Celebrate the Harvest

Today we celebrate our nation’s harvest festival, which we call Thanksgiving Day. However much or little faith shapes our modern lives four hundred years later, it certainly was central in the lives of those religious refugees from Europe who celebrated the first harvest festival in New England. Hence the name.

My wish for you is a day of peace and plenty in the company of good friends and loved relatives. It is traditional, to engage in a bit of gustatory excess, in celebration of another successful harvest season. 

Note well, Christmas is exactly one month from today. Plus the shortest day of the year and the official start of winter are even sooner. Be safe, be well, be happy.

Poll: Biden Underwater

The Rasmussen Daily Presidential Tracking Poll released today finds the following:

41% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Biden’s job performance. Fifty-eight percent (58%) disapprove.

The latest figures include 21% who Strongly Approve of the job Biden is doing and 49% who Strongly Disapprove. This gives him a Presidential Approval Index rating of -28.

Very clearly a lot of Democrats are lukewarm about Biden, as well they might be. In a nation where nearly everyone drives, each visit to the gas pump reminds people of how much worse things have become in the last 10 months. 

Survey: Whites Lie About Race

A survey of 1250 white college students found many lied about their race in applying to schools, the story comes from the website Intelligent.com. The obvious motive is improving their chances of acceptance and aid at their school-of-choice.

The survey found that 34% of white Americans who’ve applied to college falsely claimed on their applications they’re a racial minority.

The number one reason why applicants faked minority status is to improve their chances of getting accepted (81%). Fifty percent also lied to benefit from minority-focused financial aid.

Nearly half the male students claimed to have lied, while fewer than one-in-five women so claimed. The most common thing to falsely claim is Native American heritage, a la Elizabeth Warren. The story also reports colleges do not ask for proof of race, a good-to-know factoid.

This looks exactly like whites taking advantage of very real, intentional structural racism - “affirmative action” - which favors those who are non-white and non-Asian. Hat tip to The College Fix for the link. 

The data is self-report and some caution is wise in interpreting the findings. I can imagine undergraduate men thinking “I should have lied” and reporting that they did.

I Have a Question

I’ve been thinking about the previous post, and claims made by Tucker Carlson that the Jan. 6 invasion of the Capitol was, if not instigated, at least made worse by FBI infiltrator/agitators who egged on the protestors. That this happens is clear, apparently being at least somewhat responsible for a foiled plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democrat governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Will Rogers famously said of his commentary, “I only know what I read in the papers.” With a similar caveat that I’m reliant on the reporting of many others, I have a question about government law enforcement personnel urging people to do illegal acts.

Is this something we want our federal or state governments doing? Urging people to break the law and subsequently be arrested, tried, and imprisoned? Don’t we have enough people doing such things on their own, without taxpayer-funded encouragement? 

When undercover police work goes beyond information gathering and becomes agitation or outright instigation, it seems wrong to me. I believe it an inappropriate activity for our government, what we expect from a Stasi or KGB, not the FBI. 

Good Riddance

Another good-news story shows up this morning. Business Insider reports two #neverTrump voices - Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes - featured semi-regularly by Fox News have resigned in protest over the spin in Tucker Carlson’s Jan. 6 documentary Patriot Purge. I haven’t seen that documentary and take no position on its claims.

Hayes apparently was a college roommate of Bret Baier and both Hayes and Goldberg were principals at conservative publications that repudiated Trump. I denominate the report of their resignations “good news” because I haven’t found the Fox News commentary of Goldberg and Hayes insightful.

Most of us on the right have been able to appreciate the America First policies of Trump while shrugging off his flamboyant impresario’s personal style, which includes him being a sore loser. Obviously some - Hayes and Goldberg among them - cannot accomplish this mental gymnastic. I won’t miss them on Bret Baier’s panel.

Chile Votes

We don’t write about it every week, maybe not every month, but one of the issues COTTonLINE keeps an eye on is the state of our hemisphere. Today comes a good-news Associated Press report from Chile, which nation has mostly been a source of bad-news stories in recent years.

Two onetime outsiders hailing from opposite extremes of the political spectrum received the most votes Sunday in Chile’s presidential election but failed to garner enough support for an outright win, setting up a polarizing runoff in the region’s most advanced economy.

José Antonio Kast, a lawmaker who has a history of defending Chile’s military dictatorship, finished first with 28% of the vote compared to 26% for former student protest leader Gabriel Boric.

Kast, in a victory speech, doubled down on his far right rhetoric, framing the Dec. 19 runoff as a choice between “communism and liberty.” He blasted Boric as a puppet of Chile’s Communist Party — a member of the broad coalition supporting his candidacy — who would pardon “terrorists,” be soft on crime and promote instability in a country that has recently been wracked by protests laying bare deep social divisions.

AP didn’t consider this electoral outcome good news, that evaluation is mine. Interestingly, Chile faces some of the same problems we in the U.S. face.

Kast, 55, from the newly formed Republican Party, emerged from the far right fringe after having won less than 8% of the vote in 2017 as an independent. But he’s been steadily rising in the polls this time with a divisive discourse emphasizing conservative family values as well as attacking migrants — many from Haiti and Venezuela — he blames for crime.

Notice the AP’s bias, “far right fringe” and “divisive discourse” are loaded terms. Chile has intermittently demonstrated the ability to favor free markets and reject the far left, which Boric represents. When Chile has done so, its economy has boomed. 

As a result of which it has, as even AP admits, “the region’s most advanced economy.” We can hope this is one of those times. Also note many of the Haitians at our southern border are repeat-offender economic refugees coming here from Chile.

Sauce for the Gander Too

Instapundit - law prof Glenn Reynolds - approvingly shares an interesting Tweet regarding the Rittenhouse verdict.

Sunday Snark

SciFi author Sarah Hoyt, posting at Instapundit a question about President Biden’s recent colonoscopy.

Did they find his brain up there? Because it’s been missing for longer than I’ve been alive.

It would be funnier if it wasn’t sorta true. Off and on we elect some peculiar folk in this great land.

Same View, in Different Words

Apropos of what we wrote yesterday about the vigilante impulse, comes an Instapundit comment which reinforces my point.

If you want more “vigilantes” get rid of the police. Remember, the police aren’t there to protect the populace from criminals. They’re there to protect the criminals from the populace.

It is worth remembering, when the enforcement of decent behavior is left to the populace, the rights of suspected criminals don’t get a lot of respect. Police mostly follow rules which protect those rights; citizen enforcers, not so much. 

Placing Blame

A number of progressives who are angry at the Rittenhouse verdict have described the young man as an “armed vigilante.” They have declared that such behavior is always wrong. 

I don’t disagree that the impulse which drove Rittenhouse was probably that of a vigilante. Vigilantism mostly occurs in settings where effective law enforcement is missing in action. 

In the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd, Democrat mayors of many large cities instructed their police forces not to enforce the laws against mob violence, arson, property damage, and looting. The mayors’ apparent belief: the rioters were entitled to break the law because of their felt anger. Our law recognizes no such entitlement, no such holiday from lawful behavior.

With inner cities being burned and looted while police passively watched and did nothing, vigilantism was almost to be expected. Law-abiding people who don’t share the rioters sense of grievance are moved to interfere, to defend property as well as human safety. 

That appears to have been Rittenhouse‘s motive. The blame rightly accrues to Kenosha’s mayor and/or city council for their cowardice in refusing to enforce the laws.

Different Strokes, Indeed

Juan Williams’ job on Fox News is to represent, to the best of his ability, mainstream Democrat thought on issues of the day, along with Mara Liasson and a couple of others he upholds the “blue” end of the network’s “fair and balanced” claim. Recently he stated on-air the following, with regard to the Rittenhouse not-guilty verdict.

If this had been a black teenager who had done this, wow, I think the laws might have treated him a little differently.

Williams didn’t explain, but past experience suggests he meant the Black teen would have been convicted on the same evidence. I disagree.

Let’s take Williams’ hypothetical to its logical conclusion. Let us suppose a Black teen had shot three Black men, with whom he was in violent dispute. We need that extra clarification as all three men Rittenhouse shot were, like himself, white. Now our hypothetical is truly parallel.

And yes, the laws would have treated him differently, although not in the way Williams inferred. It is highly likely the shooter would never have been identified, much less arrested. Witnesses to the shooting, if any could be interviewed, would admit having seen nothing useful.

For sure the media would not have followed the trial. Fatal assaults like the above hypothetical happen every weekend in Chicago, Baltimore, Atlanta, and a half dozen more large cities. They elicit little-to-no mainstream media interest and few prosecutions. Convictions are rare.

Kyle Rittenhouse Cleared

Every news outlet is reporting the jury clearing Kyle Rittenhouse of all charges. The prosecution was unable to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the 17 year old acted in other than self-defense. 

Obviously video of the various attacks on and by him played a major part in the outcome. As I write this, there has been no major violence as a reaction to the verdict. Whether that will continue is anybody’s guess.

A New Power Reactor

The Epoch Times reports a firm founded by Microsoft’s Bill Gates - TerraPower - will build a liquid sodium cooled NLWR nuclear reactor in the southwestern Wyoming town of Kemmerer. The reactor is described as a “demonstration” which suggests developmental and proof-of-concept work at the site. 

I am somewhat familiar with the Kemmerer area. The region isn’t scenic and it isn’t cultured. It is the county seat of Lincoln County and heretofore its main claim to fame has been as the place where J. C. Penney ran his first dry goods store.

The nearest collection of nuclear physicists reside in Idaho Falls ID and work at Idaho National Laboratory. Idaho Falls is just over 200 miles distant from Kemmerer. 

The nearest university is Utah State in Logan UT, roughly 100 miles away. I suppose for the plant’s blue collar workers, if recruited locally, it will be a good and steady paycheck. I doubt very much that most engineers and scientists will enjoy living in the rural area.

Weird Gerontological/Immunological Science

Researchers at the highly respected Harvard-related Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston are beginning a test of a nasal vaccine to counteract Aszheimer’s disease. The New York Post has the story.

The whole getting-old gig is bad enough without going gaga and ending up a babbling vegetable. If this preventive proves feasible it will be amazing.

Imagine everyone growing old while remaining however mentally sharp they were when young instead of increasingly forgetful and foggy. Some are this fortunate now, sadly many are not.

The Rumor Mill

Stories are circulating this morning about possible White House scheming to dump Kamala Harris as Vice President. The obvious aim is to replace her with someone who has a better shot at being elected a Democrat president some day. 

Fox News’ Chad Pergram reports being given a heads-up to familiarize himself with the Congressional procedures for confirming a new VP if one is appointed. Gateway Pundit has the story, though it isn’t clear how much credence GP or Pergram gives the rumor.

Monica Showalter at American Thinker looks at the same Pergram blurb and theorizes an attempt to move Harris sideways into a Federal judgeship to free up the post for a new appointee. Again, it isn’t clear if Showalter believes this to be more than a rumor. 

Democrats have ample reason to wish to appoint a more plausible Veep, given Biden’s age and infirmity. Which doesn’t automatically make this more than a wish-fulfillment rumor. 

Between now and January of 2023 confirming Harris as a judge would be possible, if no slam dunk. One supposes most Republicans would reflexively vote “No” for both judicial and partisan reasons.

Covid Vax … How Good?

Power Line’s John Hinderaker cites data he believes shows how effective the Covid vaccinations are in preventing death and hospitalization. They come from a site called Healthy Skeptic which he has cited before. HS writes:

While the cumulative case rates of hospitalization and deaths don’t look very different, in older age groups the protective effect of vaccination is very clear and strong. The cumulative rates are unduly influenced by the very large number of cases and low number of hosps and deaths in younger age groups.

For age groups 50 and over, you are at least three times less likely to die if you get infected and you are vaxed than if you get infected and aren’t vaxed. While the hospitalization difference is not quite as great, it is still substantial.

In other words, for us old crocks the shots are a good deal. I’ve had all 3 Modernas, almost zero side effects, and keep crossed fingers as well. As I’ve written before, the Covid shots are like the flu vaccine, they improve your chances of bullet-dodging without any absolute guarantees.

Peace Is the Seeming Exception

Lest you think peace is the international norm, several regional brushfire wars and quasi-wars are simmering below the general level of awareness. Today’s RealClearWorld has two examples: low-level violence in the tensions between Algeria and Morocco over who controls Western Sahara, plus irregular ‘war’ along the borders between Belarus vs. Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan continue to squabble, and occasionally fight, over the fate of Kashmir. Russia and Turkey back opposites warring sides in Libya and Syria, and China continues to push other bordering countries (Vietnam, Philippines, Japan) out of the South China Sea. 

Yemen is still a shooting war, parts of Syria and Iraq ditto, several Central African countries experience Islamist insurrection and violence, Burma/Myanmar is never exactly peaceful, eastern Ukraine is threatened by a Russian military buildup just across the border, and the Balkans continue to hover just below the outbreak of genocidal violence. 

Plus Brexit seems to have turned up the heat under the tensions in Northern Ireland. One of these days Gaza will resume hostilities with Israel. And Azerbaijan and Armenia have unresolved issues.

The Western Hemisphere is, by comparison, a relatively peaceful place at the moment. Since the Colombian ceasefire, there hasn’t been much political group-on-group warfare, unless you count the gangs shooting at each other in our larger cities and the drug cartels ‘at play’ in Mexico.

Wyoming GOP Dumps Liz Cheney

The Cheyenne Post runs an AP story reporting that the state Republican Party Central Committee has voted to stop recognizing Rep. Liz Cheney as a Republican.

Cheney is now facing at least four Republican opponents in the 2022 primary including Cheyenne attorney Harriet Hageman, whom Trump has endorsed.

"Liz Cheney stopped recognizing what Wyomingites care about a long time ago. When she launched her war against President Trump, she completely broke with where we are as a state," Hageman said.

The best explanation of Cheney’s behavior is loyalty to her father, Dick Cheney. He was Bush II’s Vice President. 

Trump disses Bush II and, by implication, Dick Cheney. One can hardly expect daughter Liz to passively accept that negative evaluation of her dad, and she doesn’t. 

Regardless, hindsight suggests Trump’s negative assessment of the Bush II/Cheney regime is justified. As I’m a Wyoming voter, and our lightly populated state only gets one Rep., it matters.

Consumer Confidence Craters

Paul Mirengoff of Power Line reports the findings of the latest U. of Michigan consumer confidence index poll. You won’t be surprised to learn confidence is down.

As measured by this index, consumer confidence fell last month to 66.8, down from 71.7 the previous month. The latest number is the lowest in 10 years.

The following observations he quotes from the UM survey.

Half of American families anticipate bringing home smaller incomes after adjusting for inflation next year.

One in four consumers say inflation has led to a reduced standard of living.

Rising prices for homes, vehicles, and durables were reported more frequently than any other time in more than half a century.

What is the political impact of these findings? Paraphrasing the Ghostbusters theme, 

There's something weird
And it don't look good
Who you gonna blame?
Democrats!

Good News

One stream of recurrent polling is to ask registered voters whether, if the election was held today, they’d vote for a Democrat or Republican for Congress. This is called the “generic ballot” because the identity of the candidate isn’t specified beyond party affiliation. The ABC News/Washington Post Poll has the data.

In the forty years this question has been posed, today Republicans have the highest score they’ve ever attained, at 51%. They lead the Democrats who received only 41%. It is almost another year to the next congressional election, but these numbers have to be cheerful news for the GOP. 

Probably the best way to think about the generic ballot numbers is as a proxy for how the party-in-power is current seen. Registered voters’ view of Democrats - led by Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer - isn’t positive.