Not Just ISIL

Breitbart reports National Security Advisor Susan Rice tells the cadets at the Air Force Academy about ISIS.

We have faced down and defeated much greater adversaries. ISIL is not Nazi Germany. It is not the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War. This is not World War III or the much-hyped clash of civilizations.

Rice is correct, the threat of ISIL alone does not reach "clash of civilizations" proportions. What does reach that oft-touted level is the clash of the West with militant political Islam, which includes, but is not limited to, ISIL, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Jemaah Islamiyah, Hezbollah, the Salafists, Hamas, Abu Sayyaf, and the Moro National Liberation Front.

Taken as a collectivity of violent Islamic opponents of the West, our opposition to these is a clash of civilizations, if you can call them "civilized," which is admittedly a stretch.

Ryan Shows Class

COTTonLINE isn't entirely sympatico with Speaker Paul Ryan, we disagree with him on a number of fundamentals. Nevertheless, today he showed class and we wish to recognize and honor him for it.

Folks unhappy with the remaining GOP presidential nomination aspirants have kept pushing his name forward as someone to whom the party could turn on a second ballot. The party establishment is comfortable with Ryan, no great endorsement in this anti-establishment year.

Politico.com reports Ryan today announced two very important things. First, he will not seek, nor will he accept, the party's nomination. Second, he asks the rules committee to adopt a rule limiting the party to selecting among those who have run active campaigns during the primary season.

This is entirely as it should be. Realistically, the party should select either Cruz or Trump as no one else has won any substantial number of state contests.

If Trump arrives in Cleveland with enough pledged delegates to win on the first ballot, he must get the nomination. In the event Trump has not achieved the 1237 necessary when the primaries end, then both he and Cruz will go recruiting among the delegates pledged to Rubio, Kasich, etc. Whether these will be released before the first ballot remains unclear. It should be an interesting summer.

The party establishment needs to accept the idea they've been repudiated. Four choices remain for them: decide to follow the lead of the base, sit out the 2016 election, become Democrats, or form a third party to ensure the GOP base doesn't elect their candidate. The party's nominee only has a chance of winning if the establishment takes choice number one.

Blame the Internet

Long-time political analyst Stuart Rothenberg writes for Roll Call about a peculiar symmetry between the two parties. It isn't just the Republicans who are becoming more extreme, more ideological, and less willing to compromise. Democrats are similarly afflicted.

Many theories have been advanced to explain the drift from the middle, the hollowing out of the political center. For what it's worth, here's mine.

I believe the Internet has enabled people to find like-minded individuals and the resulting virtual groups are self-reinforcing. As grad students in Org. Psych., we learned research shows if even one person agrees with you it becomes vastly easier to hold unpopular views.

However, if a group agrees on something, a phenomenon called "risky shift" or "groupshift" occurs, for as Wikipedia notes:

Groupshift is a phenomenon in which the initial positions of individual members of a group are exaggerated toward a more extreme position. When people are in groups, they make decisions about risk differently from when they are alone. In the group, they are likely to make riskier decisions, as the shared risk makes the individual risk less.

Needing a group to agree with, to hang with, is one of the imperatives of a social species like ours. 

Reflection Is Good

Writing opinion for the Boston Globe, Niall Ferguson begins his column saying he cannot imagine a President Cruz, and ends it as follows:

Now, I am not saying Cruz is Lincoln. I am just saying that, on reflection, maybe I can imagine him as president of the United States.

To reach that conclusion, Ferguson notes several Cruz characteristics:

The point about men like Ted Cruz is not their unpopularity with their classmates; it is their popularity with everyone else.

Like Trump, Cruz saw the extent to which Republican voters were sick of their party establishment. The difference was that, unlike Trump, Cruz didn’t make it up as he went along. Trump was engaged in what is known on the New York comedy scene as “improv.” Nothing Cruz does is improv. He is always the master of his brief.

The man is a politics machine.

There is risk electing Cruz who genuinely is intelligent, but it's likely to turn out better than has the incumbent who merely poses as smart.

It's Not News

AFP reports via Yahoo News a recently published study in the Journal of the American Medical Association shows the rich live longer than the poor. Seriously, would you expect any other outcome?

Stanford researcher Raj Chetty, using IRS data, finds that the top 1% live 10-14 years longer than the bottom 1%. The value of his research is quantifying the size of the gap and demonstrating it is growing.

I hope no one is shocked a gap exists. If riches cannot buy a healthier, longer life, what good are they? If being the poorest of our poor doesn't either create or result from depression and unhealthy behaviors, what would?

My reaction to this research is like my reaction to the finding smarter people live longer: it would only be earth-shaking news if the reverse were true. It is likely opioid abuse leading to heroin addiction among the poor contributes to today's gap. It seems every generation of poor has its version of soma, earlier versions included weed, crack, meth and ethanol in various guises.

Travel Blogging II

Dateline: At Sea southwest of Hawaii's Kona Coast, en route to Fanning Island. One of the weird things about cruising west across the Pacific is that every couple of days you have a 25 hour day. The captain announces clocks will be set back one hour at 2 a.m.

The savvy tourist sets it back before bed the night before, and discovers s/he is going to bed at 9:30 p.m. instead of 10:30 p.m. whereupon you awaken too early. Fortunately cruise passengers have few required agenda items so they can take a nap or veg out by the pool.

Naturally enough, cruising east across The Big Puddle subjects a person to a 23 hour day every second day. That has its own consequences, not too unpleasant.

The big island of Hawaii was experiencing quite a bit of cloud cover the last couple of days as we've been ported first at Hilo and today at Kona, the latter a tender port where the ship cannot dock and pax go ashore in the rather elaborate, enclosed lifeboats called "tenders." We were never rained on but the mountain top was getting wet.

Assimilation - Mission Impossible

Trevor Philips, a former head of the British Equality and Human Rights Commission and himself a person of color, recently had the following to say about the failure to assimilate of British Muslims. My source is Metro.UK:

The integration of Muslims will probably be the hardest task the country has ever faced. I thought Europe’s Muslims would gradually blend into the landscape. I should have known better.

The difficulty isn't news to anybody who has been paying attention.

The Usual

Reuters reports via Yahoo News that media in Argentina say former President Cristina Fernandez and various fat-cat cronies are being investigated or under indictment for money laundering. This is sadly typical of Latin American regimes.

It is also one reason various Presidents in the region try to stay in office indefinitely, often by extra-constitutional means. Leaving office can mean prison, as in Fujimori's case, or exile. Hat tip to Drudge Report for the link.

DHS Humor

Message on a blackboard outside a restaurant, as posted by Steven Hayward of Power Line.

Eating two strips of bacon for breakfast reduces your chances of being a suicide bomber by 100%.

Also this gem:

I'm a secondhand vegetarian. Cows eat grass, I eat cows. 

Subtropical Snark

Heather MacDonald writes in City Journal about Bill Clinton putting down several Black Lives Matter hecklers. Her opening paragraph is world-class snark, the "subtropical" part is me writing from the harbor at Hilo.

Bill Clinton injected a disruptive element into the Democratic presidential campaign yesterday: truth. The question now is: How will his wife recover from this alien intrusion?

Probably the way the Dowager Empress of Chappaqua normally deals with inconvenient truths, she ignores them or has a minion communicate that she does not find them amusing.

Micro Economics Vindicated

There has been a lot of talk about the impact of minimum wage hikes on employment. Claims have been made in both directions. Those of you who have studied some basic economics likely believe raising the minimum wage will hurt employment.

Guess what? You're right! Investor's Business Daily has the data. It turns out that only three states have seen a downturn in retail employment in the last 15 months: ND, CT, and MA. North Dakota is experiencing a localized depression as fracking became infeasible with low oil prices.

Connecticut and Massachusetts are the first two states to raise minimum wages and, mirabile dictu, employment in retail went down in both. IBD also finds other indicators which say business climate in both states has been hurt.

I fully expect similar impacts in Seattle and CA which have followed suit. A likely result will be growth in the underground, off-the-books economy. Workers there have no protection whatsoever.

Disqualified, Si; Unqualified, No

There has been a lot of talk about whether Hillary Clinton is qualified to be president. Apparently Bernie Sanders said she was not, and then walked the comment back, avering she is qualified.

I believe people are missing the point. As a multi-term senator representing a large and wealthy state and former SecState she was pre-qualified - no question about it.

Without knowing his mind, I suspect what Bernie meant to say was that, by her behavior in several arenas, she has disqualified herself. Clinton has acted in ways such that she is no longer qualified, although she once seemed so. In fact she is demonstrably a pawn of Wall Street, a peddler of influence and probably an indictable felon, as well.

Picking a President in Peru

Suffragio reports on the state of the Peruvian presidential elections which are now underway. At least a half dozen candidates are running, none is expected to get a majority on the first ballot.

The polls indicate Keiko Fujimori, daughter of former president and current prison inmate Alberto Fujimori, is expected to gain the most first-round votes. She will face a run-off against the second greatest vote-getter, about whose identity there is less certainty.

Regardless of who wins the run-off, author Kevin Lees expects Peru's policies to remain moderate and pro-business as those policies have served most Peruvians well. The left fears Fujimori, if elected, might pardon her father and bring his cronies back into government, things her supporters probably favor.

Insecurity

Carl M. Cannon, Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics, writes today on the topic of our insecure electorate. His main theme is that a combination of factors is troubling Americans: illegal immigration and governmental unwillingness to do much about it, terrorism and government refusal to admit the threat thereof, general governmental ineptitude in foreign affairs, urban unrest including attacks on police, and an economy that is very biased in favor of the few.

Even before the recent attacks in Belgium, polling at the end of 2015 and the beginning of 2016 revealed that security concerns have overtaken the economy as the dominant issue in voters’ minds. A survey done for Third Way, a moderate political group, revealed that 29 percent of Americans were worried about national security/terrorism—nearly twice as many who listed the economy as their top priority.

These numbers fluctuate, depending on the proximity to a major terrorist event and by how the question is worded. But the theme has remained constant. In late January, the Gallup Poll found that 23 percent of voters listed national security/terrorism/foreign affairs as their chief concern, compared to 17 percent who named the economy.

Third Way asked Americans the following question:

Looking ahead to the next few years, which party do you think will do a better job of protecting the country from international terrorism and military threats - the Republican Party or the Democratic Party?

I'll bet you are not surprised by their findings. More Americans chose the Republican Party by a margin of 52% to 36%, with 12% having no opinion.

Translation for the numerically challenged: an absolute majority of Americans believe Republicans will do a better job of keeping them safe. From my lofty perch overlooking the harbor and city of Honolulu, I call that good news.

Travel Blogging I

Dateline: Thursday in Honolulu. This city is growing like a weed, there are dozens of modern skyscrapers and at least five construction cranes visible from the ship's observation (top) deck. With the verdant green trees lining many avenues, it bids fair to be a competitor to Singapore, and that's really saying something.

We caught a cab today and zipped over to a Safeway to stock up on soft drinks. You can bring your own soft drinks on board, but not your own booze. The cabby waited for us and took us straight back to the ship. 

Being in Honolulu is nice, but we have no agendas here as we've visited HI many times. The ship sailed in around 10 a.m. and will be here until 5 p.m. tomorrow. 

Cruise ships rarely overnight in-port, many cruises have none and spend every evening at sea. I gather we are scheduled to do a second overnight somewhere in French Polynesia. It is the sort of things a month-long cruise can do.

Hawaii is warm (of course) but not terribly sunny. Yesterday we cruised under overcast skies all day and today has been cloudy here, and the trade winds are blowing. We'll see what tomorrow brings, weatherwise. 

EU Maybe on The Ropes

Colunnist Eamonn McCann writes in the Irish Times about the faltering state of the European Union.  Hat tip to RealClearWorld for the link. McCann's title is revealing.

Undemocratic EU may not survive grim challenges

The basic argument is that nationalism is on the rise in Europe whereas the EU opposes national sovereignty, distrusts voters. You will find his conclusion curiously refreshing, I believe:

There is no democratic redress for any of the problems afflicting the union. Discontent will either be bottled up or will erupt on to the streets.

The EU may not survive.

COTTonLINE has suspected as much for some months now. Except the Brits, who have a commitment to democratic redress, may solve the EU issue for themselves via Brexit.

PC Haters

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes that Trump supporters are modestly more racist than those of Kasich and Cruz. He makes much of this modest difference. I'd interpret it differently.

The Donald has repeatedly criticized politically correct speech, defined as saying not what you mean but what you know is widely acceptable, what you are "supposed to say." My guess: Trump's white supporters are no more racist than other whites. However, echoing their champion, they refuse to say they brook no racist feelings or resentments.

Those who really hate feeling compelled to say things they neither believe nor favor in order to be socially acceptable logically gravitate to Trump. He has derided the idiocy of political correctness. Expect his followers to do less self-editing for social desirability,

WI: It's Cruz and Sanders

Wisconsin has shown its maverick streak in today's two party primary ballotings. The challenger or runner up in each party won in Wisconsin.

Delegate-wise, Cruz did better than Sanders, if RealClearPolitics can be believed. The win for Cruz is particularly sweet as WI is not a state with an evangelical majority, supposedly his forte.

I believe we don't get more results for another couple of weeks, hope I have that right.

Seaborne Thoughts

On Sunday, our first day out of San Diego, we saw a whale breaching just a couple of hundred yards off the starboard bow. We could only see a bit of its back "fin" or ridge and the puff of vapor they blow into the air when exhaling, but we saw these twice in relatively quick succession.

At the time we were perhaps 300 miles west of California so it was likely a California gray whale, a species which births their young in the warm Gulf of California and when we saw it was likely headed for its icy Alaskan summer feeding grounds. They. make this migration twice a year, once in each direction. Others of the same species hang out around Maui in the Lahaina Roads channel in winter. The California Gray is a long distance swimmer for sure.

Finding a Pony in the Manure Pile

The Pew Research Center weighs in with a recent demographic report that contains much you already knew and some things perhaps you hadn't yet seen. One factor of which they make much is the decline of the middle class as a percentage of the U.S. population.

It is true, their figures show that during the period from 1971 to 2015 the middle class declined from 61% of Americans to 50%. If you believe our genius has derived from our massive middle class then that decline could be seen as a bad deal.

Now let's unpack the middle class declining by 11%, did all 11% end up poor? Not even close. Four of those 11 percentage points were people falling out of the middle class, ending up poorer.

On the other hand, the other seven of those 11 percentage points represented middle class people becoming more affluent! The "upper income group" grew by half, rising from 14% of the population to 21% of Americans.

In other words, of those leaving the middle class, almost twice as many (7%) improved their economic lot as opposed to becoming worse off (4%). I'd call that a cause for rejoicing, you should too. This is the "pony."

The rest of the report says as a nation we're becoming older, less religious, less white, and possibly more liberal. I expect many will find things in those sections to rue, reasons to believe the country is on the wrong track. This is the "manure pile."