Posting at Instapundit, Stephen Green comes up with a very snarky name for Biden's multi-trillion dollar "human infrastructure" bill. It's the one Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema refused to support.
Biden called the gigantic wish list "Build Back Better." Green calls it "Build Back Bolshevik," a "take no prisoners" label.
About the current issues in Ukraine, Politico has a good long article laying out the history of the peoples of both Ukraine and Russia. Honestly, reading it will probably be TMI for most with a casual interest in the region. I do, however, very much endorse the following sentiment.
What can you do when your former imperial master declares that it cannot live without you? Putin’s historical article from last summer is essentially a statement of unrequited love and illustrates Russia’s core problem vis-à-vis Ukraine: It thinks of itself not as a nation but as an empire.
Imperial ambitions are not easy ones to give up, certainly Putin hasn’t lost them. In Putin’s plaints, I’m hearing echoes of Britain’s former talk of India as the jewel in its imperial crown. It is unfortunate Kiev/Kyiv was the long-ago capital of the entire Rus (Viking) nation, when Moscow was still a remote backwater.
Poor Peru, a place with electoral politics so messy the voters last election chose a non-politician school teacher as president. Not surprisingly, now he’s been in office for some months it is clear that as a non-politician he has no clue how to make Peru’s government function. He has churned through 3 cabinets in 6 months.
Parts of Peru are relatively cosmopolitan and even marginally 21st century, other parts are almost pre-Colombian. It is home to Machu Picchu and the Nacza lines - world class archeological sites by any standard. In times past it played host to the violent Shining Path Maoist guerrilla movement that was suppressed at quite a cost to civil liberties.
I liked the country when I visited there, but after it being something of an oasis of prosperity for quite a period, it now seems to have sunk back into the political miasma that sadly typifies Latin America. As I've noted before, in the absence of proof I’m inclined to blame lingering elements of Iberian colonialism for many of the region’s problems as well as much of its charm.
The Daily Mail (U.K.) does a nice job of synthesizing various data sets to look at Americans moving from high-tax states run by Democrats to low-tax states mostly run by Republicans. As they note:
Low or no-personal-income states such as Utah, Montana, Arizona, South Carolina, Delaware, Texas, Nevada, Florida, and North Carolina all saw population gains of 1 percent or more.
Meanwhile, District of Columbia and New York - the only two to raise personal income taxes in 2021 - shrunk significantly in population.
The states with the highest personal income taxes, California, Hawaii, New Jersey and Illinois, experienced the most staggering population losses.
It's called "voting with your feet."
The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports President Biden today renewed his pledge that, should a Russian invasion of Ukraine occur, the NordStream 2 pipeline would not go into operation. That pipeline is designed to bring additional Russian natural gas to Germany while earning Russia much needed foreign exchange.
Interestingly, DM also reports the words of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
"We're acting together," the German chancellor said. "We're absolutely united and we will not take different steps. We will do the same steps."
Scholz did not however mention the pipeline in his remarks.
Considering it is CNN, this article on "The Great Resignation" isn't too bad. It notes that some 2.5 million people have left the job market for a variety of reasons, including Covid. Others have quit to either find or take better jobs with more pay, better hours, better perks.
One factor omitted, I hesitate to say on purpose, is the number of people who have opted to home school their children, necessitating an adult staying home with the kids. Given the disrepute in which the public schools are now held by many parents who seek something beyond government-funded child-care-plus-indoctrination, those numbers may be considerable.
Another factor omitted was people moving to places with lower cost of living (mostly housing) and working from home via computer and the Internet. Lower housing costs in rural or flyover locations may mean one parent can afford to not work. Ceteris paribus, a parent at home leads to better child outcomes.
A window of opportunity is closing. If Russia doesn’t invade Ukraine in the next month, it probably won’t do so until very late spring or early summer, if at all. The spring thaw turns the unpaved parts of this region into a swamp in which wheeled vehicles bog down and movement is problematic even for tracked vehicles or foot soldiers.
Worrying about the weather seems old-fashioned, but when the issue is movement of men, machines and material across open country, it matters. “General Mud” is a remorseless opponent, one who serves entropy.
I was rereading Friday’s post about Liz Cheney’s (very) limited future in Republican politics, and began thinking about the whole subject of dynastic politics, or what happens when politics is the family business.
Mostly, in the U.S. it hasn’t worked out well. Examples that come to mind include George W. Bush whose father was also President, and Al Gore whose father was a Senator. I’d add Mitt Romney whose father was a governor who unsuccessfully sought the presidential nomination.
The Kennedy brothers did well, if you can overlook two of the three being assassinated, but the next generation has been a bust. The jury is still out on Rand Paul, whose father Ron was a maverick congressman.
I suppose we should add Hilary Clinton as a failed presidential candidate. And while it wasn’t on the national level, as CA Governor Jerry Brown couldn’t hold a candle to his father Governor Edmund G. “Pat” Brown.
I conclude that politics-as-family-business is largely a flawed model in the U.S. and maybe elsewhere as well. On the other hand, an objective observer would judge Nancy Pelosi has had a successful career and her father was a mayor of corrupt Baltimore.
In an article in The Federalist, Jonathan Tobin describes Liz Cheney’s attempt at reeection in 2022 as “The Last Stand Of The Ancien Regime Republicans." His contrast of the Bushies with the modern GOP is spot on.
Wyoming conservatives understand that Trump’s populist defense of the working and middle class is a better fit for the party than one that seemed more in line with the interests of Wall Street.
I predict in August Wyoming will give its GOP House nomination to Harriet Hageman. Then Rep. Cheney decides if she will run as an independent, which might be a write-in effort.
She could be deluded enough to try, but the party is no longer her dad's GOP. The political 'tectonic plates' have shifted, the neocon “corporatist” types have left the building.
Various sources are reporting former President Trump is unhappy with his Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to act in his capacity as presiding officer of the Senate to block acceptance of the 2020 elector counts sent by the states.
Pence claims to have believed he did not have that authority. He most likely is correct in that belief. What you see is an underlying stylistic difference in the two men's behaviors.
Trump believes it is easier to ask forgiveness than to seek permission. In other words, do it, and there's a good chance it will be okay. If it isn't, apologize and try something else. This approach probably worked for him as a developer and assembler of deals.
Pence has a different history and tries not to get out ahead of what he knows will pass muster. In a career in government Pence found that has worked for him. Pence's decision makes sense to career politicians, Trump's doesn't.
I take no position on which man was correct. I do believe each sincerely believed he was in the right, and finds the other's position troubling, perhaps even baffling. It is Miles' Law in action.
Some additional thoughts about Wednesday’s post on the superiority of hydroelectric power. All renewable power sources are ways to harness the sun’s power to generate electricity. With direct solar power systems the link is obvious, but no power is generated during hours of darkness, heavy cloud cover, or with snow on the solar panels.
Sunshine powers the wind, and much of the time it blows either too hard or not hard enough for wind turbines to function. Renewables like wood, biodiesel and ethanol are likewise sun-dependent, but put carbon in the air when burned - thus are not clean.
The only clean and reliable sun-powered energy source is hydroelectric because sun-evaporated water falls as rain or snow in the mountains, is trapped there by reservoirs where it waits, and generates power on demand when we let it fall through turbines on its way to lower elevations to be used for various things like drinking, bathing, and irrigation.
Why all the above isn’t obvious to decision-makers is unclear. Some blame the Sierra Club and their green fellow travelers. A conspiracy theorist would believe some sort of “fix” is in place to prevent it happening.
The Washington Examiner has new polling data from Rasmussen Reports and Gallup - the Examiner’s headline isn’t a bad summary.
Biden in 'worst president ever' territory
Some juicy details from the Democrats’ debacle:
As Rasmussen Reports said in its latest analysis, “Most voters think President Joe Biden is one of the worst ever to hold the office, and rank him below his two immediate predecessors in the White House.”
Collectively, satisfaction at the start of 2022 in a variety of areas is about as bad as it's been in two decades of Gallup measurement.
If GOAT decodes as “greatest of all time,” WOAT must be … Joe Biden. Annnnnd hapless Jimmy Carter loses his last claim to notoriety.
The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports former President George W. Bush is donating to the reelection campaigns of RINO Republicans Liz Cheney (R?-WY) and Lisa Murkowski (R?-AK). I'm not sure who would be surprised by these actions.
I fully expect Bush 43 to actively help every anti-Trump Republican running in 2022. Trump never much disguised his lack of respect for Bush's meager accomplishments, which look even worse in hindsight than they did at the time.
Human nature suggests 43 would reciprocate in kind. In terms Finley Peter Dunne popularized, "Politics ain't beanbag" but is played for keeps.
The cleanest energy we utilize is hydroelectric power, produced by falling water spinning turbines. It is the ultimate solar power as it works round-the-clock.
The sun creates the evaporation which builds clouds, the clouds produce rain and snow, those fill reservoirs, the reservoir water spins turbines, and no ash, carbon dioxide nor radioactivity is created as a byproduct. It is the original renewable technology, it works very well, and yet in the search for clean power it is scorned.
If California was sensible, every major canyon dropping west out of the Sierras would have a dam on it, controlling floods, producing power, and storing water for CA’s more-than-occasional droughts. If those had been built, think of all the hydrocarbons we would not have to burn to produce needed electricity.
Those who oppose hydro power argue that beautiful valleys are drowned, which is true. However, beautiful lakes are created and those have recreational potential too. Yes, so-called "wild rivers" are tamed, making life less fun for rafters, a small price to pay and balanced by the new fun water skiers and boaters have.
I spent most of my adult life downstream from a chain of hydroelectric dams on California's Feather River. I never once regretted them.
Damn it, we need more dams.
Various news sources are reporting that CNN President Jeff Zucker has resigned, effective immediately. The reason given, a previously undisclosed romantic relationship with his “closest colleague.”
Most U.S. sources aren’t reporting that colleague’s identity, but The U.S. Sun has this:
The woman in question was Allison Gollust, CNN's executive vice president and chief marketing officer. She is said to be remaining at CNN.
The Sun adds, somewhat cattily, that both Zucker and Gollust are divorced. In recent years the cable network Ted Turner founded has fallen on hard times, having lost its airport monopoly and lagging far behind competitors MSNBC and FoxNews in viewers.
Later: Another website suggests the Zucker/Gollust affair was the reason they both divorced, which timeline puts a different spin on the story.
Even later: The New York Post calls the long-running Zucker/Gollust affair “the worst kept secret in TV.”
Tomorrow is ground hog day, and it appears that ol' Phil from Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, won't see his shadow, since the northeast is under a storm watch. Legend has it that outcome suggests an early spring thaw.
The ground hog/marmot/woodchuck is actually an oversized ground squirrel. The myth that these rodents can predict the weather apparently came with the misnamed Pennsylvania "Dutch" who were ethnic Germans.
I have watched a colony of ground hogs, or their alpine relatives, along the north shore of Lake Yellowstone, where they bask in the sun. They hibernate through the long high-altitude winter, as do their more diminutive relatives, the Uinta ground squirrels locally known as "picket pins."
History Note: The first serious federal presence in Yellowstone after its designation as a national park was a unit of cavalry. If you tour the old buildings of Mammoth Village in northern Yellowstone you'll see the officers' quarters, barracks, stables, etc. of a late 1800s U.S. Army post called Fort Yellowstone. The nickname "picket pin" comes from the ground squirrels' upright resemblance to the metal pegs these cavalrymen used to tether their mounts.
Later: Reports are Phil did see his shadow, so six more weeks of winter are predicted by this folk indicator.
COTTonLINE's favorite foreign affairs analyst, George Friedman poses an interesting theory on what Russia is trying to accomplish with its threatening troop build-up near Ukraine.
Russia’s intention might have been to simply divide NATO so deeply that it could never be repaired. Considering the Europeans are unwilling to financially sustain the alliance, the U.S. doesn’t trust its members to share all the risks, and with the general economic forces driving Europe apart, Russia doesn’t have to try all that hard to divide the alliance.
In support of this notion, Friedman notes:
If NATO shatters, the Russians think they will take control of Ukraine without risk. From the viewpoint of Germany at least, the benefits of NATO do not compare with the benefits of access to natural gas. Germany, for one, cannot value NATO over gas.
Is Friedman correct in his supposition? We'll see. As he notes, the shift in European public opinion Putin might be counting on hasn't yet materialized.
Afterthought: I wonder if German industrialists hope to accomplish in Russia the conquest Hitler's legions could not?
The website msn.com carries a Newsweek article in which Manhattan Institute polling is reported on the question of which issues voters care most about.
In our survey, people were asked whether students should be taught that America was stolen from native peoples, and that the school they attend and houses they live in are built on stolen land. 90 percent of Republicans were "strongly against" teaching this, while Democrats were just about evenly split across the four response categories—strongly for teaching this, weakly for it, weakly against it, and strongly against it.
Author Eric Kaufmann observes that with respect to cancel culture and CRT, Democrats are split into two groups: cultural liberals (66%) and cultural socialists (34%). Cultural liberals' issues include: "free speech, due process, equal treatment before the law and elsewhere and the scientific method." Cultural socialists espouse: "protecting disadvantaged groups from offense while redistributing self-esteem and power."
Republicans of all stripes tend to share opposition to cancel culture and CRT. See Kaufmann's conclusion.
Cancel culture and CRT split the Left and rally the Right, making these issues are a clear vote winner for the GOP.
Glen Youngkin, Virginia's new GOP governor, rode these issues to victory in a state thought safe for Democrats. Prediction: you'll hear a lot more about them in the campaign for the 2022 midterm election.
The left is an endless fount of astonishingly stupid, socially destructive ideas, promulgated with a psychotic sense of moral urgency. They should be told to shut up and sit down until they can function as adults.
Geography - where things are located - matters.Writing at the website 19fortyfive.com, author Robert Farley examines Ukraine’s history to answer the question embodied in the column’s title.
Can An Independent Ukraine Exist Alongside Russia?
Farley concludes:
Ukraine can only peacefully exist in the context of a deeply weakened Russia. (However) the existence of an independent and autonomous Ukraine deeply weakens Russia’s security position.