Age Matters

It turns out that age is the best predictor of whether a voter will choose Clinton or Obama, older voters go for Clinton, age 60, younger voters go for Obama, whose age is 46. The exception is African-American voters who tend to choose Obama regardless of age. See this article for more details.

The Democratic primary has boiled down into a generational or cohort-based struggle. This cannot be good news for Obama, since historically young persons vote in much smaller numbers than older folks.

That same fact, that older Americans are more likely to vote, is what tells us that the fears about the future of the Social Security system are overblown. Yes, the system does need repair. However, the high voting rate of seniors guarantees that politicians will eventually repair it, if they want to keep their elected jobs.

If Clinton is the eventual nominee, then age will not be a large factor in the general election. If Obama is the eventual Democratic nominee, cohort politics will continue to matter in November.

Snowy Global Warming

See this article which reports the Vancouver area in Canada is having record late snowfalls and cold, this spring. Al Gore could not be reached for comment.

China Imploding?

Salim Mansur, writing in the Toronto Sun, anticipates China falling apart the way the old Soviet Union did. This is an interesting idea, and one about which I've seen little public speculation.

Clearly the Tibetans would like "out," as would the Muslim Uighur Turks in western China. Taiwan is already "out" de facto, if not de jure. Anybody want to guess what the folks in Hong Kong would choose to do? Yep, "out" is the answer.

Mansur doesn't mention it, but the leaders of China pretty clearly hope to make the transition to a Singapore-style one party state with prosperity (key word) and happy citizens. Anybody want to get up a pool on whether they'll succeed and if not, when they'll fail?

O'Rourke Visits Top Gun

P. J. O'Rourke writes funny, and does it well enough to make a living at it, which is far more than I can do. Go see his 24 Hours on the Big Stick article from The Weekly Standard. It concerns a visit O'Rourke made to the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. The "big stick" makes reference, of course, to TR's international relations maxim about walking softly and carrying a big stick. O'Rourke writes to remind us that John McCain's day job, before politics, was as a carrier pilot:

Some say John McCain's character was formed in a North Vietnamese prison. I say those people should take a gander at what John chose to do--voluntarily. Being a carrier pilot requires aptitude, intelligence, skill, knowledge, discernment, and courage of a kind rarely found anywhere but in a poem of Homer's or a half gallon of Dewar's.

And then there is his evaluation of the campaigns of Clinton and Obama:

They're not just running against the hero John McCain, they're running against heroism itself and against almost everything about America that ought to be conserved.

If you can read this all the way to the end without choking up a little, you have a much thicker callus over the spot in your heart labeled "patriotism" than I do.

Seven Uncomfortable Truths

This article by John Hawkins appears at Townhall.com. It focuses on seven truths about human nature overlooked by liberals. They are essentially the same truths that Communism couldn't grasp, and eventually brought about its demise. Here are three samples:

Human beings are born selfish and badly behaved.

Most of the world operates by the law of the jungle except when they fear the consequences of doing so.

Every problem is not fixable.

You should read the whole article, the other four are spot on too.

Quote of the Day

Chancellor Count Otto von Bismarck, quoted in Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus column in National Review Online:

Russia is never as strong or as weak as it appears.

Although today Russia appears somewhat weak, we should take the Iron Chancellor's warning to heart.

Brooks Disses Obama

David Brooks, successor to William Safire as the New York Times' conservative pundit, has a quite good column on the Obama phenomenon. Brooks tracks Obama's descent from deified uberpolitician to grubby hack, a descent helped along by the Clinton machine. Brooks' conclusion echos what we've been saying here at COTTonLINE for some weeks:

Republicans have long assumed they would lose because of the economy and the sad state of their party. Now, Democrats are deeply worried their nominee will lose in November.

Welcome to 2008. Everybody’s miserable.

Particularly, I believe, the hapless voters.

The Performance Appraisal Myth

Ask most working people the purpose of performance appraisal and they'll tell you it is done so they can find out how they're doing at work. In other words, as a source of feedback from their boss.

Unfortunately, to the extent that the performance appraisal reflects qualitative judgments today about performance that occurred several weeks or months ago, the feedback is absolutely pointless. That is to say, worthless as a shaper of the employee's future behavior.

B. F. Skinner and his colleagues demonstrated conclusively that the more time that elapses between a piece of your behavior and another's reaction to that behavior, the less that reaction shapes your future behavior. In the case of performance appraisals, which are often done at six month or one year intervals, simply too much time has elapsed for the 'feedback' to be useful.

So...why do firms do performance appraisals? Their only true use is as a process that documents in writing what the supervisor has already told the employee about his or her behavior at the time the behavior occurred. In fact, a firm should probably require every evaluative statement in the appraisal to be preceded by the clause "As I told you on (insert date), ...."

There should be absolutely no surprises in your performance appraisal. Everything should be reminders of former conversations with your boss. If there are surprises in your performance appraisal, they won't change your behavior but they will irritate you. It is like what they say about trying to teach a pig to sing. You won't succeed but you will surely irritate the pig.

Quote of the Day

Chris Muir's comic strip entitled Day by Day, runs in the Power Line News website. In the April 17, 2008 strip the characters summarize the three presidential aspirants as follows:

Obama's freaked by being asked actual questions,
Hillary is so into her lies she's in a different reality,

And McCain thinks of 'Borders' as a bookshop.

What truly lovely choices we are given...the mind boggles. I particularly love the notion that McCain thinks Borders is a bookshop, not something the nation needs to defend against the billions of poor people who'd love to move here to share your hard-earned wealth.

Photo of the Day

It often happens that a photographer will snap a picture of a subject standing in front of a backdrop that makes the subject look bad. At my highschool a student photographer caught the unpopular yearbook advisor standing in front of a chalkboard with the word "assignment" written upon it. His head blocked out the last seven letters so that the picture said "ass" immediately next to his face. The gormless teacher didn't catch the juxtaposition and the picture ran in the yearbook, to widespread student glee.

Here (link no longer works) is a great modern example of this phenomenon. The AP photographer caught Pres. Bush and Pope Benedict XVI standing in front of the flags of Indiana and Mississippi. Unfortunately, the only part of the Mississippi flag showing contains the Confederate Battle Flag. [The complete Mississippi flag has the Confederate flag as an inset, in the same way that the U.S. flag contains a field of 50 stars as an inset.]

I daresay the Pope would have preferred not to be depicted with this controversial symbol.

The Bottom Line

Michael Goodwin, writing in the New York Daily News, says some things I've been thinking. Namely, that all it took for the Democrats to lose the presidency in a year where they were expected by almost everybody to win, was to nominate a loser. He concludes they are now down to a choice between two losers.

Wouldn't it have been a treat to have choices you actually wanted to vote for? I think for awhile some people believed Obama might be that person. His not-ready-for-prime-time characteristics are recently beginning to show.

Golly, once again we get to figure out who is the least unattractive candidate. BTW, I include McCain in that "choice of least worst" dilemma.

The Big Lie

Somewhere the shade of Nazi Dr. Joseph Goebbels is cackling madly. A high profile practitioner of the "big lie" technique has struck again. The Associated Press reports that Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made the following absurd claim about 9/11:

Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names.

The AP article goes on to observe:

On the last anniversary of the attacks, the names of 2,750 victims killed in New York were read aloud at a memorial ceremony.

That list of victims is public information and widely available, a simple Google search turned up this site where the names are available and I daresay the New York Times has published a similar list.

I wonder how widely Ahmadinejad is believed? There are two ways to view what he said: he is lying or delusional.

One is reminded of former Senator Bob Kerrey's characterization of Bill Clinton as "an uncommonly good liar." Taken to task for criticizing a fellow Democrat, Kerrey protested that in fact he meant it as a compliment, adding that fluent lying is a very useful skill for a politician. Ahmadinejad is a certainly a politician, perhaps he believes he has this skill. Humorists say you can tell if politicians are lying...their lips are moving.

Alternatively, he is delusional, out of touch with reality. Not a nice thought about someone who will have nuclear weapons at his disposal one day soon. Ahmadinejad talks like the Muslim equivalent of our Christian end times enthusiasts. What you don't want to hear from such folks when they control a nuke is "bring it on."

Iraq War Sitrep

This article by Michael Yon is the best thing I've read about the Iraqi War in the last several months. Yon has been there forever, seen it all, and has no political axes to grind. He is cautiously optimistic and you will be too when you read it, as you should.

He contrasts the upbeat facts on the ground with the downbeat tone of the recent Senatorial hearings featuring 3 presidential candidates, among others, and our two main guys in theater: Petraeus and Crocker. Here is his conclusion:

We know now that we can pull off a successful counterinsurgency in Iraq. We know that we are working with an increasingly willing citizenry. But counterinsurgency, like community policing, requires lots of boots on the ground. You can't do it from inside a jet or a tank.

Over the past 15 months, we have proved that we can win this war. We stand now at the moment of truth. Victory – and a democracy in the Arab world – is within our grasp. But it could yet slip away if our leaders remain transfixed by the war we almost lost, rather than focusing on the war we are winning today.

More on "Bitter"

James Taranto, writing in The Wall Street Journal online, has the best two sentence put down of Obama's "bitter" comment I've yet seen:

In Barack Obama's America, rich people who vote on cultural issues rather than economic self-interest are principled and self-sacrificing. People of more modest means who do so are credulous and bitter.

Ain't it the truth...once again demonstrating the truth of an adage I learned in Washington 30 years ago:

Where you stand is determined by where you sit.

Quote of the Day

Our 30 year old guide Juanito, aka "Johnny," talking to our group in the Amazon basin of Peru, said something incorrect and immediately corrected himself, explaining:

I had a junior moment.

Well, why not? His spontaneous, done-in-a-second-language burlesque of "senior moment" is my quote of the day.

Obama's Tin Ear

Barack Obama made the following comments at a private meeting with supporters in Marin County, CA:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them," Obama said. "And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

As a piece of sociological analysis it isn't bad, it may even be accurate. A near-perfect thing for a new doctoral graduate to say when being interviewed for a position as Assistant Professor of Sociology, Anthropology, or Political Science. Bill Kristol here points out the Marxist roots of such thinking, there is a lot of nostalgia for Marx in many university faculty.

As a comment by a Democrat, trying to garner the votes of small town blue collar workers and their families, it is a flaming disaster. I do believe BO has a tin ear.

No Right to Disagree (or Win)

During the heyday of Communism, the Party argued that it represented the will of all the working people. Since this representation was axiomatic, other political parties could not be allowed to exist because (a) to the extent that their philosophy differed, to that extent they did not represent the working people, and (b) to the extent that their philosophy was the same, they were not needed since those viewpoints were already represented in society by the Communist Party.

Of course, the logical fallacy is at the beginning: Communism did not represent the will of all working people, although it clearly represented some. For that reason, every statement that followed the fallacy was likewise incorrect.

Enough history lesson, what is my point? I see an analogy to the present political climate in the United States. Our lunatic left, particularly as represented in the more extreme rantings on the web, takes the view that any election they don't win is, by definition, illegitimate. Like the Roman Catholic Church during the Spanish Inquisition, they believe that what they define as error has no rights. To the lunatic left, that a majority of voters might vote for a non-left candidate is inexplicable without recourse to accusations of stupidity, duplicity or insanity. In other words, the only good election is one they win; whether the process be clean or dirty means nothing.

On the other hand, I fully understand that circumstances may influence intelligent, sane individuals to vote for liberals on occasion. For example, the election of FDR in 1932 and reelection in 1936 is entirely understandable. The Great Depression was enough to make Democrats out of a lot of folks. As a conservative, I may not like the outcome, but I do understand it and don't view such elections as illegitimate. Our political system works best when no party monopolizes the levers of power for very long.

Farewell to Peru

Trip is about ended, our plane is waiting. The trip has been exhausting but fun. Machu Picchu is very beautiful, as well as being extremely interesting . I expected the "interesting" but was surprised by the "beautiful" part. It exists in a cloud forest where it rains a lot. We were there two days, the first had beautiful weather, second rained on us till we were soaked. We were lucky to have one good day. The train trip into the site on a very modern narrow gauge railroad was great too. All in all, an amazing trip. Starting Saturday, we are back to our usual "politics and more" format. Adios for now, amigos.

Brooks on McCain

Read David Brook´s summary of John McCain´s foreign policy views in the New York Times, going back 25 years. This impressive article points out that foreign policy ala McCain, if it happens, will be very different than foreign policy ala Bush. His conclusion:

Anybody who thinks McCain is merely continuing the Bush agenda is not paying attention.

Gasping for Air in Cuzco

Don´t let anyone tell you altitude sickness is a myth, it isn´t. Every year I spend several months a year at 6300 ft elevation with no ill effects and figured I´d have no trouble with Cuzco´s 10,000+ ft. Wrong. I spend yesterday fighting a killer headache and traveller´s tummy. For some this would be unmemorable, I don´t have a headache more often than every 2-3 years. Tomorrow it is on to Machu Picchu, then the next day back here to Cuzco before returning to Lima and then home.

We spent nearly a week cruising 400 miles on the upper Amazon River out of Iquitos, Peru. This was an amazing experience. Our "ship" was the La Aquamarina, run by Jungle Expeditions based in Iquitos. Actually the boat was comfortable, the food was good, and the crew were great; the quote marks around ship reflect the fact that she was no cruise liner. In fact she looked like the river boat she is, low freeboard and shallow draft. There were 20 passengers and about 15 crew and expedition staff, all locals. Each passenger couple had a stateroom with bath and there were an excellent indoor dining room and outdoor covered patio/bar.

This part of Peru is a world of water, particularly at this time of year (high water is usually reached in May). We got rained on plenty, once we were all soaked to the skin in spite of rubberized ponchos with hoods. Some small boat rides had to be rescheduled because of weather, flexibility was the watch word. We saw bunches of neat birds, river dolphins both grey and pink, a huge anaconda snake maybe 15 feet long and bigger around than a firehose, sloths, bats, boa constrictors, turtles, iguanas, and of course the local people, called Riberños, meaning people of the riverbank.

The locals are people of small stature, fit, and for the most part happy with their lives. They don´t have much material wealth but the countryside supports them with a combination of hunter-gatherer and agricultural lifestyles. Only the larger towns have electricity, nobody has TV but DVDs are in some use, radio does reach them and mp3 players are used. Cell phones only work in the two largest towns, short wave radio does exist in some few places. Houses are built on stilts, just above the highwater line, everybody has a dugout canoe and some larger boats exist. High status is conferred by owning an outboard motor or having front teeth capped in gold. The machete is called "my second wife" and is always at hand.

Peru is a nominally Catholic country but shamans provide much of the spiritual and medical support for the people. We met one and he was an oddly charismatic guy. Our guide described his people as animists, believers in everything having a spirit. He and our naturalist are planning a book on the shaman we met, that should be interesting. One of the shaman´s major instruments is a hallucinogin, not surprising in a country where everybody drinks coca tea. Yes, that coca, the one cocaine is made from. Coca tea tastes like something made from steeping bamboo in hot water, not terrible but not very interesting either. You spoon the leaves out of your cup and drink the resulting infusion, and I guess you could chew the leaves for additional stimulus if you don´t expect to have to pass a drug test anytime soon.

The other DrC and I will be home soon, and actually be there for a couple of months this time. I´m ready to be home, we´ve been "on the road or on the briny" for most of the past seven months. We should be back to geopolitical blogging by the end of the week.