Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark, a Day Late

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

A Least Bad Choice

Seventy plus years of Communism and the almost forty years since have largely extinguished the Russian public’s optimism about its influence on public policy. Thus I have been persistent in my pessimistic view of the chances of peace in Ukraine.

Relatively few voices in the media have shared my pessimism. Today comes a column for Vox, echoed by msn.com, which says a lot of what I’ve been thinking and writing.

Misled by his deceptively easy successes in Georgia and the Crimea, Putin painted himself into a corner in Ukraine. Now his least bad choice is making the reconquest of Ukraine the hill which he must defend to the death, regardless of cost to the nation.

I’d like to be wrong about Putin’s obsession and Trump’s efforts to achieve peace for Ukraine. That liking is part of what fuels my pessimism.

Our First, Failed Socialist Experiment

Each year at Thanksgiving Power Line reprints an evergreen column written in 2009 for PL by history prof Paul A. Rahe. He relates the Plymouth Colony’s failed experiment with communal ownership aka socialism, and subsequent success with private property, quoting freely from the writings of William Bradford, Governor of the Colony.

As we celebrate our national harvest festival by emulating their feast, we need to remember this part of our history. Socialism didn’t work then, nor has it since. 

When … Not If

September 11, 2001, October 7, 2023, the National Guard shooting in DC, the San Bernardino and Bataclan massacres and so many more. You have to wonder when supposed Islamophobia becomes redefined as patriotic prudence? 

With his condemnations of Somali corruption, CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood, it seems President Trump begins to sanction the threat posed.

Later … See the following quote from Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL):

We must IMMEDIATELY BAN all ISLAM immigrants and DEPORT every single Islamist who is living among us just waiting to attack.

That didn’t take long. I am reminded of an Ian Fleming Goldfinger quote.

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

As noted above, we are far beyond the third time. 

Why Turkey?

MSN.com echoes a Vox.com column about how the turkey got selected as the entree for the Thanksgiving feast. Spoiler alert. It did not start with the Pilgrim colony in MA, they probably ate venison.

Out of my family history, I’ll add something the article doesn’t mention. During World War II the US had meat rationing for civilians. Big roasts and hams were basically unavailable, unless you knew someone in the butchery business. 

Curiously, turkeys were not rationed; something of which one of my uncles took full advantage. He and his wife raised and slaughtered hundreds of turkeys annually in rural SoCal, with the aid of a cluster of neighborhood women who earned money for Christmas shopping by ‘dressing’ the birds for cooking. 

Uncle sold the turkeys from a store at their farm throughout the Thanksgiving - Christmas - New Years - Easter season during and briefly after the war. When the production of beef and pork caught up with demand, the market for turkey contracted to basically Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I conclude that among the factors making turkey the entree of choice for Thanksgiving, rationing during WW II must be included.

Thanksgiving

Have a happy Thanksgiving Day, as we pause to savor the good things in our lives. I feel very fortunate, I hope you are able to say the same.

Review: The American Revolution on PBS

The new Ken Burns opus for PBS is The American Revolution in six installments. I watched (most of) it and was pleasantly surprised at how little heavy-duty woke was on display. The first 15-20 minutes of the first episode and the last 15-20 minutes of the last episode were preachy and woke, in between it was remarkably free of woke considering it is on PBS.

I viewed "most of" it because I fell asleep a couple of times. That isn't a criticism, I'm old and Burns style, while elegant, is ponderous. 

The other DrC felt it overemphasized the involvement of Native American tribes and enslaved black people. While accurate, I took that as a given on PBS and could mostly ignore it. 

If I have a complaint it is that, with the exception of Washington who was lionized, the other influential architects of our form of government - Franklin, Hamilton, Jefferson, Madison, Adams - were downplayed. 

It is fair to say this program is the history of the fighting as both civil war and uprising against authority. Designing a form of government substantially without historic precedent happens 'off stage' and isn't a major focus. 

White House-ology

Power Line links to a Substack opinion column by Danielle Pletka who purports to explain the confusing signals on Ukraine peace policy coming from the Trump White House. She believes Trump backs Zelensky while VP Vance heads a sub rosa group of isolationists whose foreign policy interests may be limited to the Western Hemisphere. 

If Pletka is right, it would explain the 28 point proposed plan that heavily favored Russia (supposedly a Vance leak) being countered by SecState Rubio dissing that plan and issuing his own Trump-backed 19 point plan that’s much more Ukraine-supportive.

Or just maybe the apparent confusion was intentional. Trump-the-master-negotiator lofting a pro-Russian trial balloon which was widely attacked, followed by a substantially ‘improved’ plan which is still short of what Zelensky seeks. 

Think of this two-step process as a “cooling the mark” scenario to get Zelensky to compromise and settle for the proverbial “half a loaf.” That makes the Pletka story a sign Trump currently favors Rubio over Vance as his successor, with Trump gifting Rubio a policy “win.”

The meta question raised is this. When negotiating, does Trump intentionally play 3-D chess, or is the bargaining game simply intuitive with him?

Pletka is with the American Enterprise Institute and its former VP for foreign and defense policy.

Three Strikes … Still Good Policy

Writing for City Journal, Tal Fortgang makes a good argument that “Incarceration Works.” In short, locking up the roughly one in twenty who commit most of the felonies protects the nineteen in twenty who, mostly, do not. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the link.

We had this argument back in the “Three Strikes” era of the early 1990s, and it worked. Very many of those so imprisoned were black. Civil rights activists claimed we were locking up too many individuals whose life experiences ‘doomed’ them to a life of crime. 

This claim of course ignored that many others with similar “life experiences” did not become career criminals. It continues to be true that separating the violent few from the not-violent many is good social policy. And apparently this is an argument we are doomed to repeat every few years.

Ukraine Update

Power Line's John Hinderaker pulls together extended quotes from the New York Post and the BBC to get a handle on the current state of play in negotiations aimed at ending the fighting in Ukraine. Much reported elsewhere has oversimplified the process and been misleading.

In Ken Burns' new PBS documentary on the US revolutionary war, an important point was made. It is claimed Washington realized that he didn't need to win, merely to not lose. The British opponent, on the other hand, needed to win. As long as the colonists continued to fight, the war was a continued drain on the British exchequer and diverted its attention from its peer adversary next door - France.

I wouldn't be surprised if Zelensky has reached the same conclusion and, like Washington, proposes to continue the fight by "not losing." President Trump wants to end the fighting, but that may not be in Zelensky's or Ukraine's interests. 

Plus Putin may have concluded there is no scenario (except outright victory) in which he personally survives ending the Ukraine war. If he believes that, settling for less would be suicidal and he won't agree.

Having staked his reputation on settling the Ukraine war, Trump may have painted himself into a corner.

Weird Dietary Science

Japanese researchers have determined that "arginine supplementation curbs Alzheimers disease pathology in animal models." The even better news is that arginine is commonly available, safe for human use, and occurs naturally in meats, nuts, dairy products, legumes, etc.

It remains to be seen if arginine is effective against Alzheimers in humans. Still, if I were concerned about the disease I would load up on OTC arginine as it is unlikely to be of harm. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

More on China

On Monday I noted George Friedman's thoughts on evolving relations between China. and the US. He has had subsequent additional insights on this topic which you can find here. He continues to see hints that China has chosen to be less belligerent towards the US than formerly, 

Friedman believes the change is driven by China's domestic economic issues. He suggests, and I agree, that even autocratic governments respond to shifts in public opinion, though in less obvious ways than in nations with popularly elected governments.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Thursday Snark

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, 11-21-2025

Weird Psychiatric Science

Science Alert reports research which finds a correlation between cat ownership and schizophrenia. It speculates (but correctly does not conclude) about cat ownership causing schizophrenia.

"After adjusting for covariates, we found that individuals exposed to cats had approximately twice the odds of developing schizophrenia," the Australian team writes.

Assuming their data is correct, the causal arrow could point in either direction. Perhaps associating closely with cats increases one’s propensity to exhibit schizophrenia. Or the reverse, perhaps having schizo characteristics predisposes one to appreciate cats’ aloof and self-centered mannerisms.

 Offhand, I find either explanation equally likely. 

Saying the Quiet Part Aloud

Writing for The American Spectator, John Mac Ghlionn looks at states with high and low crime and finds a pattern that is widely understood, but rarely mentioned. See his conclusion.

The pattern is not complicated. The safest states in America are strongly-knit, mostly white, with cultures that still run on shared expectations. The most dangerous states are “diverse,” divided, and disorderly — proof that without cultural unity, color-blind catchphrases fall apart the moment they meet the street.

You cannot fix a problem you won’t name. You cannot reverse a trend you refuse to measure. America’s safety divide is consequence, not coincidence. And every family choosing a place to live already knows it, even if they never say it aloud.

Decoding China’s Intentions

Foreign policy thinker George Friedman launches a trial balloon theory of what’s going on with relations between the US and China. He sees this as signaled by two bits of semi-opaque information. 

The first, and possibly more important, is the sacking of several generals and admirals by the PLA. “Several” is a number too large for it to be coincidence. It definitely signals something, exactly what is unclear.

The second is the invitation to the US of the leader of Taiwan’s opposition party - the Kuomintang. This party is viewed as less hostile to the PRC than that of the current President. This would be like the CCP inviting the head of our Democrats to visit China, as they’re the party out of power at the moment.

Friedman hypothesizes that these two indicia may point to a decision by China to be less hostile to the US than has recently been the case. He speculates (1) the ousted military leaders may have been unwilling to give up their dream of a military confrontation with the US. And (2) weakness in China’s economy makes giving up exporting to the lucrative US market seem unwise.

Because I would like this to be an accurate decoding of the signals being sent, I am therefore doubly reluctant to endorse this rosy scenario. We humans need to resist the temptation to assume things have taken a turn for the better, because too often our hopes mislead us.

What I wrote in the previous paragraph reminds me of a line spoken by Scott Glenn playing CIA Director Ezra Kramer in one of the later Bourne films, here paraphrased from memory. “My policy is to hope for the best and plan for the worst.”

Sunday Snark

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt blogging at Instapundit.

Correction

Eleven days ago I wrote about our new humidifier. In that post I made a claim I believed to be true and subsequently discovered was not true. Here is the false claim.

What we perceived as dust was in fact fine particles of salt from the softened water, settling out all over the house. I finally remembered that the kitchen sink is supposed to provide unsoftened water, and began filling the humidifier there. Problem solved.

It took a week or so to learn that we were still getting "dust" settling all over the house, even using unsoftened water. Instead of salty dust, the new dust was the hard water's mineral content. 

The problem was the type of humidifier we were using - a "cool mist" type. It was spraying tiny droplets of water into the air in a stream that resembled fog. 

Containing mineral or mineral plus salt, the water would evaporate but the water-hardening mineral was left behind as "dust." Subsequent online investigation revealed recommendations to fill the cool mist humidifiers with distilled water, which has little or no mineral content. 

We consulted with neighbors who have had humidifiers operating for years with no dust problem and learned they had evaporative humidifiers. We've stopped using the cool mist microspray machine and purchased an evaporative humidifier. It is both larger and more expensive, but does not require distilled water.

The new machine wicks tap water up into a matrix through which room air is pulled. Evaporation will leave the mineral content behind as it does not evaporate. The stream of air leaving this new humidifier doesn't resemble fog. 

Cleaning the mineral stuff left behind in the machine will be a periodic chore that is likely to be unpleasant. We've yet to do it as it appears to be more or less monthly. If I remember I will report how ugly the cleaning process is, after we've done it.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.