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.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Weird Biometric Science

DEI has resulted in individuals with less ability being admitted to medical schools in relatively large numbers. In spite of the Trump administration declaring the practice unlawful, it continues. Doing so almost certainly degrades patient outcomes. 

A study done in Norway found primary care physician (general practitioner) quality related to patient outcomes. See what they report:

A one standard deviation increase in doctor quality is associated with a 12.2- percentage point decline in a patient’s two-year mortality risk.

Because of DEI, people are dying. Take care your GP was not admitted to med school to fill a quota. 

Thursday Snark

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, 5/22/2025.

A Good Trend

Ruy Teixeira keeps writing columns trying to get his Democrats to change course, these make very agreeable reading for Republicans. Some choice pickings from his latest article which looks at Catalist's demographic breakdown of the 2024 election data.

Obama carried black voters in 2012 by an amazing 93 points. Harris managed only a 71-point margin. Democratic decline: 22 points.

Obama carried Latinos by 35 points; in 2024, the Democratic margin was down to just 8 points. Democratic decline: 27 points.

Obama was the last Democratic presidential candidate to carry the working class as a whole (2-point margin). (snip) Democratic decline: 12 points.

In 2012, Obama dominated Hispanic voters under 30 by 51 points. In 2024, the Democratic margin among these voters was just 14 points. Democratic decline: 37 points.

The widening of the gender gap between 2012 and 2024 is entirely attributable to Democrats doing worse among men, not to doing better among women.

I'm loving these numbers, obviously Teixeira is not. He thinks they prove Dems should change from a DEI pitch to an economic message. Dems on the other hand think their problem is that they have no Trump-style performer-candidate. 

I think it is both. The Dems' DEI message resonates with many who've experienced university indoctrination, but they constitute a minority of voters. And Trump is a uniquely talented politician.

We Told You So

Sally Quinn is a longtime Washington DC society insider, a Washington Post columnist, and the widow of its Watergate era editor Ben Bradlee. In a recent interview she has blamed Jill Biden for Joe Biden's attempt to run for reelection, calling it "elder abuse." Quinn however refuses to accept guilt for not telling us this when it still mattered.

A quick search of COTTonLINE shows we first called pushing Joe into the limelight elder abuse in 2020. We continued to contend elder abuse was an issue here, here, here, and here. In other words, Joe's obvious inability to function has been evident for close to five years.

It is beyond disgusting that 'reporters' are writing tell-all books about his disability now, when it has been on display for all to see since he ran from the basement in 2020.

Plastics Fight Poverty

I like it when conventional wisdom turns out to be something less than wise, which I suspect to be the case much more often than is recognized. I have an example for you this morning.

Plastics have been made a villain, microplastics circulating in our bloodstreams and less micro ones clogging our oceans. A website labeled The Daily Economy runs an article describing all the ways plastics help fight poverty, prevent disease, and actually save thousands of lives once lost to malaria each year. It poses this question:

If we were to stop using plastic tomorrow, global supply chains would collapse, food wouldn’t reach the people who need it in remote areas, and millions would lose access to life-saving medical supplies. Are we willing to accept this increase in human suffering to live in a plastic-free world?

It is clear the article’s author is not willing. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

N.B., Apparently The Graduate (1967) was given good career advice.

Irritating the Pig

I was born in Hollywood and grew up in an orange orchard; you can't get more Californian than that. And I lived there most of my life, domiciled at various times in northern, central, and southern CA. 

I spent my career as an employee of the CA state university system, and retired there. While I no longer live in CA, I know it better than most people.

California needs high speed rail about as much as fish need bicycles. The few high density cities have public transit that works sort of, some of the time. High density development is what you need to make high speed rail work, and CA neither has nor wants it for most of its citizens.

CA is a big, roomy state and it has grown based on the automobile. Suburbs, where families like to live, are based on auto transit. Commercial air traffic between the Bay Area's three major airports and the LA area's 4-5 major airports makes passenger rail redundant.

As a nation we need to stop wasting money on high speed rail. It fits Japan, Europe and maybe China. It is useful in the Acela corridor, it doesn't fit most of the US and especially CA. This is a reality urban planners refuse to grasp.

Forcing Californians into high speed rail will be like trying to teach a pig to sing. It won't work and it irritates the pig.

Weird Oncological Science

Who knew lung cancer had a racial component? UPI reports findings that I find amazing.

An estimated 57% of Asian-American women diagnosed with lung cancer have never smoked, compared to only about 15% of all other women, according to a recent University of California-San Francisco study.

A Korean researcher named Kim reports:

In Korea, more than 85% of female lung cancer patients are non-smokers. As a result, increasing attention has been given to evaluating the effectiveness of lung cancer screening, or LCS, in traditionally low-risk populations in Asia.

As to why this might be the case:

The cause of this remains unknown, but suspicion is centered on genetic mutations developed during a person's lifetime rather than inherited, such as damage to a gene that codes for a protein known as EGFR, which prevents cells from growing too quickly.

This genetic damage is believed to be caused by environmental toxins including second-hand smoke and even fumes produced by high-temperature stir-fry cooking in rooms that lack proper ventilation.

Thus: Grok the wok. 

Peace in Ukraine Unlikely

The Atlantic leans left, reliably. For all that, it is still a serious publication. Today Anne Applebaum reports on another visit she recently made to Ukraine, her column echoed at msn.com. 

Certainly the Ukraine government wanted to show her positive things, nevertheless I believe her column is worth your time. Two particular points of interest I found, here's the first.

Trump repeatedly misunderstands Putin, overrates his alleged friendship with Putin, and often attributes to Putin motives that are really his own. "Putin is tired of this whole thing," Trump said on Fox News. "He is not looking good. And he wants to look good." In reality, it is Trump who is "tired of this whole thing." Trump who is not looking good, and Trump who wants to look good.

Applebaum could well be right about this, it would be an example of the psychological process called projection where we imagine others feel as we would in their place. Here is the second.

Ukrainians believe the war will continue, and the prospect no longer scares them. (snip) Ukrainians are confident that they can continue fighting, even without the same level of American support. 

On the front line, this war has become a drone war, and Ukraine both produces drones - more than 2 million last year, probably twice that many this year - and builds software and systems to run them.

All of that helps explain the nonchalance, even the humor, with which many Ukrainians now talk about the war, as well as their assumption that they will keep fighting no matter what happens.

Skynet smiles. Bottom line, don't expect negotiations to produce much reduction in the war anytime soon. If her take on the situation is accurate and the talks stall, Trump's reaction will be interesting to observe.

That’s Twice

Over the past 30+ years I’ve been fond of saying that the DrsC have opted for spring-like conditions more-or-less year-round. Specifically that we arrive in WY in time to see the last snowfall of spring and leave after the first snowfall of autumn.

I can’t make that claim this year, this morning I saw my second late-spring snowfall here at 6300 ft. in the Rockies. There may even be more to come. 

This late in the season it is gone within hours and doesn’t accumulate at our elevation. Farther up the mountain it adds to the snowpack still there. This a.m. there was no wind and the fat flakes drifted straight down in dead silence, of course. Snowfall is notoriously stealthy.

Later ... It is now late afternoon, the skies are blue, the sun is shining, and you'd never know we awoke to leaden skies and fat flakes of snow.

Wrong-Think on Stilts

A physics prof retired from Idaho State U. has crafted a ringing condemnation of our current national state of play. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link. 

We are, these days, a nation in the thrall of lazy, dishonest, spineless, clueless, incompetent, yet endlessly entitled and arrogant academics, bureaucrats, politicians, media figures, and other “experts” who can’t seem to find their way from their heads to their asses with their hands when something important, like, say, COVID or the 25th Amendment, is in play.

But it doesn't slow them down in the slightest when they decide, despite millions of years of evolution (and a plethora of other ancillary evidence to the contrary), that men can transform into women, that merit is a manifestation of oppression, that opposing ideas are vulgar, and that disagreement is tantamount to prejudice. 

He's almost a neighbor in Pocatello, it's maybe 120 miles away from where I write this. Distances are relative in the spacious Mountain West. I've driven 230 miles to keep a doctor's appointment.

Owning the Failure

Hollywood in Toto has a Bill Maher quote on the sad state of education in this country, and on where the blame is to be placed for said sad state.

Democrats absolutely have to own education. Because that is their portfolio in the government. They wanted it. They own it. If you go to the Democratic convention half the delegates are teachers

The Democratic party is way too beholden to the Teachers Union and the Teachers Union has to answer to the fact that kids don’t know anything.

Among other things for which they should answer ... but never will. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.

Hyperawareness

The journal Science Alert weighs in with a nice long column on the various seemingly subjective methods Polynesian navigators used to sail sea-going outrigger canoes thousands of miles and reach destinations maybe not much bigger than an mile wide in the planet's most vast ocean.

The amount of remembered signs and portents and the modifiers to each were enormous, and the sensory awareness of quite subtile variations in star patterns and wave types and directions seem to almost defy belief.

All of this accomplished with zero precision instruments, and total reliance on memory retention and sensory hypersensitivity. I'm surprised the early European explorers of the region didn't attribute Polynesian navigation excellence to witchcraft or pacts with the devil. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Update

We've had a gloomy day, no sunshine and this evening, as I write this, we're having a thunderstorm with hail, tap-tapping on the window. We get interesting echoes of the thunder with the shock waves bouncing off the mountains which, a mile or so east of the house, shoot up another 3000 ft. The peaks will be getting snow. 

Given the geometry - those peaks cast a big shadow - our sunrises aren't early. I'm okay with that as I'm a bit of a night owl, normally up past midnight.

Believe it or not, in our WY valley along the ID border the only restaurant we find reliably acceptable is a casual seafood place. Yep, here we are some 900 miles from the nearest ocean and we have a decent seafood restaurant. Go figure.

My usual meal there is a hollowed-out boule filled with excellent clam chowder and they aren't chintzy with the clams. The other DrC normally orders fish and chips, but today had the coconut shrimp and chips and pronounced it good.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

He'd Lost It

Axios has obtained audio of Special Council Robert Hur interviewing President Joe Biden. I reproduce for you the first paragraph of the story they've written about his testimony, delivered in October, 2023. The article has audio for your listening 'pleasure.'

Amid long, uncomfortable pauses, Joe Biden struggled to recall when his son died, when he left office as vice president, what year Donald Trump was elected or why he had classified documents he shouldn't have had, according to audio Axios obtained of his October 2023 interviews with special counsel Robert Hur.

Later on they write:

The newly released recordings of Biden having trouble recalling such details — while occasionally slurring words and muttering — shed light on why his White House refused to release the recordings last year, as questions mounted about his mental acuity.  

The audio also appears to validate Hur's assertion that jurors in a trial likely would have viewed Biden as "a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory."

That foggy old codger is what we had for President for four years. The people who propped him up, covered for him, and made (or walked him through) decisions he was supposed to make should spend the rest of their lives in prison. 

Oddly enough I can't get too mad at Joe himself. To expect any career politician to turn down a term in the top job, when offered, is asking for sainthood. That's something politicians rarely achieve even briefly.

More Friday Snark

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Insight

An anonymous feminist J Xs an intriguing sentence, repeated on Instapundit. It is probably too neat to be entirely true, but if nothing else, appreciate the cleverness shown in its concise ideation.

A lot of being “trans” has to do with males wishing they were the objects of sexual desire, and females wishing they weren’t.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Thursday Snark

Image courtesy of the 5/16/2025 Lucianne.com.

A Quiet Visitor

Good morning, friends. The other DrC just opened the blinds so we could look at the day outside and guess what? We had snowfall overnight. She is taking pix now and I will either post same here or provide links to her site.

As I’ve noted at some point in the past 30 years, locals here in western WY claim snow is possible year-round. My rejoinder then and now is that I’ve seen snow flurries in June and Sept. but never in my experience in July or August.

When we went out to run some errands mid-day yesterday, the temp was 55℉. By the time we headed home two hours later it had dropped to 38℉ and my light jacket was no longer adequate outside the car. The other DrC said 38℉ was a good temp for snowfall, to which I nodded without expecting any.

At 6300 ft., snow in mid-May is no shock. It likewise won’t stick, it will probably be gone by evening, if not sooner. So it is just fun, along with four deer in the forest out back yesterday, another part of what makes life in these mountains a treat.

Later … When I wrote the above I had yet to discover that an otherwise healthy young aspen tree of maybe 7” diameter had fallen athwart our driveway. The other DrC saw it when she was headed out for an appointment, which has now been rescheduled. 

Oddly, I know exactly what needs to be done - both immediately and eventually - but due to the vagaries of age am no longer able to perform the required tasks. Getting old isn’t for cowards but, so far, beats the alternative.

Hyperactivity

We have a hyperactive President, maybe the first although Teddy Roosevelt was a busybody too. Trump is moving so fast our sluggish bureaucracy is unable to keep up with him, even if they wanted to do so (hint: they don't).

He spent the four Biden years thinking about what he should have tried to do as Trump 1.0, but didn't get around to doing. Evidently he kept a list, maybe literally, and he hasn't let any grass grow under his feet since Jan. 20. 

Hardly a day has gone by without some new initiative or EO on things as small as shower heads and as big as the redesign of the world economy. He is fun to watch in action, schmoozing sheiks and making foreign policy on the fly. No wonder the White House press corps is exhausted.

P.S. I've not even started to get tired of the winning yet.

South Africa Reacts

The ruling party in South Africa - the African National Congress - has reacted to a group of their white citizens accepting asylum in the United States. The pseudonymous Bonchie at Red State has the ANC's communique. See the key phrase:

What the instigators of this falsehood seek is not safety, but impunity from transformation. They flee not from persecution, but from justice, equality, and accountability for historic privilege.

Reacting to which, Bonchie concludes:

To claim they are fleeing "transformation" while citing "justice" and "accountability for historic privilege" is terrifyingly Orwellian. Everyone knows exactly what that means, which is the continued ethnic cleansing that has been endorsed by South Africa's ruling party.

That was my reaction as well. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link.

Political Realignments, Observed and Described

Taking a fine-grained look at the polling data, Joel Kotkin notes political divisions among both oligarchs and blue collar workers that cross social class lines. There are now oligarchs who support both parties, with the type of business they run determining political orientation. There are similar splits among blue collar workers. 

He also takes note of the over-production of college graduates who have both inflated expectations and deflated opportunities, the latter especially threatened by AI. It is a new political landscape, one having been influenced by changes in the economic landscape.

If I have a criticism of Kotkin’s analysis it is that it is backward looking. He seems not to take into account the changes Trump 2.0 is driving in the economic system and those would appear to eventually be massive. Some of this negativity is driven by Kotkin’s lack of MAGA enthusiasm.

I’d argue the solutions to the problems Kotkin observes with some dismay are already within view, if not yet much beyond the talking stage. If Trump can kick-start a reindustrialization of the US economy, expect the prospects going forward to more closely resemble sunlit fields than Kotkin’s dismal swamps.

A Really Big Hand-Me-Down

Many sources are taking a dim view of the "gift" of a luxury 747 to Trump by Qatar, and I share some of their questions. There is, however, a factor that has not been mentioned in any of the analysis I've seen.

The 747 is an obsolete design, it first flew commercial routes in 1970, some 55 years ago. Boeing no longer makes them. 

Modern Boeing and Airbus designs that fly the same sort of long passenger routes the 747 flew are all have two engines instead of four. They get the job done with less fuel and incorporate other design upgrades reflecting new technology.

Perhaps the uber-wealthy Qataris want a more modern plane for their leaders and saw an opportunity to gain good will by donating their gently used luxury 747 to Trump? Seen in that light, their gift may be no more significant than you donating granny’s no longer needed Buick to your PBS station's fund drive. 

Perhaps it is less a Trojan horse than a shiny hand-me-down.

Politico Honors Bret Baier

With few exceptions, the only thing I watch on Fox News is Bret Baier's Special Report. He does their "straight news" show and tries with some success to keep his own opinions out of the show. Now Politico has interviewed him about the prominence his show has achieved in the Trump 2.0 era.

In posing this question, Politico admits Baier's show isn't opinion TV.

Fox News is often known for some of its more conservative, opinionated voices. That is not the lane that you own. How do you navigate being under the Fox News umbrella, but sort of owning this lane that is more straight journalism?

To be fair to Politico, they didn't fool with his answers. His was the same 'voice' I hear most nights when I tune in. 

They didn't ask about the visits to various executive department headquarters around Washington which he has featured recently. Pretty clearly he has access others do not. 

Two things I find a little tiresome are these: (a) how much golf news gets finagled into Bret's show, and (b) the things which his Common Ground folks can agree upon are real enough but often not very compelling outside the specific communities directly affected.

Mothers' Day

Today we celebrate Mothers' Day, every person now drawing breath on this planet had one and many still have one to cherish. Born when the century was new, my own mother passed away in the late 1990s, at an advanced age. I remember her with great fondness.

She was a pathbreaker in several ways. The second of 7 children, she didn't marry right out of high school. She got stenographic skills and went to work for the Feds in Oklahoma City. 

While working there she bought a new Ford model A coupe. She and a girl friend drove it cross country to Virginia and back to visit the friend's parents as a vacation adventure. Some of the roads weren't paved and lodging was iffy, they sometimes camped on school grounds (closed for the summer) where they could use the outhouse. 

During the Depression she moved to Los Angeles where she continued to work for the Veterans' Administration. There she met my father who was processing VA disability claims. They married and I was born 4 years later. While I was little she invested in stocks and made money. 

In retirement she played bridge and took up oil painting. She did some credible landscapes, I have a couple hanging and they are no embarrassment whatsoever. I hope you can tell I'm proud of her.

Saturday Snark

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