Power Line's Steve Hayward posts the following graphic showing all the businesses in downtown San Francisco which have closed as a result of the terrible conditions prevalent there.
Do I need to tell you how happy I am I don't own real property in the dying city?
On this morning after Super Tuesday, Former Governor Nikki Haley has suspended her campaign for the Republican nomination. It never threatened to "catch fire" and become a serious threat to Trump.
I have to say I liked many of the issues on which she campaigned, but what she tried to accomplish was always a forlorn hope. Today's GOP is Trump's party; his is the bigger "tent."
As is our custom, we offer a bye-ku - a haiku of farewell - to Ms. Haley commemorating this occasion.
The main news out of Super Tuesday was that Nikki Haley won Vermont, while Donald Trump won everything else in the GOP primary. If you were a Republican candidate for President and were told you got to pick one state to lose, chances are good you'd pick Vermont.
Vermont has few electors and always votes progressive anyway. Giving it up would be like giving up something you hate for Lent, an entirely empty gesture. Especially since crossover voting permitted mischievous Democrats to vote against Trump in the GOP primary without changing their party registration.
Bottom line: Vermont means very little to Republicans in the same way Wyoming means little to Democrats.
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The other interesting thing is that Steve Garvey and Adam Schiff ended up winning spots on California's senate ballot this fall. Garvey is a Republican and they normally don't do well in CA's "jungle primary."
Perhaps it means a non-trivial number of Californians have gotten fed up with the ugliness of life in a woke one party state? I hope so. That is the only way CA gets back on a sensible track.
I'd really like CA to get its act together and become a place normals can be comfy. When the DrsC get too old and shot-down to commute between two places, ideally our year-round place would be in CA.
Do you know the terms "forced error" and "unforced error"? Originally from tennis, we sometimes use the terms in the political or policy arenas, where a forced error is of the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" variety. Any choice you make ends you up in hot water.
Leaving the forced variety aside, examine all the unforced errors Joe Biden has made as president. I hope no one reading this believes he did a good job of extracting US forces from Afghanistan, it is widely regarded as a cluster-futz.
Similarly with immigration. He could have stopped building the wall and tinkered with a couple of minor regulations and his base would have accepted it. Instead he created a flood of illegal immigration that became his major shortcoming.
Trying to get the economy out of the Covid "blues" he spent government funds like a drunken sailor on shore leave. You know his economists cautioned it would be inflationary but he did it anyway.
His failing health and mental acuity were things over which he had no control, forced "errors" of a sort. But the things where people are comparing him invidiously with Trump are things he didn't have to do to be an okay president.
Biden made bad policy choices that will be the main cudgels with which Trump will beat him, and those were unforced. He may have been following bad advice, but as Harry Truman famously said, "The buck stops with the President."
We have two announcements of non-candidacy today. It is also Super Tuesday, if you are keeping track.
The first is former First Lady Michelle Obama whose Director of Communications Crystal Carson, issued the following disclaimer, according to NBC News.
As former First Lady Michelle Obama has expressed several times over the years, she will not be running for president. Mrs. Obama supports President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign.
Ms Obama has also been quoted as stating the following in a Netflix special.
Politics is hard. And the people who get into it … you’ve got to want it. It’s got to be in your soul, because it is so important. It is not in my soul.
The second announcement is from Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ). AP News reports she made the following statement.
I love Arizona and I am so proud of what we’ve delivered. Because I choose civility, understanding, listening, working together to get stuff done, I will leave the Senate at the end of this year.
Sinema left the Democrat Party in December of 2022 and became an Independent. Both major parties had identified candidates to run against her in November, and even with the advantages of incumbency it appeared she would lose a three-way race.
WalletHub has calculated the tax burden on the average household for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, and ranked them from lowest (1) to highest (51). They note the following:
Taxpayers in the most tax-expensive states, for instance, pay more than twice as much as those in the cheapest states.
The two states we call home, Wyoming (legal residence) and Nevada (winter residence) are ranked numbers 3 and 7 respectively. In each case we live near the state border and do our major shopping in the adjacent state: Idaho (no. 4) and Utah (no. 14). All four are low-tax havens.
It is no coincidence we live in two low-tax states, we planned it that way. Hat tip to the other DrC for the link.
Last night we watched a documentary on Yellowstone National Park on Prime TV. It concerned the greater Yellowstone ecosystem which includes two national parks, several National Forests and includes parts of three states: WY, MT, and ID.
The other DrC says the documentary wasn’t slickly produced (true) and I say it spent too much time on the thermal features (also true). My main gripe was it totally didn’t mention Lake Yellowstone, the second largest high altitude lake in the world, and the largest in North America at 136 square miles of surface area.
My nephew put his inboard power boat on the lake but stayed fairly close to shore as he said “it felt like an ocean.” It is the most easily recognized feature attributable to the area being a caldera, an area where a large volcano erupted, after which the area collapsed and filled with water.
Enough about the documentary, let me give you my thumbnail sketch of Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. Yellowstone is outstanding for three things: thermal features (geysers, mud pots, thermal pools), wildlife (grizzly and black bears, deer, elk, and moose, big horn sheep, wolves, pronghorn, bison, beaver, marmots, and eagles), and a really big fresh water lake. The Tetons are the most photogenic mountains in North America, and the headwaters of the Snake River. The region is varied and beautiful.
The documentary said one thing I want to quote with approval. Yellowstone is to North America what the Serengeti is to Africa, a place where large animals live natural lives as they did before the first humans arrived. We can go see them in situ, them roaming free and us cooped up in our cars.
Comparisons are interesting. In 2020 voters compared the reality of the Trump presidency with the possibilities of a Biden presidency. We are asked to believe a majority took a chance on the latter turning out to be an improvement.
Now we are in 2024 and voters are faced with a comparison of two known outcomes, two proven approaches to the Oval Office. What are the chances that, come January, 2025, either of these gentlemen will suddenly transform into a Reagan or a Roosevelt? Basically, zero.
Sadly for Biden, in hindsight the Trump approach left more people feeling satisfied with their circumstances. For some of this Trump can take credit, some was happenstance, but it happened "on his watch" as they say in the Navy. He gets the benefit thereof.
Our country is fortunate the SCOTUS decided the 14th amendment case in Trump's favor. Trump got a big win. And the Court spoke with one voice on the key issue, if not on all collateral issues.
If they had instead decided states could eliminate people from their ballots, suppose all the red states eliminated Biden from their ballots as some had threatened, and all the blue states eliminated Trump, as several had actually tried to do. Where was that going to take us?
Very likely, to a group of blue states claiming Biden was elected, and another of red states claiming Trump was elected. Meaning two claimants to the presidency, like Abe Lincoln and Jeff Davis.
Down that road lies civil war. It's a road which nobody who has studied history wants to travel.
CNBC reports the US Supreme Court this morning issued a 9-0 opinion that Colorado cannot block Donald Trump from their ballot.
The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously reversed the Colorado court ruling that barred former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot because of a provision in the U.S. Constitution related to people who engage in insurrection.
The Supreme Court’s ruling means that no other state can bar Trump — or any other candidate from now on — from a presidential ballot or election for Congress by invoking the insurrection clause in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
‘Nuff said. They were less unanimous on whether Congress is the only federal actor which may do so. It is still very good news.
In the previous post, written yesterday afternoon, we looked at results from a New York Times/Siena College poll, and they weren't favorable for Biden. Today the Times has released further info from that survey and RedState has the key finding, out from behind the NYT paywall.
Power Line's Steve Hayward reports the findings of a recent New York Times/Siena College poll (behind firewall). Knowing how it must enrage Times peeps to admit it, Hayward posts the NYT headline for their story on the poll.
Voters Doubt Biden's Leadership and Favor Trump, Times/Siena Poll Finds
Mr. Trump is winning 97 percent of those who say they voted for him four years ago, and virtually none of his past supporters said they are casting a ballot for Mr. Biden. In contrast, Mr. Biden is winning only 83 percent of his 2020 voters, with 10 percent saying they now back Mr. Trump. . .
Mr. Trump’s policies were generally viewed far more favorably by voters than Mr. Biden’s. A full 40 percent of voters said Mr. Trump’s policies had helped them personally, compared to only 18 percent who said the same of Mr. Biden’s.
Much can happen in the eight months between now and early November. The above is a snapshot of where things stand now.
Democrats have bought into their own propaganda about Trump, and are having difficulty believing so many can say they will vote for him. An interesting question is whether they will smell the coffee in time to pick another nominee?
This from an X by radio show host Jesse Kelly, reposted in the Comments section (scroll down).
These people aren't even talking to you. That's why they seem like some alien species that doesn't even speak our language.
The beating heart of the Democrat Party is single, mentally ill women on anti-anxiety meds. THAT is who they're talking to at all times.
Heaven save us, thanks to feminism and LBJ's Great Society there are millions of these troubled individuals.
You've been hearing about blizzard conditions in the Sierras? High wind conditions too? Yep, we're getting the edge of this system in southeastern Nevada. It was windy all day Friday and looks to be the same Saturday.
No precipitation so far. This is a desert after all, even if it does get a bit of rain now and then.
We've holed up indoors and, as our house is on top of a mesa, listened to the wind howl in the eaves for the last half day or so. I gotta say wind is not my favorite background 'music.'
My mom was from the Great Plains and learned to hate wind, which was pretty much a constant for her growing up. Luckily we didn't get a lot of it in SoCal where I grew up.
The Daily Mail reports the University of Florida has fired all 28 of its DEI employees. This is a response to a series of new state laws promoted by FL's excellent Governor DeSantis aimed at eliminating DEI units and activities in all state-funded organizations.
DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Diversity and Inclusion are typically anti-white and involve pointedly ignoring a range of mental illnesses and delusions. Equity pushes equal outcomes for all people regardless of quite unequal abilities, talents, and effort levels.
Eliminating DEI is a step that should be emulated in all states controlled by conservatives. DEI is a racist, divisive, anti-excellence operation wherever it rears its ugly head.
I found this BBC article about life in Antarctica very interesting, particularly the part about the crew of 26 developing a new "accent" during the winter. Part of what they were studying was what happens to language in a remote, isolated location.
All they knew was that they were taking part in an unusual experiment, which involved tracking their own voices over time. This was done by making 10-minute recordings every few weeks. They would sit in front of a microphone and repeat the same 29 words as they appeared on a computer screen. Food. Coffee. Hid. Airflow. Most were words they used regularly during their day and contained vowel sounds known to differ in English accents.
When the recordings finally got back to a team of phonetics researchers at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich in Germany for analysis, they discovered that the pronunciation of some of the words had changed ever so slightly. What they were seeing was the beginning of a new accent emerging.
Where the DrsC have noticed this in in New Zealand, one of the most geographically isolated nations on earth. NZ speaks English as its primary language. In visiting there we found the speech of women and young adults difficult to understand, adult men were relatively easier to decode.
For example, driving a small rental motorhome at the south end of the South Island, we camped at a private camp run by the property's owners. Out for a stroll, we met the owner and her small dog.
We asked the dog's name and were told it was Gee See. Unclear about what we'd heard we asked for a repeat, and again heard Gee See. Feigning deafness we asked for a spelling, she spelled J.E.S.S.E.E. and reiterated Gee See.
We would call that name Jess ee, rhyming with messy. It was clear she pronounced both e and ee as what we call long e. It is possible she'd also pronounce messy as Mee See.
Interestingly, while we had difficulty understanding women and youths in NZ, they had no difficulty understanding us. They watch a lot of US made films and TV shows and are familiar with our US accent, which however they do not copy.
We never got an explanation of why NZ men were more understandable. Maybe it is because more of them have been off-island for extended periods.
