Wisdom

Stephen Green quotes economist Thomas Sowell, in reference to international relations.

There are no solutions. There are only tradeoffs.

Analysis … true.

Cotton on China

Power Line’s John Hinderaker posts a quote from a new book by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who now chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee. Cotton (no relation) writes:

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I’m often asked if the threat from China is as bad as it seems. My answer is no — it’s worse than you can imagine.

Which is to say, dire, unless the lingering effects of its “one child” policy cripple it from within, a real possibility.

Tough Love

Last week in Munich Vice President JD Vance told the other members of NATO the US "gravy train" was fast approaching the end of the line. He made clear that we weren't very impressed with their free-riding delegation of their defense to the US military. Canada is an especially egregious offender.

Trump isn't even slightly worried about hurting their feelings. Every president since Reagan has told them the same thing, but they seem to have heard it at long last. 

This realism shock is long overdue. It is far from clear if the political will exists in the EU to enable them to step up their game and protect themselves.

Monday Snark

Images courtesy of RealClearPolitics Cartoons of the Week.

Arguing Causes

Many people are going nuts over an opinion expressed by CBS’s Margaret Brennan who claimed too much free speech was responsible for the rise of the Nazis in Germany. There was, of course, no free speech under the Nazis, once in office - a point most critics make.

However you could argue if the Weimar government had refused to allow Hitler to hold his rallies, own a newspaper, and to speak on radio - basically censored him - maybe Germany might have taken a different direction in the 1930s. That is merely a speculation Hitler caused the rise of the right.

The issue is do “great men” create history, or do historical forces create the leaders they need? I can argue it either way, perhaps it is some of both. Maybe Hitler really did create the Nazi movement. In which case Brennan has a point.

It is equally plausible the German right was fueled by the Versailles Treaty ending World War I, and Hitler was who emerged to lead the reaction to it. Perhaps something like the Nazi movement was inevitable given the Weimar inflation, the worldwide depression, and the treaty’s punishing provisions.

Later … About whether Hitler flourished in an environment of  free speech, it appears he flourished in spite of considerable attempts to shut him up. See an Ed Driscoll post at Instapundit for details. Thus making the criticism of Brennan valid.

Tough Odds

At COTTonLINE we don't have to be deadly serious all the time, here's a link to a fun article with a catchy title.

The Typical Man Disgusts the Typical Woman

The title is cute, nearly a thirst trap. The column is more serious, introducing the reader to the somewhat exotic concept of hypergamy. That is serious evolutionary stuff indeed. 

Still, the author treats it as less of a tragedy and more as the basis for some really common sense recommendations. If you struggled through the dating minefield long ago and can look back on it with some perspective, what's he has written will likely ring true.

If you are still in the process of finding "the one" and having a tough time, at least you'll gain some perspective on the reason it is hard and can be nasty. Like growing old, dating is not for cowards.

Saturday Snark

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Proposing Extreme Federalism

An interesting post by Mark Tapscott at Instapundit who links to a Substack column proposing what I choose to call “extreme federalism.” The pseudonymous author imagines a US future with the present 50 states and new ones like Canada, Greenland, and Gaza. 

It imagines TX, CA, FL, and more as sovereign states going their own ways, pursuing their own policies, sharing relatively few laws at the Supra-state level. It is viewed as an ‘evolutionary’ governmental form.

Would it work? I am unsure. It is a fun-to-think-about abstraction. Upon further reflection, it is somewhat like libertarianism at the state level. Cohesive foreign policy would be impossible.

About EVs

Writing for RealClearPolitics, David Harsanyi looks at EV market acceptance, pronounces it a niche product, and concludes as follows.

The Department of Energy doesn't lend money to Solyndra or Rivian because these companies have the best people, the best ideas or the best chance of creating self-sustaining jobs. They lend it to companies because state central planners like the idea of solar and EVs to combat an imaginary climate emergency.

Now, if people want to buy electric cars, of course they should be able to. I know people who love them -- the quiet engine, the quick acceleration, the way they look. One assumes there would be a profitable niche market for EVs if the industry significantly scaled back production.

Let's find out. Because taxpayers shouldn't be subsidizing their rides.

Indeed. As we’ve written before, there is a a niche for vehicles that combine the best features of a golf cart and an automobile, That niche is as a local vehicle for households (a) with their own at-home charger which also have (b) an ICE powered car capable of conveniently accomplishing non-local trips.

The snowbird DrsC are such a household, we could install chargers at both homes if our local vehicles - 2 older SUVs - weren’t also ICE powered.

Friday Snark

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

Cowardice

Here is a quote by JD Vance spoken at the Munich Security Conference. He berated them for limiting free speech in pursuit of social peace. Vance is reacting to reports of a man arrested for praying outside an abortion clinic, and others in trouble for posting online about Muslim grooming gangs.

Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making. If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.

Translation … “You’re screwed and hopeless.” Hat tip to Ed Driscoll posting at Instapundit for the link. 

Good News re HHS

I just heard new HHS Secretary Bob Kennedy being interviewed by Laura Ingraham on her Fox News show. He indicated he would not interfere with vaccine availability or junk food.

He wants to make good science available about the risks as well as the benefits of the vaccines. I support that, and I support vaccines generally, I’ve had most of them except the most recent Covid vaccines. 

If you’ve noticed I haven’t posted for a couple of days, it’s because I’ve been ill, I’m certain it’s nothing life threatening. I get the flu vaccine every fall and mostly it works.  

Whatever I’ve got now may be flu but is probably something else - no fever but no energy, a cough, and too many trips to the toilet. It is unpleasant but not scary. In a long life I’ve had my share of “unpleasant,” it comes with the territory.

Missing Data

In honor of the Super Bowl yesterday, Steve Hayward of Power Line posts the following potentially misleading chart. It looks at NFL players' contributions to the two major political parties. 

It shows the percentage of those contributing to each party. Big advantage in donors to Republicans, but the few Democrats gave more each, on average.

What you don't learn from the chart is what percentage made political contributions. It might be true that most players don't. You could get charts like these if only 20 players contributed and 19 of them gave to Republicans, interesting maybe but not significant. 

If most players give to political parties, it means something, but we have no idea of what percentage do.

Grift or Graft

From Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, a quote about the current scene to cherish.

Nowadays if they’re calling you racist, it usually just means they’re defending some sort of grift or graft.

Truly. 

Civil Service Bloat

At various times I have spent a total of nearly three years inside the Federal bureaucracy, though never a true "civil servant" as I was never permanent. But I worked with the true civil service, made friends there, talked about the nature of the culture, and learned a lot in the process. 

If you're wondering why the government employment is bloated, one reason is the more people you supervise - what in business they call "direct reports" - the higher your pay grade is likely to be. If you supervise people who themselves supervise others, it goes even higher. Thus it is to your advantage to grow the workforce reporting to you.

Another reason you want more workers is that you will almost inevitably have some subordinates who are ineffective but who for one reason or another you cannot fire. Perhaps they are DEI hires, are "connected," or are careful not to give you evidence to use against them. Plus, the organizational culture discourages firing people by making it quite difficult to do.

So you hire another person to do the work the loser should be doing. They sit there on your payroll doing very little but their very presence increases the number you supervise and that alone is good for you personally, if not good for the agency or the taxpayer.

There are also some very talented people who work for the Feds, and they are often as irritated by their do-nothing colleagues as you would be. Be glad they exist. 

Inevitably some of these winners will be cut when the Musk whirlwind sweeps a lot of losers out of the government service. It happens with some frequency in the private sector. A desire to avoid this sort of collateral damage is another reason for civil service bloat.

Hearing Deteriorates with Age

One of the downsides of a long life is the deterioration of hearing among seniors. Mine - once normal - has gotten kinda bad, an audiologist estimated I have about 25% of normal hearing. I've worn hearing aids for over a decade.

With them you and I could sit in a quiet room and, presuming I can see your face, carry on a reasonable conversation. Put me in a noisy neighborhood party in someone's family room with six different conversations going on at once and my hearing aids are overwhelmed. Ditto in a noisy restaurant. 

Hearing aids are designed to magnify the audio frequencies of the human voice but many voices at once are too much. I can't sort out the one I'm trying to focus on from all the equally amplified background speech.

I go to parties and restaurants, I sit there looking pleasant and interested but I am basically disconnected from the flow of conversation. Because of that, the parties are social obligations I willingly perform but do not happily anticipate. In restaurants I concentrate on eating, the pleasure of which has not diminished. I let others carry the conversation.

The other DrC and I always have the subtitles turned on for TV or a movie at home, we both find them helpful, if occasionally incomplete or laughably incorrect. Our last couple of attempts at seeing a film at a theater found us guessing at the dialog, and we haven't gone back.

If you have an older friend whose hearing is diminished, please encourage them to get hearing aids. They are not perfect but they keep us from being isolated except as noted above. 

New ones are rechargeable overnight while you sleep. A very nice feature is that they can Bluetooth directly with your smart phone, enable this for sure. A set of aids will last about 5 years, I'm on my third pair and wouldn't willingly be without them.

Here's an unsolicited plug for Costco hearing aids. If you have a peripatetic lifestyle like the DrsC, the advantage beyond lower cost is that wherever you go, there is a Costco you can stop at and get them serviced free of charge while you shop. 

Their data base will show you bought the aids from Costco. They service what they sell and are - in my experience - uniformly helpful. Recently they connected the other DrC's aids with a new cell phone.

Hearing loss is associated with age-related dementia, via isolation. Don't be ashamed to wear aids, I still have to ask folks to repeat speech more often than I'd like, but without them I would be lost.

Saturday Snark

"A man needs to know his incantations."

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Lindy Li Leaks Hunter’s Role

Bombshell revelation concerning who was in charge at the Biden White House. Lindy Li, who was a major fund-raiser for the Biden and Harris campaigns and tight with the DNC, has spilled the beans. Matt Margolis at PJ Media has the details.

Back in December, she revealed new dirt on Joe Biden’s mental decline. “The president has not been cognitively fit to assume the duties of the Oval Office for a number of years now,” she told Fox News. "And it breaks my heart because I know President Biden and I love the man, but he is in no shape or form able to carry out the duties that the Commander in Chief requires, and it's just devastating.”

Li alleges that, following Biden’s disastrous debate drubbing, Hunter essentially took over White House operations. Speaking with podcaster Shawn Ryan, she painted a picture of dysfunction at the highest levels of government: “After the [CNN] debate, Hunter basically commandeered the White House. He sat in on all of the White House top-level meetings. We had a former cocaine addict sitting in on the most sensitive meetings of the most consequential and most important government in world history. Does that sit right with you?" (Snip) “Without security clearance mind you,” Li added. (links in original)

If true, what happened is just wrong on so many levels. No wonder Hunter kept showing up in White House photos of Joe. 

We’ve been blaming Dr. Jill, who you can maybe excuse for “standing by her man.” Perhaps the real ramrod was Hunter - who had to keep Joe going long enough to get a pardon. It makes you wonder if Hunter wrote his own pardon and coached dad to announce and defend it.

Imagine how crazy this looks to the rest of the world. If you wrote it as fiction, you’d be accused of gross exaggeration, the reviews would suck. Hat tip to Ed Driscoll, posting at Instapundit, for the link.

A Heck of a Show

Last November we elected the Energizer Bunny as our President, DJT is a regular whirlwind of action, comment, and policy promulgation. Since Jan. 20, has a single day gone by where he didn't dominate the news cycle? If so, I missed it. 

He had four years to think about what he would be doing if in office, and and apparently he was storing up a backlog of "to dos." I'm guessing that you, like me, are loving it. He is putting on a heck of a show.

Approval of Same Sex Marriage Down

The numbers guy at Power Line - Steve Hayward - posts the following chart, based on data from the General Social Survey created by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Are you surprised the approval levels have declined over the four year period 2018-2022, especially among the younger respondents? I am. We don't have data for those reporting no religious affiliation.

I wonder to what we can attribute this shift in opinion? It coincides with an increase in voters registering Republican. I doubt one causes the other, some unknown third factor may be causing both.