Saturday Snark

A Tri Delt looking good at 61.

Excellent wordplay.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

He's hyperactive.

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

'Twas cider vinegar.

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics'

Cartoons of the Week.

A 'Coincidence' Questioned

Writing* at the Wall Street Journal, author Louise Perry looks at falling birth rates worldwide, relates them to political orientations, and ends up with more questions than answers. One conclusion she does reach is this.

Twin studies suggest that political attitudes are roughly 40% heritable. Of course, children do sometimes diverge from or react against their parents’ politics. But in general, expect the partisan fertility gap to usher in a U.S. that is more conservative. In fact, the whole of the developed world is on track to become more conservative.

In brief, wherever found, conservatives are having more children than progressives. 

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I'm going to suggest a possibly related factor. The sexually conventional have more kids than those whose sexuality is unconventional.

The sexually unconventional have tended to be progressive for absolutely rational reasons. Declining repression of unconventional sexuality throughout the developed world has paralleled declining birth rates. I believe this parallel may not be a coincidence.

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*Article is behind a "semi-paywall." You can scroll it on the top half of the screen while your screen's bottom half is filled with a pitch to sell you a WSJ subscription.

Pence Another Gore?

Tim O'Brien at PJ Media writes: "Looks like Mike Pence is gunning to be the next Al Gore." I freely admit I hadn't made the connection. In my defense, I am unlikely to think of either Al Gore or Mike Pence in any context.

The comparison may become one of those things that once seen, cannot be forgotten. Both men are former Vice Presidents, both are nags and stiffs. Both strike a "holier than thou" pose that is hard to stomach.

Current VP Vance is none of those things, though his place in history is yet to be revealed.

For Anglophiles

Amelia image courtesy of Ed Driscoll, posting at Instapundit,

with hat tip to Shepard Fairey.

FAFO in CO

Four of my first cousins, with whom I played as a child in CA, grew up in rural western CO. Three have lived there since childhood, and the fourth retired there. So I keep a weather eye on Colorado.

Today CO resident Stephen Green, posting at Instapundit, links to interesting economic indicators reflecting Colorado’s evolving conditions. Some key insights:

For the first time in 16 years, rents in metro Denver are actually going down. Not “slowing their increase.” Not “rising less quickly.” Going down. Metro-wide rents are down nearly 5% over the last year.

People are still fleeing the high-tax, government-failure states of California, New York and Illinois. Those refugees used to pour into Colorado. No more. They’re finding sanctuary in low-tax, low-regulation states like Florida and Texas instead.

Give our leaders one victory. They’ve stopped the mass migration of Californians to Colorado — albeit by Californicating our laws.

Now rents are falling — not because Colorado suddenly learned how to build housing efficiently — but because people stopped coming. Demand softened.

When rents fall for the first time in 16 years and population growth stalls, it’s not a mystery. It’s the market delivering feedback.

Colorado is learning the California lesson: bad governance can spoil a beautiful place. Friends in Idaho are worried they could suffer the same fate.

Another Tory Defector

A former Tory Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, recently defected from that benighted party to join Reform. Not entirely unexpected, but certainly significant. 

Comments about rats and sinking ships seem redundant at this juncture. Reform’s Nigel Farage bids fair to be the UK’s Donald Trump, an unabashed nationalist and defender of Brit culture.

Taken along with the Amelia movement, there are some hopeful signs of life in Blighty.

Ride or Literally Die

The latest from COTTonLINE’s current favorite foreign policy analyst - George Friedman - is out. In it he uses the current trilateral talks among the US, Ukraine, and Russia now happening in Dubai as a reason to itemize the many problems now facing Russia.

Taken together, he believes these could be sufficient to cause Russia to want to end the war in Ukraine. Sufficient, that is, if Putin can bring himself to recognize the corner into which he’s painted himself. 

My hunch is that Friedman makes too little of the threat of peace to Putin’s personal survival. Putin sought to reestablish Russia as a world power.  Accepting the status quo in Ukraine as “the best he could manage” against a much smaller adversary will be an admission of personal failure. 

Admitting failure is something autocrats seldom survive and Putin’s knows it. Guilty of war crimes and of diminishing Russia’s might, he’s realizing there is no imaginable safe dismount from the tiger’s back.

As Hitler and Mussolini demonstrated, once you lose you die, by your own hand or those of others. So you struggle on to the end.

Tuesday Snark

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com, 1/26/26.

Conspiracy Unmasked

After a lot of winning by the rioters in Minneapolis, finally some winning by those who oppose the anti-ICE movement. Power Line’s Scott Johnson has the story of a few talented hackers who penetrated the on-line anti-ICE networks. It is a quick and good read.

They revealed the identities of many of those coordinating and funding the anti-ICE demonstrators and harassers. The movement was anything but spontaneous. 

There is a strong suggestion that highly placed persons in state and local government were active in the planning and coordination. At least hints that the Lieutenant Gov. or someone using her nickname was involved.

The hacker vs. hacker ‘wars’ of today remind me of the Mad Magazine Spy vs.Spy cartoons of old. It is good to see the “white hats” win one for a change.

Geography: Unpopular but Relentless

Ten days ago I wrote Canadian PM Carney cozying up to China was unwise, noting this.

I’d think this recent action has moved the notion of a U.S. invasion of Canada from “inconceivable” to “remotely possible.”

Now comes his ill-advised speech at Davos, which could move the notion from “remotely possible” to “unlikely.” If he keeps going this way he could bait Trump into doing something we’d have believed impossible, and Canadians won’t like even a little bit. 

By contrast, Mexico’s President Sheinbaum seems to understand the inevitable logic of being located adjacent to a hegemonic power like the US. Canada once seemed to understand, now … not so much.

At some point it becomes “Geography demands we defend you so we might as well own you.” It is the same logic Trump applied to Greenland.

MN Protests Lack Support

Instapundit posts the following polling on which forms of public protests are believed okay and are which not. It seems clear much of what is happening in Minneapolis doesn't have public support.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Trump to WEF: FAFO

The Washington Examiner's Byron York writes that Europe's leaders would be better off today if they had listened to Trump's advice on key issues. At least a few of them sort of acknowledge it.

First, Trump told Europe: you're killing yourself with mass migration. Stop. Second, Trump told NATO: You've got to spend more on your own defense. Third, Trump told the European Union: You're hurting yourselves with draconian regulations. And fourth, Trump told German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others: don't build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. It's a terrible idea to depend on Putin's Russia for your energy.

Trump was right about each of those things.

Meanwhile, they were mostly wrong to varying degrees. Now he rubs their noses in the bad choices they made.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's

The Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

Image courtesy of Lucianne.com.