Update

We are experiencing the dog days of August, when most places are too hot and nothing much is scheduled. Congress goes on vacay, the Supreme Court is on hiatus, and, as this is not an election year for most of the country, there isn't a lot of overt campaigning to follow.

Here in the Rockies, this is quite the nicest time of year. The only time we get hot here is when we get into a car that has been sitting the sun, utilizing the "greenhouse effect" to build up heat. 

Our local reservoir on the south fork of the Snake filled up with the snow melt in June. It now has been drawn down maybe 12' as water is sent downstream so Idaho's potato farmers can irrigate their fields, Gotta love those russets.

Upstream the white water rafting is tapering down as the tourists head home to put the kids in school. Nearly three weeks from now the Fed Reserve holds its annual Jackson Hole meeting, at Jackson Lake Lodge. It's the cycle of life hereabouts, one dear to the hearts of the DrsC.

Summer here is short, but very sweet. What we view as spring, summer, and fall are compressed into half a year here, roughly two months of each. The other half year is some variety of winter, not so much brutal as loooong. As snowbirds, we like to say we arrive in time to see the last snowfall of spring, and leave after the first snowfall of autumn. 

Whither the EU

Politico has a very good column by Garry Kasparov and Gabrielius Landsbergis looking at the problems the European Union has in trying to deal with aggressive adversaries. Based on cooperation and consensus, the EU finds itself hobbled in dealing with adversaries whose basic model is confrontation.

Though the column doesn't deal with it, the EU was designed to keep the nations of Europe from going to war against each other. A very real problem the EU did in fact solve. 

Now the threat is external (Russia, China, Iran) and Trump has sent the message the EU needs to pull its own weight in defense. A system based on consensus doesn't deal well with confrontation, and Russia's war against Ukraine is exactly that.

Kasparov and Landsbergis make the point that leaders who excelled at compromise are temperamentally unsuited to confront Putin's Russia. The authors don't excel at proposing solutions to this dilemma. They imply, without stating it, no feasible solution exists.

Balz Steps Back at WaPo

Dan Balz is semi-retiring from his front-row seat at the Washington Post. Instead of a weekly column he will write what moves him when it occurs, at a reduced pace. I picture his future like that of Brit Hume at Fox News. 

Dan writes about his 47 years at the Post, and identifies one mentor - David Broder - for special praise. I like to think Balz picked up where Broder left off and carried on being an actual journalist when so many became hacks for the Democrats. Well done.

Balz admits he failed to grasp the phenomenon that was and is Donald Trump. In that he’s had lots of company. Looking back I suspect Trump will be talked about being one of the most consequential political figures since FDR - for good or evil. Something like a force of nature.

I group Dan Balz with David Brooks and Peggy Noonan as people whose work I enjoyed for many years but who couldn’t make the transition to the Trump era. Trump was simply too different from what went before. Like Jackson, Teddy R., FDR, and Reagan, Trump is sui generis, one of a kind.

I’ve liked much of Balz’ work as I have followed politics for that same period he did.  Unlike Balz, I did it as a spectator sport until I began this blog nearly 20 years ago, and "spectator sport" still largely describes my involvement. Other than voting, and this blog, my involvement in politics has been that of an interested observer.

Heritage Americans

I just learned a new term that is developing some currency among the MAGA crowd. It is "heritage Americans," here is a Politico article describing it.

In its most basic sense, the phrase refers to present-day Americans who trace their ancestral roots to the colonial period, or shortly thereafter.

I'm one of those, the first Cotton came to the Massachusetts colony in the 1600s, 13 years after the Mayflower. John was a scholarly Congregational minister whose austerity got him driven out of "high church" Britain. His grandson Cotton Mather - another scholar/minister - wrote a defense of the Salem witchcraft trials. 

When phone books were still a thing, the Boston phone book had a half page of folks with our family name. It is also occurs with some frequency in Britain.

As a heritage American I believe our culture has much to admire and is worth defending here in its birthplace. If other nations wish to copy it, I'm okay with that. If they wish to go their own way, that's fine as long as they can let us be us.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Jubilation Is Premature

Bloomberg reports the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is taking steps to shut down when its federal funding runs out in September. Expect this announcement to prematurely trigger much public grief among progressives and excitement among conservatives.

I say "prematurely" because there is every chance George Soros, Steve Job's widow or some less well-known guilt-stricken billionaire will bail them out. As a low cost funder of lefty programming, it wouldn't be a bad buy for someone who cares deeply about the social and ecological agenda which the public doesn't love.

Their announcement of pending layoffs on Sept. 30 is lawyerly butt-covering. Let's wait and see if it happens before breaking out the champagne.

Trump Orders "Deterrence"

Under the cold, dark waters of the North Atlantic, quiet as a tomb, two boomers wait for the message to destroy Russia. It's safe to assume both are Ohio class submarines. A public source reports:

The American Ohio class and British Vanguard class boats both carry Trident II missiles, with 24 SLBMs on each Ohio and 16 SLBMs on each Vanguard. Each Trident II carries eight to 12 Multiple Independently Targetable Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs) with ranges up to 7,500 miles.

By my calculation, that represents at least 24 x 8 x 2 = 384 warheads. Assuming half get through to target and detonate, that is 192 Russian bases, cities, ports, etc. gone within an hour. 

I would suppose the prospect could conceivably deter Putin from starting a war, assuming he isn't suicidal. With Russians, that is not always a safe assumption.

Be clear, a similar Russian contingent is almost certainly sitting off one or both of our coasts with similar targeting orders. When both get the "go code," the result is the infamous "mutually assured destruction." The gloomy prospect of which has prevented nuclear war for nearly 80 years.

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.

Statehood for the U.K.?

The New York Post has a column by Sp!ked columnist Brendan O'Neill with this provocative headline.

Forget Canada, Trump should make the UK the 51st state!

The column consists of a series of Trump pronouncements while in Britain, telling PM Keir Starmer how he should be running the U.K. O'Neill takes great pleasure in Starmer's discomfort at being rebuked on his home ground. 

O'Neill really thinks Trump has the right vision for how the Brits should manage their sceptered isle. It's abundantly clear Keir Starmer has no clue and the recently defeated Torys don't either. Nigel Farage might ... or might not.

Do you suppose Trump could propose unifying the Anglosphere into single, gigantic globe-straddling country? I suspect he can think that big. What a coup if he could make it happen.

Memories ....

The current headline article at Politico has this title:

Winklevoss brothers pressed Trump to dump pick for top Wall Street regulator

I can't read the article as it is behind the Politico paywall, but I can see the nice photo of the twins. They look a lot like their father Howard Winklevoss who was a friend in grad school.

Howard, or Wink as he was known, and I were doctoral students at the University of Oregon business school at the same time. The group of b-school doctoral students was small enough we all knew each other. 

We studied different specialties but partied together on more than a few occasions in the late 1960s. As a newly-divorced Californian I would complain about the rain and the coeds' thick ankles and Wink would complain about his fiancee Carol being on the east coast. Or at least that's how I remember it from almost 50 years ago.

We had no idea he would have twins, much less that the twins would be described as "the Trump-supporting billionaire twins." Wink did well himself, he left academia and opened a successful consulting practice applying actuarial science to the management of benefit programs.

A Bullet … Dodged

California has dodged a bullet. Kamala Harris has announced she will not be a candidate for governor in 2026, when current Governor Gavin Newsom is term-limited out of office. 

Whichever doofus they end up electing will be better than Harris. The next gov may not be better than Newsom, however. The CA voters can, and likely will, do worse than he.

The last decent governor CA had was Republican Pete Wilson, and the last really good one was Democrat Edmund G. “Pat” Brown. Wilson finished his second term in 1999 and Pat Brown was defeated by Reagan in 1966.

CA has ‘coasted’ on infrastructure Brown built ever since, eventually outgrowing it. Wishing to do no harm to any living thing, however trivial, CA has been over-regulated to the point of near-gridlock ever since.

If you conclude from the above that politics in CA are a mess, you are being kind. They are something worse than a mere mess, I view them as aspirational Utopianism unguided by common sense.

Wednesday Snark

Image courtesy of Power Line.

Treating Mental Illness

An excellent long City Journal article is about the lack of inpatient beds for psychiatric patients. It was triggered by President Trump's recent EO concerning "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets."

[The EO] declares that “vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks”—often a function of untreated serious mental illness—be addressed through civil commitment and humane treatment in long-term institutional settings. For this effort to succeed, the most urgent priority is expanding the number of available inpatient psychiatric beds. The U.S. currently has a significant shortage.

Why do we have this shortage? The article gives a detailed answer, explaining at length how a confluence of social and financial factors shut down government funding for psychiatric inpatient treatment.

When Medicaid was enacted in 1965, it included a provision known as the “Institutions for Mental Diseases (IMD) exclusion,” which barred federal reimbursement for care provided in psychiatric hospitals.

Today, state hospital bed capacity is down more than 97 percent from peak capacity, adjusted for population. While the IMD exclusion remains in place, simply maintaining current bed capacity is often financially unworkable for states.

As long as the IMD exclusion remains in place, states face a powerful fiscal disincentive to expand public psychiatric bed capacity. Congress must repeal the IMD exclusion and allow Medicaid to cover psychiatric hospitals as it does nearly every other medical setting. Anything less will blunt the impact of the executive order and leave the nation’s most vulnerable without the care they need.

Repeal of the IMD exclusion will require Congressional action. It has the force of law, Trump cannot change it by EO. 

Our Leverage

Axios has a quote by former US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland, echoed at msn.com.

No one fully valued how much leverage our market creates when it comes to trade negotiations until Trump.

No country besides the US has the same combination of large population and great wealth, creating a market to which exporters feel they must have access. One aspect of Trump's genius was recognizing and exploiting this leverage when others did not.

So far only the French seem to be taking umbrage at the EU trade deal. And check this out, courtesy of Instapundit.

Unexceptional Undergraduates

 RealClearScience reports recent research has found college students aren’t as smart as they once were.

The meta-analysis aggregated numerous studies measuring college students’ IQs conducted between 1939 and 2022. The results showed that undergraduates’ IQs have steadily fallen from roughly 119 to a mean of 102 today — just slightly above the population average of 100. In short, undergraduates are now no more intelligent on average than members of the general population.

Almost half of those matriculating do not graduate within 6 years, much less the theoretically possible four years. Full disclosure, it took me 4.5 years to complete my baccalaureate.

According to statistics from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, only 58% of students manage to attain their degrees within six years. What’s more, the rate of dropping out is negatively linked with IQ — the lower an undergraduate’s IQ, the more likely it is that they will leave college without a degree, potentially saddled with debt. One influential study showed that for white American undergraduates with an IQ only slightly above average, their chance of graduating is essentially 50-50.

We shouldn’t overlook that while college students aren’t smarter than average, college graduates likely are smarter. By how much isn’t clear. 

My conclusion is that too many are being encouraged to attend, and the coursework has been dumbed down to permit more to pass. When everybody goes to college, it no longer gives those who do much advantage in the job market. 

This is the labor force version of inflation, printing diplomas instead of printing money with the same end result. It decreases the purchasing power of that which is printed. 

The underlying cause of this decline was the post-World War II GI Bill. It was created to take many “demobbed” GIs out of the labor market and thus prevent post-war mass unemployment.

Billy's 3.0

We've been summering in the vicinity of Jackson, WY for over 30 years. In the early days on Sundays we would eat hamburgers at a dive called Billy's, a side enterprise of a restaurant called The Cadillac. Both were located on Cache St. on the west side of the square in downtown Jackson, facing the block square park with its iconic elkhorn arches.

Billy's was a one room enterprise with the cooks on display and a counter that formed a U around them. We sat on stools and watched our burgers get grilled, fries get deep fried, sodas get drawn, etc. The cooks were rude in a good-humored way, wore funny hats, dreamed up outrageous "house rules," and made themselves useful by handing us our meals straight from the grill and deep fryer. 

The pre-cooking prep was done in The Cadillac's kitchen and you could also order a Billy burger in their bar. The DrsC have fond memories of Billy's on the Square. Examples include meeting VP Dick Cheney's Secret Service detail at Billy's, taking a meal break. Cheney's WY place is in nearby Wilson.

We spotted the curly cords running from the earpieces down under their collars and asked. They were whining about having to run a couple more miles to burn off the calories. 

Another time we met someone we had seen on TV, sitting alongside us munching a burger. Mario Gabelli, a big-deal investor and wealthy market analyst. He is a distinctive-looking gentleman who had been a frequent guest on Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street Week program on PBS. He had a place in Jackson and would hold seminars there for his largest investors. 

Another time we'd finished our meal and were walking to our vehicle when we passed Harrison Ford on the boardwalk outside the Million Dollar Bar, carrying a six pack of bottled beer. Wikipedia says he's 6'1" but he sure looked shorter than that to me. Maybe he didn't have his heels on. He lives near here.

Anyway, The Cadillac folded and, with it, Billy's. A year or so later the owners got a new restaurant named "The Lift" on south Cache by the Snow King ski lift. We went there for burgers for several years. Then that restaurant closed, and the building was razed to put up condos. The mountains hemming in Jackson make developable land scarce and therefore super valuable.

Now Billy's has been revived again, this time co-located with The Virginian hotel-restaurant-saloon combination on west Broadway. We'll have to give it a try, Billy's is a part of old Jackson lore.

Media Defensiveness

The following quote - posted by Instapundit - has the words of New York Times Pulitzer winner Jeff Gerth.

The media isn't looking for Russiagate scoops nor will they fairly present the ones others get if they reflect poorly on their prior reporting. They're in a defensive posture & aren't inclined to report deeply on anything that helps Trump.

In other words, they work for the opposition and publish propaganda, not journalism. If Trump does his level best to discredit or destroy them, I can't blame him, can you?

Poll: Democrats Unpopular

Power Line’s Scott Johnson reports poll findings from The Wall Street Journal (behind paywall) with bad news for Democrats.

The survey finds that 63% of voters hold an unfavorable view of the Democratic Party—the highest share in Journal polls dating to 1990 and 30 points higher than the 33% who hold a favorable view. That’s a far weaker assessment than voters give to Trump or the GOP, who are viewed more unfavorably than favorably by 7 points and 11 points, respectively.

However, GOP optimism isn’t entirely warranted.

The weight of history favors Democrats, as presidents rarely escape a voter backlash in their first midterm election. McInturff, the Republican pollster, points out that five successive presidents have lost control of Congress.

Moreover, voters are continually looking for change. In nine of the last 10 presidential or midterm elections, voters have changed party control of the House, Senate or White House.

Meaning … Trump is entirely wise to get as much done as possible during the first two years of his second term in office. History suggests he will be hard pressed to keep control of the House after the 2026 mid-term election, especially given his very slim majority now.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.