Why CA Stays Blue

In COTTonLINE’s continuing coverage of the decline and fall of California, here comes a column at Chronicles which adds measurably to that discussion. Its contribution is in noting the importance of state and local government employees in the CA Democrat coalition. 

The D coalition consists of the wealthy and the poor, that much is common knowledge. Add to that all the various government employees who are its middle class members. The Ds makes sure they are treated well and they make sure the state continues to vote D.

Consider California’s notoriously generous CalPERS (California Public Employee’s Retirement System) payouts. In an era where pensions in the private sector are increasingly rare, CalPERS benefits (while they last) are a boon to millions of middle-class Californians.

As one can imagine, this makes government employment for at least one family member very attractive and, in turn, fuels the demand for and creation of ever more government jobs—whether legitimate or, as in most cases, concocted.

Some are concocted, most are not. But government employment at some level - school or other special district, city, county, regional agency, state, or federal including military - provides many of the middle class jobs left in CA.

Demographer/pundit Joel Kotkin famously compares the role of government employees in modern society to that of the Church in medieval society, and refers to them as the “clerisy,” meaning “the literate ones.” I get a mental image of a fat friar - robe, sandals, tonsure and all, but of course it’s wrong.

Schools in Trouble

Power Line's numbers guy, Steve Hayward, posts a chart comparing the performance of three types of schools at educating the nation's 4th and 8th grade students.

What is discouraging is that charter schools do no better than regular public schools. At both grade levels and for both reading and math, Catholic schools outperform the other two types and the differences are not tiny. 

When parents are paying monthly fees to keep their kids in school, it appears they pay more attention to whether their allocation of funds is paying off, whether their kids are doing homework and learning. It is also likely the RC schools are more serious about maintaining classroom order and discipline.

The other DrC - who trained teachers for employment in the public schools - believes those schools are no longer doing their job. Another chart shows things are getting worse over time. This testing evidence substantiates her dismal opinion.

Monday Snark

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics' Cartoons of the Week.

Last Friday's Snark, Belatedly

Images courtesy of Politico's 

Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

History ... Rhyming

This Oren Cass column deals with the some of the same issues as the previous post below. It also contains some foreign policy thoughts current in the Trump White House you need to see. Hat tip to Power Line for the link.

In it Stephen Miran, chair of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisors, quotes Scott Bessent, the new Treasury Secretary, as proposing the following.

Putting countries into different groups based on their currency policies, the terms of bilateral trade agreements and security agreements, their values and more. … These buckets can bear different tariff rates, and the government can lay out what actions a trade partner would need to undertake to move between the buckets.

More clearly segmenting the international economy into zones based on common security and economic systems would help … highlight the persistence of imbalances and introduce more friction points to deal with them.

To which Miran adds:

Countries that want to be inside the defense umbrella must also be inside the fair trade umbrella.

Cass describes the dilemma facing other nations thus.

Doing so will be in their interest, as compared to the alternatives of falling into the Chinese sphere or being excluded from both ours and theirs. Only while the United States offers the alternative of “take advantage of us and gain all the benefits of our alliance anyway” does the option of complying with U.S. demands seem strange.

What they're proposing would essentially reestablish the Cold War "us vs. them" duopoly, with China replacing the USSR as our designated foe and some third group of "non-aligned" nations, typified by Indonesia and a few others in the first Cold War. 

"Second verse, same as the first." History doesn't repeat itself but it often rhymes.

The Power of the Purse

Not everyone in the U.S. is wealthy, but collectively we represent the biggest import market for other countries’ raw materials, manufactured goods, and services on the planet. We’re their biggest customer.

President Trump figured out something that we should have known for decades, but obviously failed to recognize. Namely, the enormous leverage the huge, lucrative U.S. market’s demand for goods with overseas roots gives us. 

Trump decided we should demand the respect the biggest customer should always expect to get, by reminding countries of how much they depend on our custom. Plus how he can price their offerings out of our giant market with his targeted tariffs.

He recognized that - if we decided to buy less from them - they’d rather please their biggest customer than continue with whatever policy we found offensive. That is precisely what his tariff threats represent, pricing their goods out of our market.

So far Panama has decided to not renew it’s deal with China, Mexico has decided to help us with a drug crackdown, and several have decided to allow us to repatriate their citizens now illegally in the U.S. Who knows what other nations will offer up in return for unfettered access to our market? 

So far, only Canada seems not to recognize the “biggest customer” reality. It may take a political shift there before it does.

Better Late Than Never Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

A Third Term?

Yesterday Politico headlined a speculative piece about ways Trump might succeed in having a third term as President. It quotes Trump as joking about the possibility. 

Was he kidding or floating a trial balloon, who knows? He sometimes says outrageous things just for the fun of watching Dims’ heads explode.

It then lists the four ways this could come about, beginning with a new constitutional amendment. The most plausible of these is he could run as another Republican’s vice president with the public understanding that individual would resign and hand the job to Trump. There is precedent for such transparent trickery overseas.

I will make a prediction that, in 2028, Trump will not want to run for a third term. I know he seems like the Energizer™ bunny now, but his current pace would tire a much younger pol. The office wears its occupants down, even the younger ones age visibly over 4 years. He won’t want to risk the Joe Biden experience of losing it in office and looking foolish.

From Zion NP

 If you have been wondering where the Friday and Saturday Snark postings have gotten to, here’s the scoop. We decided on a last-minute weekend getaway and booked in at the lodge at Zion National Park. 

We have been here since yesterday afternoon and it has been super, not crowded at all. The other DrC has pretty photos at her blog, as well as some very well earned praise for this special place. 

As she notes, we each came here as children with our parents. We’ve been coming back over the decades, not every year but more like every 3 years, give or take. 

Now that we winter a 1.5 hour drive from here we’ll be back at least yearly, and always in midwinter. It is the only time the place isn’t overrun with what the other DrC calls ‘tourons,” a portmanteau of tourists and morons. 

What would I call the scenery here? Literally one of the most spectacular places on this planet, much of which I’ve seen in our travels. They named it Zion because you can feel the presence of the creator here, even if not especially religious.

Do you remember a Sunday comic strip featuring a Western sheriff Rick O’Shay and his gunslinger pal Hipshot Percussion? When Easter or Christmas would roll around, they’d ride out to the rim of the Grand Canyon and, looking in awe at the enormous view, feel like they were in church. I get that feeling at Zion N.P.

Foot Shooting: Theory and Practice

Ruy Teixeira continues to write the most insightful critiques of his Democratic Party, all done from a “why can’t we do better” point of view. See the conclusion of his latest effort which surveys the Party’s failures in urban order, immigration control, and overregulation.

As long as Democrats are seen to prioritize their ideological commitments over governing well and getting things done voters care about, they will be far less attractive to voters than they fancy themselves to be. Or just flat-out unattractive.

Common sense is the antithesis of ideological purity. The current Republican emphasis on “common sense” governing takes full advantage of the Ds’ ideological fixation.

As Napoleon wisely said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

EU Populist Right Losing Stigma

Angela Merkel was chancellor of Germany for 16 years. She was known for her "y'all come" immigration policy that brought many hundreds of thousands of Islamic immigrants to Germany. 

You have to wonder, did she hate her own country so much she needed to destroy it? Her behavior had that sort of effect.

Her pro-immigrant policy is definitely in the rear view mirror now. The current leader of her CDU party Friedrich Merz has broken the EU-wide agreement not to accept the help of what Europeans call "far right" parties. 

Merz will likely propose anti-immigrant policies the rightist AfD party can vote for. He is tacitly accepting their help, he has already accepted several of their policies. The photo  in this column shows him clasping the hand of the AfD leader and smiling broadly. These other articles here and here further elaborate on this move.

This is a major change in European political affairs, one MAGA folk can cheer.

Fear and Chaos

This NBC News article has a descriptive title:

'Fear' and 'chaos' grip federal workers as Trump rapidly remakes the government.

This brings back memories of what I experienced while working in a Federal office during another transition from one president to another. I experienced the change-over from the Gerald Ford administration to the Jimmy Carter administration. 

It was a transition from a Republican White House to a Democratic one. I was interested to watch how the career civil servants (I was temp) reacted to the hand-off. 

We got a new Secretary and new deputy and assistant secretaries, political appointees all. There was a lot of speculation among the career cadre about how agency policies would change. 

As I remember it, nothing much got done for a couple of weeks while my co-workers gossiped about who would be "up" and who "down." That particular transition turned out to be a nothingburger but apparently some prior ones had been consequential.

Most of today's civil servants are Democrats so they will be gloomy anyway. Given Trump has indicated he intends to shrink the administrative state in ways they won't like, NBC's claims of fear and chaos probably aren't overstatements. 

Offering career employees buyouts will have only exacerbated their fear and loathing. They will gain a new understanding of the insecurities business employees feel when M & A activity roils the workplace.

Out of Step

The nominations for the Oscar awards are out and one thing is clear from those picked to compete. Whoever wins, the entire enterprise is out of step with the anti-woke sea change going on nationally. 

What that mismatch tells you is the movie industry has not yet caught up with the culture shift that’s happening. For that reason, I don’t expect a lot of big hit films in the coming year. An alert stock picker might short industry stocks.

Hollywood is a place where dreams are turned into entertainment. It has historically been to the left of society in general. Hence the McCarthy hearings and the blacklist. When entertainers target the public’s taste they do fine, when they try to shape or ‘improve’ that taste, not so fine.

Latter-Day Devil’s Island

A quote I like very much from Stephen Kruiser’s PJ Media column, vis-a-vis sending illegals to GITMO, our latter-day Devil’s Island.

After four years of a presidential administration that celebrated criminality, we now have someone in charge who revels in proving that he is the opposite of whatever the hell went on during the Biden slog. Trump is willing to treat heinous people like they're heinous people.

The only heinous person Biden/Harris recognized was Donald Trump. A majority of us who cared to “share an opinion” (i.e., voted) emphatically disagreed.

Immigrants vs. Settlers

 The Federalist has an OpEd piece with this intriguing title.

No, America Wasn't 'Founded' By Immigrants

It argues correctly that the British colonies in North America were founded by British settlers moving to territories Britain then owned. There were immigrants from elsewhere, but the bulk of the European inhabitants of the colonies were from the British Isles, seeking opportunities not available in the home counties. They came in their thousands fully intending to live under British rule, and the original colonists lived and died as Brits. 

Our revolution - technically a civil war - happened roughly 150 years later. The Boston “tea party” was in many ways like the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. In each case, a bunch of angry citizens protesting their government's actions. 

The Boston Tea Party crew eventually had to go to war. We went to the polls and elected a different government. Our founders intended we shouldn't need to do a civil war to protest bad government, and so far they have mostly been right, with one glaring exception 160 years ago.

----------

The first of my ancestors to arrive here came in 1633, 13 years after the Mayflower. The Rev. John Cotton was a Puritan minister at King's Chapel in Boston, MA. 

He lived and died British, as did his grandson Rev. Cotton Mather who was famed as author of a book supportive of the Salem witchcraft trials. These, and their descendants, were British colonial citizens who never emigrated, they simply migrated within the British empire.

A century and a half later our U.S. founders were frustrated British who rebelled against the crown. With French help, they won their freedom and nationhood.

Hat tip to my uncle, the late Colonel Cotton, USA (ret.), for the genealogical data. I'd already earned my Ph.D. when I learned he'd done a Ph.D. in Military History at Georgetown U. in 1931. 

In my family, his rank of Colonel was the big deal. Nobody mentioned his doctorate, it's likely they didn't know.

Learning from Mistakes

I’m not the only one who thinks Trump 2.0 is turning out better because he had four years to think about what he did during Trump 1.0. He has noted what lessons to learn from that experience, and what he would do differently if given the chance. 

The improvement is so large that we almost should make an interrupted second term standard for the presidency.  In the meantime, I propose we take advantage of the new-and-improved Trump 2.0 that we’ve got. So far it exceeds expectations.

Glorious

At his Substack column, Instapundit Reynolds posts an Xray that he liked, and I like it so much I'm also posting it here.

"Glorious" isn't a bad descriptor for Trump 2.0.

Not Fooling Around

The government of Colombia refused landing to two Army planes filled with criminals being returned to their native land. President Trump wasted no time in slapping a harsh tariff on Colombian imports and may have sanctioned some individual Colombians. 

President Petro quickly backed down and offered his presidential plane to bring the miscreants home. One hopes other nations, to which we will be returning its citizens who illegally entered the U.S., have taken note and decided not to refuse entry. 

Self Awareness

Yahoo echoes an article from The Telegraph (U.K.) in which Microsoft founder Bill Gates is quoted as saying that if he had been born recently he would be diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. In another interview with Fortune he called what he has Asperger's syndrome.

Wikipedia defines Asperger's thus.

Asperger's is a diagnostic label that has been used to describe a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and interests.

The DrsC have a friend with Asperger's syndrome who has made his living writing code and doing systems analysis. We've known him for forty years. He has had a decent life and career. Unfortunately his kids and grandkids have inherited the trait with very mixed results, some okay, some pretty grim.

Gates and my friend were among those who found ways to make Asperger's work for them while still being a social hindrance. Others are less fortunate.

China Poisoning Us … Intentionally

Writing for the Hudson Institute, former Attorney General William Barr and John P. Walters write about China’s involvement in the illegal drug trade. A key quote:

A recent report by the bipartisan (House) Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) shows that China’s participation in the illegal drug trade is a deliberate policy.

According to the report, the Chinese government and the CCP has been granting tax subsidies to encourage their drug companies to produce and export – for consumption in the U.S. – fentanyl and other death-dealing drugs that are illegal in China, the U.S. and throughout the world.

This is an intolerable situation. The U.S. must compel China to stop producing these drugs by imposing an escalating series of consequences on those involved.

Something to add to Trump’s list of problems awaiting early solution. Perhaps Stefanik can pursue this at the UN.

Maybe the cartels can get the precursor chemicals elsewhere, but that’s a problem for another day. Those other sources won’t be as well defended as China is.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Understanding Why

Before the details are released, I will tell you my hunch concerning why some parts of the assassination investigations of two Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr. have been kept secret all these years.  Let’s call what follows “My Guess”

In each of the three killings I’m sure a lot of effort went into trying to learn why the killers murdered prominent men. “Why” meaning “on behalf of what anti-government ideology?” 

I think what we will learn is that deep cover moles were tapped in each case to determine if the shooter had ties to various white supremacist, jihadist, or communist groups.

I’m guessing protecting the cover of those moles has been the motive for keeping some documents from each investigation secret. Enough years have now passed those moles are likely dead of natural causes and cannot be hurt by their hidden allegiance becoming known. 

Even so, the agencies running the moles would fight to keep their use of moles a secret. Presumably those agencies still have agents planted inside the various anti-government groups. Confirming this practice will only fuel ‘witch hunts’ making life more precarious for this generation’s moles.

That is my guess, for what it’s worth.

Made for Each Other

Let me preface this post with a disclaimer. I'm not a big fan of country music or its performers, though many are talented folk and deserve their success.  And I don't know if you'd call the song "Wayfaring Stranger" a hymn or a folk song, I think maybe it is both.

 However, I am a big fan of music videos on YouTube, and there is one I'd like to share with you. It is Trace Adkins performing at a retrospective honoring the late Johnny Cash, singing Wayfaring Stranger.

Sometimes people will say a particular performer was born to sing a particular song. This one has Trace Adkins' name on it. Give it a listen.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics. 

A Latter Day Abolitionist

Instapundit proprietor Glenn Reynolds also writes an occasional column for the New York Post. His topic for the Post yesterday was the abolition of the institutional monument to sloth, greed, and inertia called the Federal civil service.

The theory of the Federal civil service and the reality of that service are two quite different things. Under our “professional” civil service, though, no one is really in charge. Presidents can’t fire the government’s many middle, and even fairly senior, managers without a lot of hassle.

The thought was that this would give us an efficient, well-run government staffed by politically neutral, expert bureaucrats. We don’t have those.

They’re not neutral, for one thing; they’re Democratic apparatchiks who can’t be fired by a Republican president — or a Democratic one, for that matter. Federal workers donate overwhelmingly to Democrats.

Not only that, they’re not experts, either: I defy anyone to examine the record of the federal bureaucracy over the past decade and suggest that it reeks of expertise. It just plain reeks.

The built-in inefficiency and inertia of the Federal civil service is legendary. I spent nearly two years as a visitor (temp. employee) therein and could bore you to tears with examples of its dysfunction I either experienced personally or heard described by bureaucrats who’d lived through egregious examples thereof.

Reynolds’ solution to the problem posed by the civil service is simple but draconian, remove and replace it with the former “spoils system.” This, he argues, would make it responsive to the President’s wishes, something it is not at present.

Understanding the Now

Just a random thought I haven’t seen written anywhere. One of the reasons on-line shopping can compete with bricks-and-mortar retailing is because it doesn’t bear the cost of “shrinkage,” defined as shoplifting by both customers and employees. 

As big city district attorneys shy away from jailing shoplifters, because too many minorities ended up jailed, the advantage this gives on-line retailing grows. And the number of physical stores and shops declines, as does employment therein. 

The warehouses from which stuff is shipped to homes and apartments were there anyway, only now they’ve cut out the middleman which was the retailer, and replaced him or her with a delivery person.

If you imagine a future without shops and stores, with everyone holed up in their dwellings having everything delivered, you may not be so very far wrong. The need for cities likewise declines. Somehow the image doesn’t seem a healthy one. We are already too isolated, not healthy for a social species like ours.

Looking Back at November

People continue to argue about why the Democrats lost so strongly to Donald Trump. I write to argue that at least one of the reasons was the Dims' penchant for telling Americans that "things are good and you should be happy about it."

They continued to do this in the face of evidence that people believed things were bad and as a consequence they were unhappy. Telling someone they should be happy when they've told you they aren't isn't going to work. That is like trying to teach a pig to sing, you fail and it seriously irritates the pig.

Dims also made much of the argument that Trump once elected would be a dictator. It's an argument that could have had more credibility if we hadn't experienced four years of Trump wherein he was no dictator. 

It can't have helped that the two parties had decided to speak for two different groups of Americans. Dims for the dispossessed, the disadvantaged, and the disgruntled. GOPs for the people who thought the country had been good but had recently lost its way. In 2024, nostalgia was a winning platform. 

Add to all that the differences between a lackluster candidate who dropped out of a presidential primary before the first vote was cast and the most effective campaigner of this century so far, and in retrospect all the predictions of a razor thin win look like so much wishful thinking.

About Birthright Citizenship

The key to the birthright citizenship is the 14th amendment to the constitution. The first sentence of the first section is the key to birthright citizenship. It says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.

The key phrase in this sentence is this: “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” The exact meaning of that phrase is what the courts will debate. Does that mean everyone save those with diplomatic immunity because everyone is required to obey our laws, regardless of citizenship? If so, then birthright citizenship is supported.

If, on the other hand, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means those with a legal right to be here, either as citizens, those granted permanent residency, or those with a valid current visa, then birthright citizenship is much more constrained and not available to the children of illegal immigrants. 

Or it could be interpreted even more narrowly to exclude infants whose parents - legally here on visas - are citizens of another country and whose citizenship there grants their child automatic citizenship in that other nation. That would withhold citizenship from those born here whose parents retain foreign citizenship, for instance those with H1-B or student visas.

Also involved in the discussion of meaning is the original intent of the amendment which was to give rights to freed slaves and their children. Those freed slaves did not have citizenship in whatever African nation or colony from which their ancestors were plucked, if that was even known. The intent of the amendment was to give citizenship rights to stateless people previously held in involuntary servitude.

Everyone who has thought about the birthright citizenship issue believes it will eventually be decided by the Supreme Court. The increased number of originalist justices on the current Court suggests it could go against birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants. The liberal Warren or Burger courts would have favored it.

For an attorney’s version of the above issue, see John Hinderaker’s Power Line column.

DC ... a Parody

We begin with a tight focus on Prince Hunter, who intones:

A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then that it is the year 2024. The Known Universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Joseph R. Biden, Jr., my father. 

In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice Power. The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. The spice is vital to governance. 

The administrative state and its minions, who the spice has mutated over 250 years, use the spice penumbra, which gives them the ability to regulate society. That is, do any act they desire without authorization.

Oh, yes. I forgot to tell you — the spice exists in only one city in the entire universe. A desolate, monument-strewn city with vast slums. 

Hidden away within the office parks of this city are a people known as civil servants, who have long held a prophecy that a demon would return, a magician who would destroy their kingdom. The city is Washington, also known as DC.

Hat tip to the intro to David Lynch's 1984 film Dune, for inspiring this parody. 

Greatest American Figure of His Era

Politico’s John Harris, a Democrat if one ever drew breath, concedes Trump is yuuuuggge.

The second occasion of Trump taking the oath of office also put him in an entirely new light. For the first time, he is holding power under circumstances in which reasonable people cannot deny a basic fact: He is the greatest American figure of his era.

Not just politician or even president, but basically greatest American of any stripe of this era. I am gobsmacked at this admission, and not certain I would go that far, but with a whiff of hyperbole, probably true. 

Noses … Rubbed

The only presenter worth listening to at CNN - Scott Jennings - describing his experience of the Trump inauguration ceremony.

This was an incredible speech for Trump. Watching him indict these gangsters to their faces while they had to sit with him in an intimate setting... they had to sit there and take it. It was glorious.

Those were my feelings exactly. He rubbed their noses in the mess they’ve left for him to clean up. It’s doubtful they learned anything from the experience. Puppies are smarter.

Loving It

Watching the inauguration this morning I looked at the Bidens and Harris and Obama sitting there listening to Trump describe their four years and, by implication, Obama's eight years as a disasterous period of national decay. One to be overturned as rapidly as possible. 

I thought how painful the cheering and the standing Os as Trump made those points must have been to those leaving office. It's the latter day equivalent of standing in the stocks, being pelted with rotting fruit, dung and stones.

I thought, now you know how I felt at all the stupid and evil things you all did while I had to sit and watch for 12 years. It was world-class schadenfreude and I reveled in it.

A Common Sense Presidency

We have a new President, and not a moment too soon. His reelection to the office of President is almost unprecedented and certainly historic. Congratulations, Donald John Trump, 45th and now 47th President of these United States of America.

It is very possible, dare I say likely, that today represents a turning, an inflection point in the arc of our nation's evolution. Not everyone will be happy with the new direction, but apparently a majority will be happy and that is good.

I have written that I hope we are embarking on an era of common sense governance, and I'm pleased to see others describing the new program as "common sense." Much of what was offensive about "woke" and "DEI" and "intersectionality" was that it flew in the face of common sense, required belief in strained concepts that asked us to disbelieve our eyes and our logic.

Last Minute Pardons

Joe Biden and his whole administration is shot through with sleaze and corruption. Just before his term ended lame-duck President Biden preemptively pardoned his entire family back to 2014 when he was Vice President. He also preemptively pardoned Dr. Fauci and the members of Nancy Pelosi's select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 disturbance at the Capitol. 

It is fair to conclude the entire Biden family are criminals or spouses of criminals who need Get Out of Jail Free cards. And the 2014 date is no coincidence. It tells us the statute of limitations has run out on anything done before that date 

It is fair to conclude that Dr. Fauci was instrumental in ordering and funding the "gain of function" research in China that produced the Covid virus, and in the cover-up of its origin. By comparison, convicted war criminal Dr. Mengele was a piker. It isn't a big stretch to believe Fauci complicit in the negligent murder of perhaps millions, making him a world-class villain on the order of Stalin or Mao.

Let's be clear, "select" meant Pelosi chose people who hate Trump to investigate him, guaranteeing an unfair outcome. The committee was a lynch mob carefully chosen to indict Trump. 

It failed because he didn't incite a riot, and "riot" is what Jan. 6 was, not an 'insurrection.' On Nov. 5 the American people cast a ballot/verdict on the committee's assertions and the verdict was "not guilty."

A Trump Whisperer

If you read COTTonLINE you probably like Donald J. Trump, probably voted for him. I just read the best column about our next and former President I have ever seen, and you know I read a lot of stuff.

It is written by Salena Zito whose work we’ve cited here repeatedly … actually 20 times that a quick computerized search found. She likes Trump and he likes her, even if he has dissed her a couple of times. 

What’s more she “gets” Trump, understands why he connects with regular people, people who actually know how things work and how to fix them or build them. If she’s not a “coal miner’s daughter,” she grew up with gals who were.

Zito popularized the deep wisdom of the comment that the press takes him literally but not seriously, whereas his supporters take him seriously but not literally. They know each other well enough for him to tease her about her hair; if she teases him she doesn’t brag about it.

I put this column in the elite “must read” category. I make that call less than twice a year. That is how good it is.

Mean-Spirited, Corrupt, Avaricious, and Vindictive

As Joe Biden leaves office on Monday, various pundits are writing appraisals of the Biden presidency. For PJ Media, Lincoln Brown pens an unkind but probably accurate portrait of the man nominally in charge during those four years.

He is a mean-spirited, corrupt, avaricious, and vindictive old man who felt entitled to his ride in the Oval Office despite driving the nation to the brink of poverty and chaos and the world to the edge of war.

I believe Biden did two massively stupid things. He botched the withdrawal from Afghanistan and he threw open the border. History will forgive him for neither.

And I was often embarrassed by Biden’s stumbles, fumbles and foibles. The world’s supposed hegemon should have better representation on the world stage.

Not Loving Trans Issues

The Daily Wire summarized the findings of a new poll on transexualism.

New polling from the New York Times shows that Americans, regardless of political party, agree with Republican positions on numerous transgender issues, including gender transitions for minors and sports inclusion.

Steve McGuire Xtras those findings as follows: 

Society has gone too far or far enough accommodating trans people:

  Total: 77%

  GOP: 93%

  Dem: 62% 

Trans women should NOT be allowed in women’s sports:

  Total: 79%

  GOP: 94%

  Dem: 67% 

Minors should NOT be able to get puberty blockers: 

  Total: 71%

  GOP: 90%

  Dem: 54% 

Another indication, if needed, that a new age of common sense is dawning as the coerced age of woke dies.

Vietnam to Emulate Argentina’s Milei

Lucianne.com links to an unusual source - Gateway Hispanic - which carries an article reporting efforts by supposedly Communist Vietnam to emulate the government streamlining pioneered by Javier Milei in Argentina. In passing it notes the incoming Trump administration plans to do likewise.

Communists are supposed to love government planning above all else, so how to understand this move by Vietnam? The other DrC and I have visited Vietnam and I’ll report what we saw and experienced which tend to support what the article claims.

On our visit to Vietnam several years ago we saw lots of communist sloganeering - billboards and banners - alongside what was obviously rampant capitalism in action. Lots of gold stars on scarlet backgrounds and socialist realism posters, yes. Also everyone mounted on a lite motorcycle with their entire family hanging on for dear life, thousands of small businesses everywhere, and little evidence of regimentation or standardization. 

As a retired business school prof I pay attention to economic activity in a place I visit. Virtually every new house being built had a shop on the ground floor with living quarters above. If the builder didn’t intend to be a shopkeeper himself he planned to rent it to someone who wanted a place of business, making him a landlord. 

It was very clear that whatever government slogans were being mouthed, the people were culturally capitalists and getting on with their businesses. We also experienced some of this in 1980s China.

So whatever Marx and Mao said and wrote, the people of Asia have a seemingly quite strong sense of doing business and getting ahead that likely dates back centuries. The former Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, is a teeming, sweltering place with thousands of motorbikes put-putting every which way. And shops large and small everywhere you look.

I suspect the Vietnamese used the Communists’ sense of organization to help them get the foreigners to leave and are now honoring that “dictatorship of the proletariat” ideology more in the breach than in actuality. They understand neighbor China is a bigger threat than the far off U.S., and are among those contesting China’s attempts at hegemony in the greater South China Sea.

So yes, I can imagine Vietnam discovering the bureaucrats cost more than they were worth (certainly true here) and made doing everything much harder than it needed to be (ditto). Some regulation is necessary but it is easily overdone and should be kept to a minimum. Human beings thrive better when largely responsible for their own outcomes - good and bad.

David Lynch 1946 - 2025

People are writing to eulogize the great film director David Lynch. He is being remembered for the surreal TV mini-series Twin Peaks and a number of films. 

Most remembrances I’ve seen do not mention Lynch’s 1984 version of Frank Herbert’s Dune. I suppose the authors prefer the more recent adaptation by Villeneuve, two episodes of which are already released.

I have seen both versions as well as the TV miniseries. I prefer the mini-series to the Villeneuve effort. The Lynch 1984 film which I own on DVD and watch at least once a year is my favorite of the three. 

The Lynch film opens with a soliloquy by Princess Irulan (Virginia Madsen), of which the first line is this.

A beginning is a very delicate time.

Delicate indeed. Let’s hold that thought on Monday as a new President is inaugurated. 

Process Note

I will be traveling over the weekend. The Friday and Saturday "memefests" I normally post will certainly be late and may not happen at all. If they don't, never fear, the popular features will return next week.

Thinking About China and War

Something to keep in mind when considering China as an adversary. Expect much of its adversarial activity to be of a nature and level calculated to remain below the threshold of a shooting war, for the following reason.

China began it's one-child policy in 1980 and ended it in 2016. The "only child" cadre born during that period are now aged 9 - 44. Coincidentally all of China's current People's Liberation Army front line personnel, as well as some of its officers, were born during that period.

If China chooses to go to war and loses many thousands of men, and somewhat fewer women, each of those families ends at that point. In an ancestor-honoring or -worshiping society can you imagine the impact? 

I'm sure I cannot grasp the full meaning of that calamity as we don't much honor our ancestors, we may not even like them much. I suspect the PLA may be substantially less effective than its numbers might suggest at first, especially if committed outside of what is normally considered China.

China's leaders have to be substantially reluctant to commit troops in serious combat beyond China's borders. They in fact have not done so in any large numbers since the Korean War ended, decades before 1980. The social upheaval implicit in long PLA casualty lists could be regime-ending, and China's ruling oligarchs know it.

An Exaggeration

In his Morning Briefing column for PJ Media, Stephen Kruiser makes a comment with which I take issue. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link. Kruiser writes:

I'm just saying that the worst Republican in Congress is exponentially better than the best Democrat.

From my Republican perspective, the best Democrat is probably Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), although I don't think much of his sartorial choices. Without analyzing his voting record, at least his public utterances reported in the press strike me as more sensible than the bumf often attributed to Lisa Murkowski (RINO-AK) and Susan Collins (RINO-ME). I'm just sayin'....

My Funny Valentine

When asked today about fears she will “weaponize” the DOJ against Trump’s enemies, I wish Pam Bondi had replied, “I intend to follow AG Merrick Garland’s sterling example. Of which I’m certain you approve. I’ve been interviewing prospective special prosecutors, several of whom show real promise.”

Heads would have exploded all over the District. I know why she treated the question seriously, but making fun of the question and the person asking it would have been hilarious.

About Drone Warfare

Conventional wisdom holds that artillery is "the queen of battle," the most effective weapon of war. Given modern drone technology, the lobbing of explosives at a distant enemy is evolving.

Ballistic artillery shells travel in straight line arcs and a combination of radar and computers can determine their launch point within a few feet by tracking the arc back to its origin. This enables what is called "counter-battery fire" where your own artillery fires at the opponent's guns which are shelling you.

The artilleryman's response to counter-battery fire is what is called "shoot and scoot," where you rapidly fire a few rounds and quickly move several hundred yards (or more) away. Such movement attracts unhelpful attention by the enemy but moving targets are harder to hit and counter-battery fire aimed at the point from which you fired falls on empty dirt.

An Xtra makes an interesting point about drone use in warfare, especially explosive "suicide" drones as a substitute for artillery. Drones almost certainly do not travel in straight arcs from launch to target, as such backtracking them and firing at the launch point may not be possible from the battlefield. 

Possibly the only counter to a drone launch point is satellite-based "look down" radar that sees launches happen and directs counter-battery fire at the launch site. 

Relatively speaking drones are cheap, counter-drone missiles exist but are expensive, the disparity being something like $1000 vs. $500,000. Actually a large model airplane with a grenade or other explosive as weapon can be a drone. Missiles which can track and shoot down drones are too costly to expend hundreds of them per day. 

Because of the cost disparity launching too many drones to overwhelm a fancy anti-drone system is feasible. To date, no one has figured out how to cope with drone swarms. Launch several drones at a target and at least 1-2 are likely to penetrate whatever AA fire is directed at them and detonate on the target. 

It is an interesting dilemma. Poor assailants can tie up or defeat expensive defenses with cheap drones. If you're a poor assailant you view this as a boon, if you are a wealthy fat target you hate this reality a great deal. This is the dilemma at the mouth of the Red Sea posed by the Houthis. 

Another Win Documented

From California, Power Line's Steve Hayward reports that, in anticipation of the Trump presidency, the CA Air Resources Board has withdrawn four requests for waiver of national regulations. Those waivers had sought permission to impose stricter limits than the rest of the nation.

The most grievous was one mandating the end of diesel trucks. Evidence has shown that the huge weight of the batteries needed for EVs to pull heavy loads cancels out any advantage over diesel.

Further evidence, if any was needed, that we are seeing salutary outcomes from the new Trump administration, even before it takes office. I cautiously admit to some modest optimism that a common sense era may be aborning.

A Coven of Karens

In yesterday's Senate hearing on the proposed appointment of Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, several Democrat women senators managed to beclown themselves, acting like a coven of harpies. They aren't the image the Democrats want their party to have in the public mind. 

As one of Bret Baier's panelists noted last night, in order to win the Dims need to convince some GOP senators to join their cause. The morals approach wasn't the winning card to for them to play. It didn't work against Trump, nor against Hegseth.

Republicans are genuinely split over whether isolationism or a smarter international involvement is the wiser path. Getting Hegseth on the record as siding with either position would have potentially alienated some Republicans, but they didn't try to do this.

Had they tried it, Hegseth's wise answer would have been along the lines of "The President makes foreign policy. My job will be to have our military ready to defend our nation and support with force his foreign policy aims. That will be my focus as SecDef."

One Week Left

Seven days to inauguration (again) of President-elect Trump. It’s gotten close enough to count down the days. 

If you’re like me you have fingers crossed Biden won’t commit further indiscretions between now and then. Sadly, there are no guarantees some awful notion won't bubble up through Biden foggy mind and be whispered to, and acted on by, one of his faceless minions.

Later ... It already happened. He today removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Add that to the growing list of executive actions Trump will need to reverse asap.

Scumbags ... and Their Enablers

Kurt Schlichter writes "take no prisoners" conservative columns for Townhall. Today he dips his pen in sulfuric acid and etches a bitter portrait of today's California. Here is a sample.

Today’s California is a feudal society with an affluent aristocracy – their castles and keeps were the ones burned in this fire – lording over a huge caste of serfs. The middle class is either gone or leaving.

It was the middle class that made California a Republican state for so long. They were the ones who demanded good government. Most of them are now in Texas or Idaho.

That leaves a bunch of really poor people and a few really rich ones. The poor people vote Democrat because the Dems feed them scraps, and the rich people vote Democrat because it makes them feel that they’re not the complete scumbags that, in many cases, they are.

What remains of CA's middle class is the government employees who work for its cities, counties, special districts, the state, and the feds. Many are well-paid and have good benefits. Their unions fund the election campaigns of CA's Democrat elected officialdom who repay the favor when union contracts are negotiated. 

In Schlichter's feudal model public employees occupy the role of the Church, Joel Kotkin refers to them as the "clerisy." In feudal times the Church enabled the nobles, today’s government employees fulfill a similar role. They "manage" the poor and the infrastructure on behalf of the current aristos.

Whither Greenland?

The New Yorker looks at Trump’s expressed interest in Greenland, asks is his interest real, and concludes it is. They note:

Last week, Denmark’s foreign minister said that his government was “open to dialogue” with the United States on how the two countries could coöperate in the Arctic region, including Greenland. “I presume the idea is not to start a war or to invade,” Vidal said. “But over time there could well be significant economic and military deals that would bring Greenland a lot closer to the United States. That is the most likely outcome, in my opinion.”

Florian Vidal is a scholar at the Arctic University of Norway who specializes in polar geopolitics. This is one view, obviously there are others.

For example I can imagine Greenland signing with the U.S. a "compact of free association" (aka COPA) similar to those we have with the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau.

Placing Blame

Thinking about the really lame governmental responses to the LA area fires forces upon one the following conclusion. We have to blame the relevant elected officials, and they are all Democrats. 

I'm talking about the Governor, super majorities of both houses of the CA legislature, the Mayor of LA, the City Council, the Coastal Commission, the DWP, you name it. All are Democrats, even those supposedly nonpartisan.

As you might imagine, Republicans are going to point out this Democrat monopolization of the levers of power in the Golden State generally and in the LA basin in particular. We already hear these officials bemoaning the injection of politics into a naturally occurring tragedy. It has been amplified by their governmental malfeasance, corruption, misplaced priorities and general ineptitude.

Wildfires are a fact of life in California, and as such their management must be high on the priority list of any CA official. If that had been the case, we wouldn't be talking about the worst firestorm in the area's history. 

Firefighting isn't sexy but it is absolutely essential. Doing it well is expected but wins you no kudos from the voters. Like the current Secretary of Transportation, you only notice it when it's done poorly or fails. 

LA has failed the test, and its voters are going to notice. CA also has failed the test, and its voters will notice as well. 

It will be surprising if the political careers of Gov. Newsom and Mayor Bass aren't damaged beyond repair because this firestorm happened on their watch, during their incumbency. It was made orders of magnitude worse by their mismanagement. 

Fire hydrants without water are ridiculous. The equivalent of cops knowingly carrying unloaded weapons.

The Vice Presidential Jinx

I'm sure I'm not the first person to have noticed that in the last century those Vice Presidents who later run for the presidency do not fare especially well. Some fail to get elected, some get elected but cannot get reelected, some have decided not to run for reelection, and some have resigned.

Franklin Roosevelt's last VP Harry Truman served most of FDR's fourth term, and was elected once to the office, but didn't run for reelection though he was eligible to do so. History treats him kindly but he was quite unpopular when he left office.

Eisenhower's VP Richard Nixon ran but was defeated by Kennedy. Kennedy's VP Lyndon Johnson assumed the office when Kennedy was killed, won election to continue in office but, like Truman, decided not to run for reelection. Probably for the same reason, too.

Nixon ran again following Johnson, won, and then won reelection but resigned because of Watergate. Nixon's second VP Gerald Ford assumed office when Nixon resigned but could not get elected when he subsequently ran for the presidency. Carter's VP Walter Mondale ran for president but was defeated.

Reagan's VP George H.W. Bush was elected POTUS but failed to get reelected. Clinton's VP Al Gore ran for president but was defeated. Barack Obama's VP Joe Biden was elected but couldn't get renominated by his party. Trump's first VP Mike Pence could not secure his party's nomination.

Biden's VP Kamala Harris inherited the nomination but was defeated. No former VP has served two full consecutive terms as president in the last century.

The vice presidency appears to be an inherently unlucky office. Yet people continue to volunteer for the job that former VP John Nance Garner confided to fellow Texan LBJ "wasn't worth a bucket of warm spit." 

N.B., I'd guess "spit" was something equally biological, but even less attractive, in the original.

Late Regime

Ron Brownstein has been writing politics as long as I can remember, and though he leans left, he knows too much to turn him completely into a propagandist. Here writing for The Atlantic and copied out from behind their paywall by msn.com, Brownstein uses an analytic framework by Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek that looks at "late regime" presidencies, men who served at the ends of multi-cycle period of dominance by one party or the other. 

He identifies a couple of the most recent as Hoover and Carter. Hoover led to FDR and a long period of Democrat dominance, Carter led to Reagan and a stretch of Republican presidencies. Brownstein asks the question is Biden another of these late regime presidents whose successor Trump redefines partisan boundaries, shifts constituencies, and begins another dominant cycle lasting for several presidential cycles?

Brownstein concludes there is a serious possibility that 2024 was one of those inflection points in our nation's political trajectory. That Biden will be grouped with Carter and Hoover meaning, if you've done the math, Trump can be as consequential as FDR and Reagan. 

Brownstein writes he asked Skowronek if Biden-to-Trump fit the pattern of Carter-to-Reagan and Hoover-to-FDR. Skowronek agreed that the key factors were in place. I'm sure it gives Brownstein little pleasure in writing this, see his conclusion.

For Democrats, however, the sobering precedent of the Carter era is a public loss of faith that set up 12 years of Republican control of the White House. They can only hope that the late-regime rejection of Biden doesn't trigger another period of consolidated GOP dominance.

Brownstein is careful not to name the Democrat stretch which may be ending. It is the 16 year Obama era that encompasses both his terms in office, the Trump term when Obama wasn't in office but dominated his party, and then the Biden term which many have viewed as Obama's de facto 'third term.' 

Got Woke, Went Broke

Glenn Beaton is the sage of Aspen, and a skilled columnist. Today he does an excellent job of deconstructing "woke" and its handmaiden "DEI." 

The thread that ties it all together for him is the Dims' obsession with everything being "RACIST!" (his caps, not mine). Leading the charge are the four young non-white Congresswomen of "the Squad" and their less famous allies. 

His column is definitely worth your time. Of the damage they've done to the Dim party, he concludes thus.

It’s one thing to argue that your position is the better one on the merits. That argument allows for negotiation and compromise. It’s another thing to climb down from a moralistic perch where you shout that your opponent’s focus on merit simply proves he’s a . . .

RACIST!

We’ve never seen a political climate quite like the current one. The Democrats went way out on a race limb, sawed it off, and are now surprised that they and their limb – not the tree – have fallen.

If the Squad's efforts leave the Dims wandering in the wilderness for several electoral cycles, it certainly won't hurt my feelings overmuch. That is the usual price a party pays when its efforts to lead Bob and Sue Public to a more 'enlightened' understanding fail. Finance types would describe it as "getting over your skis."

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.