WY GOP Censures Cheney

In mid-January we wrote that House Cheney had exacted payback on House Trump, with Liz Cheney’s vote in favor of his impeachment. At that time I opined her action was personal and not a reflection of Wyoming opinion.

Today the Associated Press reports:

The Wyoming Republican Party voted overwhelmingly Saturday to censure U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney for voting to impeach President Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Only eight of the 74-member state GOP’s central committee stood to oppose censure in a vote that didn’t proceed to a formal count. The censure document accused Cheney of voting to impeach even though the U.S. House didn’t offer Trump “formal hearing or due process.”

By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, something like 89% voted for her censure. Pols haven’t forgotten in 2013 she threatened a primary challenge of popular Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY).

A month ago she chose to side with the Swamp; her future in DC is not as a WY elected representative. Our WY primary is in August of 2022, and many of us will vote to have someone else represent our party. It won’t surprise me if she chooses to pursue alternative career opportunities.

Hyper-Sensitivity

Ed Driscoll, a regular poster at Instapundit, requotes a Barron’s article which cites an unnamed newspaper. 

“New York speculators,” crowed one newspaper, “made to pay through the nose.”

In the spirit of the current, hyper-sensitive zeitgeist, I wonder if that statement might be a double-barreled anti-Semitic dog-whistle? I believe it could be so alleged. 

Swamp ≈ CCP Fifth Column

At Tablet, Lee Smith writes an important article with an improbable title, “The Thirty Tyrants.” If you can get past the irrelevant classicism of a precedent in Ancient Greece, Smith makes an important point about what Trump represented and the motives of those who opposed him. 

His basic point is that the American elites which oppose Trump are making huge fortunes dealing with China, regardless of the negative impact that has on most people here at home. Trump recognized this and sided with Americans, against China, which threatened the elite’s access to further wealth. Presto, longtime big business Republicans became Democrats, as if by magic. 

Smith concludes what Trump called “the Swamp” is de facto China’s fifth column in the U.S. These are key people whose loyalty the CCP has bought with market access or cheap manufacturing labor. Their residence may be America but their rallying cry is “Globalism” and their sponsor is Beijing.

————— 

The new issue of Time has another insight which buttresses this argument. Author Molly Ball argues that what Smith calls the pro-China lobby was colluding behind-the-scenes to ensure Trump lost his November reelection bid. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for both links.

A Milestone

Today was a milestone in the lives of the DrsC. We are CA natives who've owned property in CA since 1978. As of today we no longer own property in the state. 

We have been Wyoming residents since 2004 but continued to have a winter place in CA. No longer, our new winter place will be in eastern Nevada. This cuts the distance from roughly 900 miles to under 600, it will be doable in one day, if need be, or an easy 2 days.

They were scheduled to break ground on our new place in NV yesterday. It will be finished in the late summer. 

Like the place we just sold, the new place also has a hilltop location and a panoramic view, though the view is of quite different scenery. Until WY warms up, we are wandering snowbirds, living in our RV.

Weird Poop Science

Research is beginning to learn that the minute beasties that live in your lower digestive tract (aka colon) make a difference in your health. See findings from Medical Express which showed that people with melanoma - a very evil and often fatal cancer - who were not responding to immunotherapy began to respond positively following a fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). 

I’m imagining a future in which shopping for “designer fecal biota” is a normal thing. We might even learn that centenarians have relatively unique biota cohabiting in their colons. Or that the presence or absence of biota are involved in Alzheimer’s.

Wise Words

Robert Stacy McCain, aka “the other McCain,” writes wise words about the pernicious effects of identity politics for The American Spectator.

The challenge for Americans, if we are to survive this destructive barrage of toxic identity-politics propaganda, is to see through the motives of those who seek to divide us. The vast majority of Americans do not spend their days stewing in resentment over “systemic” oppression.

We are not a nation of victims, and neither are we a nation of oppressors. Most of us are just trying to get through the week, pay our bills, and live the best life we can. And the best way to do that is still by clinging to those “little platoons” Burke so eloquently described. Our faith, our family, our community — real people we actually know, and not strangers chattering on the internet — are our genuine tribes.

This is likely the only life you’ll have. Choose to live as a winner, not as a victim. 

Dems Look Over Shoulder

Glenn Reynolds has a column in the New York Post you might want to check out. He argues that Democrats, who won the election last autumn, aren’t acting like winners confident in their victory.

Why? Polling shows nearly half of Americans believe there were significant problems with the 2020 election vote-counting and reporting. And that leaving office Trump had higher approval ratings than Biden has upon entering that same office. 

Romney Seeks Pork

Sen. Mitt Romney (R?-UT) has proposed paying people to have children, per The Daily Wire.

The legislation, dubbed the Family Security Act, would provide $350 per month to families with a child under the age of 6, and $250 per month to families with a child under the age of 17.

Talk about pork, this is something a guy who is worried about reelection would propose. It would constitute an enormous income transfer to his Utah constituents, many of whom have large families, averaging around 4 kids per LDS household.  I don’t expect his proposal to pass.

A Retro Solution

Instapundit links to a FEMA document concerning how to “cook” woody material to make a gas to fuel internal combustion engines if petroleum products become scarce. This sounds hi-tech, but truly isn’t new.

A sometime military historian, I remember reading that during their World War II occupation the Japanese would spare little or no gasoline to the Philippine civilian sector. Clever locals used this method to propel buses and taxis in Manila.

The vehicles in question had a bulky device welded on the back which used a external combustion fire to heat a tank of plant material which gave off gas which was piped to the engine, which ran (badly, I suspect) on the fumes. Once the plant material had given off all its gas, it was effectively charcoal which was then burned to heat the next tank of plant material.

FEMA’s design improves on the WW II version but I hope I’m never reduced to such kluges.

An Anti-Israel Choice

If you support Israel, or wish that nation well, please understand the Biden administration does not share those views. Paul Mirengoff of Power Line observes about this issue:

Joe Biden has selected Hady Amr to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israel-Palestine. A more accurate title would be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State against Israel and for Palestine. . .and for Hamas.

After citing several of Amr’s anti-Israel positions, Mirengoff concludes:

We should expect the hatred Amr has expressed towards Israel, his close ties with Qatar, and his sympathy for Hamas and even Hezbollah to drive his work. And, considering the importance of his new post, we should worry that Amr’s work will drive Biden administration Israel policy.

Well ... since you wouldn’t pick a vegan to barbecue ribs, presume the Biden administration’s personnel choice signals a stance vis-a-vis Israel that is adversarial, maybe even hostile. Not that this will bother American Jews who mostly voted for Biden and find Israel’s tough security posture embarrassing.

Demography Reconsidered

Power Line’s John Hinderaker mines a Charles Blow column from the New York Times (behind paywall) to make several points conservatives won’t mind reading. First, a Norm Ornstein quote from the Blow article:

By 2040 or so, 70 percent of Americans will live in 15 states. Meaning 30 percent will choose 70 senators. And the 30 percent will be older, whiter, more rural, more male than the 70 percent.

To which Blow adds:

If you think it has been hard to get this Senate to embrace policies like reparations or voting rights that stand to benefit Black people, imagine how much harder that task will be before a Senate that continues to tilt toward smaller states.

Furthermore, a Pew demographic analysis has found that by 2065, Hispanics in America will nearly double the population of Black people, and Asians will overtake Black people as the nation’s second-largest minority.

Each of these groups have their own specific legislative agendas. How high on the list of priorities will be the agenda of the third-largest minority group at that point?

Hinderaker’s conclusion: 

Liberals have confidently believed that demography is on their side; even that it makes their ultimate victory inevitable. But as Blow correctly observes, demographic tides may be moving in a very different direction.

To which I’d add this caveat: Ornstein wrote his warning before the pandemic got lots of people to work from home, something many won’t give up willingly. Right now the migratory trends are away from the east and west coasts, who knows if that newer trend will continue once we’re mostly vaccinated? 

Message Received

The Biden administration’s message to Asians and Whites: it’s okay for Yale to discriminate against you in admissions. By implication, other IHEs can do the same, with apparent impunity.

I believe it is important to know who your friends (and not-friends) are. If you didn’t know before, you have received a clear indication. If White or Asian, you have not-friends in higher education and in the Biden administration.

More Evidence

Last Friday we wrote about Liz Cheney’s troubles back home in WY, and since then we’ve seen WY media reports that 10 of the state’s 23 Republican county organizations have censured her. On Monday we wrote about former Bush appointees leaving the GOP.

Today comes a piece in American Greatness synthesizing these data points, arguing that “Cheney’s Republican Party Is No More.” In a very real sense, the obituary is a fair one. 

Trump wasn’t the cause of the extinction, but rather its beneficiary, as he embraced the new populist-nationalist doctrine the grassroots was feeling. The prior migration of the Davos-attending super rich from GOP to the Dems can be viewed as a cause, a result or maybe both.

This latter party change has been evident in WY for a decade or more. Its one high roller county - Teton County - is the one reliably blue island in a statewide sea of red. That county is known for wealthy residents, skiing, Jackson Hole and the summer Fed meeting, a kind of mini-Davos. It is also the Cheney clan’s WY residence. 

A Celebration

Happy Ground Hog Day, COTTonLINE readers. If your weather was like mine, the prescient rodent saw his shadow meaning he’s predicted six more weeks of winter. That doesn’t sound like much fun.

Did you know that the ground hog is also known as a woodchuck, a whistle pig, or marmot? And that, by whatever name, it is an oversized ground squirrel?

Have a nice day.

Epstein’s Wealth

We finally find out how convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein earned his millions and afforded the tropical island retreat. He sold extremely helpful tax advice to hyper-wealthy clients and, it would appear, saved them billions. See the write-up at TaxProfBlog. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Oregon Lunacy

The PBS website reports Oregon is the first state to decriminalize possession of “personal-use quantities” of hard drugs. The article specifies "heroin, methamphetamine, LSD, oxycodone and other hard drugs."

Oregon is consistent, still leading the way in intentional insanity. Oregon richly deserves to have every strung-out crack whore and addict move there. Not clear is whether Oregonians will notice if the deserved migration actually takes place.

Urbanism’s Decline

Not everything that appears in The Atlantic is total nonsense. Today I bring your attention to a discussion of the possible impacts of remote work on cities, commuting, and population density. The Covid pandemic has kickstarted this trend.

Metcalfe’s Law: The value of a communications network rises exponentially with the number of its users. 

In 2018, it was weird and rude to ask a boss to move a meeting to Skype, or to tell a business partner to fire up a Zoom link because you can’t make lunch. The teleconference tech existed, but it was considered an ersatz substitute for the normal course of business. 

“The most important outcome of the pandemic wasn’t that it taught you how to use Zoom, but rather that it forced everybody else to use Zoom,” Autor told me. "We all leapfrogged over the coordination problem at the exact same time.” Meetings, business lunches, work trips—all these things will still happen in the after world. But nobody will forget the lesson we were all just forced to learn: Telecommunications doesn’t have to be the perfect substitute for in-person meetings, as long as it’s mostly good enough. For the most part, remote work just works.

There will still be traditionalist bosses who demand you show up in the office every morning at 8 a.m. and work past 5 p.m. They will be viewed as outlier, hard-ass exceptions. 

Lots of us are going to live where we choose, and often that will be low density living. I write this on a hilltop in rural northern CA where I have a 40 mile view and no close neighbors. These are interesting times.

Barstool Conservatives?

None of us knows for certain what the future holds in store, sometimes it’s fun to imagine where present trends, extended into the future, might take us. The Week brings us an example of this that you might enjoy. Author Matthew Walther writes:

I believe that Trump brought the conservative movement to an end. But what its destruction means is something very different from the prophecies of permanent Democratic supermajorities issuing forth from the former president's critics.

About the Trump voters, Walther opines: 

Whatever their opinions might have been 20 years ago, in 2021 these are people who, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, accept pornography, homosexuality, drug use, legalized gambling, and whatever GamerGate was about. On economic questions their views are a curious and at times incoherent mixture of standard libertarian talking points and pseudo-populism, embracing lower taxes on the one hand and stimulus checks and stricter regulation of social media platforms on the other.

Like all futurists, Walther is almost certainly wrong about major details of the future he sees, but may also be right about others. This makes his “Barstool conservatives” projection interesting and fun to ponder.

Later ... keen readers might detect an indirect allusion to Rod Dreher’s Benedict Option at the end of the column when Walther writes:

The best that can be hoped for is a kind of recusancy, a limited accommodation for a few hundred thousand families who cling to traditions that in the decades to come will appear as bizarre as those of the Pennsylvania Dutch.

About Burma/Myanmar

Burma or Myanmar (same place, take your pick) has experienced another military coup, one of several since World War II. The military recently arrested and detained elected President Aung San Suu Kyi and other members of her government, declaring a one-year emergency.

You may wonder how it is the country allows a powerful military to take over the government whenever it chooses. In some ways the nation is like the former Yugoslavia or Soviet Union, two countries whose various regions were populated by members of different tribes. In Burma, several of these don’t like being ruled by the dominant Burman ethnic group and to varying degrees support separatist movements.

Burma tolerates a powerful military because, in its absence, the country would likely fall apart much like Yugoslavia or the Soviet Union did, and for the same reasons. The fragility of those held-together-by-force nations teaches a lesson that isn’t lost on the Burmese majority. It makes their commitment to democracy somewhat ambivalent.

A Mini-Migration

Reuters reports the following story, and the headline largely sums it up.

Exclusive: Dozens of Former Bush Officials Leave Republican Party, Calling It 'Trump Cult'

While preferable to a Democrat administration, the Bush terms were largely periods of wasted opportunity. While I understand these appointees showing loyalty to former employers they admired and liked, it isn’t clear any currently active Republicans are going to miss them. 

Will they become enthusiastic Democrats, the only other active choice in our de facto two party nation? I’d guess they will simply become unmotivated independents who find little to like in either party. 

Their corporate internationalist version of “Republican” doesn’t have a lot of adherents in this era of populist nationalism on the right. And their wealth means they’ve found more simpatico cronies among wealthy Democrats.