Birthday Greetings

Happy Birthday, America, we celebrate sensibly later today. You're a grand old republic, and we love ya!

The DrsC have visited over 100 countries, and have found none we'd prefer to the U.S. Have we found countries where we could live comfortably? Several. Have we found one to which we were tempted to move domicile? Never, and don't expect to in the future.

Further evidence, if needed, that we're not among Pew's "solid liberals."

Altitude and Weight

RealClearScience reports mountain climbers who spend time at high altitudes eat less than needed to keep their weight up, and lose weight. Meanwhile, the government's Center for Disease Control reports that obesity is least prevalent in Colorado, which is also the state with the highest mean elevation - 6800 feet.

I spend four+ months a year above 6000 feet in the Rockies and during that time typically lose a few pounds without dieting. Coincidence? Perhaps not.

The Final Assault?

Writing in The National Interest, Gordon G. Chang argues that China's new leader Xi Jinping has determined to move against Taiwan, politically if he can, militarily if he must. A recent visit to Taiwan by a PRC official did not go well.

Meanwhile, unification with the PRC is unpopular with nine out of ten island residents, who increasingly self-identify as Taiwanese rather than as Chinese. Chang's concluding sentence is ominous:

The next assault on Taiwan, in the minds of Beijing officials, will be the final one.

A "final assault" threatens as much bloodshed as a "final solution." Some of it will be U.S. blood.

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Dr. Charles Krauthammer, columnist, interviewed on securing the border against illegal aliens. From a RealClearPolitics video of The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News:

You start with a fence.

San Diego did that in the mid 90's and within a decade, the illegal immigration rate at that point was reduced by 90%.

If fences don't work, why is there one around the White House? If they don't work, why is it that the Israeli fence which separate Israel from the West Bank has cut down terror attacks within Israel by 99%. Fences work.

Robert Frost reminds us good fences make good neighbors. Dumping surplus population on the US isn't being a good neighbor.

A Caveat

RealClearPolitics' political analyst Sean Trende weighs in with a caveat about the Quinnipiac University poll showing Obama to be the worst post-war president.

What really drives this particular finding is that Republicans are much more unified in their dislike of Obama than Democrats are in their dislike of any particular GOP president.

Had Democrats been able to agree more on their least-favorite president, Obama might not have come in first.

Trende concludes:

This isn’t to dismiss the Quinnipiac poll in its entirety, which has some truly bad findings for the president and the Democrats.

Americans are basically split evenly on whether the worst postwar president was a Republican or a Democrat, which is what you’d expect in a 50-50 nation.

Republicans are crystal clear about who they like and don't like. They like Ronald Reagan. They don't like Barack Obama.

Quote of the Day I

Yesterday we blogged about a new Quinnipiac University poll. An editorial in the New York Post reacts to this poll:

Looks like another win for the Gipper.

Ronald Reagan is rated the best post-war president. The poll isn’t even close. Reagan polls at double the second-place winner, Bill Clinton, and more than four times JFK.

Reagan had the right governing philosophy: strong defense, small government. He was unabashedly proud to be an American.

Contrast Reagan's characteristics with those of Obama, ranked worst post-war president. Could they be more different?

Political Polarization

The Fix political blog at The Washington Post starts out to debunk a study which found relatively low levels of political polarization. In the process they present unsurprising data which shows we truly are very polarized.

I particularly like a graphic entitled "Democrats and Republicans More Ideologically Divided than in the Past." It shows the distance between the values of median members of the two parties at 10 year intervals: 1994, 2004, and 2014.

Between 1994 and 2004 the values difference stayed largely constant. During the most recent decade the values difference between median Democrats and Republicans have become nearly four times as great as just ten years ago: Democrats have become more liberal, Republicans have become more conservative.

I expect most liberal Republicans became Democrats and most conservative Democrats became Republicans. The consequence is less variability among members of either party, greater ideological consistency.

Weird Parenting Science

The conventional wisdom says children of two-parent families are less likely to have unfortunate outcomes, more likely to thrive. Indeed the science showing that true is solid. Does it provide prima facie evidence of the value of a father in the home? Perhaps not, see what a RealClearPolicy article says:

The problems associated with single motherhood show up far less when a father dies, which suggests that the absence of a father in itself isn't the problem.

This statement infers that the emotional upheaval attendant upon a father absconding generates more problems than does the absence of the man himself. An interesting place to study father absence would be among maritime families whose fathers spend months at a time at sea away from the family.

Chinese Culture Clash

Adam Minter writes for Bloomberg View on the culture clash between Hong Kong and its millions of visitors from China. Apparently, Hong Kong learned manners from their British colonial past, manners not practiced by the hordes of well-heeled visitors who arrive from the rest of China.

Hong Kong citizens cannot abide mainlanders, and Minter argues that those feelings are, at least in part, behind the huge pro-democracy rally held there a couple of days ago. The lovely thing about the conflict is all participants on both sides are Chinese.

The issue isn't race, rather straightforwardly it is culture. Remnants of British culture in Hong Kong are what we like about Fragrant Harbor, the literal translation of Hong Kong.

It's Beach Weather

Are you down for an example of political incorrectness run rampant? Try this:

The main effects of global warming would be: sun, warmth, lush vegetation, and lots of water. So global warming is basically like a day at the beach.

It is tough to get folks to panic about this set of 'horrid' effects. The above quote comes from a sort-of review of the dystopian film Snowpiercer in The Federalist.

Young Liberals Diverge

On June 26 we wrote about a Pew Research Center poll taking a careful look at US political attitudes, and segmenting the very large sample into seven groups with relatively cohesive views. Here the Washington Post weighs in with further insights gleaned from the Pew poll.

WP blogger Emily Badger finds puzzling that Pew's Next Generation Left group (young liberals) hold certain views more closely aligned with those of the two conservative groups. For example, by a two to one margin they agree with this statement:

U.S. has made the changes needed to give blacks equal rights.

And by a three to one margin they agree with the statement:

Blacks who can't get ahead are mostly responsible for their own condition.

Sounds like widespread empathy fatigue.

Iraq, In Hindsight

Hindsight is more acute than foresight, for the obvious reasons. Historian Joseph J. Ellis writes for the Los Angeles Times about US involvement in Iraq then and now. Some of his conclusions seem spot on.

Prime Minister Nouri Maliki is never going to create an inclusive, pluralistic government, not just because he is stubborn but because the Iraqi people do not want one. In truth, there is no such thing as the Iraqi people.

What we are witnessing now is the partitioning of Iraq into three regional sovereignties — Shiite, Sunni and Kurd — which was always the inevitable consequence of our toppling of Hussein.

The recent decision to send 300 American troops back into Iraq reveals that even Obama does not get it. He apparently believes that the United States can overcome more than 1,000 years of history to transform the Middle East. We can't, and we never could.

Did you notice "even Obama does not get it?" I would have said, "... like Bush, Obama does not get it."

Whither Soccer?

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes for Time that soccer isn't destined to be a dominant US sport. Some of his arguments are relatively persuasive.

Why aren’t those millions of youth soccer players since 1974 watching? Perhaps another perception is that it is a kid’s game. Kids get to run around, kick something, and generally wear themselves out to the gratitude of parents. Parents who dutifully and diligently attend their kids’ games don’t seem inclined to tune in to professionals on TV.

Apparently the kids don't watch TV soccer either. Soccer may be more fun to play than to watch, like golf.

Hotel Censorship

Red State reports at least some Hyatt Hotels use the Uniguest server to provide in-room Internet. Uniguest has blocked conservative sites like Power Line, Instapundit, and Drudge Report while not blocking equivalent liberal sites like DailyKos and Talking Points Memo.

This is the electronic equivalent of preventing the lobby newsstand from selling The Wall Street Journal. If you have this experience in any hotel, please register a complaint with hotel management.

Poll: Romney A Better Choice

The Washington Times reports the findings of a new Quinnipiac University poll looking at the performance of the Obama presidency. The White House won't like the results.

Quinnipiac found 45 percent of voters say the country would have been better off if Mr. Romney, the 2012 GOP nominee, had been elected, while just 38 percent say Mr. Obama remains a better choice.

Voters also rate him the worst president since World War II, topping even his predecessor, President George W. Bush, who had left office with terrible ratings.

Meanwhile, Politico reports this same poll found Ronald Reagan most admired of the post-war presidents, with Bill Clinton a distant second. They add:

Fifty-four percent of voters say the Obama administration is not competent at running the government.

And yet Obama was reelected, how dumb was that? Hat tip to Drudge Report for the links.

Weird Genetic Science

The Associated Press reports via Yahoo News research abstracted in Nature showing Tibetans have an ancient gene that helps them breathe at high altitudes. The gene comes from early proto-humans called Denisovans whose fossils are found in Siberia.

Siberia isn't a particularly high altitude region so it's likely Denisovans lived elsewhere too, perhaps in the Himalayas. Andean peoples who live at high altitudes apparently do not share this gene.

The intriguing aspect of the finding is it demonstrates various human forerunner species interbred. If you have a neighbor or coworker who looks like an Australopithecus or Neanderthal, maybe it's not coincidence but in fact his genetic inheritance.

Weird Automotive Science

Road & Track reports on a new Toyota gasoline engine which has one piston and no connecting rod or crankshaft. Think of it as a gasoline-powered generator. You need to see R&T's cutaway diagram.

Instead of spinning a magnet inside a coil of wire, the FPEG (Free Piston Engine Linear Generator) free piston slides back and forth within a coil built into the cylinder wall and generates power directly, supposedly with great efficiency. Apparently the basic design can also function as a diesel, firing on compression alone.

Most railroad locomotives are diesel-electrics, there's no especial reason why autos and trucks cannot operate similarly. Drive the vehicle's wheels with electric motors and power those with the FPEG. I like the concept. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Student ID Card

The photo comes courtesy of my long-time friend Earl. I don't know the original source but that source clearly invites sharing so enjoy, keeping in mind the usual caveats about Photoshopped counterfeits.

Question: when is a foreign student eligible to be President? Answer: never. Alternatively, assuming this individual pictured is eligible to be president, he was almost certainly ineligible for foreign student status.

Independence Possible for the Kurds

For decades conventional wisdom held that Turkey absolutely could not abide the idea of an independent Kurdistan. Before Turkey would let an independent Kurdish nation happen they'd go to war to prevent it.

The calculus in Ankara appears to have changed, see a Bloomberg View article for details. Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan seeks to run for president and, for a change, his opponents have coalesced around a single candidate to oppose him. This gives Turkey's Kurdish minority the ability to decide the election.

Recognizing this, Erdogan has decided to court the Kurds, rather than bash them as has typically occurred. The article points out that Barzani, leader of Iraqi Kurdistan, announced a referendum on independence on the same day that Erdogan announced he was running for president, which the article views as no coincidence.

For a less sanguine view of Turkish - Kurdish relations, see an article in Commentary. Hat tip to RealClearWorld for both links.

The Kurds are nearly as successful a group as the Israelis, clearly better organized and more effective than the Arabs among whom they live. COTTonLINE wishes the Kurds well.

Hong Kong Demonstrations

Reuters reports for Yahoo News that as many as half a million demonstrators marched in Hong Kong in support of true democracy and in opposition to micromanagement from Beijing. This is the largest such demonstration since China regained control in 1997. Hong Kong experiences brutal heat and humidity in summer, so to march is no picnic.

Today's demonstration is a reaction to central government meddling. China's new leader, Xi Jinping, has taken a hard line against demands for direct democracy in the former British colony, interfering in the city's governance.

Beijing appears to be backing away from the "one country, two systems" formulation agreed to in 1997. You can be sure the people of Taiwan, for whom a similar arrangement has been suggested, are watching events in Hong Kong very closely.