Political Realist

The San Francisco Chronicle writes that California Attorney General Kamala Harris has spoken out in support of the sanctuary cities concept. This in reaction to the controversy about the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by a serial felon and multiple deportee illegal alien who had been in police custody and was released without deportation.

Her comments are unwelcome but not unexpected. What else could we expect a Senate candidate to say in the officially Hispanic-majority state that California recently became?

I'm surprised she didn't announce it in Spanish. Any guesses when Dia del Muertos becomes an official CA state holiday as it is in Mexico?

Adios, Alta California. Vaya con Dios, land of my birth.  Welcome to the Third World.

Recidivism

The New York Post reports Mayor de Blasio's decriminalization of minor offences is having the expected effect - New York City is rapidly becoming an armpit again. The story is headed by a photo of a vagrant pissing in the street as cars zip by ... and he isn't even French!

Here’s an up-close look at a quality-of-life offense the City Council wants to decriminalize. This urinating vagrant turned a busy stretch of Broadway into his own private bathroom yesterday – an offense that would result in a mere summons if Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and her pals get their way.

Mark-Viverito in April announced plans to decriminalize public urination along with five other low-level offenses: biking on the sidewalk, public consumption of alcohol, being in a park after dark, failure to obey a park sign and jumping subway turnstiles.

This is backing away from the proven "broken windows" model of proactive policing that cleaned up NYC 20 years ago. I hope New Yorkers, always an abrasive lot, enjoy what they freely elected. It couldn't happen to a more richly deserving group.

Global Cooling?

The Daily Mail (U.K.) reports scientists think we may be headed for another "Maunder Minimum," a period when the sun goes quiet and the earth gets cold - a so-called "mini-Ice Age." The solar predictive model was presented recently at the U.K.'s National Astronomy Meeting in Wales.

As the Mail notes, during the last such cold period the Thames froze over, not a common occurrence. In Europe these were the "years without summer," crops failed.

COTTonLINE believes it likely the sun plays a greater role in climate than human activities ever will.  As a gargantuan thermonuclear furnace its power output so dwarfs anything of which humans are collectively capable as to be orders of magnitude greater in scale. And solar output definitely varies.

In the words of NPR's Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, we may need the notorious Bronco Nagurski long underwear to get through the cold spell. The mere thought of it makes me itch.

Aussies Lead Way

The Australians are the first to back out of the F-35 fighter aircraft acquisition program. Given the plane's lousy performance against previous-generation fighters, I'm betting they won't be the last potential buyer bailing out. See the brief item in Defense Industry Daily, scroll down to the Asia section.

Archuleta Bye-ku

National Journal reports Katherine Archuleta, Director of the Federal Office of Personnel Management, has resigned under fire. It was on her watch the personnel records of tens of millions of federal workers were compromised by malicious hackers and/or the People's Liberation Army of China.

Honoring a practice of the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto, on the day of her resignation I offer a bye-ku, a haiku commemorating a departure.

Knowing no H R
Katherine Archuleta
Falls on her KA-BAR

Micronesian Musings

The Associated Press reports a break in the undersea fiber optic cable connecting the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to the world grid. Apparently some on Guam were also affected.

In the mid-1980s when the DrsC lived there, Guam was only connected via satellite and calls off-island weren't common or inexpensive. In fact Guam's phone system was a standing joke among expats; like the local people, the phones sometimes worked, but often did not or screwed up.

A common occurrence then was to dial a local number and get a busy signal after the first or second digit dialed. A widely shared, and possibly apocryphal, story concerned a recent arrival on-island who became so frustrated with the phone he threw it at the wall.

I remember learning the hard way there was no utility in calling a business to ask if they had a particular item available. The person answering always replied "yes," regardless of its actual existence in stock.

Upon questioning this practice, I learned saying "no" was considered rude so it didn't happen, even if the result was me making a trip to the store in vain. By contrast, we'd consider giving the wrong answer rude.

The flag over Guam may be the Stars and Stripes but the culture is basically Asian with some Hispanic highlights. Corruption is therefore bred-in-the-bone.

The idea that you would not favor a relative or friend over a stranger, someone with whom you're not connected, is considered immoral. We joked the FBI would send to Guam agents who had lost their self-confidence so they could get some easy convictions; the laws are American while the culture is not.

Morales Clueless

Bolivian President Evo Morales presented visiting Pope Francis with a Christ figure crucified on the hammer of a Communist hammer and sickle symbol. The Pope shook his head and responded, "That's not right." See the story in The Telegraph (U.K.).

After his election in 2006, Mr Morales, an indigenous Indian, adopted a confrontational approach towards the Roman Catholic Church to which he once referred as his “main enemy”.

He has frequently criticised its role in the colonisation of the continent, ordered the Bible and cross to be removed from the presidential palace and made the country a secular state.

Francis isn't as deeply "into" liberation theology as Morales obviously hoped. Or at least he doesn't like it with an officially atheist flavor as is typical in Communism.

Trump in Lead

Fifty years ago on the TV program Laugh-In, comic Arte Johnson would don a German soldier's uniform and helmet and, in a letter-perfect Austrian accent, deadpan about the previous skit, "Verrrrrry interesting, but not funny." He captured exactly my reaction to the following news item.

In this week’s Economist/YouGov Poll, businessman Donald Trump leads among Republicans, ahead of Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Trump looks even better as a candidate this week when Republicans are asked for their second choice. When they are, Trump extends his lead. One in four Republicans who are registered to vote say he is their first or second choice.

The Lucianne.com site asks concerning an article on Trump:

Did GOP leaders think immigration wouldn't come up?

COTTonLINE responds: Think? No, "GOP leaders" hoped it wouldn't come up. Hope is a contingency plan for losers.

Americans are pissed about illegal immigration; meanwhile all Democrats and most Republicans act like the alien tsunami is wonderful, or at least no big deal. With classic marketing savvy, Trump sensed the public anger and spoke to it.

Either the GOP competition wises up and gets on The Donald's side of this issue or he walks away with the nomination. I wonder how many of his opponents can stomach immigrant bashing?

Several GOP candidates, I am certain, will refuse. Some may interpret this poll to say you can put a fork in those refuseniks, they're done.

That's a limb out upon which I'm not going just yet. One robin doesn't make a spring, and one poll doesn't always gauge the public mood.

The Long Game

Blogging at Instapundit, Elizabeth Price Foley writes about Putin's courting of the Greek socialist PM as follows:

Reagan won the Cold War, in part, by playing a long game designed to bankrupt the Soviet Union. It seems Putin now has similar aims, using the profligacy of European socialist countries such as Greece as a long-term weapon. Such profligacy holds the potential to bankrupt the EU if it continues to cave to political pressure to bailout Greece and similar entitlement-driven economies. And if EU resists the pressure and refuses further bailouts, Russia will undoubtedly swoop in with offers of “assistance” to leaders more interested in keeping entitlements flowing than defending and preserving their countries’ freedom and democracy.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when we hand out “free” (tax-supported) stuff and get citizens addicted. This is why the founders’ philosophy of individualism, not socialist communitarianism, works to sustain freedom and democracy.

We have to hope Putin can't afford to become Greece's "benefactor." Addiction to free stuff is the problem in Argentina, too.

God and Santa

Blogging at PJ Media, Ed Driscoll quotes humorist P. J. O'Rourke's wise words from 20 years ago. They are worth sharing with you, enjoy:

I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat.

God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on literally everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.

Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without the thought of quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.

Scratch a humorist, find a closet Calvinist.

No Allies Here

Michael Totten writes in World Affairs Journal why the Iraqi government insists the U.S. not arm anti-ISIS Sunnis and Kurds.

The real reason for the government’s reluctance ought to be obvious: Iraq’s Shias do not want to arm Iraq’s Sunnis. They’d rather have ISIS controlling huge swaths of the country than a genuinely popular Sunni movement with staying power that’s implacably hostile to the Iranian-backed project in Mesopotamia.

Totten's conclusion below logically flows from his detailed analysis.

We don’t have to choose between ISIS and Iran’s revolutionary regime. They’re both murderous Islamist powers with global ambitions, and they’re both implacably hostile to us and our interests. Resisting both simultaneously wouldn’t make our foreign policy even a whit more complicated. It would, however, make our foreign policy much more coherent.

However, "resisting both simultaneously" could look like we've declared war on Islam, something few in Washington are prepared to do until events force their hands. For starters, you know Obama won't buy in.

A Demographic Milestone

The Los Angeles Times reports Census Bureau figures which show, as of July 1, 2014, the Hispanic population of California outnumbered the non-Hispanic white population by 14.99 million to 14.92 million.

What's more, the median age of CA Hispanics is 29, that of whites is 45. Therefore, expect the disparity to increase.

California is now the first large state and the third overall — after Hawaii and New Mexico — without a white plurality.

The U.S. is evolving in the same direction as Europe, but Europe is a few years farther down the road to oblivion.

The Dreary Northwest

Politico has an article on racism in the Pacific Northwest, the U.S. region with the fewest African-Americans. I spent three years in Oregon and didn't see much racism or many blacks; however I was in a university town (Eugene) which was more accepting and multicultural than most. Oregon's KKK past was talked about.

One thing is for sure, the region is very odd ... the bizarro Twin Peaks type of odd. Some grad students in the Business school were into hallucinogens; imagine what the social science and liberal arts kids were doing.

It's no accident Starbucks and other coffee mavens started in the region, blame the gloomy weather. Massive caffeine infusions help stave off the "no-sun" depression and keep folks moving.

When I lived there, some decades ago, the single car accident was the most common automotive fatality. Conventional wisdom held many of those crashes to be suicides, I know of one for sure.

In 1969, the acting president of the University of Oregon, pressured by campus radicals making "nonnegotiable demands," drove his VW head-on into a loaded logging truck with instantly fatal results.

As he was CEO of the city's largest employer, we learned the details of his crash. Most of those who drove into a tree or overpass abutment were just sad anonymous statistics, obscured by the endless rain.

The Greek Hangover

The Economist opines the Greek economy will be a mess regardless of what is eventually decided. To be sure, the Greeks had their moment of defiance, voting "no" by almost 2 to 1.

But two days after the close of the polls the fact remains that Greece's real economy is in a mess.

Firms have also been hit particularly hard.

Unsurprisingly, as a result, Greek economic growth—which began to falter shortly after Syriza came to power in January—has collapsed. Consumption has slumped by 70% since capital controls were imposed.

And they conclude:

Whatever Greece's political fate, its economy is bound to get much worse before it gets better.

Presuming Greece leaves the euro zone, wealth-destroying inflation is the villain lurking around the corner. Be glad you don't live in Greece.

July Madness? It Lacks Alliteration

Writing for Bloomberg, Will Leitch likens the scramble to be among the 10 on-stage debaters in the GOP primary debates to the scramble of college basketball teams to be included in the N.C.A.A. tournament brackets.

Apparently being neither clearly "in" nor "out" but merely a possible is called "being on the bubble," a term possibly arising from auto racing. Leitch writes a couple of things worth quoting:

The Republican Party, top to bottom, would do anything in its power to keep Trump out of the debate, while for Fox (along with CNN), Trump not only means eyeballs, he means outstanding television. Tossing Trump in on stage turns every debate into a fiasco, which is bad for the Republican Party but ratings manna for the cable networks. We have finally found where Fox News and conservative politics diverge: Donald Trump.

It is an awful way to narrow this field, this non-primary primary. But as any seasoned college basketball fan can tell you, watching teams desperately scramble to avoid their bubble bursting is incredibly entertaining. Strap in. It’s gonna be a wild month. It’s going to be madness.

Whac-a-Mole© in Syria

The Washington Post's Dana Milbank writes about a recent Obama speech at the Pentagon in which he described our efforts against ISIS as basically "whac-a-mole." It isn't actually a bad description of our efforts there with air strikes.

Let's analyze. What makes the game "whac-a-mole" difficult? The player has only one mallet and a rubber mole can pop up out of any of five holes, one or more at a time. As the game goes on the pace accelerates. The faster you react the higher your score. It becomes a test of reaction times and situational awareness.

Suppose you had five mallets and five arms and could hit every hole every time movement appeared anywhere on the board, conditions that do not exist on the game console. You could get a very high score.

Now, about ISIS. Suppose we had enough planes to bomb every town they occupy every day. We'd kill a lot of civilians but might just make ISIS-as-a-supposed-country impossible to sustain.

What makes ISIS whac-a-mole difficult is trying to guess where the bad guys are right now, and how to tell them from the civilians among whom they hide. You solve that problem by not being discriminating, by deeming everyone within their boundaries an enemy or a collaborator and, as such, a target.

If we aren't willing to do what is necessary, as I expect is the case, we might as well leave and let ISIS get on with building the early 21st century version of Nazi Germany, complete with creative genocidal practices.

... the Mice Will Play

Writing at Breaking Defense, James Kitfield describes the disaster that has been the Obama foreign policy, in which Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a major player.

In just the past year the administration has been forced to rush U.S. troops back to Iraq and then reinforce them, and launch sustained airstrikes over both Iraq and Syria targeting the Islamic State. Planned U.S. troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this year have been frozen in the face of a resurgent Taliban, and military experts continue to criticize the administration’s deadline for withdrawing all U.S. troops by the end of next year. The Pentagon also just announced the redeployment of battle tanks and heavy armored equipment back to Europe to calm the nerves of NATO allies shaken by Russian aggression in Ukraine.

What’s most remarkable about those reversals is how rapidly an Obama Doctrine of international retrenchment and domestic renewal — coupled with political paralysis and a budget impasse in Washington that have severely degraded military readiness — left a perceived global power vacuum. It has rapidly been filled by bad actors behaving very badly, creating a narrative of U.S. retreat that is proving hard to dispel.

Exactly the same thing happens when we forego foreign intervention as when the police forego proactive enforcement, a surge in misbehavior. The U.S. "cat" is away, and we all know what that tells those reprobate mice ... playtime!

Obama "Complicit" in Kate Steinle Murder

Bill O'Reilly of Fox News writes concerning the fatal shooting of Kate Steinle in San Francisco by an illegal alien whom the City of San Francisco, as a "sanctuary" city, refused to hand to the Feds for deportation. Said murderer already had seven felony convictions and had been deported five times. O'Reilly's comment:

The mayor and city supervisors of San Francisco are directly responsible for the death of Kate Steinle and the Obama administration is complicit.

See the article for Bill's reasoning supporting this claim, it looks solid to me.

Bloody Chicago

DNAinfo reports research the blogger has compiled on shootings and gun deaths in Chicago over the past 5.5 years. Hat tip to Lucianne.com for the link. The research shows:

Since New Year's Day 2010, there have been more than 12,000 shootings in Chicago. More than 14,000 people were hit in those shootings, including more than 2,000 who died.

That makes Chicago roughly as dangerous as Baghdad or Kabul. He continues:

For the decade so far, shootings peaked in 2012 when 2,499 shootings resulted in 2,990 people being wounded.

The next year saw a nearly 25 percent drop in shootings. The 1,920 shootings in 2013 were the lowest this decade.

Through the first six months of this year, shootings are up 20 percent compared to last year.

Imagine living in a place where the 2013 shootings numbered "only" 1,920 - and was "the lowest this decade."   A scary neighborhood.

Quote of the Day

The National Review's Victor Davis Hanson writes about Obama's jubilation at last week's Supreme Court rulings, which were liberal in tone.

He twice ran for president expressing opposition to gay marriage while emphasizing the religious element of holy matrimony, which, he argued, precluded same-sex marriages. Is he delighted that the Court ignored his prior views?

Certainly, for his expressed views were never his true views. Lame-duck Obama doesn't mind the revelation; he has no further need to convince religious black voters he shares their values.

Anyway, the optics of sharing a victory of one segment of his coalition (gays), are so much better than those of sharing the defeat of another segment (black evangelicals). Remember Billy Crystal's "'Nando, don't be a schnook, it's not how you feel, it's how you look. And you look maaahvelous, baby."