Reap the Whirlwind

John Hinderaker of Power Line has a great story about a Democrat Party official in Minnesota who was on record favoring getting rid of the Minneapolis police, He reprints her 2020 email to that effect.

Recently she was carjacked in front of her small children, beaten, her head cut and leg broken, by a group of four young men with guns who also terrorized neighbors who came to her aid.

Now, all of a sudden, she is for law and order, she wants to lock 'em up. It is almost impossible to avoid saying she deserves what she got as it is the direct result of policies she advocated from a position of power just three years ago. 

I wonder if she stops to think the police she formerly said terrible things about, and now praises, deal with these human monsters every day?  Can she imagine how that work affects their perceptions?

One could wish this sort of kinetic wake-up call happened to all the Soros-supported DAs across the country. It is a story worth reading in its entirety. 

Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind. 

A Ceteris Paribus Failure

Ruy Teixeira is a Democrat who believes with good reason his party is on the wrong track. He keeps writing about it, and quite inadvertently ends up posting ideas Republicans can take heart in. We’ve referenced his material several times here at COTTonLINE.

Today he describes at some length findings by New York Times numbers guy Nate Cohn who sees non-white voters dropping away from Democrat positions on the environment, and on social issues. While a majority still support Democrats, that majority continues to shrink.

None of this means that nonwhite voters are now going to become a Republican constituency, despite these voters’ concerns about the Democrats and cross-pressures on issues. Hardly; Biden will likely carry these voters by a healthy margin in 2024. But it does mean that Democrats’ hold on these voters may well slip further in 2024, cutting Democrats’ margins dangerously among a group that has been the bedrock of Democrats’ electoral strategy.

Minority voters remember clearly they were doing better economically during the Trump administration than they have fared since under Biden. If the coming election is in fact between these two men, it will draw that contrast in stark terms. Teixeira indirectly admits he earlier got it wrong in assuming minority voters would always be loyal Democrats.

I’d direct your attention to the five small charts (above) which document the trends in Teixeira’s article, likely borrowed from Cohn’s work for NYT. The dotted line extensions reflect recent polling. 

Trump Dumps Electrics

Bizpacreview.com reports Donald Trump has made a campaign pledge that, if reelected, he will stop the government pressure to adopt electric vehicles. Clearly this is a step other Republicans who seek their party’s nomination should emulate, or improve upon.

As we’ve noted several times, electric cars are effectively tarted-up golf carts masquerading as autos. Like golf carts, they are practical for local transportation if the owners have a garage or other dedicated space in which to store-and-recharge them. Bottom line, electrics can be practical second cars for suburban multi-vehicle families, full stop.

I’ll give you an example. We own a lot in a very large RV park which has its own 9 hole golf course. Most of the RV spaces are owned, not rented. Many residents have a golf cart which they use not only to play golf, but also for transport to the pool, pickle ball courts, rec hall, mail room, etc.

However, the nearest small town with a supermarket, hardware store, post office and gas station is roughly 6 miles away and nobody drives their golf cart to these, they all drive their gas or diesel powered auto or pickup truck, except a few hardy souls who occasionally bicycle. 

In a huge country like ours, electric cars are not the practical general-purpose vehicles hydrocarbon-fueled vehicles currently are. Many of us choose to live in exurban locales and every couple of weeks need to make a round trip of 100-200 miles to access medical specialties, an airport, or shopping-beyond-basics - places like Target, Best Buy, Costco, Walmart, or a car dealer. Electric cars are not practical for these and even longer trips.

Higher Ed's Effect on Our Nation

Yesterday we noted Steven Hayward's take on a New York Times piece on how Americans view higher education, and how those who graduate fare economically in later life. Today he returns with a chart showing how Republicans and Democrats view the effect of college on our country.

We shouldn't be too surprised Republicans have been turned off by the degree of left-wing political bias in higher education, while Democrats by and large have not. The change in attitude among Republicans is substantial when, as here, it happens over a relatively brief 7 year period. 

Since I retired some years ago, the CSU campus I called home for 30 years has gone full "woke." I still get the faculty emails and they make discouraging reading.

Burning Man

To the discovery by our latter day flower children that rain sometimes falls in the desert, making a mess of Burning Man 2023, my reaction in one word: 

Schadenfreude. 

Baccalaureate Degree Value

At Power Line, Steven Hayward is, among other things, Mr. Data - the contributor with the handy chart or visual. Today he has a really amazing New York Times chart based on Federal Reserve data showing the "Expected Wealth Benefit for 4-year College Graduates as Compared with High School Graduates." 

I'm in that first tall black column on the left. It is probably true I accumulated something like three times as much wealth as a high school graduate my age. With graduate level education, it may be even more.

Why has it declined over time? Supply and demand - too many graduates chasing too few jobs which require additional schooling. Plus decreased quality - grade inflation and dumbing down the coursework. 

And majors matter - degrees in Victims Studies and other non-occupational topics. Finally, as in life, timing is vital. 

Hinderaker Predicts

Power Line's John Hinderaker makes a bold prediction that, if it is true, will upend the presidential contest in 2024. See what he writes:

The Democrats aren’t going to nominate Joe Biden. They are just hoping he can limp through the next year so they don’t have to deal with Kamala Harris. Gavin Newsom is 25 years younger than Biden, isn’t burdened with Biden’s record in office or his growing scandals, and is a far more plausible demagogue and liar than Biden. If nominated, as I think he will be, and if Trump is the GOP nominee, Newsom will crush him. The only Democrat against whom Trump can run a competitive race is Joe Biden.

Of course, assuming John is correct, it behooves Joe Biden to continue to claim he will run. Immediately after announcing he won't run, he becomes a proverbial "lame duck" and has no clout whatsoever. 

Don't be surprised if Biden waits to make the announcement at the Democrat's convention next August, after the GOP convention in July. The dates are important because he could announce his pull-out after Trump is already nominated.

Hinderaker predicts this because it is what he'd do in their shoes. I actually think, barring health catastrophe, Biden will run again. Jill likes being FLOTUS, Joe is retired-on-the-job, and whoever is pulling strings from behind the curtain is apparently okay with that role. 

The White House with its perks, planes, security, and resident physician beats a retirement home any day. And, staying in office is the only way to keep Hunter and maybe Joe out of prison, no minor consideration.

Behind the Academic Curtain

The Free Press carries an article by a climate scientist - Patrick T. Brown - in which he describes the sort of pressures brought to bear by conventional wisdom and the dominant narrative that prestige science journals wish to sustain and promote. He admits writing a sensationalized article for the journal Nature which they published. 

He is clear a more nuanced article would likely have been rejected by Nature and shunted off to a less prestigious journal. It would have accurately described his findings, including several other factors climate alarmists at the prestige journals don't want confusing the issue.

As an untenured assistant professor he accurately believed his career would suffer if he didn't score publication in prestige journals like Nature and Science. These are committed to the climate alarmism party line emphasizing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Working at universities that didn't offer the doctorate, my pressure to publish was less. And I was fortunate that policy positions had not been politicized in my field. Yet I tried to write papers I believed would find acceptance, and often enough they did.  

Fortunately self-censorship wasn't an issue for me and my coauthor colleagues. Without it, we still had trouble getting our papers past cranky editors and opinionated reviewers. Hat tip to RealClearPolitics for the link.

Labor Day Thoughts

Today we celebrate Labor Day. It was originally dedicated to the people whose back-breaking toil built this great nation, and the organizations which defended them from the depredations of robber baron capitalists.

Today, unions represent mostly government workers, including public school teachers. In some ways victims of their own success, private sector unions have fallen on hard times. Public employee unions exert direct influence over their elected bosses in ways private sector unions never could with corporate bosses.

The work-from-home trend, begun by the Covid pandemic, has proved to be wildly popular with those whose work permits it. So popular that more than a few people have resigned when their employers demanded a return to the office.

I predict the workers from home will be much harder to organize than office workers were. Increasing numbers of government workers are doing the job at home. I saw a recent estimate that half of the DC bureaucrats and their support staff are not in the office these days.

Historians of the future may recount that office towers, labor unions and strikes were quaint artifacts of the industrial era. 

Full disclosure: For several years I was represented by a union as a faculty member of the CSU system in CA. Blue CA has no right to work law so I was required to pay "in lieu" fees as I refused to become a union member.

Prosecutorial Baggage

The new gal at Power Line, Elizabeth Stauffer, writes about how personalities on ABC News’ The Week were stunned at polls showing President Biden and former President Trump tied at 46% in the race to be the next president. 

At least before Covid overwhelmed everything, Trump was the far better president and people remember this. He presided over a better economy, no vast military disappointments, and reduced infiltration at our southern border. When he spoke he didn’t appear addled. On the basis of demonstrated performance in office, he should be far ahead.

On the other hand, aided by a tame media complex and the cover provided by the presidency, Biden has managed to avoid being charged for his manifest wrong-doings, enriching himself at the expense of selling influence upon his country’s policy to shady foreigners and sometimes bragging about it on TV.

With no such protection, Trump has accumulated four indictments that smell like politically motivated prosecution. None of them involves something the average person understands to be “crime” - harming someone physically or stealing their property. 

Trump’s supposed wrong-doings inhabit the unclear border region between free speech and incitement to illegality. It’s an area where slack can be granted or withheld at the whim of a DA. Lately, too many DAs have earned a bad reputation letting violent criminals walk while persecuting political enemies.

Bottom line: No one should be surprised a demonstrably better president has pulled even, in spite of the prosecutorial baggage he has acquired. 

Bookends

There is a tendency for us to view the summer as bookended by Memorial Day and Labor Day. Summer, 2023, has both begun and ended in the popular view, though it technically has another 18 days to run.

Next Saturday brings the annual LaToJa Classic bicycle race, the longest one-day amateur bicycle race in North America at 200+ miles. It includes 3 mountain passes and most of the route is over a mile high. 

The last fifth, along the Snake River Canyon south of Jackson, is especially scenic. Competitors begin in Logan, UT, and cross the finish line in Jackson, WY. Between bicyclists and chase cars driven by support teams, next Saturday is a great day to stay off the highways.

Looking back at the summer that’s ending, it has been cooler and somewhat more rainy than usual, though still very pleasant. By now most years the fire danger is extreme, this year it is only moderate. As a result we’ve had fewer smoky days this time around.

We’ve also had less summertime company than is usual for those of us who live near national parks. I’m not sure the reason, maybe high fuel costs and the bite of inflation more generally.

Cute Comment

Writing about the rainout of Burning Man now wrapping up in Nevada, Instapundit contributor Ed Driscoll quips: 

The long awaited mashup of Woodstock and Stalingrad has finally arrived.

Man proposes, nature disposes. ‘Twas ever thus. 

Two Headlines

Here are two headlines from the Lucianne.com news aggregator site this September Sunday morning.

Joe Biden Has Spent 40 Percent of Presidency Away on Personal Trips (from Breitbart.com)

Biden cites busy schedule when asked about visiting East Palestine, Ohio: “It's going to be a while” (from Fox News)

We have a President who is too busy vacationing to do his job properly. Treating the presidency as a part-time job isn’t what he signed up for. But given his gaffe-a-minute performance when he shows up at work, it is probably safer this way.

Maybe the satirical Babylon Bee has it right:

Nation torn between being mad Biden never shows up for work and being glad he never shows up for work.

Miserable, Self-Hating, and Basically Crazy

Here's a quote to ponder, it's from The American Mind, a publication of the Claremont Institute.

The Manhattan Institute’s Zach Goldberg has noted in his research, the increasing divergence between the Democrats’ elites and proles is getting harder to manage. It prompts the Democrats to obsess over social issues that are important to their elite demographic but not their actual voting base (Climate Change! Transgenderism!), while doing nothing to serve liberal white Democrats who, as has been shown in study after study, are actually miserable, self-hating, and basically crazy. (links in the original)

I found this aside interesting, but not especially surprising. 

His (Biden's) Secretary of State, Treasury Secretary, Attorney General, DHS Secretary, Director of National Intelligence, and Chief of Staff, among many other senior officials, are Jewish. But Biden’s appointments represent an old-guard, D.C.-centric view that will almost assuredly not be shared by his successors.

In the Biden administration, we may be seeing the last gasp of the old guard Democratic Party. Hat tip to Instapundit for the link.

Tuckered Out

Power  Line's first-among-equals - John Hinderaker - writes that Tucker Carlson has wandered off into tinfoil hat country with comments he made on the Adam Corolla podcast. To be specific, the odd Tucker claims are these:

He asserts as a fact that the CIA “had a role in the Kennedy assassination.” 

Tucker asserts without qualification that Larry Sinclair told the truth when he claimed to have smoked crack and had gay sex with Barack Obama. 

Tucker asserts, again with total confidence, that the Biden administration blew up the Nordstream pipeline. 

Tucker vouches for a book that claims Charles Manson was a CIA source–“agent is too strong,” he says. 

Tucker thinks the Democrats are in big trouble in 2024, and as a result, they are going to start a hot war with Russia as a distraction. He says he would bet his house on it.

The odds against any of these being true are fairly large, odds that several are true near infinitesimal. Was Carlson stoned when he was interviewed? Sorta sounds like it, unless he was having Corolla on.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Friday Snark

Images courtesy of Politico's Nation's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

The Feel of Fall

Summer is glorious in the high country, glorious but short. The first of September is here and, as expected, it begins to feel like summer is on its way out the door. 

At our 6300 ft. elevation the only two months of summer we can absolutely count on are July and August. June and September are pleasant enough, but a light jacket is sometimes indicated, and a light snowfall that doesn't stick isn't uncommon. 

When we arrived in early May, there were no leaves on the aspens. As I look out my office window into the forest this afternoon, some parts of the understory have just started to turn gold. The aspens are still green but the leaves look a bit tired.

No longer overhead, the sun now slants in from the south, and the sunlight begins to look different, autumnal. School is back in session, and people are laying in firewood. We'll be here till mid October, and will drive out through shoals of pure, pale yellow aspen leaves. 

Secretary Booty Juice

Twitchy has video of President Biden mispronouncing the name of Transportation Secretary Buttigieg. It very much sounds like Biden calls him "Booty-Juice." 

For reasons I hope are obvious, everyone who hears that is cracking up. Check it out. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll, posting at Instapundit, for the link.

You Loot, We Shoot

The sage of Aspen, CO, Glenn Beaton, writes today about FL Gov. Ron DeSantis warning post-hurricane looters that Florida passed the first Stand Your Ground law in 2005 and looters stand a good chance of getting shot. Beaton opines:

Governor Ron DeSantis is a very good governor. He may or may not out-debate the California pretty boy governor if that debate actually happens, but he sure out-governs him. The guy can run a big state, which historically suggests he could run a big country. 

All of which brings me to a realization which, as is my custom, I share with you. First of all, I agree that DeSantis is a good administrator, he tends to get done what he sets out to do. His track record on two recent hurricanes makes that point clearly. 

My second insight is that my career as a business school prof teaching management - my appreciation of good, effective management - is why I've been drawn to the DeSantis candidacy. For most of his term, Trump was a good president but getting the sullen, resistant bureaucracy to do his bidding wasn't a Trump strength. And that is exactly what DeSantis does well.

One could wish DeSantis were a better pitchman, had a bit more of the huckster about him. Those are skills Trump has in super abundance. But my career causes me to prefer the good administrator, and that appears to be Ron Desantis.