilot Washburne on cult favorite Firefly. He was good in that role and in this one, too.
We just started watching it on Roku and so far, 3-4 episodes in, it is both fun and a bit suspenseful.
Axios has just broken a story supposedly leaked by members of the Biden entourage or White House staff. Their intent was to explain Joe's poor debate performance. They say Biden is fine between 10 am and 4 pm, not so fine at other times.
Between the lines: Biden's miscues and limitations are more familiar inside the White House.
- The time of day is important as to which of the two Bidens will appear.
- From 10am to 4pm, Biden is dependably engaged — and many of his public events in front of cameras are held within those hours.
- Outside of that time range or while traveling abroad, Biden is more likely to have verbal miscues and become fatigued, aides told Axios.
- Thursday's 90-minute debate began at 9pm ET.
The New York Post also ran a column with much the same content.
The 81-year-old commander in chief is prone to absent-minded gaffes and fatigue outside of the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. or while traveling abroad, White House aides told Axios in a bizarre attempt to spin his disastrous debate performance.
During the 90-minute trainwreck of a presidential debate — which kicked off five hours after the president’s peak performance window, at 9 p.m. — Biden often appeared vacant or slack-jawed, and on several occasions froze mid-thought, misspoke, or struggled to form coherent sentences.
Like the authors of these columns I am no psychiatrist, and I suppose they worry about lawsuits. Nevertheless the elephant in the room is that both columns describe quite accurately something called "sundowners syndrome" without ever using its name. I suggest you explore that term using your search engine and draw your own conclusions.
Personal aside: In our experience with older friends who've passed through a sundowners phase, it was a way-station en route to memory care.
Nick Arama writing at Red State quotes Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to the effect that the only Democrat who can replace Joe Biden and get rid of Kamala Harris at the same time is Michelle Obama. Any of the other choices run the risk of offending the crucial Black vote.
The problem: Michelle appears not to want the job. The questions are these: does she want to avoid it enough to let Donald Trump be president again? Can they offer her enough to change her mind? Can they get the Bidens to go quietly?
Imagine Barack becoming chief of staff and running the government while she does the figurehead stuff - presiding at the Easter egg hunt, pardoning the turkeys, chatting up foreign dignitaries. Imagine how that would play with feminists, they'd be bleeping livid.
I wrote below of the importance of the SCOTUS decision overturning Chevron. Perhaps equally important is their decision declaring ordinances banning camping in public parks and sidewalks do not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
The Court noted that the causes of homelessness are many and complex, including those voluntarily living rough. It also noted that their decision did not mandate making such living outdoors a criminal offense and a city or other jurisdiction may choose to permit it or ban it.
How important is this ruling? Had it existed four years ago we might never have sold our CA winter place. The avalanche of tents and cardboard hovels springing up in our town's public spaces was the camel's-back-breaking-straw for the DrsC. That and our friend who lived near the large city park complaining that homeless people were defecating on her lawn.
Our liberal university town might have chosen to allow impromptu campgrounds anyway. On the other hand, the homeless issue was key in multiple lefty town council members losing their reelection efforts.
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The 2023-4 SCOTUS session which is ending has been particularly consequential, in ways I view as positive. Many of their decisions were unanimous or decided along lines other than perceived party identification.
OTOH the truly consequential decisions have mostly been 6-3. Thank you President Trump and Majority Leader McConnell.
Everyone is excited about the debate and Biden’s poor performance therein. An actually more important story that may be eclipsed is SCOTUS overturning the so-called Chevron doctrine.
Forty years ago the Chevron decision held courts had to defer to regulatory agencies’ often sweeping interpretations of their powers to dictate rules and regulations. The Roberts court just called this hyper-delegation of powers simply wrong.
Dumping Chevron will mean legislatures will have to spell out the rules they wish such agencies to enforce in considerable detail. Almost inevitably this will curtail the power of agency heads - a good thing.
Writing for RealClearPolitics, Philip Wegmann cites a poll taken before the debate.
A New York Times/Siena poll released the day before the debate found that 70% of registered voters believed Biden was “just too old to be an effective president.”
As is often the case, voters saw clearly the President’s disability. Last night Biden proved them correct.
All Trump had to do was keep cool and let Biden be Biden. This he did, and it worked. Take a moment to shed a crocodile tear for your Democrat friends whose angst this morning must be monumental.
- Democrats really have no way to spin this
- Dems freak out over Biden’s debate performance: ‘Biden is toast’
- Here's how Democrats could replace Biden
- ‘WTF’: Panicked Dems start looking for alternatives to Biden
- How Trump Shockingly Thrived With the New Debate Rules
- ‘A turning point’: US allies wince at Biden debate performance
There you see the outline of a master class in how to react to a debacle. In retrospect this outcome seems to have been almost inevitable.
I will have a additional thoughts tomorrow.
Amy Walter of the Cook Political Group, being interviewed on PBS, drops a bomb. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the text.
We did some polling in battleground states. About 18 percent of (2020) Biden voters in those battleground states are not supporting Biden this time around.
That's almost one in five, it is far from trivial.
Writing at Silver Bulletin, numbers guy Nate Silver indicates that his model says Trump is the favorite at this point. Yes the race is close, but not a toss up.
Silver admits he'd prefer a Biden win, which makes his prediction more credible, in my eyes. One thing about which he is very clear is that national polls don't tell us much. Winning the presidency is a matter of winning enough states to accrue at least 270 electors, so state by state polling is key.
This is a long column and Silver gets really deep in the weeds of prediction and modeling. Honestly, most readers will find their eyes glazing as they read it.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds also writes for Substack, today he does a deep dive into the interactions of gender, mental illness, and politics. Some key quotes.
About one-third of Democratic voters are single women.
Surveys show that, after 50 years of feminism, American women are increasingly likely to report themselves as unhappy, a characteristic especially marked in unmarried young liberal women with no religious connection.
I’m seeing a story that goes something like this: Depressed, neurotic people (especially single women) are more likely to support Democrats. Democrats support policies and messaging that produce more depressed, neurotic people, especially single women. Now maybe this is an accident, but maybe it isn’t.
Making the populace (especially women) more fearful, depressed, and neurotic is undoubtedly bad for societal wealth and happiness. But does it yield votes for Democrats? Clearly yes. Are they doing it on purpose?
Who knows? But it does seem that many of the policies advocated by Democrats and the left tend to promote unfavorable mental states. Cui bono?
Reynolds is a lawyer. Cui bono? is 'lawyer Latin' for "who benefits?"
The other DrC has a post about my current medical travails, which have us temporarily in Salt Lake City. It was a beautiful drive here from WY, we really enjoy the greenery as a big contrast to arid southeastern NV.
You may be wondering why I’m being treated at a place specializing in cancer if I don’t currently have it. I’m dealing with the sequelae of treatments for skin cancer (not melanoma) that left me with a smallish wound that despite the best efforts of a wound clinic, so far will not heal.
For a year I’ve tried everything short of surgery, this a.m. we did the (minor, outpatient) surgery. It hurts, but not too bad.
While I am hopeful, it may not work either. I’ve been warned. Believe it or not simply living with and managing it for the rest of my life is the probable fallback if it doesn’t heal following surgery.
As my dear lady is fond of writing, we’re all in this together, coping with the indignities and vagaries of aging.
An article in The American Prospect claims “We Can and Should Address Racial Disparities.” This triggered a question for me that perhaps you have asked yourself.
Social justice warriors claim all cultures are of equal value, and should be esteemed equally. Maybe so. But what if they produce unequal outcomes by emphasizing the importance of different behavioral attributes? What if some cultures are more achievement-oriented than others, or prize different sorts of outcomes?
I suspect racial disparities, to the extent they truly exist, are the result of long-term cultural differences which eventually become genetic as they advantage different individuals within a racial group. Those exhibiting the culturally prized attributes have more resources and better outcomes leading, over many generations, to greater contributions to the racial gene pool.
I conclude some cultures “program” their adherents to produce more economic outcomes than other cultures. Prove me wrong.
Gateway Pundit Jim Hoff reports that former Speaker Paul Ryan (RINO-WI) had a copy of the infamous fake "Russian" dossier on Trump long before anybody else had it. That dossier is the hit job paid for by the Clinton campaign. Instead of taking it to Trump and asking if it were true, Ryan sat on it.
The strong suspicion is that Ryan essentially collaborated with the FBI in attempting to smear President Trump. Further proof, if any were needed, that Ryan was perhaps the worst Republican speaker in the memory of living man.
The GOP should "excommunicate" Paul Ryan, declare him persona non grata, formally if possible. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.
Good morning. Welcome to the summer solstice, the longest day and shortest night of the northern hemisphere’s year. Officially, today spring ends and summer begins north of the equator. In the southern hemisphere winter begins today.
Constructions like Stonehenge, of which there are many less famous, indicate we humans have been recognizing this day for millennia. Pattern recognition is one of our species’ signature traits, the basis for much of science - the search to understand the “how” and the “why” of things.
Here in the Rockies above 6000 ft., something that feels like summer will be a bit delayed. We’re still experiencing spring weather whereas at our winter home they had their first 100℉ degree day weeks ago and should reach 108℉ today.
Daniel McCarthy writes for the New York Post about the Nigel Farage phenomenon in British politics and what it means for US Politics. McCarthy is also editor-at-large for The American Conservative.
He sees Farage forcing the UK Conservatives to become strongly anti-immigration. He argues anti-immigration pols can do the same to the Republican Party here.
Immigration is the defining issue of our time on both sides of the Atlantic, not only in America and Britain but on the European continent too, as demonstrated by last week’s EU elections, Immigration restriction has a popular constituency throughout the Western world, and its voters are impatient with old center-right parties reluctant to take up the cause.
Farage’s strategy is one that other politicians, including Republicans after Trump, can employ. Here the Farage strategy doesn’t require a new party — the same pressure can be applied to the Republican establishment through primaries.
Whether or not populist Republicans win a general election, simply by making it impossible for other Republicans to win without them, they gain leverage the way Farage has.
You could view this column as another epitaph for the Bush-Romney-Ryan wing of the GOP.
Ruy Teixeira is a Democrat worth reading. Truth be told, he is mostly a Republican who won't admit it.
Today he writes about "greenlash" which he defines as "backlash against green policies." Here is my favorite quote from the column.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs anyone? No wonder Trump thinks he can effectively slam Biden and the Democrats on their climate change approach. They are leaning into an issue and devoting considerable resources to a cause that is fundamentally boutique in nature.
"Boutique" as used here means appealing to a small affluent image-conscious group.
NRA Shooting Illustrated reports that for the last 58 months there were at least a million firearms sold each and every month. In the last 5 years and 10 months there have been enough guns bought to arm every fifth American adult.
Most estimates now claim there are more firearms than people in the US. I grew up in a gun owning family and I still find that amazing. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.
As President, Donald Trump hectored NATO countries for not spending enough on defense. The alliance had earlier agreed every member would spend at least 2% of GDP on defense, but quite a few did not live up to their promise. It now looks like Trump might be president again.
NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg announced 23 of the 31 are now meeting that goal. This is a record number of members meeting the 2% goal.
You have to believe Trump's threat to not take seriously any attack on a country not paying their fair share has had something to do with the improved number meeting the goal. Russia attacking Ukraine also helped with the decision to spend more.
The list of shame - those spending less than 2% - includes: Croatia, Portugal, Italy, Canada, Belgium, Luxembourg, Slovenia, and Spain. In spite of which a couple of those - Italy and Spain - host sizable US military bases, which is quite helpful both to Europe's defense and their national economies.
Of the nations spending less than 2% only a couple - Croatia, Slovenia - live in a "rough neighborhood" where threats seem imminent and both are somewhat economically disadvantaged.
RealClearWorld links to a Vox article by Joshua Keating with a provocative title, The World Is Running Out of Soldiers. It looks at the negative impacts of population decline, increased obesity, and other health issues, including drug use, on the shrinking pool of young men (and perhaps women) available to recruit or, if need be, draft into military service. It is a growing problem across the developed world.
Meanwhile hundreds of thousands of military-age young men are voluntarily (albeit illegally) crossing our southern border, adding to the millions already here. If reelected, President Trump promises to deport them.
Logically, before deporting them, giving the healthy ones the alternative of volunteering for our "foreign legion" seems a wise choice. To date, no one including Joshua Keating is suggesting this, so I will.
We could end up being the only nation in the world with an effectively unlimited source of military manpower. The lure being eventual U.S. citizenship and a pension after 20 years.
A fact seldom mentioned in the West is that Taiwan is the one former Japanese colony where there are residual good feelings about the Japanese occupation. Pro-Japan good vibes are rare elsewhere in Asia and Taiwan's are not widely understood in the West.
We've noted the relationship here at COTTonLINE at least 7 times that I can locate. The first such 11 years ago and the most recent just last year.
Now comes a whole article in ASPI-The Strategist describing the warm feelings between Taiwan and Japan and examining some of the reasons these exist. If you've wandered the Pacific basin as we have, you'll have noted how unusual pro-Japan feelings are.
Here in the high country we've had more than a week of fine spring weather. I guess I should have known that wouldn't last.
Tonight we are predicted to have a low of 30℉ which, for those who don't keep track, is below freezing. As our day was cloudy, we may even have snow fall.
The other DrC stopped by the bank late this afternoon and found their flower pots had been taken inside. Flowers don't tolerate frost.
All this in spite of the fact that summer technically begins in four days. And two-thirds of the country is experiencing record high temps.
That's life in the mountains.
Later ... I just checked and snow has fallen, maybe an inch or so.
Tuesday a.m. … Snow is all melted, but still cold for almost-summer.
Stephen Green, a frequent contributor to Instapundit, also does a column for PJ Media. His topic there today is the continuing exodus from California.
Relocation firm moveBuddha looked at searches for 100,000 moves just this year, and five of the top ten were people looking to get out of the Golden State for almost anywhere else. "5 of the top 10 exit metros are in California, the firm reported on Monday. "Los Angeles has the highest interest in outbound moves, with 42% more outbound inquiries than runner-up San Francisco. Per capita, the prize goes to San Francisco."
“The U.S. Census Bureau reported in March that California’s population as of last July had dropped to an estimated 38,965,000,” wrote George Skelton, Capitol Journal columnist for the Los Angeles Times on April 8. “That’s down by 75,400 in a year — and 573,000 below California’s peak of 39.5 million in 2020.”
California — for the first time in the state's long history of rapid population growth — lost a congressional seat in the 2020 reapportionment. The state could lose as many as five more in 2030.
The DrsC were an early part of this exodus. We shifted our legal address to WY in 2004 and sold our CA winter home in 2020, opting instead for NV. Hat tip to the theme lyric from Rawhide for my title.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has written a much-noted piece about how badly "his" liberals have mangled what conservatives call "the Left Coast" or rhyme "West Coast, messed coast." It's behind a paywall but you can read a pirated copy at DNyuz.com. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the link.
An Oregon native, Kristof finds much to like about the West but concludes it has too many drug problems, too many homeless, and too little housing. I suppose what irritates him most is that local governments are all run by Democrats and have been for decades so he can't blame Republicans for the region's problems.
See why he believes the current (unhappy) state of affairs exists.
My take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.
Perhaps on the West Coast we have ideological purity because there isn’t much political competition. Republicans are irrelevant in much of the Far West, so they can’t hold Democrats’ feet to the fire — leading Democrats in turn to wander unchecked farther to the left.
He does write one thing that is semi-ridiculous, giving credit to blue governments for the following.
The three states with the lowest rates of unsheltered homelessness are all blue ones in the Northeast: Vermont, New York and Maine.
Homeless people are not intentionally suicidal; is it any wonder they don't stay where the winters can easily kill you? The West Coast is above freezing much of the time, and blizzards are rare, though not unknown in OR and WA. In the late '60s I experienced nearly 3 feet of snow over a weekend in Eugene.
Santa Barbara, on the coast north of Los Angeles, has had a homeless problem longer than almost anywhere. Its temperatures almost never drop below freezing, avocados and lemons are grown nearby.
Some of the West Coast's homeless problem is simply down to weather. Living outdoors is way easier where the temperature is moderate.
