Caveat

Yesterday I wrote that 100,000 Russian troops are camped at the border with Ukraine. Today I read that only about half that many troops are there, the 50,000 normally stationed in that part of Russia, and those likely in barracks, not in chilly tents.

So why the confusion? Because the military hardware, the trucks, tanks, cannons, and APCs of another 50,000 troops have been “prepositioned” near the border awaiting the arrival of soldiers. “Prepositioning” is a standard military tactic.

In order for an invasion to occur, the missing 45-50,000 troops have to arrive by train from their normal winter quarters and, it is alleged, they have not yet made an appearance. Once they arrive, assuming they ever do, the countdown to an invasion can be assumed to have started in earnest.

Meanwhile our embassy in Ukraine is sending dependents home, but those of the EU countries have not done so. This suggests we and they have assessed the risks differently. 

I speculate Russian intent is to create enough “invasion jitters” in Ukraine for the inhabitants to cave and install the pro-Russian government Moscow desires, to forestall an actual invasion. It could work.

We live in “interesting” times.

Ukraine Watch

Perennial bad actor Russia appears to be on the brink of invading neighboring Ukraine, a former part of the empire called the USSR. Some 100,000 Russian troops are bivouacked just across the border in the snow, waiting for the "go" code. 

If they're going to invade, they need to do it before the spring thaw, when everything becomes bogged in mud. Ukraine claims it will fight, nobody much expects Ukraine to win.

People who claim to know say the Russians want to install a puppet regime in Kiev. One which will be aligned with Russian aims and less enamored of the EU. 

What to watch for in the coming days? Diplomatic blunders which add up to a broader war in Europe. Let's hope they do not occur. 

That the US has a geriatric President - widely perceived to be weak - only makes the situation more fraught. 

Understanding Teacher Reluctance

Many conservatives have criticized teachers' unions for being reluctant to return to the classroom, quoting the experts who say almost no children experience Covid as worse than a cold. For now, let's assume the experts are correct.

For the first 5+ years of our marriage my wife, who subsequently became "the other DrC," was an elementary school teacher. After earning her PhD, she taught people to become elementary school teachers which, in part, involved coaching student teachers. 

In the early years she got sick a lot, because the children would bring bacteria and viruses to school and inadvertently share them. Later she would note that student teachers got sick a lot, with something medical folks call the "pediatric crud," generic slang for the many respiratory diseases which circulate in a child population. 

If adult school personnel are concerned about catching things the children bring to school, it is only because they've experienced it repeatedly. Eventually they build up immunity to the usual cold viruses, and are ill no more often than anyone else. 

My experience suggests school personnel view the various strains of Covid-19 as "new" viruses to which they've no hard-won immunity. They are loath to go through the get-sick process once more, especially since a fair number of adults are having a hard time with the corona virus, even dying from it. 

In addition, some percentage of them are in the so-called "sandwich generation" who are also taking care of elderly at-risk parents to whom they don't want to bring the virus.

Weird Archeological Science

Writing for Popular Science, Philip Kiefer describes what archeological evidence shows from some of the earliest known prehistoric settlements in Turkey. These date from the period when hunter-gatherer humans were first experimenting with agriculture.

That evidence suggests hunters captured young wild sheep and goats, likely while killing their mothers, and kept them penned to eat later. Apparently they weren't very successful at this, but over time discovered basic animal husbandry by trial and error.

Eventually, the animals came to rely on the humans and domestication occurred, more or less by accident the archeologists surmise. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Path to Perdition

With the Covid mess and pandemic fears as excuses, the 2020 election was run in somewhat peculiar ways. The outcome wasn’t to the Republican loser’s liking, and he cried “foul.” 

Now it begins to look like Democrats, having screwed up big, will lose big in 2022. They are already crying “foul,” blaming election manipulation and cheating.

All of this begins to have very much the feeling of third world politics, where losers never accept defeat. How many election cycles before we have tanks in the streets as the votes are counted? 

It feels like we have embarked on the trajectory followed by Argentina and Venezuela, among others? These once wealthy countries ended up with poverty, squalor, human rights abuses and thuggish politics.

I suggest we do not follow their well-worn “path to perdition.”

Mind-Boggling

Lucianne.com links to an editorial at the Issues & Insights website that says something that is passing strange, but according to a recent Gallup poll, true nevertheless.

For the past year, Democrats up and down the leadership ladder have been on an endless campaign to portray Republicans as delusional out-of-touch anti-science hate-mongering conspiracy-peddling vote-suppressing anti-vaxxer insurrectionist racists. The result has been a huge shift in party preference: away from Democrats and toward Republicans.

While many D voices have been involved in the smear “campaign,” the troika of Schumer, Pelosi, and Biden have been at the forefront, the "leads" as it were. Meanwhile a Greek chorus of the Squad plus Bernie, Elizabeth, Stacey and Maxine sings backup. I&I quotes Gallup as follows:

Both the 9-point Democratic advantage in the first quarter and the 5-point Republican edge in the fourth quarter are among the largest Gallup has measured for each party in any quarter since it began regularly measuring party identification and leaning in 1991.

Napoleon Bonaparte famously said, “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." With majorities in both houses of Congress and the Presidency, Democrats have no excuses; they’ve shot themselves in the foot. Imagine what further self-carnage another year of this arrangement will enable them to achieve.

Good News

Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff cites at length a David Leonhardt article for the New York Times (behind paywall) concerning hopeful developments in the Covid-19 pandemic. All of it is interesting but I found particularly relevant the following excerpt:

A typical 65-year-old American woman — to take one example — is five foot three inches tall and weighs 166 pounds. If she had been vaccinated and did not have a major Covid risk factor, like an organ transplant, her chance of dying after contracting Covid would be 1 in 872, according to the calculator. For a typical 65-year-old man, the risk would be 1 in 434.

Among 75-year-olds, the risk would be 1 in 264 for a typical woman and 1 in 133 for a typical man.

Those are meaningful risks. But they are not larger than many other risks older people face. In the 2019-20 flu season, about 1 out of every 138 Americans 65 and older who had flu symptoms died from them, according to the C.D.C. (emphasis added)

Translation: Flu is dangerous to seniors, so is Covid. The vaccines for both are (a) helpful and improve your odds, but (b) no guarantee of absolutely dodging the disease. 

The no-longer-young DrsC get the flu vaccine every year, and I won’t be upset if we end up getting a Covid vaccine every year too. Doing so beats getting sick and Medicare wisely picks up the tab.

Outspoken

A current issue about which many are outraged is a statement by Chamath Palihapitiya, tech venture capitalist and part owner of the Golden State Warriors of the NBA. He claims disinterest in the plight of the Uyghur people of western China, who are abused by the China's Han majority. 

Palihapitiya is a Sinhalese immigrant from Sri Lanka. Perhaps relevant is that the Sinhalese majority in Sri Lanka won a bitter civil war with the Tamil minority. It could be that as a member of a nation's majority which had a tough time dealing with a belligerent minority, he empathizes with China's Han majority.

Or, as I wrote two years ago,

At various times we’ve noted efforts to get Americans interested in the Chinese Han majority abusing the Uighur minority in western China. Also efforts to get Americans interested in the Burmese abuse of their Rohingya minority in western Myanmar.

None of these efforts have experienced much success. Which raises the question of why not? What the two minorities have in common - the Muslim faith.

Does this make them less sympathetic figures to Americans in this post 9-11 era? While you’d have a hard time getting educated people to admit it, I suspect the actual answer is “yes.”

Palihapitiya has a reputation for being outspoken. He may be saying what many are thinking but not saying, fearing reprisals. 

The Enemy of An Enemy

Conservative pundits have often taken exception to the rulings of SCOTUS Chief Justice John Roberts. And, as you know, I've often cited the political analysis of liberal pundit Ron Brownstein. 

For his normal venue at The Atlantic, Brownstein writes that Roberts has been an absolute stalwart in defending the GOP preference for minimizing FedGov interference with state control of elections. Naturally, he does not approve of Roberts' decisions but I believe Brownstein has his facts straight.

Based on Brownstein's research, perhaps conservatives should reconsider their negative views of Chief Justice Roberts. If liberal Brownstein dislikes him this much, Roberts must be doing a lot of which the GOP approves, at least when it comes to voting rights.

There's Something Happening Here

Image for this Gallup result courtesy of John Hinderaker at Power Line. Title courtesy of a Buffalo Springfield hit from 1967.

A seven percent shift in party identifications is extremely large, and very unusual. Joe Biden gets the 'credit' for this political earthquake. Buyer's remorse is already evident among some Ds and many independents.

Battery-Powered Vehicles

Ed Driscoll, posting at Instapundit, links to an article in Torque News about issues with using a battery-powered electric vehicle (BEV) for long road trips. Author John Goreham describes himself as a "recovering engineer."

His advice: Don't. The range is less than the EPA says it is, charging them takes longer than you've got, cold weather makes the range even less, and so do highway speeds. In the mountain west where I live, interstates are often posted at 75-80 mph with most driving 5-10 mph faster.

Goreham specifically deals with the impracticality of heavily loading or towing anything behind a BEV, as for example depicted at the other DrC's blog here. Neither of us could believe what you'll see there, and we've been RVing since 1972.

BEVs work okay for people who commute/drive 50-60 miles a day, or less. They are quiet, reliable, and give you green bragging rights with people too stupid to realize most electricity is generated by burning fossil fuel. 

If you live, as I do, where 500-1000 mile road trips are a several-times-a-year experience, you're better off with a plug-in hybrid electric or petroleum-fueled vehicle. Leave the 'super golf cart' BEVs for those who stay within an hour of home.

Echoes of the Culture War

On-line publication Issues & Insights sponsored a TIPP poll which asked this question:

Do you agree or disagree with the statement “religion is under attack in the U.S.?

Fifty-two percent agreed with the statement, 40% disagreed, and the balance were unsure/had no idea. As a picture of what people believe about a public policy question, I have no quarrel with the findings. 

The real source of the “attack,” if you want to call it that, is today’s relatively widespread disinterest in religion and church-attendance. This disinterest is not unique to the U.S., it is relatively common throughout the developed world and became obvious in Europe before it spread to the U.S.

A century ago there was a relatively widespread consensus of religious belief here. That consensus underpinned a variety of government policies which codified various aspects of that belief into governmental structures and laws. 

That consensus faded starting 50-60 years ago. Those who found those structures and laws confining have had much luck in getting them repealed. So we have same-sex marriage where we once imprisoned people for such behavior, we have legal recreational use of drugs in many jurisdictions where we once imprisoned people for this. You can think of other examples, like ignoring homelessness where once we had vagrancy laws.

And that process isn’t over, there are people trying to normalize pedophilia as this is being written. I can imagine people 30 years from now thinking Jeffrey Epstein was a martyr. 

As society becomes more libertarian, more accepting of alternative lifestyles and deviant behavior, it isn’t surprising that people perceive this as an “attack” on religion. The faithful in our country are losing the culture war and that loss feels like an attack on religion. Ironically, the attack is often led by the clergy of  once-mainstream churches, whose attendance has correspondingly cratered.

The Amistad Project

Perhaps you have questions about the 2020 presidential election that have not been, and likely will never be, answered to your satisfaction. I have a link for you to a RealClearPolitics discussion of the findings of the Amistad Project which has reached seven conclusions about the manner it was run. Here is a Cliff Notes version for those in a hurry.

1. Many key government election offices received more private money than taxpayer money to manage the election.
2. A majority of that money was spent in a sophisticated effort to turn out the vote of a specific profile of voter in order to benefit one candidate.
3. These expenditures greatly exceeded campaign finance limits and violated laws and systems designed to keep government neutral in managing elections.
4. These private interests dictated the manner in which the election would be managed.
5. Amistad litigation and investigation have revealed that a handful of partisan billionaires funneled funds through a collection of left-leaning nonprofits directly into the counting centers of the urban core of swing states.
6. Ballots and voters were treated differently based on access to these funds.
7. A series of lawsuits by the left — and executive branch use of “emergency police powers” due to COVID-19 — radically changed the management of the 2020 election, resulting in different treatment of ballots and voters within several states.

It is elsewhere alleged Mark Zuckerberg spent many millions purchasing the election outcome he preferred. If true, it makes claims democracy is now endangered both too little and far too late.

Weird Virological Science

Instapundit links to a Scientific American article reporting research which finds that the Epstein-Barr virus is likely the cause for Multiple Sclerosis. This is true although most humans have been exposed to the virus and very few of those get MS. 

Epidemiologist Alberto Ascherio, senior author of the new study, says, “The bottom line is almost: if you’re not infected with EBV, you don’t get MS. It’s rare to get such black-and-white results.”

Obviously, some as-yet-unknown and relatively rare factor combines with EBV to cause MS, perhaps a gene or lifestyle factors or both. 

Missionaries of Entropy

Sci Fi author Sarah Hoyt posts at Instapundit, her views there are often a little strident for my taste. However, today she writes something about the "woke" left and their Gramscian march through the institutions with which I absolutely agree.

Everything they take over stops working. Everything. From the arts, to the culture, to news, to now industry. They’re perplexed and scared by this. And starting to panic.

Universities are corrupted, the mainstream media is losing readers/viewers, films aren't attracting audiences, people aren't marrying and having kids, and woke companies are turning off customers. People are dropping out of the workforce and we may be in for a series of one-term presidents.

Recently, entropy is winning. 

The Twitter Bubble

Yair Rosenberg, writing for The Atlantic (behind paywall) and quoted at length by John Sexton at the HotAir site, observes how misleading conclusions made from a bunch of Tweets can be.

According to the Pew Research Center, only 23 percent of U.S. adults use Twitter, and of those users, “the most active 25% … produced 97% of all tweets.” In other words, nearly all tweets come from less than 6 percent of American adults. This is not a remotely good representation of public opinion, let alone newsworthiness, and treating it as such will inevitably result in wrong conclusions.

Plus Instapundit Glenn Reynolds opines about Twitter.

The best thing to do with Twitter is to ignore it, and certainly not to treat it as anything connected with how most people think or feel. Think of it rather as a window into the ugly souls and scanty intellects of our chattering class.

In other words, Twitter is an echo chamber bubble and the “woke” inside the bubble are nonstop talking to themselves while the rest of us - somewhere between 77-94% - go on about our business largely oblivious to the “Twitterverse” and those who infest it. 

Woke Craziness

Ed Driscoll, posting at Instapundit, provides a link to this bit of  “woke” craziness. Website ProPublica self-describes as follows:

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power

It reports their research shows traffic cameras in Chicago “disproportionately ticket Black and Latino motorists." 

My question: Exactly how do robotic cameras know who is Black or Latino? Answer: They don’t. A human traffic cop might discriminate against drivers of color, a robotic camera cannot.

The inescapable conclusion, Black and Latino drivers disproportionately engage in scofflaw driving behaviors which earn them traffic cam tickets. Paraphrasing an old adage, “Drive the crime, pay the dime.”

Poll: Biden Hits a New Low

The New York Post reports findings of a Quinnipiac University poll looking at public attitudes toward President Biden and toward the two major parties. Respondents were contacted over the last weekend.

President Biden’s job approval rating has tumbled to 33 percent in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, a whopping 17 percentage-point drop​ from February.

More than half of American adults (53 percent) disapprove of the job the president is doing.

When asked which party they would want to control the House of Representatives if the midterm elections were held today, Republicans edged out Democrats 43 percent to 42 percent. 

When asked which party they’d want to be a majority in the Senate, 45 percent chose Republicans, while 41 percent said Democrats.

Roughly one year in, the hapless Biden Presidency continues to circle the drain.

Poll: Trump Would Win a Rematch

New Rasmussen Reports poll results don't look promising for Democrats.

A new Heartland Institute and Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that, if the election were held today, just 40% of Likely U.S. Voters would vote to reelect Biden, while 46% would vote for Trump. Another 10% would choose some other candidate in a Biden-Trump rematch.

Trump would get 81% support from GOP voters and Biden would get 75% of Democrats if the election were held today. Among voters not affiliated with either major party, however, Trump would win by a 16-point margin, with 45% to Biden’s 29% of the vote.

It seems like American voters are experiencing a classic case of voter’s remorse.

It would appear Independents truly are exactly that.

The Need for Plausible Deniability

Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) poses an excellent question, as reported by RealClearPolitics.

Sen. Ted Cruz failed to get a comment Tuesday from Jill Sanborn, an assistant director of the National Security branch of the FBI, about Ray Epps, a man seen acting suspiciously before and during the January 6, 2021 riot whose name disappeared from the FBI's suspect list after he appeared in New York Times reporting.

"Ms. Sanborn, was Ray Epps a fed?" Cruz asked. "How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of January 6th?"

"Sir, I can't answer that," Sanborn said, repeating that the FBI does not go into "sources and methods" in settings like this.

"A lot of Americans are concerned that the federal government deliberately encouraged illegal and violent conduct on January 6. This is not an ordinary law enforcement question, this is about public accountability. Did federal agents or those in service of federal agents actively encourage violent and criminal conduct on January 6?" Cruz asked.

"Not to my knowledge, sir," Sanborn replied.

BTW, "not to my knowledge" is different than "no." It also includes "I may have to testify in Congress so don't tell me, or put in writing, any questionable things you're doing in furtherance of our shared goals." 

This government's demand for unlawful behavior by conservatives far exceeds the natural occurring supply. Hence, agitation by feds and those in their employ. 

Given the FBI's track record, do you believe Ms. Sanborn? I'm not certain I do. Power Line’s John Hinderaker writes the following opinion about the FBI, which I share.

The Bureau has engaged in so much political conduct in recent years that there is no longer any presumption in its favor.