Pathetic Padilla

US Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) forced his way into a press conference being held by DHS Secretary Noem, shouted at her, and was dragged out and handcuffed by security. He isn't a "famous face" like Rand Paul or Chuck Shumer and while he claimed to be a US Senator he didn't flash his ID. 

It was straight up street theater, an attempt to embarrass Noem and the Trump administration. It could have worked as his D colleagues were quick to jump to his defense. 

Except ... with no malicious intent toward Padilla ... Israel picked this evening to go to war against Iran. Talk about stepping on Padilla's moment of glory, they really sucked all the air out of his grandstanding. Karma is a bitch. 

It's likely they also stepped all over the "No Kings" anti-ICE protests scheduled for this weekend. Trump's luck is legendary, you could almost forgive POTUS for believing God is on his side. 

Sanctuary? Yes or No

The editorial board of the Issues & Insights website quantify the migration from states favoring sanctuary for illegal immigrants and to states which support ICE's actions to remove illegal immigrants. Their charts cover the four years of the Biden presidency.

I was going to describe these charts but I believe they speak for themselves ... eloquently.

Iran Preemptively Attacked

In case you haven't been paying attention, tonight Israel attacked Iran's nuclear sites, ballistic missile sites, and military command centers. Israel has also targeted specific leaders of the IRGC, and reportedly killed its leader. 

Prime Minister Netanyahu has announced the attacks will continue until Iran's nuclear enrichment and weapon development programs are destroyed. As you can imagine, Israel is hunkered down expecting retaliatory strikes. 

SecState Rubio has announced the attacks were undertaken unilaterally by the Israelis, who have declared they were left no choice when Iran refused to stop nuclear weapon development. Rubio further cautioned Iran to avoid retaliation against US personnel in the region, saying we have not been involved in these strikes. Implicit in his warning is that we are not now attacking Iran but will do so if we are attacked. 

Iran has called for the death of Israel, which they call "the Little Satan" and of the United States which they call "the Great Satan." A view I share with many: if someone announces they seek your death, believe them and act accordingly. 

Iran has been a theocratic pain the butt for their Arab neighbors, for Israel, for the entire region, and for the US. Regime change in Iran would be fully justified, I wish Israel well in this endeavor.

Thursday Snark

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, 6/12/2025.

Wednesday Snark

Image courtesy of NewsAmmo's Garrison Cartoons.

Enjoying the Irony

Riots in Los Angeles ... let me think ... almost as unusual as sunshine in Palm Springs. What I love is the irony of the rioters waving Mexican flags.

None of those doing the waving want LA to be part of Mexico. They fled Mexico, or at least transited it without being tempted to stay.

Indeed, if LA were somehow magically handed back to Mexico, the rioters would leave and head for Denver or Salt Lake City, or maybe Phoenix. The whole point of being an economic refugee is moving to a first world nation, which cartel-ridden Mexico definitely is not. 

LA elected a mayor who idolized the late Fidel Castro, traveled to Cuba, and sides with the protestors. To punish the rioters will require bringing federal charges as local prosecutors will let them walk. 

The CA governor is term-limited out of office in 2026 and would like to be the Dem. nominee for prez in 2028. This unrest doesn't put him in a favorable light, both he and the mayor are on the wrong side of the immigration issue, according to US voters.

OTOH, President Trump has stepped up to meet the challenge. I approve.

I wish I could be optimistic about the city of my birth, but I cannot. It seems to be on a downhill path and gaining momentum.

News from Iraq

Politico reports (not behind paywall, for a change) that our diplomatic missions in Iraq have ordered an evacuation of all but skeleton staff. Spouses and children are to go home, and some diplomats as well. Gateway Pundit adds the drawdown extends to Kuwait, Bahrain and beyond (see below). 

As I see it, there are two ways to read these 'tea leaves.' First, the nuclear talks with next door neighbor Iran are stalemated and kinetic strikes on Iran's nuclear installations are imminent. Therefore we are reducing the risk of reprisal to non-essential personnel.

Or second, as a way to suggest to Iran a not-distant attack. Thus perhaps getting those same talks restarted.

I suppose a third, remotely possible interpretation is that DC has finally become realistic about Iraq and decided to let the locals sort it out themselves without our hand-holding. 

One thing it does not mean is "everything is fine, no worries. Open Source Intel posts the following on X.

The U.S. has directed all embassies within range of Iran — including those in the Middle East, parts of Eastern Europe, and North Africa — to activate emergency action committees and report back to Washington on their risk mitigation plans. This directive triggered today’s evacuation moves in Iraq.

An Imported Servant Class

Instapundit posts a quip by Chris Arnade, concerning attitudes toward immigration.

The entire immigration debate in US comes down to if you see this undisputed fact (we have an imported servant class) as a positive thing, or a negative thing.

I’m thinking there is quite a lot of truth in that assertion. It is another fine example of Miles’ Law, “where you stand depends on where you sit.”

Monday Snark

Image courtesy of Instapundit.

The Unexplained

An article in Foreign Affairs starts out with the description of finding an "extermination camp" in Mexico where one of the drug cartels was killing kidnapped children and young people, and disposing of their bodies. It adds:

It wasn’t the first one discovered in Mexico in recent years. It wasn’t even the biggest.

Then the article goes on to describe the difficulties Mexico's new President Sheinbaum has in dealing with corruption in her nation. Needless to say, these are manifold.

What is never explained is why cartels want to exterminate large numbers of children and youth. The article presumes the reader understands why cartels view this as important to do. I don't get the rationale.

Were they hostages whose parents have refused to pay ransom? Were they the beloved dependents of people resisting cooperation with the cartels? 

Multiple "extermination camps" suggest a need to 'disappear' hundreds of individuals, many of them children. This feels more like the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, or the Nazi's Auschwitz; not the Mafia 86ing a rival or making an example of a bodega owner who won't pay "protection."

A Work-Around

Marc Thiessen is often a panelist on Bret Baier's Special Report. Here interviewed by Fox News' Shannon Bream, he describes the Trump administration's work-around for stymieing sanctuary cities.

Local officials can refuse to honor an ICE detainer, but they can’t refuse to honor a federal felony warrant. So the Trump administration has this thing called Operation Guardian Angel, where they are charging illegal migrants who reenter the country with felony illegal reentry, and then they are presenting the local jurisdictions with federal felony warrants, and they have to hand them over. So they’ve been handing over hundreds of illegal migrants to ICE, and this has set people off.

Outstanding, round up illegals entirely within the law. This has the advantage of labeling those so apprehended as felons who are therefore ineligible for asylum.

Sunday Snark

Image courtesy of News Ammo's Garrison Cartoons.

LA Street Theater

Anti-immigration enforcement riots in Los Angeles, the mayor and Governor siding (more or less) with the rioters. Trump sends in the National Guard. I do believe the summer ‘street festivities’ have begun in earnest. 

Meanwhile polling shows public opinion supports the deportation of those here in the US without permission, the so-called “illegals immigrants.” And it turns out the NGOs supporting the rioters are funded by government grants, a misuse of tax revenues that should stop immediately.

I support what ICE is trying to accomplish. I hope you do so as well.

Saturday Snark ... a Tad Late

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Rethinking the China Threat

China announced the official end of its notorious "one child policy" less than 10 years ago, on Oct. 29, 2015. The policy was in effect for 35 years, having started in 1980. 

Do the math, everyone younger than 45 serving the People's Liberation Army is an only child. The entire body of their actual combat forces is composed of only children, only sons.

In a culture like China's where sons are expected to care for aged parents, imagine how unpopular would be a war where every combat death creates a newly-childless couple facing old age with no caregiver. no living progeny. 

It is probably no coincidence that the PLA is almost never deployed outside the country, and when it has been, they've started no wars. The last time the PLA went to war outside China and sustained severe casualties, was in Korea and hostilities there ended well before "one child" became policy.

It is just possible China has no intention of getting into a serious fight anywhere except in defense of its own territory, and "own territory" might exclude Taiwan, as it now seems to do in all but rhetoric.

China's CCP leaders have held the country together for something like 77 years. That's no small feat in a culture with a several thousand year history of internal strife, regional warlords, civil wars, and foreign intervention.

Perhaps China can, in the current parlance, "take the win" and let the rest of us do likewise? I suggest this as one of several possible paths the future may allow, rather than as a prediction.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Trump vs. Musk

Much hoo-haw about the Trump-Musk spat, a battle of titans pitting the wealthiest man in the world against the world's most powerful man. Here is the wisest comment I’ve seen, courtesy of Instapundit Reynolds.

Both have a tendency to talk a lot of smack and then cut a deal. That’s what will likely happen here, because neither one of them is stupid.

And I also like this more nuanced comment by Dinesh D’Souza.

Who’s right?
Trump or Elon?
They both are.
Elon is emphasizing the way things ought to be.
Trump, the way things are, given the current makeup of Congress.
If Musk wants to fix things, don’t start a new party.
Help the GOP win a strong majority of fiscal conservatives.

Metropole vs. Heartland

Writing for Rasmussen Reports, long-time political observer Michael Barone takes note of shifting tides in the electorate. Time was, the major political/economic/cultural centers he labels “the Metropole” plus minorities controlled politics in much of the world, in opposition to “the Heartland.” 

What has changed is that the minorities are slipping away from the grasp of the Metropole and voting instead with the Heartland. Much of this is captured in a Josh Kraushaar quote that Barone shares.

For years, the belief was Democrats have had demographic destiny on our side. Now, the inverse is true.

Minorities, especially Hispanics and Asians, are experiencing assimilation and consequently voting for prosperity and law enforcement.  But then, Hispanics and Asians came here intentionally, at no little cost and physical peril, to share in the wealth our system generates. Resentment and entitlement aren’t a major part of their mindset.

Our US immigration policy should favor those whose beliefs and ideologies will facilitate assimilation. It should discriminate against those who would come here and try to change our values to match theirs.

Remembering ... on Time

Today is the 81st anniversary of D-Day, the day the largest armada ever assembled in one place put ashore at Normandy three armies, one Brit, one Canadian, and one American. Let's don't forget that the night before dozens of planes dropped thousands of airborne troops behind German lines. 

The weather was far from ideal, the coast was fortified, and the conjunction of the moon, the tides, etc. sort of forced them to go anyway, so they did. Ike rolled the dice, took the chance, and won. 

It was no cakewalk. A lot of brave boys died that day, and kept dying all the way to Berlin. Meanwhile, the Russians were moving in from the East, pushing across Poland and what was to become East Germany. 

D-Day marked, at long last, the very "beginning of the end" which 7 months earlier Churchill correctly warned us we had not yet reached.

Remembering ... a Day Late

The other DrC has been down with sinusitis and bad spring allergies, I wish I could help her but there isn't a lot I can do. It is, by the way, the only excuse I can give for failing yesterday to note "Ode to Billie Joe" day. I had the best intentions which, as is often the case, turned out to be paving on that proverbial road to perdition.

Yesterday "was the third of June," here in the Rockies we didn't have a "sleepy, dusty Delta day." At this altitude, 1.2 miles high, it is still very much springtime - beautiful and green and tough on those of us with hay fever allergies.

I grew up in an extended family not unlike the one Bobbie Gentry sings about. A grandmother, five uncles and an aunt, plus their six spouses, and my 9 cousins. 

In the early years we all lived in CA and holiday meals saw us kids eating at a separate table. The food was good - home-grown turkey - and the talk was loud and superficial.

A couple of uncles who were execs for the SoCal Royal Crown bottler would bring cases of product and we kids would guzzle the treat. If anyone had a private trauma nobody gave it much attention. Halcyon days to be sure, and now many decades gone.

A New Threat

Ukraine pulled off a drone attack on the Russian Air Force, using drones sneaked into Russia and remotely launched from trucks parked near the several air bases attacked. I hope people in DC are paying attention.

It is easy to admire the "proof of concept" cleverness and coordination Ukraine demonstrated with this attack, and the Russians deserved what they got. Once you get past the novelty, if you're like me your next thought is something like "This makes defense soooo much harder for an open society like ours."

A Imagine a sneak attack on the US using container ship freight containers carefully timed to arrive simultaneously in the various ports on our three coasts. They pop open on cue, and swarms of drones target key objectives within say 100 miles of each port. 

Is there any practical way to prevent this from happening? Trump's Golden Dome won't do the job. Maybe 100% inspection off-shore or en route? 

Someone in China is drawing up such plans as you read this, count on it. If Ukraine can coordinate this activity, China can. Iran might try it too.

New Data on the Decline of Woke

In a Gallup poll that was released last Thursday, some interesting findings concerning attitudes toward acceptance of same-sex marriage and attitudes toward same-sex relations.

Stability in Americans’ backing for same-sex marriage masks shifts in partisans’ views over the same period. Democrats’ support has risen to 88%, the record high for this group by one percentage point. Independents’ backing for same-sex marriage has been relatively stable in recent years and currently stands at 76%, one point shy of the record high.

At the same time, Republicans’ support, which peaked at 55% in 2021 and 2022, has gradually edged down to 41%, the lowest point since 2016 after the Obergefell decision.

The current 47-point gap between Republicans and Democrats is the largest since Gallup first began tracking this measure 29 years ago.

Gallup doesn't comment on why these changes have occurred. I speculate it is because a number of former Democrats who opposed same-sex marriage have, in the interim, become Republicans, and vice versa. 

During this same period the number of those leaning Republican has become larger than those leaning Democrat for the first time, perhaps ever. The difference between Democrats' and Republicans' poll outcomes being due to the larger number of former Ds who've become Rs. 

Sunday Snark

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics' 

Cartoons of the Week.

Lack of Appeal

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, commenting on why the Democrat Party platform doesn't appeal to men.

When your platform is built by and for batshit crazy upper middle class white women, men are going to look elsewhere.

The exit polling seems to suggest Reynolds is correct. "Karen" is a taste acquired by few.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Weird Psychiatric Science

Shock therapy has a largely unearned bad reputation in the public mind, as a sort of torture - which it is not. In fact electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), described as a kind of “hard reset,” is extremely effective in treating some of the most intractable forms of mental illness. That it works has been known for perhaps 100 years, why it works has been unclear.

Modern studies of what occurs when the brain is subjected to ECT show them to be twofold. First the shock induces a seizure, what occurs second appears to be more important.

Immediately after a seizure, ECT induces a second major brain event, known as cortical spreading depolarization (CSD), a slow-moving, high-amplitude traveling wave of neuronal depolarization that resets virtually every neuron in its path. A CSD wave is a kind of hard reset for the brain and has the potential to explain many of the clinical effects of ECT.

Recognizing this “depolarization” as the therapeutic event may enable ECT to become more effective, more targeted. It continues to be used.

—————

As a doctoral student at U of Oregon, my closest friend in the PhD program was a married student with whom I’d worked at Lockheed. His wife developed mental difficulties. The local psychiatric community attempted to control these with medications … and failed.

They recommended he take her to the state mental hospital in Salem some 65 miles north of Eugene, and this he did. I drove them to Salem in my VW, and brought him back home.

Over the next several weeks the state hospital administered ECT which worked. She was able to come home to married student housing and carry on with being the wife of a hard-studying grad student.

I wish I could tell you it was a permanent “cure,” but it was not. Her problems recurred over the next decades, during most of which she did not require hospitalization.

I guess if I were to attempt an IT analogy, the mind can be "rebooted" with ECT but doing so does not guarantee it won't become corrupted again.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's 

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

I'm Not Surprised ...

Recently several have commented on the dramatic shift to Hispanics voting for the GOP in 2024. Depending on the commenter's party, they have either responded "of course" or been puzzled by this unexpected move.

I'd like to reflect on my own expectations and how they've come to pass. Around four years ago we moved our winter quarters from northern CA to NV. NV has an exceptionally large emigrant Hispanic population.

Our small town - not a suburb of Las Vegas - is doing its level best to become "the Palm Springs of the Mountain West." It is growing rapidly by attracting retirees, simultaneously building multiple 55+ retirement communities each with its own golf course. 

Local building trades are largely staffed with Hispanics, as are most of the service, casino and clerical jobs. The manager of my Wells Fargo branch is Hispanic. Perforce we have come in contact with a number of local Hispanics and have found them pleasant, cheerful, hard working individuals who don't resent their lot in life. 

They or their parents chose to come north to make a better life, have done so, and they're busy pursuing the American dream. More than a few are successfully self-employed. They strike me as people who could vote for today's GOP. 

Wrestling With Why

There is a column entitled "The Psychology of Party Decline" that several sources have linked to. It deals with the Democrats' indifference toward evidence - manifest before the 2024 election - that their party policy planks were unpopular with blue-collar Americans.

Author John Halpin notes working class voters were not sold on the agenda the party had adopted.

Democrats’ support for trade deals that led to factory closings in many small towns and midsize cities in states that were once Democratic strongholds. 

Democrats’ support for spending bills that the working and middle classes paid for but that were primarily of benefit to poor Americans, many of whom were minorities. 

Democrats’ enthusiasm for immigration of unskilled workers and the party’s opposition to measures that might reduce illegal immigration. 

Democrats’ support for strict gun control. 

Democrats’ insistence on eliminating fossil fuels. 

Democrats’ use of the courts and regulations to enforce their moral and cultural agenda, whether on the sale of wedding cakes or the use of public men’s and women’s bathrooms.

Halpin wisecracks "[The working class] have no idea what most of the initials in LGBTQIA+ stand for." He puzzles over why the party's leadership ignored these signs the party was on the wrong track. I ask myself that question and my outsider's answer follows.

The leaders of the Democrat Party may have been at least dimly aware of the items listed above, and a possible need to change. But they faced this question: "If we made those changes, would this still be a party to which I could make a full commitment?" They discovered their answer was "No." At that point neither major party would spark in them any enthusiasm or represent their preferred policy direction. 

Ask yourself, if you did politics for a living and, in order to win your party had to become something which no longer represented your views, would you support the change, or have the party keep a platform you liked and hope for the best? 

The Bush, Cheney, Ryan, Romney cabal faced that dilemma, sat tight as Trump stole their party, made the needed changes, and left them impotent and adrift. Don't be surprised if something similar happens to the Dems in the next decade.

First afterthought: If Democrats cleaned up the issues bullet pointed above, wouldn't their program essentially be MAGA-lite?

Second afterthought: It is a social class thing. MAGA is better at “reading the room” than the Dems., who push luxury beliefs not as widely held.

Policies Hindering Home Ownership

RealClearInvestigations brings us the first of two articles by Joel Kotkin and Wendell Cox which focus on zoning, green belting, and densification measures pushing up housing costs much more rapidly than incomes, and consequently pushing down home ownership and birth rates. This is happening fairly generally across the developed parts of the world.

I have followed Kotkin’s work for at least 15 years. He has consistently maintained that actual people prefer suburban living, free-standing, owner-occupied single family homes, and automobile transportation. This while urban planners prefer dense multifamily, often rental housing connected by public transportation. 

What remains unclear is how we produce what people want, and suppress the planners and their hive mentality designs. So far the bad guys are winning. Perhaps the MAGA movement can help with deregulation?

Going Neo-Feudal

Writing at American Greatness, another episode in the continuing saga of California mismanaging itself into a place the middle class cannot afford to live. The author basically documents the tax burden CA imposes on what elsewhere would be middle class families. 

Income taxes are confiscatory, sales taxes of not quite 10 cents on the dollar, gas taxes that nearly double the price of fuel, property taxes based on the state’s extremely high real estate values, and more. 

All of this done in the name of saving the environment from impending doom, and eradicating racism. The result is a neo-feudal society of the very wealthy elite, the well-paid government employees that Joel Kotkin calls the “clerisy,” and the masses of poor who benefit from costly government handouts for food, shelter, health care, etc. 

The result has been a mass exodus of middle class families, on the order of 6-8 hundred thousand people per year for the last three years for which data is available. This because the average wage in CA is roughly half what would be required for a minimal middle class lifestyle. 

Term-limited CA Governor Gavin Newsom would like to bring the “joys” of the CA model to the rest of the nation via a run for the presidency in 2028. As a CA emigre who pre-retirement job was as part of that “clerisy,” trust me - you don’t want and can’t afford to be Californicated.

The New Way of War

Msn.com echoes an article from The Atlantic concerning the nitty-gritty of warfare, Ukraine style. Drones seem to be the controlling factor, for offense, defense, logistics, and intel gathering. The US military had better be taking careful notes. Some key thoughts:

For more than a year, the Ukrainian and Russian militaries have avoided using heavily fortified trenches, because they are too visible from the sky. To defend themselves from drone strikes, both armies seek to jam the signals that link drones to their operators, often using portable electronic-warfare systems.

[It is] a battlefield surveilled constantly from the air. When infantrymen arrive at their positions, they have less than an hour to dig foxholes that can accommodate two or three men for a period of days.

What they can't carry on their backs is delivered by drones. Exiting the foxhole for any reason is dangerous. On the worst days, soldiers relieve themselves into plastic bags.

The brigade rotates its infantry only on days when fog, rain, snow, or heavy wind limit the enemy's visibility. On some occasions infantrymen have been stuck in their positions for weeks or even months.

In the past, medics could hope to evacuate wounded soldiers in time to save their lives. That's rarely practical now.

The medics have taught soldiers how to treat themselves and one another. Infantrymen and women carry medicine with them on their missions, and their medics often guide them remotely.

That doesn't sound like Vietnam, or even Iraq. Unmanned systems impose new limits, create new opportunities. GIs have to adapt.

We first saw some of these new techniques defeating old standbys in the fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Azeris being the more skillful users of drone tech were thus the winner.

Prostate Risk Factors

With former President Biden being revealed to have an aggressive form of prostate cancer, the condition is now much in the news. BBC Science Focus Magazine summarizes the risk factors.

According to science, most of your risk comes down to three – sadly, uncontrollable – factors:

• Age – Risk rises sharply after 50. Most diagnoses are in men over 70.
• Ethnicity – Black men are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer as white men. We don’t yet know why, but genetics may play a role.
• Family history – You’re at higher risk if your father, brother or grandfather had it – especially if they were diagnosed under 60. A family history of breast or ovarian cancer may also increase risk, particularly if a mutation of a gene known as BRCA2 is involved.

Now you know, knowledge is power. Hat tip to RealClearScience for the link.

A Surprising Argument

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds also writes for the New York Post, where today he does something surprising. He appears to almost advocate President Trump ignore the blizzard of Temporary Restraining Orders from district court judges. 

It is surprising because, as a law prof, Reynolds normally treats the law with respect. Here is a CliffsNotes version of Reynolds' reasoning.

What if Trump simply ignores these rulings? He wouldn’t be the first president to do so.

Reynolds follows this claim with examples from Presidents Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and FDR.

The judiciary’s prestige has been badly damaged, in part because of Democrats’ attacks after rulings on abortion, affirmative action and gun control went against their preferences.

Will the Supreme Court impose some order on the lower courts — or will we find out how far a president can go in ignoring the judiciary? And if it’s the latter, is that so bad?

Previously, the balance worked because the judiciary had self-control and understood the dangers of overreach. Now, like so many of our institutions, it’s been addled and corrupted by Trump-hatred — and one way or another, a corrective is in order.

I can imagine Trump's political advisors advising him thus, but a law prof? Really?

My hunch is Reynolds is trying to influence the Supremes to rein in the district judges, and in this he may succeed. 

Schadenfreude

While driving cross country, Sasha Stone listens to Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s new book Original Sin - about the Biden White House coverup - and has this reaction to insiders’ anguish at the outcome.

I found it cathartic, not just because the Democrats had it coming, and got everything they deserved, but for the sheer joy of witnessing the most most powerful people in the world have their asses handed to them by the very democracy they claimed they wanted to protect.

Karma … when the worm turns … getting their comeuppance … call it what you will. Tis glorious fun at the expense of some slithy toves.

Memorial Day Musings

Today we honor those who lost their lives fighting for this country and the things for which this country stands. For me, it brings to mind the feeling I get each time I return to the US after being abroad, the feeling that “I’m home, the US is where I belong, where I choose to be.”  Call it love of country.

----------

Mind you, there are parts of this great land where I choose not to domicile. My feelings about the US remind me of what a German emigre friend of my father famously said of beer, “Der is no bad beer, but … some is better than others.” 

At various times in a long life I have called each of the four continental US time zones “home.” I have ended up in the Mountain West because I find it “better than others.” 

I would not voluntarily live on the West Coast as it is currently managed, ditto the Acela corridor. Basically the handful of “blue” states are places I don’t mind visiting, like I don’t mind visiting abroad. But I would not voluntarily call any “home.” 

Both places I now call home are parts of the Mountain West; it is roomy country with big vistas, big mountains, dry air, and life-giving rivers. My mountain valley in WY is drained by the Snake River and its tributaries.

From my NV backyard I see big nearby mountains in NV, UT, and AZ just by turning my head. The Virgin River starts high in those UT mountains, exits UT just south of St. George, cuts a gorge across a corner of northwestern AZ, crosses into NV, and ends up in the Colorado River at Lake Mead. 

While the Virgin is mostly no bigger than a stream or healthy creek, in a desert a year-round river of any size is basically a miracle. In St. George - currently a boom town - it seems half the major street names refer somehow to that miraculous little river.

Three Bad Choices

A perceptive concluding quote from Power Line's John Hinderaker, the focus of whose column is "Does the Democratic Party Have a Future?." He concludes:

Until Democrats are willing to acknowledge (at least privately) that Donald Trump is a far more accomplished person than any of their last three presidential candidates–Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris–they will continue to wander in the wilderness.

Truly, Trump is the most talented major party political campaigner of the first quarter of the 21st century. No one else consistently draws rock concert sized crowds in out-of-the-way places. No one since Reagan has completely restructured a major political party in his own image.

Review: Sand Pebbles (1966)

A week or so ago I did a swipe past Turner Classic Movies, ran across The Sand Pebbles (1966) with Steve McQueen, Candice Bergen and Richard Crenna, and recorded it for future viewing. The "future" turned out to be last night, it felt appropriate for Memorial Day weekend.

I'm sure I saw the film when it came out, but who remembers every film they saw almost 70 years ago? The film is set somewhere upriver from Shanghai, but was filmed in still-British Hong Kong and Taiwan.

There was no CGI in those days, and the settings look very "right" for the time and place. It featured a very young Candice Bergen, I'd forgotten what a classically beautiful young woman she was. 

Steve McQueen played an engineering mate whose specialty was steam engines, which he took very seriously. He'd come from a squared away headquarters ship, and found the USS San Pablo, aka Sand Pebbles, had more or less "gone native" with the Captain's acquiescence. Trouble ensued.

Colonial powers, including the US, truly did have gunboats on the rivers of China protecting their interests and their missionaries.  You hear stories about "China Marines" and the warlord battles of the time. My dad's older brother - a young Army lieutenant - did garrison duty in the Philippines, a then-colony of the US. It was a colorful era. One progressive Americans prefer to forget, or disparage, if reminded. 

Sand Pebbles is a good film without the typical Hollywood "happy ending." It is fiction set in a real piece of US military history, even if that history was 6000 miles offshore. 

Is "Engineering" Even Possible?

So ... how does the war in Ukraine end? Foreign policy analyst George Friedman wraps up an overview of where negotiations started, how little they've accomplished, why, and what they must accomplish to succeed.

The phase of the peace process we are in, such as it is, is what I call engineering. It is the process by which leaders of countries try to construct an edifice that is necessarily based in reality but is compatible with each side’s political needs – in terms of international relations and internal politics alike. The process of engineering is essential and extraordinarily difficult. The most difficult parts of this particular feat of engineering are Putin’s political needs.

Is there an outcome, short of winning, in which Putin continues as leader of Russia? He is 'riding a tiger' from which there may be no survivable dismount except as victor. Autocrats suffer this problem.

In my mind – and this is not a prediction because engineering is not predictable – this ends when Trump makes a credible threat to intervene militarily in some massive way, perhaps with troops, if Putin continues his aggressive stance. European military intervention is not only unlikely but also not politically and militarily possible. Therefore, the question is when will Trump make a threat of massive intervention so credible that Putin would have to accept failure.

Trump may not be willing to make such a massive, credible threat. A substantial bloc of Trump's supporters are totally opposed to further involvement in this situation which poses no immediate threat to the homeland. 

In which case, does the war drag on until Ukraine is exhausted and Russia wins? Then what, Holodomar 2.0 to drive the remnant population westward as refugees?

Update

Day before yesterday we had eight deer in our forested backyard. Yesterday we had exactly zero deer.

What changed? You’d have to ask the deer, they come and go as they please. So far we have not seen a spotted fawn, maybe they’ll show up in June.

Most of those 8 were does, females. We did have at least one buck whose antlers were buds maybe the size of the first joint of my thumb. 

We’ve mostly left the forest natural, aspen trees plus an understory of bushes that bear white berries, plus wild flowers and wild grasses. The deer ‘prune’ this mix without doing it any harm, and it likewise doesn’t harm them. 

After we discovered a clever doe using her long tongue to empty a bird feeder, we no longer feed birds. We settle for those which come for what’s naturally on offer. Mostly broody robins, some “wild canaries” and the occasional summer tanager later in the year - the tanagers are real beauties.

Fun Stuff

Not everything we do here is serious, amirite? For some fun, I refer you to the other DrC’s blog where she shares the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile ‘race’ in the pre-race activities at the Indy 500 race, which is traditionally held this weekend.

They got the entire contingent of promotional vehicles to Indianapolis for this special event - excellent PR for the company. It may be a first. 

In 51 years of wandering around North America in a succession of  6 RVs we’ve seen Weinermobiles more than once, it is always a treat when it happens. Thank you, Oscar Mayer.

Attack Imminent?

An article at the Middle East Forum website predicts Israeli military action against Iran's nuclear enrichment and weapon development locations. Their estimated timeline, Israel will strike within days, not weeks.

Expect repercussions not only in the region, but elsewhere against Israeli, Jewish, and perhaps U.S. installations and interests. The next several months may not be an ideal time to be an American overseas.

When things have looked this tense in the past, Iran has backed down or at least cooled provocative behavior. This could happen again, but those who study the region think it less likely. 

Stay alert, take precautions.

Weird Anthropological Science

Aeon has a long article on how the current human species emerged from something like 10 earlier pre-human species, including Neanderthals, Denisovans, and something called "archaics." See what the article concludes.

After thousands and millions of years, one lineage emerged to replace all the others. This probably explains something about our history, and our tendency towards war and conflict.

We may live in civilisation today, but the genes within us are those that made us the sole survivors of hundreds of thousands of years of intertribal conflicts and bloody, genocidal wars. We replaced all the other humans because we were more dangerous than all the others.

That's us: "more dangerous." We not only eradicated the competition, it's possible we hunted them as food. If we encounter other star-faring species, it is likely their backstory may be as violent as ours. 

Heinlein's Starship Troopers could be in our future.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.