We Came That Close....

Earth is currently in the path of a solar flare and our area of the Rockies was given a good chance of seeing the northern lights or aurora borealis. About a half hour ago the DrsC went outside and saw an unusually bright northern sky, as though there was light pollution.

Except that in our rural area there isn't light pollution. What we saw was part of the aurora borealis, but I am forced to admit it was an unspectacular manifestation thereof, alas. No gaudy red or green streamers.

The late spring we drove the Alaskan highway from CA to Fairbanks and back in our little motorhome, the aurora was nowhere to be seen. That would have been in the early 1980s, exactly which year I don't offhand remember.

Later … The other DrC did see more of the aurora than I last night, she was up at 3 a.m. and bingo, she saw the colors sweep across the sky. I looked somewhat later and saw only the unnatural brightness, before going back to sleep. And she reminds me we’ve been north of the Arctic Circle and not seen it on a couple of occasions, both in Northern Europe. 

Mike Johnson Speaks

Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade interview House Speaker Mike Johnson for Politico Magazine, the result is magazine-length - not short. It is also serious, sometimes funny, thoughtful, historically and constitutionally grounded, and sorta charming. 

You get Mike J. in his own words, not edited down or laden with gotchas. I took the time to read it, and enjoyed it a lot. I don't know about you, I ended up thinking Mike Johnson is a good man, a patriot, and a constitutional scholar. 

I recommend this article to you, if you have the time. I came away feeling more optimistic about our country's prospects than I have managed to be recently.

An Awkward Question

A US government website reports the following.

The most recent CDC report on abortion in the United States indicates that, in 2016, the Non-Hispanic Black abortion rate (25.1 abortions per 1,000 women age 15-44) was 3.8 times the Non-Hispanic White rate of 6.6.

And the Politifact website reports they fact checked the claim that in New York City abortions performed on black women outnumbered live births to black women in 2013 and a previous year. They found it to be true.

A reasonable question is the following: "To what extent is support for abortion availability motivated by white racism?" That is, by an understanding that abortion availability suppresses black population growth much more than white population growth, something it clearly does.

Friday Snark

Prof resembles PL's Steve Hayward, minus goatee.

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

Polls: Climate Change Not Major Concern

Writing at TownHall, Gabriella Hoffman pulls together findings from several recent polls which together point to a lack of concern with climate change, even among the young. Some key points from her summary, links at the original.

A new Monmouth University poll doesn’t portend well for climate alarmists.

Monmouth explained, “Less than half (46 percent) of the American public sees climate change as a very serious problem.” This is down for every voting demographic group–Republicans, independents, and even Democrats.

NBC reported last month that climate change isn’t a top issue for voters.

A recent Gallup poll found that energy and environment ranked near the bottom of voter priorities.

Finally, Pew found most people “were in agreement that the Earth’s climate is changing, but they typically explained these changes as part of natural patterns over time, with humans described as having little control over these changes."

And yet the Biden administration, evidently in thrall to the World Economic Forum, keeps treating climate and net-zero as crises. Come November we need to repudiate the climate neurotics.

How Does Your State Rank?

Hat tip to the other DrC who sent me a link to the following WalletHub map. It shows the 2024 total tax burden (state and local) in each state. 

I am delighted to see that our home state of Wyoming is very near the bottom of the list. DeSantis' Florida is near the bottom too.

Note: If you cannot enlarge the map sufficiently to read the information you seek, go to the site linked above where the map fills the screen.

Her Real Problem

People are upset at South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem because in ranch country she shot a stock killing work dog and bragged about it in a self-promotional autobiography. Shooting the dog wasn’t wrong, bragging about it was.

The real problem with Ms. Noem as a politician isn’t brutality. Her failure is not understanding how her behavior will be perceived by others, by the public at large whose dogs are companions. 

Comedians call this ability "reading the room," recognizing different audiences have different sore points. Psychologists call it having empathy. Most would say women are better at it than men, Ms. Noem appears to be an exception.

By my count this is the second time she has 'shot herself in the foot.'

Happy Conservatives

Longtime New York Times columnist Thomas Edsall has written a column looking at the half century of social science research showing the political conservatives are happier people than are political progressives. The findings are indeed robust.

Edsall and the social scientists he cites want to explain this difference as a result of progressives viewing many negative factors in life as caused by forces over which they have essentially no control. That is, one's beliefs that the world is not well organized  and fair makes one unhappy.

Since what we're looking at here is a correlation, the famous causal arrow can point in either direction. I'd argue that unhappy people prefer to blame others for their sadness, and in doing so they become progressives. 

Conservatives, on the other hand, have found ways to make the-world-as-it-is work for them. And because it does work for them, they don't want it to change overmuch. Round pegs need to find round holes in which to rest comfortably.

It doesn't take magic, just a job you like, a spouse you love, reasonable health, and a locale that feels okay to you. Presto, you're a conservative. 

Capitalism Builds Better

President Biden on the campaign trail, complains that as President Trump "didn't build a damn thing." Really? So what? Since when is the government responsible for building factories?

It is Republican policy to get out of the way and let private industry do what it does best. Very nearly the only things government should build are schools, roads, prisons, (with luck) mental hospitals, and military bases. 

Presumably they''d contract out most of that work to private builders who can do it better and cheaper. The economy hummed during Trump's watch, has slumped on Biden's. Does any reasonable person believe this to be a coincidence?

Democrats persist in getting in the way of entrepreneurs and guys like Trump who build things in the private sector. Democrats never see an activity they don't want to festoon with regulations, limitations and reporting requirements. It is their unhealthy raison d'être.

Afterthought: A corollary of government's nation defense responsibility is preventing the off-shoring of industries upon which our national defense relies: high tech, pharmaceuticals, and defense production. It's an example of government regulations of which I approve.

Update

As I look out my office window at the aspen forest, it is snowing gently. When we woke this a.m. it looked positively Christmas-like outside, especially the spruce we planted which was 'flocked' like a tannenbaum. See photos at the other DrC's blog.

We'd originally planned to arrive here a couple of days from now, but had to come sooner for a medical appointment. Spring apparently is in no rush to arrive at 6300 ft. in the Rockies 

Once again we've adjusted to the altitude, for the first few days we found ourselves saying to each other "There's no oxygen in the air here." The body responds by making more red blood cells. In spite of the gray skies, it feels like home. 

Yin and Yang

Puzzling over the attraction Donald Trump has for evangelicals, Dylon Jones writes an interesting Politico column.  He views Trump’s history of womanizing paradoxically making him a model for those who favor an active, even aggressive role for males in our culture. It is an interesting read.

We noted recently Democrats have become the party of single women and their out-of-wedlock children. It logically follows the leader of the opposition Republicans would be a womanizing, much married, doting father of five who is overtly and proudly masculine.

It is an age-old way of looking at society’s yin and yang, echoed in the political realm.

Mike Johnson Another Truman?

When Kevin McCarthy was ousted as Speaker and eventually Mike Johnson was chosen to fill the post, it seemed like a desperation move by a badly split Republican House caucus. As Politico notes, Johnson has surprised nearly everyone by doing much better than expected.

How Johnson did this isn’t overly complicated. He listens to those who would threaten his Speakership. He has secured the support of Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive presidential nominee and de facto leader. And he keeps his word, if he says he will do something, he does it.

Using this refreshing approach, Johnson has accomplished much more than anyone expected. At this juncture he reminds me of Harry Truman, of whom little was expected and by whom much was accomplished. COTTonLINE wishes him well.

Cui Bono

Instapundit Glenn Reynolds follows the maxim "cui bono" - which means "who benefits" - in explaining government policies regarding homelessness. He writes:

Homelessness is too lucrative a problem to solve.

Think of all the plum government jobs that can be created to 'manage' the problem. A friend of ours who recently graduated from nursing school was offered $90k a year by the VA to work with homeless veterans, she passed on that "opportunity."

The Karen Party

Writing for the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll headlines an article about Democrats' problems with male voters thus. 

The Karen Party has no place for men

 And I particularly like Carroll's conclusion.

As women get older, they often do become more conservative — but only if they get married. Married women are actually more likely to vote for Republicans than single men. Married men, married women, and single men all vote for Republicans. It is just unmarried women who vote for the Democratic Party. This is why Democrats can’t admit children need married fathers. No one benefits more from the destruction of the American family than the Democratic Party. (emphasis in original)

Slightly overstated, but fundamentally accurate. 

Everyone Else Is Weaker

James Pethokoukis interviews demographer Joel Kotkin for his Substack column. Asked to defend the title thesis in his new book The Myth of America's Decline, Kotkin responded.

It's not just that America is stronger, but that everyone else is weaker. When you look at investment flows, I don't think money is coming to America because people think that Joe Biden is a brilliant leader. I think they're coming to America because, where else are they going to put their money?

Europe is not a success story, it can't function as a unit. China is beginning to go the way of Japan, and vast Russia can't defeat Ukraine while 33 times bigger in land area, and ca. 4 times bigger in population. 

Who else is there? With all our problems, we remain the hegemon. As Kotkin observes, this is more or less by default.

On the Dole

Lucianne.com links to a Newsweek article about the declining workforce participation rate of American men. It has dropped from 97 percent in 1950 to just 89 percent today. “Workforce participation” is defined as working or actively looking for work.

At the same time, many more people are drawing Social Security disability benefits.

Of course, since 1950, there's also been growth in the United States' safety social net. While 1960 saw only 455,000 workers on Social Security disability benefits, that had moved to 7.6 million people in 2022. Of that cohort, 1.3 million were men between the ages of 25 and 54.

Non-participation is much higher among men with no college degree. This is attributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs which have ‘migrated’ overseas while the men who formerly did them remained here and often can’t find work worth doing.

—————

What we’re experiencing today has happened before. Employment was high during the 1920s, until the Great Depression happened. Then many men could not find jobs. 

Men who had enlisted in the military during the Great War, as World War I was then called, and worked during the 1920s were out of work. Social Security didn’t exist yet but veteran’s disability payments did.

Tens of thousands of veterans who were newly unemployed decided they’d somehow been incapacitated over a decade ago while in the military and applied for veteran’s disability benefits. The Veterans’ Administration was overwhelmed when the number of applicants jumped a hundredfold.

Cinco de Mayo

Hola, amigos. Today is May 5,  2024, Cinco de Mayo, a holiday more celebrated in the US than in Mexico. I will honor our Mexican heritage in the western US by eating a Chilerno burger at my favorite burger place in Jackson. 

Said place is Liberty Burger on N. Cache St. It’s a hole-in-the-wall diner with an amazing pressed tin ceiling that must date back to the early 1900s.

The Chilerno is first and foremost, a burger. It replaces the lettuce, tomato and onion with a layer of fresh green chili pepper, and the sauce is a creamy white Mexican cheese. Seriously tasty. I will pair it with a side of string fries dipped in chipotle catsup, and a soft drink. 

Via con Dios.

Full disclosure: I don’t speak or read Spanish, but one didn’t grow up in midcentury SoCal without learning a few phrases, a lot of names of things - and selected oaths.

If Proof Was Needed

On Thursday we posted a Trump quote about London having become "unrecognizable." Today comes word that London just reelected its Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan to an unprecedented third term. 

Enough said.

Saturday Snark

My man, Smoky

Mr. Dune

Images courtesy of Power Line's The Week in Pictures

and its Comments section.

Comparing Recent Presidents

Power Line's Steve Hayward posts the following chart, It compares how recent presidents were/are doing at this point in their first term. Biden is the worst of the bunch.

Hayward doesn't explain but I believe the percentages shown represent percent approving minus percent disapproving. If the second number is larger than the first, a negative percent is the result.

He also posts this NYT comparison of several world leaders' unpopularity. It is not a great time to win popularity in leadership roles.

I''m going out on a limb and guessing that conservative leaders like Italy's Meloni and Hungary's Orbán were left off the list because they are (gasp) actually popular. That's something NYT wouldn't like to admit.