Maher Nails It

With the caveat that there are some F bombs, you really need to go watch Bill Maher's monologue about the woke revolution available on YouTube. If you don't want the entire program, just the monologue, the best way I know to get there is via this Steve Hayward post at Power Line.

Maher argues the woke are latter-day Red Guards, he ridicules them without mercy, and is funny at the same time using good examples and good illustrations. He makes the very cogent point that these crazies believe they can revise human nature - which they cannot do. 

Ignore (or enjoy, your choice) his rough language, savor his humor, and attend to his logic, which is rock solid. I've tried to find a transcription of the monologue to quote, but it doesn't seem to be available and I'm too lazy to create my own.

Friday Snark

All images courtesy of Politico's Cartoonists on the 

Week in Politics.

Death By Smart Phone?

Steve Hayward at Power Line has 3 charts, the first showing that motor vehicle fatality rates have declined dramatically over the past 100 years. The second shows pedestrian fatality rates fell until 2009, after which they began to climb rather steeply. 

The third chart (shown below) is the second chart with the advent of the smart phone superimposed to show that shortly after its introduction pedestrian fatalities began to zoom upward. As Hayward notes, it's probably not a coincidence.

Appetites

Breitbart Europe reports the U.K. Children’s Commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza has issued a report showing the average teen begins viewing online pornography by age 13, with something like 10% beginning at age 9. By age 18 four out of five are watching porn.

I shouldn't wonder if such findings make some who grew up before the Internet a wee bit jealous. Perhaps we were the lucky ones, and didn't then know it.

A Reminder

UPI reports former President Trump, running for reelection, has made a key campaign promise concerning what he called the "left-wing gender insanity.".

Former President Donald Trump took aim Tuesday at transgender Americans, vowing that if re-elected he will end gender-affirming medical care for minors, ask Congress to pass legislation directing the U.S. government to only recognize one's birth gender and promote "positive education of the nuclear family" and "the roles of mothers and fathers."

Magically, “the Donald” reminds us of why he seemed a breath of fresh air in 2016. He is the guy who will say the things the rest of us are thinking but have been bullied into not saying because some snowflake's feelings might be hurt. He advocates what we wish were public policy, stuff the swamp will never push.

Most of us think if someone is unhappy with the plumbing they were born with, the problem is between their ears, not between their legs. He is the guy who will say it and act on it, driving society’s neurotics wild.

Historically his very brashness offends a fair number, especially in the legacy media and among the perpetually aggrieved. Many of us experience it as refreshingly direct, realistic and commonsensical. He speaks for society’s non-victims, which is (or should be) most of us.

Trump's forthrightness doesn’t answer the question of whether he would, if reelected, be able to get the federal bureaucracy to act on his wishes. In his first term his mastery of the bureaucracy was spotty at best, and his appointments were often a disappointment. 

Those may well be issues where Gov. Ron DeSantis scores better than Trump. And DeSantis has also been outstanding at confronting the woke head-on.

When Circumstances Change ....

The website Bizpacreview.com quotes Newsmax host Greg Kelly claiming that a Nikki Haley quote from April 2021 disqualifies her as a candidate for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination. The article has a link to the video and here's her quote:

I would not run if President Trump ran.

Her change of heart can be explained by Trump's behavior since the comment was made. I can imagine her responding "Yes, that is how it looked two years ago, but both Trump and our circumstances have changed. I believe a president needs to deal with current realities."

Gainers and Losers

Speaking of statistics, I've written a fair amount about internal migration within the U.S. Recently a CBS News story provided a link to a website by the National Assn. of Realtors which reports the relative as well as absolute population losses or gains experienced by the 50 states.

Big percentage gainers - each gaining 1% or more during 2022 - were the following, in declining order of gain. FL 1.9%, ID 1.8%, SC 1.7%, TX 1.6%, MT and SD 1.5%, DE 1.4%, NC and AZ 1.3%, TN, GA, and UT 1.2%, and NV 1.0%. 

In absolute numbers of people moving from one state to another, FL gained over 300,000, TX gained over 200,000, and all others listed above gained fewer than 100,000. SD got on the list with fewer than 8500 emigrants, because their population is quite small.

The big losers in absolute numbers were CA, NY, and IL Certainly that is not news to those following the internal migration story. 

Fading Faith

Power Line's Steven Hayward posts a chart or two every day, showing in pictorial form some set of statistics that might be of interest. Today's charts deal with the prevalence (or lack thereof) of religion in the daily lives of people in the U.K. and Europe. In large parts of the U.K. nearly half the population identifies as "atheist or non-religious." 

The chart asking about belief in hell - as a proxy for religious belief - lacks reports for Kosovo, Ireland, Moldova and Belgium. Fewer than one in five believe in hell in Scandinavia, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Czechia. 

Few of Europe's other supposedly Christian countries have a lot of belief in hell, except Poland and Romania. Muslim countries Turkey and Bosnia/Herzegovina have lots of such belief while Muslim Albania has about the same amount as France - roughly 1 believer in 4.

Optimism ... Perhaps Unjustified

Recently a couple of DC insiders have predicted we might find ourselves at war with China in 2025. If they are correct, that is no small thing.

George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures looks at their statements, reviews his own earlier predictions which don't see a war developing, and concludes he remains of that more pacifistic opinion.

Friedman however concludes with this comment:

Perhaps I am reverting to bad habits. Answering my own questions with my old views is admittedly poor intelligence. Feel free to let me know which questions I didn’t pose and which answers were insufficient.

The gist of his argument is that it is not in China's own interests, rationally considered, to go to war. My response is that going to war is often a less-than-rational decision on the part of autocrats. 

I offer Putin's decision to invade Ukraine as an example of this. It appears he envisioned himself as a restorer of the currently depleted Russian empire, wearing the laurel leaves of victory. Such visions can be heady stuff.

His vision was emotional rather than rational, as subsequent events have seemed to demonstrate rather conclusively. Who is to say Xi is more rational than Putin? Or more constrained? Or less determined to be enshrined in his country's millennia-spanning pantheon of heroes?

Fooling Around

Lucianne.com links to a Monica Showalter column at American Thinker. Her topic today is the prevalence of marital infidelity at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, where it supposedly is a firing offense. If you enjoy relatively well-documented gossip about people in high places, this column could be for you. 

I write "supposedly" because it appears to be somewhat common among the higher-ups in the bureau. Such shenanigans need to cease forthwith in an agency where a security clearance is mandatory. This is not prudery but because it makes the straying agent susceptible to blackmail and coercion.

On the other hand, those who alleged the man who attacked Paul Pelosi was actually there for a gay assignation need to apologize. The video shows the attacker breaking a window with his hammer to gain access. That would be highly unconventional 'courting behavior' even in outre' San Francisco.

Storing Our Toy

Having come home to NV a week ago after spending the last 6 weeks in our RV in CA, we finally got the trailer cleaned up and ready to store until we take it to WY in May. The other DrC has a photo of the rather tight storage slot I managed to back it into Friday, taking it slow and carefully. 

For a guy who was never a teamster, I'm not too bad at backing the trailer. I do prefer pull-thru campsites, however covered storage seems to never be pull-thru, too costly one supposes.

We hope to take the RV cross-country this summer to Tennessee. If we do so, it will celebrate the 50th anniversary of our first cross-country RV trip, one that took us from CA to Key West, FL, Washington DC, and back. 

A young woman the other DrC mentored will graduate from a Family Nurse Practitioner program in Nashville in August and we'd like to attend the ceremony. While in TN we will probably go farther east to see friends in the Knoxville area and western NC.

Review: Wednesday

The DrsC have begun watching Wednesday, the eponymously named series on Netflix. It is fun, a sort of amalgam of Stranger Things and Harry Potter, with a bit of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children added for "flavor."

Wednesday, of course, is the Addams family's pigtailed daughter, so named because supposedly Wednesday's child is full of woe. She is played appealingly by an young Hispanic actress and accompanied by the disembodied hand, Thing. We meet her parents - Morticia and Gomez - briefly in the first episode, as they bring her to their old school, Nevermore Academy. 

The headmistress is an over-the-top Lady Gaga lookalike, and a shapeshifter, played by Gwendoline Christie, who did Brianna of Tarth in Game of Thrones. As headmistress her character could hardly be more unlike Brianna, an outstanding way to demonstrate acting versatility. A troupe of young acting talent believably fills out the various school roles: roommate, bully, prom queen, nerd, lovable doofus, etc.

If you've liked the film and two TV series mentioned above - as we did - you could like the series Wednesday. As a mentor of mine was fond of saying, "it works the same line of country."

Saturday Snark

Took me a minute or two to "see" this one.

Something for Star Wars fans.

The crisper, where veggies go to die.

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures, and its Comments section.

A Fourth Term

Mitt Romney's niece Ronna McDaniels just won a fourth term as chair of the Republican National Committee. The vote wasn't particularly close, she got 111 votes, California attorney Harmeet Dhillon got 51, and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell got 5. 

This was a win for Donald Trump who had supported McDaniels, and a loss for Ron DeSantis who supported Dhillon. Those who get to vote for the chair are the party stalwarts, people who've spent the better part of a lifetime being active in Republican Party affairs and are elected to the RNC by the party in each state.

I was inclined to agree with DeSantis that new blood at the RNC was needed, given the party's ho-hum performance at the last midterm when a red wave was predicted but materialized only in Florida. Obviously two-thirds of the apparatchik electorate thought otherwise. 

Most of us don't become party activists, don't make the party the organizing principle of our lives. The people who just reelected McDaniel have done exactly that. In their state they are Mr. or Ms. Republican.

The activists of both major parties are not particularly in tune with the grass roots for whom being a Republican or Democrat is like rooting for the local NFL team. Something done one afternoon while spending the rest of the week getting on with life.

Friday Snark

Both images courtesy of Politico's Cartoonists on the Week in Politics.

MBTs for Ukraine

It is reported widely that the U.S. and certain EU allies will be providing main battle tanks (MBTs) to Ukraine. Given how little use the Russians got out of their tanks, I am not certain the German Panther and U.S. Abrams tanks will make much difference. Perhaps their value may be primarily symbolic.

The otherwise admired turbine-powered Abrams is a notorious "gas hog" which gets terrible mileage and needs refueling too often. U.S. technicians don't plan to go to Ukraine to service the Abrams; training locals to fight and maintain them isn't something done in a couple of weeks. If the diesel-powered Panther follows normal German practice, it will be over-engineered but perhaps effective. 

I've been wondering why the Ukes haven't cannibalized the many abandoned Russian tanks to put together a good sized unit of working weaponry? Supposedly many were dumped because they ran out of fuel, and should be nearly ready to go, even modestly supplied with ammunition.

A Need for Clarity

Various sources are reporting that the FDA is considering a policy of annual Covid shots much like the annual influenza shots. Considering the similarities in the two viral diseases this makes a certain sense. The DrsC have gotten annual flu shots for decades, with reasonable-if-not-perfect results.

I’d like to have more clarity around the “sudden death following Covid shots” issue before we jump into duplicating this routine for Covid. Clearly some of this is coincidence, but some may be causative. 

Refusing to be open about this situation only makes us more suspicious. I don’t want to be ‘holding my breath’ every fall following a Covid shot. We need studies and some sense of risk rates following immunizations.

It’s Karma Time

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to seat pro-Trump Republicans, appointed by Minority Leader McCarthy, on the Jan. 6 committee. She replaced them with two anti-Trump Republicans - Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger - neither of whom now serves in Congress.

Now Speaker Kevin McCarthy has refused to return Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell to the House Intelligence Committee upon which they formerly served, alleging their lack of “integrity.” And it is rumored he will not return Ilhan Omar to the House Foreign Affairs Committee for similar reasons.

Democrats never figure others will use against them ploys they originate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did the same thing to former Leader Harry Reid, over confirming judges.

Karma is a wonderful thing. Being able to skewer your opponent, using a tactic he or she invented, must be one of life’s purest pleasures. 

This is exactly why Sens. Sinema and Manchin won’t vote to drop the filibuster rule. They understand some year soon the Democrats will be a Senate minority and it will then protect their interests to have the filibuster rule in place, as it now protects Republicans.

Saturday Snark, a Day Late

All images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures, and the Comments section thereof.

Sunshine Going to Waste

The DrsC spent parts of the last two days driving across the Mojave Desert - mile after mile after mile of empty, barren land. In the deserts of the Southwest there are thousands of square miles of unattractive land that nobody uses for anything, nor are they likely to do so. 

I suspect most of this land is owned by the federal government. It being desert, the area gets nearly daily big doses of … you guessed it … sunshine. While batteries are impractical, if we could figure out an efficient way to store the power so generated for use at night and on the few cloudy days, covering significant acreage with solar panels could be useful. Some of this has already been done.

Yes, there are some hardy critters that call it home: rodents, lizards, snakes and turtles plus some few predators which feed on same. At least some of these will enjoy the shade photovoltaic panels provide.