Something's Shaking

The Casper Star Tribune reports northwestern Yellowstone National Park has been experiencing "swarms" of modest earthquakes in recent days. The University of Utah Seismograph Station has detected 20-30 quakes per day in the 2.7-3.4 magnitude range.

Nobody hereabouts thinks it means much. After all, Yellowstone has dozens of geysers and mud pots because it sits on the ruins of a former super volcano. Lake Yellowstone is a flooded caldera.

Could it erupt again? I suppose it could, but we who live in the area aren't holding our collective breath.

Poll: Disapproval of the President

A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds nearly 80% of voters hold President Obama at least somewhat personally responsible for the troubles at Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics. WaPo details the President's difficulties:

On a series of specific issues, Obama’s approval ratings are a net negative. Just 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of immigration reform, 39 percent approve of how he has handled the implementation of the new health-care law, 41 percent approve of his overall handling of international issues and 43 percent approve of his handling of the economy. At least 50 percent disapprove of his handling of those four areas.

Ice In June on Lake Superior

The ice on Lake Superior hasn't melted and is expected to last until July. See the USA Today story with recent photos. That darned global warming just won't give us a break, will it?

Serious About Syria

Syrian President Bashar Assad recently called a contested election and was reelected overwhelmingly, see the Associated Press story at Yahoo News. Another AP story has Secretary of State Kerry calling the vote "meaningless." Few in the U. S. are willing to admit liking Assad.

I won't defend the honesty of a vote in a country at war with itself, but I think Kerry is wrong, too. Given how well the Assad government has fared in the civil war, it is clear that many Syrians do support him. If not the 88+% by which he supposedly won, clearly a large number back the government against the rebels.

According to the CIA World Factbook, Syria is, by religion, 74% Sunni and 26% other (Shia, Alawi, Ismaili, Christian, and Druse). By ethnicity, Syria is 90% Arab, 10% Kurd and Armenian. Clearly all of the "other" faiths and the non-Arabs back the government and Assad.

The rebels are a Sunni Arab movement. If the rebels win, all who are not Sunni Arabs expect an apartheid state with themselves as second-class citizens. So they back Assad, even if they don't love him.

The Prisoner Swap

Swapping five senior terrorist jihadis for one anti-American GI POW may prove to be okay if it turns out a court martial finds him guilty of dissertion and imprisons him for life. Otherwise, it was a turkey of a deal.

It's relatively certain that Bergdahl's squad mates think he went over to the enemy. It is being reported a 2010 Army investigation concluded he did so. Nobody gets to pick their parents, but it appears his father is a nut case and perhaps he inherited it.

Obama's Foreign Relations Unpopular at Home

The Washington Post reports the results of the latest WaPo/ABC News poll. It found:

President Obama's approval rating on international affairs has fallen to 41 percent, five points below his overall job rating and down six points since September to the lowest point in his administration.

Surprise, surprise, people have paid attention to the headlines from overseas: Benghazi, Crimea, Korea, Somalia, Nigeria, and Kerry's failure to get the Israelis and Palestinians to settle.

A Hollow Army

Writing for Politico Magazine, Army Col. Douglas Macgregor (Ret.) argues for a leaner, meaner Army with less overhead, more teeth and less tail. He is plugging a proposal he's made before in two books cited in the article; I find his ideas interesting.

Macgregor's description of the inability of today's Army to respond to the threat in Ukraine is pathetic:

How could an Army of 550,000 with 32,000 troops in Afghanistan’s forward operating bases fail to provide more than two combat-ready brigades, roughly 8,000 men under arms, to deploy and fight?

He likens our present situation to that at the beginning of the Korean War.

Georgia On My Mind

The ironically named website War Is Boring reports efforts being made by the former Soviet republic of Georgia to enhance its military capabilities. They've done something smart, sending troops to Afghanistan to become battle-hardened.

Russia controls some 20% of Georgian territory in the breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Georgia's obvious goal: to keep Putin's Russia from stealing more of their country. The article states:

Today, Georgia boasts some 10,000 troops whom it claims are trained to the highest NATO standards. This is reportedly a bigger trained force than even many current NATO states can field.

That's great for Georgia, but it's a darned sad commentary on NATO.

Willful Ignorance

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. - George Santayana.

Jeffrey Herf, writing in The American Interest, notes that the U.S. government refuses to take Iran's anti-Semitism seriously. Even if its leaders' public statements do not reflect popular opinion, the public does not make Iran's decisions, the Ayatollahs do.

The irrationality of Iran’s government has received scant attention in the United States government, which seems unable to believe that people could put their faith in a post-apocalyptic messiah. That is both a failure of imagination and a failure of policy.

It wouldn't be the first time such beliefs led to vast tragedy, within the last century.

Quote of the Day

Newly successful Front National politician Marine Le Pen of France, being interviewed by Spiegel Online about her opposition to the EU:

Whenever I hear people utter anti-German sentiments, I say: You can't blame Germany for defending its own interests. I can't blame Ms. Merkel for saying she wants a strong euro. I place the blame with our own leaders who are not defending our interests. A strong euro is ruining our economy.

Whither Middle Class Jobs?

Pundits whine about the decline of the middle class in the U.S. The President makes reducing income disparity a major goal. We need to ask, why is the middle class faring poorly?

Anton Cheremukhin, senior research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, has answers to this pressing question. Hat tip to RealClearMarkets for the link. Cheremukhin writes:

The distribution of jobs by skill level has shifted dramatically since 1980. The number of jobs requiring medium levels of skill has shrunk, while the number at both ends of the distribution—those requiring high and low skill levels—has expanded.

This declining prominence of middle-skill jobs is not driven by changes in labor market institutions, such as declining unionization. Rather, an increase in automation of routine tasks, a relative scarcity of skilled workers and to a lesser extent, relocation of jobs outside the country (are responsible).

Jobs are classified as cognitive or manual, and also as routine or non routine.

Routine jobs have declined from 58 percent of employment in 1981 to 44 percent in 2011, while both types of non-routine jobs have expanded. The biggest declines in cognitive routine jobs were concentrated in such occupations as administrative support and sales. Examples of rapidly declining jobs are brokers, clerks, tellers, cashiers, telemarketers, title examiners, bookkeepers, insurance underwriters, travel agents and technicians. Among the manual routine jobs on the decline are mail carriers, drivers, cooks and engravers.

Patterns of polarization similar to those in the U.S. have been found in 16 developed European countries whose labor market institutions markedly differ. Thus, changes in labor market institutions are unlikely to play a big role in polarization’s growth.

Ergo, the changes in employment are largely technology-driven. Cheremukhin's entire article is worth reading, the tables are particularly revealing.

Insanity, Not Misogyny

Heather MacDonald writes for National Review about the UCSB killings. She derides the emphasis on anti-feminist violence, inasmuch as four of the six persons Elliot Roger killed were male. MacDonald makes some interesting points, including the following four:

There is no pattern of gender-based rampages in this country; there is an emerging pattern of rampages by the untreated mentally ill.

Rap music is the one cultural locus that may legitimately be described as misogynist, but of course, the academy and its orbiting feminists are assiduously silent about rap’s portrayal of “ho’s” and “bitches.”

Rodger’s pathetically grandiose final video bespeaks an entitlement mentality, more than a misogynist one. He believes himself entitled to whatever he wishes for — in this case, college sex — and licensed to kill because he hasn’t gotten what he wants.

By all means, let us try to “end violence against women,” as the feminists say. (snip) We should also be trying to end violence against men. And when it comes to mass slaughter, the best hope for doing both is by treating mental illness, not by railing against the imaginary patriarchy.

Maybe "treating" but more likely warehousing the mentally ill.

1/3 Live With Parents

Writing in Business Insider, Sam Ro cites the latest monthly chart book of Deutsche Bank's Torsten Slok. Slok has a chart showing the numbers of 18-34 year olds now living with their parents. Today it is 32%.

Slok sees a bright side to these numbers: they represent pent-up home buying demand awaiting a better job market. When jobs finally arrive, lots of homes should sell.

Dare We Hope?

Facing the strong possibility of a GOP-controlled Senate in his last two years in office isn't something President Obama relishes. See what Politico writes about this:

Obama tells anxious Democrats that there is only so much he can do beyond fundraising and better implementing the health care law. But he also has told allies that losing the Senate to Republicans would make his last two years in office unbearable.

"Unbearable" means "intolerable." Dare we hope he might resign in January of 2015? Nah, too good to be true.

Weird Cognitive Science

An article in The Telegraph (U.K.) touts University of Edinburgh research findings that learning a second language can somehow slow brain aging and postpone dementia, even if the language is learned in adulthood. A natural experiment is suggested.

Most Americans are monolingual whereas many Europeans are multilingual. If the above is accurate, the prevalence of dementia at any given age should be lower in Europe than in the U.S. My question: Is it the case?

I suspect contaminating variables in the U.K. study. In the U.K. knowing a second language may be a proxy variable for social class, unless large numbers of immigrants were included in the sample. Children who attend private boarding schools are more likely to be taught a second or third language than youngsters who attend neighborhood schools run by the government. Plus their parents are more likely to vacation abroad in places where knowing French or Spanish is useful.

Another possible contaminant: suppose most of the multilingual subjects were immigrants who eat substantially different diets than ethnic Brits, Scots, and Welsh. Diet can certainly affect brain health.

Quote of the Day

Instapundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds, writing yesterday (12:47 p.m.) about the collapse of cable news ratings:

All this talk about “the demo” and over-55 viewers being less valuable seems out-of-date. In today’s economy, those are the people with money.

Seniors are just about the only passengers you see aboard cruise ships. Too many young people are underemployed or unemployed and broke.

Weird Arcological Science

Bloomberg reports an attempt to create floating city-states that effectively would be independent nations. The source for the story is Patri Friedman, grandson of Nobel winning economist Milton Friedman and chairman of The Seasteading Institute. Hat tip to Drudge Report for the link.

The idea is related to the concept of having one's permanent residence on a cruise ship, as COTTonLINE reported two and a half months ago. The difference being the floating city-state would be anchored in one location, presumably in sheltered littoral waters.

Achieving substantial sovereignty within another nation's territorial waters seem to be a key difficulty. It would be difficult to negotiate, even harder to defend.

Waterworld, anyone?

3,142 Days Since Last U.S. Major Hurricane Landfall

Drudge Report links to two related stories that form an odd juxtaposition. The first is from The Hill which reports:

President Obama warned Friday that storms like Hurricane Sandy will become more frequent as climate change intensifies.

Compare that with this story from The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang blog:

The U.S. has been extraordinarily fortunate lately: we have not been witness to the fury of a major hurricane (category 3 or higher) landfall since October 2005 when Wilma hit southwest Florida as a Category 3 storm.

Since the hyper-active 2005 season, the U.S. has had just six Category 1 and 2 hurricane landfalls: Humberto (TX), Ike (TX), Gustav (LA), Dolly (TX), Irene (NC), and Isaac (LA). Sandy was not technically a hurricane at its NJ landfall, and if it were, it would have been a Category 1 storm.

Such a streak, or “drought”, is unprecendented going back to 1900. As of the start of this hurricane season, the span will be 3,142 days since the last U.S. major hurricane landfall.  The previous longest span is about 2½ years shorter!

President Obama has never let the facts get in the way of a good story. As an empiricist, I find the WaPo data speaks for itself.

The WaPo article is a treatise on hurricanes. As a Westerner, I found it contained more than I wanted to know. If you live on the Gulf or East Coast, it should be relevant information.

No Bright Spots

NewsBusters reports NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel was asked by the former CEO of Home Depot Ken Langone to name one country with which U.S. relations are better under President Obama than under his predecessor. Speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box, Engel replied:

I think you would be hard pressed to find that. You would naturally want to say Europe, but generally the relations with a lot of European countries have gotten worse.

Our allies have become confused. For eight years you had the Bush administration with a very interventionist policy, driving into world affairs, driving primarily into the Islamic world army first, or fist first. And that was very unpopular with many of our allies. But toward the end, after 8 years, people adjusted to it.

Now you have a presidency that for the last six years is pulling out very rapidly. And that is creating a kind of pump action, a vortex of instability that has left allies like Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, like even some European countries very confused. Are we going in? Are we pulling out? Are we leading? Are we trying to set the agenda? That has been a lot of frustration.

So in terms of the foreign policy objectives laid out in West Point, yes, he talked about ending these two unpopular wars. But I do sympathize with some of the things said in the Wall Street Journal. Right now we have a black hole in Syria. Iraq is in a state of collapse. Libya is about to go back into a civil war. And this was the one case where we intervened militarily. So I think there is a lot of problems on the horizon in the foreign policy world.

Emery: Times Bias

Noemie Emery, in a column for The Weekly Standard comparing Hillary Clinton and Jill Abramson, finds them much alike in age, temperament, and beliefs. In the process she describes Abramson's former employer - the New York Times - in unflattering terms.

While treating liberal blacks with kid gloves and much reverence, the Times would make a practice of profiling conservatives such as Clarence Thomas and quota foe Ward Connerly as disturbed personalities whose judgment was wanting.

NYT was once a great newspaper; on a good day it still is. Unfortunately, its "good days" have become scarce.