Truly Odd Science

Some see a spaceship orbiting Mercury, others think it is Mercury itself. Apparently something makes the sun's "coronal mass ejection" act oddly in that vicinity and those who want to, see a spaceship.

Parenthetic thought: don't we all "want to?" I guess not, they could be bad guys. See the article at Yahoo News.

Quite Good News

In National Journal I just read the following headline: "Battleground-State Voters Leaving the Democratic Party." That was the title of a column by Josh Kraushaar, a column of essentially unalloyed good news.

That people are leaving the Democrat party at this time shouldn't be surprising. In 2008 lots of people registered Democrat in order to participate in the historic election of the first black president. His reelection is much more ho-hum, not particularly historic.

In 2008 it was "hope and change," in 2012 it is "how has he done?" Sadly for our country, the answer is "not so good."

Most of those leaving the Dems are not registering GOP but either registering Ind or not registering. From a GOP point of view, either works. In 2012 we could have another 2010 "wave;" it wouldn't hurt our feelings.

Quote of the Day

Chris Stirewalt, writing for Fox News, about Gingrich's current poll standing in the polls:

Gingrich is not, as he says, leading a movement, he is the political equivalent of the U.S. dollar: it’s not that it’s strong because it’s so good, it’s that the other options are so bad.

I'm afraid that could be true.

Illinois Sucks

Demographer Joel Kotkin, writing again for Forbes, takes a close look at President Obama's home state Illinois and finds much not to like. The recent sentencing of Governor Blagojevich is obviously what triggered the article. See this list of shame:

Since 1973, for example, 27 Chicago Aldermen have been convicted by U.S. Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois. (snip) Both Gov. George Ryan (who served from 1999 to 2003 and and his successor Ron Blagojevich have been convicted a major crimes. So have four of the state’s last eight governors.

Of course it isn't just elected officials who are bent, Illinois has:

A political climate that also includes the also newly convicted Antonin “Tony” Rezko, a real estate speculator and early key Obama backer, sentenced late last month to a ten-year prison sentence.

No demographer would omit population flows, Kotkin reports:

According to the last Census, Chicago lost more than 200,000 people during the last decade.

Newt vs. Mitt

Yuval Levin writes in the National Review Online a comparison of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. I think the description of each he does is accurate; I wouldn't argue with the notion that both occupy largely similar policy positions.

Levin concludes that Romney is the better manager and sees the presidency as an executive position, which technically it is. That gives Romney the edge in Levin's view.

I see the presidency differently. Technically, the president is the CEO of the federal government. However, most cabinet departments operate pretty much by carrying out congressional mandates, with little input from the president. Foreign policy is the only sphere in which the president has substantial independence.

In reality, he (or she) is truly less the CEO than the nation's spokesperson. I ask myself which person I'd rather be looking at and listening to on the news for the next four years: boring, managerial Mitt or interesting, mercurial Newt. Newt wins this contest hands down, he is just more interesting.

Will I support whoever is nominated? If it is one of these two, yes certainly. Either would likely be a substantial improvement on the incumbent. Is it possible the Republicans could nominate someone I could not support? Of course.

Again, Sea Levels May Be Rising

Here is another article about sea levels rising, this one in USA Today. Who knows, it may in fact happen and it may be caused in part by human activity.

We wrote what we think is the definitive response to that situation on June 8 of this year. We proposed damming estuaries like the San Francisco Bay, the Chesapeake Bay, etc.

The Netherlands has done plenty of this, to increase their land area. Our roadblocks would be twofold: environmental and cost. We could overcome the second, I'm not sure about the first.

Pearl Harbor Day

This is the day every year when we remember the 2400 sailors and airmen who died on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii. They were sucker punched by the Empire of Japan, as they peacefully went about their early Sunday morning business.

Although there is no specific day, this would also be a good time to remember the more than 600 GI prisoners of war who died four months later during the Bataan Death March, while in the custody of the Japanese. The early days of World War II were grim for the Allies.

I am reminded this is the 70th anniversary of this sad affair. Whatever, 70th or not, I always remember. You should too.

No Personal Attacks

Yahoo News reports Republicans warn against "personal attacks" on President Obama. That is like warning against criticism of Mother Teresa's morals - it isn't going to happen anyway.

COTTonLINE has linked to plenty of criticism of President Obama's official acts, and failure to act. I can remember very little criticism of his personal life, perhaps his love of golf and tendency to vacation - things that amount to essentially nothing.

The criticism of President Clinton was often personal, and rightly so as he apparently could not control his libido. Criticisms of Presidents Bush and Obama have almost all been directed at their policies and official actions - entirely appropriate targets for public officials.

Predicted Bank Run

On November 15 COTTonLINE predicted that Greeks would be withdrawing hard money (i.e., euros) from their banks. They would do this in anticipation of either a freeze on their accounts or a conversion into a devalued new drachma.

Less than a month later here is an article in Der Spiegel Online (English version) which reports happening what we predicted. Spiegel suggests additional reasons for this run on the banks, reasons with which we have no argument.

More Weird Science

Giant undersea volcanoes are collapsing into the Tonga Trench, the process causing less commotion than you'd expect. Who knew?

The whole thing is part of the vast, slow-moving phenomenon called plate tectonics. See this BBC News article for details.

Weakness Underestimated

Sean Trende is senior elections analyst for RealClearPolitics. In this article he makes the point that it doesn't take a particularly strong candidate to defeat an incumbent. And he notes that:

Our chattering class hasn’t fully accepted how weak the president really is.

Speaking of Romney, Gingrich, and Perry, he concludes:

Whether they are strong enough to actually win a race against Obama is still an open question. But given the very real weakness of the current president, I would not be surprised if any of them were very much in the game come November 2012.

White Working Class Votes

David Paul Kuhn is chief political correspondent for RealClearPolitics. Here he writes about the dangers inherent in Team Obama abandoning the white working class, the Archie and Edith Bunker group. The article is an interesting mix of demographics and politics.

No Liberal Talk Radio

Except for NPR (National Public Radio) which is pledge and government supported, liberal talk radio doesn't succeed. Conservative talk radio is everywhere successful, even in San Francisco. See this article in Big Journalism.

The reasons for this should be obvious. There is no need for a separate venue for liberal or "progressive" ideas and discussion, most MSM newspapers and television news already provide it. Conservative talk radio exists to provide conservative ideas and discussion in markets where it otherwise doesn't exist or is a beleaguered cable minority (Fox News).

Translate the thoughts in the above paragraph into listenership, which is what drives radio programming as it attracts advertising dollars. Conservative talk radio draws listeners which draws advertisers. Liberal talk radio has few listeners, therefore few advertising dollars, and isn't an economically viable proposition. In radio markets rule.

The article does make one valid point, it is likely more conservatives have jobs where listening to radio while working is a reasonable thing to do.

No COINs in the Fountain

David Ignatius writes foreign affairs for the Washington Post. Here he writes about the Pentagon's reduced emphasis on counterinsurgency [COIN] by our military. This translates into reduced budgets for the Army and Marines.

The new thinking is that, in the future, we will not send huge armies to occupy countries. If there is trouble somewhere, we will send in small teams to kill the trouble-makers - think SEAL team, Special Forces A team, or maybe a drone strike. This tactic requires excellent target identification.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I guess Mossad should feel flattered. The violent events currently happening in Iran are examples. In other words, forget COIN's "hearts and minds;" if the heart stops beating, the mind is irrelevant.

More Demography

On November 27 we wrote debunking a story in The New York Times about the "death of suburbia." Happily, here is a Forbes column by our favorite demographer, Joel Kotkin, which makes the same points we made but makes them better and with much interesting data.

Kotkin is of course correct that "urban land owners, planners and pundits" want people to live near public transportation in dense clusters - mostly downtown. Unfortunately for the planners, actual Americans want to live in the suburbs, the exurbs, and in small towns or rural areas:

Aging boomers tended to move out of dense urban cores, and to a lesser extent, even the suburbs. If they moved anywhere, they were headed further out in metropolis towards the more rural area.

Samuelson: We Are Alike

Robert Samuelson who writes on economics for RealClearPolitics, says Americans should see the parallels between what is happening in Europe and what is happening here. We don't face their "shared currency without coordinated fiscal policies" problem.

However we do share the problem of having developed social welfare entitlement programs for which we can no longer afford to pay without raising taxes to the point where our economies will not function. He states:

To flourish, the welfare state requires favorable economics and demographics: rapid economic growth to pay for social benefits; and young populations to support the old. Both economics and demographics have moved adversely.

Our economies are flaccid and our populations are aging, theirs aging more rapidly than ours. This is not a recipe for happy politics.

The "Stay Behinds"

Janet Daley who writes for The Telegraph (U.K.), has a column that is extremely pessimistic about the future of the EU and particularly the eurozone. She says a number of bitter things, including the following which I find interesting:

To Americans, an inability to escape from the past is incomprehensible: theirs is a country composed entirely of people who did exactly that. But Europe is populated by the people who did not leave.

"Europe is populated by the people who did not leave." That is something for Americans to remember. Maybe we should let them live with whatever problems they create, rather than rushing to their rescue yet again.

Political Humor Alert

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty speaking at the Winter Gridiron Dinner about losing in the Iowa straw poll to GOP presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann:

It bothers me a little to be beaten by Sarah Palin's stunt double.

Pawlenty managed to kid himself and both women in one sentence, not bad. If he'd been this funny in July he might still be in the running; timing is everything.

My source for this quip is a column by Kerry Picket in The Washington Times, quoting a Karen Tumulty (Washington Post) tweet.

As Predicted....

Back on October 17 COTTonLINE observed that "General Winter" would beat the Occupy Wall Street movement. Then on October 28 we noted that the mainstream media had recognized this possibility.

Here we are in early December and mirabile dictu, the death of the movement is being reported. See this column on Andrew Breitbart's Big Journalism, by author John Nolte, which includes photos you may not have seen, or want to see.

Nolte believes the movement is dying of its own total ickiness; a factor which while real is overvalued. Unfortunately, human beings are willing, even eager to be icky.

I maintain that General Winter won the "war." Living in a tent in wet and freezing weather may be fun for an ice fishing weekend, not for much longer as General Washington learned at Valley Forge.

Podhoretz: Romney Is Stuck

John Podhoretz, who writes politics for the New York Post, has an interesting take on Mitt Romney's problem: why he cannot attract more than a quarter of the Republican electorate. It isn't anything mystical.

Podhoretz says Romney's problem is that he cannot explain away Romneycare's striking resemblance to Obamacare. Both have as the centerpiece forcing everybody to buy health insurance. That forcing really ticks off Republicans who worry Mitt is a RINO, a Republican In Name Only.

I suspect Mitt's real problem is that he is a manager. Managing, unlike governing, isn't much guided by ideology. Managers don't have a problem changing their mind about what approach to use, depending on what seems practical.

Voters try to determine how politicians will govern in the future based on how they governed in the past. Past inconsistency means we have little confidence in our prediction about their future actions.

Politicians who have changed their minds about things are called "flip-floppers." I've never heard a manager described that way.