About Virginia

Thinking about the Abigail Spanberger (D) win in Virginia yesterday, handily defeating Winsome Sears (R). VA is an interesting mix of two very different kinds of voters. 

The DC suburbs of northern VA are loaded with federal workers, most of whom will be Democrats. The rest of VA is part of the old South, where a majority tends to be Republican these days.

What I’m curious about is turnout in those parts of VA which are not DC bedroom communities. Southern whites don’t elect a lot of black candidates. I can imagine them viewing the Spanberger/Sears contest as a choice between two unattractive candidates and not bothering to vote. 

Four years ago Republicans Youngkin and Sears were elected when the hot issue in VA was excessive wokeness in the public schools. It may have gotten some fedgov worker-parents to vote Republican, albeit reluctantly.

The boys-in-girls’-locker-rooms issue isn’t so hot four years later. Fedgov workers missing shutdown paychecks is currently front and center. 

A differential analysis of turnout in the two quite different regions of VA over the last two off-year elections will be interesting, if anyone does it. I add that postscript because those who think the answers will be unflattering may skip the analysis. I’m looking at you, Larry Sabato.

The Elections

There were off season elections yesterday in New Jersey, Virginia, New York City, and a few other less consequential places. All these jurisdictions lean Democrat and all were won by Democrats, no surprises there. If there were any bright spots for Republicans no one has yet reported them.

Tomorrow will bring thumb-sucker essays where pundits try to tease some larger meaning from these meager results. It isn't clear any such omens and portents should be inferred. 

Would you draw national conclusions from a Republican winning in TX of FL? Probably not, so why get excited about Democrats winning where they usually win? Answer: you shouldn't.

The Mamdani win in NYC is a first, of sorts. However people with good sense choose not to live in big cities so big cities electing people who seem to likely to make things worse is maybe what we should expect. 

My cynical take is this: NYC and Mamdani deserve each other.

A Lesson Learned

Anyone but a bedouin would call the terrain hereabouts a desert. The Mojave has no dunes, saguaro, or cholla but does have Joshua trees, lots of sage, scorpions, snakes and barren, wind-sculpted land, plus next to no rain. In any event, the region is dry as dust and the humidity is laughably low.

I learned something recently. As usual, it happened the hard way. Our winter place here was new when we moved into it. Local water is hard, so the house came with a water softener installed. Most softeners, including ours, utilize salt (NaCl) as the softening agent.

We recently decided to buy a portable humidifier to add some water vapor to our indoor air. Our hope was of having somewhat less dry skin and eyes. I filled and refilled it with tap water from the nearest sink in the bath and set it to "vaporizing."

Over a couple of weeks we noticed the house getting much dustier than usual, and wondered if the humidifier somehow was causing it. It was the cause. 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. What we saw immediately was that the plume of unsoftened water vapor rising from the humidifier's spout was less visible. It didn't contain salt particles that could not evaporate into room air. 

The instruction manual for the softener didn't warn us of fallout from softened water. I suppose one would ideally fill humidifiers with distilled water, but that would be a huge hassle and at least somewhat expensive. The lesson is don't use softened water in a room humidifier.

Richard Bruce Cheney, RIP

It is widely reported today that former Congressman, SecDef and Vice President Dick Cheney died yesterday. Cheney was 84. 

He was a resident of Jackson Hole (hole=valley), and thus almost a neighbor. Powerful during the Bush II years, the tides of recent history have been unkind to him, to his daughter, to his President, and to his preferred neocon policies.

The fierce loyalty that marked the Cheneys, father and daughter, meant being left behind like the oxbow lakes a river leaves behind when it straightens it course. Like the Bushes - pere et fils - whom they served, the Cheney legacy is as losers to the Trump/MAGA movement that remade the Republican Party over their bitter objections.

I am reminded of the words Shakespeare imagined from the mouth of Mark Anthony, speaking at the funeral of Julius Caesar.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar.

So let it be with Cheney. 

The Canyon of the Virgin

If you look at a map of the western United States that shows major highways, you'll see that I-15 cuts across the northwest corner of Arizona. That stretch of I-15 is maybe 27 miles long and its northeastern half traverses the canyon cut by the Virgin River as it drops 700 feet between St. George UT and Mesquite, NV.

The canyon twists and turns, cutting down through the many layers of sandstone. In several places it is less than twice the width of the highway. 

I won't call the terrain so exposed "beautiful" but it is definitely awe-inspiring and more dramatic than anything this side of Zion NP. It definitely has the ability to make you feel quite tiny. 

Winters in NV we drive it both ways at least twice a month, sometimes more often. Some days I marvel at the immensity of the terrain, other times I marvel at the civil engineering required to push a superhighway through a winding, narrow canyon with walls that go up several hundred feet. I-15 is four lane divided/limited access through the entire canyon.

Both the engineering and the scenery are worth your time to see. I recommend listening to Ennio Morricone's score for the Clint Eastwood "Dollars" movies as you make the transit. 

I find the canyon a tourist attraction but I have neighbors who fear driving it. One thing to know, the traffic moves fast on the winding road and accidents are not unknown.

----------

Two peculiar aspects of AZ ... First, if you insist on driving on paved roads, the only way to access this part of AZ from the rest of the state is by detouring through either UT or NV. 

Second, while AZ is in the Mountain Time Zone, most of AZ doesn't observe Daylight Savings Time. It spends the entire year on Mountain Standard Time.  In the summer AZ time agrees with Los Angeles, in winter, AZ clocks agree with those in Denver and SLC. 

The exception is the large Navajo Nation, basically the generous northeast corner of the state which observes DST and agrees with Denver all year long.

Monday Snark

Images courtesy of Sarah Hoyt blogging at Instapundit.

Propellant-free Interplanetary Travel

RealClearScience links to an article about the potential for space travel that doesn't consume propellant. What is inferred, but not made explicit, is that the space travel described all occurs within our solar system. 

It involves using the pressure of sunlight against sails or the magnetic or electrical equivalent of sails. My guess is that the power derived from sunlight drops with the square of the distance from the sun. 

Out past Pluto there won't be much push on your "sails," the space equivalent of being "becalmed." Thus true interstellar travel using solar 'winds' isn't likely to be practical, solar powered interplanetary travel may be possible.

Check Out the Hat

The other DrC has a Halloween blogpost with a picture of the wild Carnival hat we were given in Rio by a participant. Having worn it in their “samba school” parade, the participant had no further use for it as each year the school wears new costumes. 

Our problem was bringing it home on the plane. It looks like it weighs a lot, but doesn’t as it is mostly hollow. To ship it was going to cost hundreds of dollars so we begged for an empty cardboard box, wedged it in surrounded by dirty clothes, and tagged it as excess luggage. It got home with only a little damage, an amazing souvenir.

We actually saw part of the last night’s parade, by the prize winning schools. Brazil is south of the equator so Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) happens in late summer which is warm and humid. 

The parade started about 9 pm and we stayed until about 1 am when about half the schools had paraded past our grandstand seats. We had to leave “early” as we had an excursion the next day and needed to get a few hours sleep. 

Those who stayed for the whole show probably got home about dawn. The crowd was the biggest group of happy drunks I’ve ever seen, there were police everywhere but I saw no arrests.

This was on the way home from a trip to Antarctica, clearly one of our favorites. Icebergs, penguins, Iguazu Falls and Carnival in Rio, all in one trip … some amazing memories!

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

News from Vietnam

A very interesting column at American Greatness entitled “Did We Just Win the Vietnam War?” It appears the government of Vietnam is moving away from Marxism-Leninism and toward a market economy. Color me not surprised.

We visited Vietnam in early 2010 while cruising, making several stops. We experienced it as one of the most small-c capitalist places imaginable, even though scarlet and yellow communist hammer-and-sickle flags were flying everywhere and billboards of socialist realism exhortations abounded.

Everybody seemed to be in business one way or another, selling, buying, or renting space. While the government praised Communism, the people were doing private enterprise with great gusto and nobody except me and the other DrC seemed to see a conflict.

Apparently the Vietnamese government has finally figured out what their people were doing and ‘regularized’ it as “nationalism.” Good for them. Nice people, nice country, terrible climate - sweltering heat and humidity. 

The Long Game

Writing for RealClearPolicy, Joe Palaggi looks at the long game Trump is playing with the economy. He is rebuilding domestic manufacturing and reshoring microchips and pharmaceuticals. Rebalancing our trade relations and pushing the reestablishment of manufacturing employment.

Palaggi writes consumers notice higher costs and may not be willing to wait for the good things to come downstream. See his conclusion.

History doesn’t remember who won the news cycle. It remembers who rebuilt the foundation. If America abandons long-term economic sovereignty for short-term comfort, we’ll find ourselves once again dependent on foreign suppliers, foreign fuel, and foreign debt — a nation outsourcing its future for convenience.

The administration’s challenge isn’t just inflation. It’s inattention. Trump may be playing the long game. The question is whether America still has the patience to let him finish it.

Wars destroy vast amounts of stuff, particularly weapons and munitions. We basically won World War II because we were the accurately named the “arsenal of democracy.” Our arms factories outproduced the Axis powers. 

The rebuilding of domestic manufacturing is critical to our ability to defend our nation. We’ve given away that capacity, and need to reestablish it. Simultaneously we can rebuild economic opportunity for America’s working class and reduce the incidence of “deaths of despair.”

Time Horizons

It is widely reported President Trump has urged the Republican-majority Senate to dump its rule requiring 60 votes to break a filibuster in order to reopen the government. Republican senators resist this move. 

Perhaps it is worth noting why this difference of opinion exists among Republicans who normally agree. The answer rests in the fact that the Senate and this president have differing time horizons.

President Trump has until January of 2029 - just over 3 years - to accomplish whatever is on his agenda. Constitutionally he is term limited by that cutoff date, which makes him in a hurry to get things done.

Senators have a six year term and, often win two or more of those. As such they realize in our de facto two party system it is quite likely each will spend some part of their Senate tenure in the minority. The filibuster rule empowers the minority, or more accurately it limits the power of a narrow majority to make major changes in our national governance.

Imagine John Thune & Co. thinking about a future Democrat majority nationalizing health care or emptying the prisons or worse. Being able to prevent such moves is important to Republicans. 

Trump is thinking “I’ve only got 3 years” while GOP senators are thinking “It’s likely I’m here for the rest of my political life.” Those are very different time horizons, hence different priorities. To POTUS time’s a-wasting, senators see the shutdown as a speed bump in a much longer journey.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

🎃 Happy Halloween 🎃

I did my share of trick or treating as a kid, although living in a semi-rural area meant some walking between front doors. These days I don't personally make a big deal out of Halloween, though we're invited to a neighborhood gathering later this afternoon and will attend to avoid seeming curmudgeonly. 

Nevertheless I realize I am out of step; every year our society makes a bigger deal of Halloween for adults. It's an excuse to dress up and do masquerade, something humans have enjoyed for hundreds of years, being a little (or a lot) naughty while thinly disguised. 

Halloween-on-steroids is part of the Weimar vibe recently in fashion. There are some indications this overripe era may be on the way out as preliminary hints of a religious revival are popping up here and there. As His Orangeness is fond of saying, "We'll see what happens."

In the meantime, have a Happy Halloween and indulge ... carefully.

A Quote I Like

Stephen Green, posting at Instapundit, shares words of wisdom.

Democrats can be a party of weirdos, sickos, and foreign ideologies, but they certainly can’t be a majority party that way.

Analysis: Obvious and accurate, but devilishly hard to counter when most of the left's political energy is among the victims and their advocates. 

MAGA has monopolized the 80 end of nearly every 80-20 issue (except abortion). This leaves Ds to represent a collection of the 20s plus the (mostly) unmarried women for whom abortion is a single-issue decider.

Sixes and Sevens

A variety of sources have been commenting on the Generation Alpha (born between 2010 and 2024) use of the two numbers 6, 7 spoken as "six seven" as a catchphrase or interjection. Seemingly it is used mostly as an irritating way to say "we're here and with it, while you're not."

A explanation I haven't seen so far is with the phrase "at sixes and sevens" meaning confused, disorganized or in disarray. I made the connection listening to the lyrics of "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" in which Evita sings the following.

You won't believe me, all you will see is a girl you once knew
Although she's dressed up to the nines
At sixes and sevens with you.

Maybe the kids are saying their woke world is in disarray. If so they aren't wrong, although change for the better is coming, courtesy of His Orangeness, President Trump.

Not An American At All

The New York Post runs a story that clearly illustrates this truth. Whatever negative things could surface about people damaging their political future, they will come to light in this web-searchable age. 

Someone tracked down a 12 year old interview of Zohran Mamdani's mother in an Indian newspaper.

Mamdani’s mother, Mira Nair, made the remarks in a 2013 interview with the Hindustan Times when she was asked about her then-21-year-old son’s upbringing. “He is a total desi,” Nair told the outlet, referring to the Hindi and Urdu term used to describe those of Indian descent.

“We are not firangs at all. He is very much us. He is not an Uhmericcan (American) at all,” she continued.

“He was born in Uganda, raised between India and America. He is at home in many places. He thinks of himself as a Ugandan and as an Indian.” The term “firangs” is often used informally in the Hindi and Urdu language to refer to foreigners.

At the time of the 2013 interview, son Zohran was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine. 

Saturday Snark

Missing Wyoming

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark 2.0

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

Friday Snark 1.0

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.