Data Comparisons

Open Thread Nov 20!

511 Comments

I’ve been busy dancing. (There was a competition last week.) The previous thread self closed. Here’s a new one.

I’d say it’s hard to believe this is real. But this is the newly elected president of Argentina.

511 thoughts on “Open Thread Nov 20!”

  1. He doesn’t have enough power in the Argentine Congress to actually do much. But he really doesn’t like the left, calling the (leftist) Pope ‘the Devil’s agent on Earth.’. The left really has destroyed Argentina economically. It will be interesting how it unfolds, but if I were him I would avoid situations where assassination is not difficult.

  2. I’m just amazed at how long he can speak with no evidence of breathing!
    .
    I have no idea what’s going to eventually happen in Argentina. But he’s entertaining from afar.

  3. Wow!
    So articulate.
    Good looking Latin lover looks.
    And passionate about his cause?
    Makes the Donald look like a cupcake.
    Thanks Lucia.
    I think?

  5. What’s with the sustained extreme closeup in the clip? It seems to me it makes Milei appear threatening.

  7. I don’t think they need close ups to capture his ferver
    https://x.com/pabloaure/status/1726377047428149607?s=20

  8. Lucia,
    Ya, he is pretty worked up, but that is nothing new: he has been railing at the ‘elites’ and their ‘cancel culture’ for years. I suspect he doesn’t trust “experts” either. 😉
    .
    It will be interesting to see what happens. Argentina has an enormous bureaucracy, with almost endless regulations and rules controlling every part of the economy.
    .
    I doubt those folks will go down without a very big fight. Even aligned with some conservatives parties, he seems unlikely to get the level of control in Congress that he would need to do the things he wants to do (which is mostly dismantling the huge Argentine bureaucracy and dollarizing the economy!) He is not going to get any cooperation from the Biden administration or the Europeans… they are perfectly OK with gigantic, all-controlling government in Argentina.

  10. The Great Thanksgiving Week Plan is coming together. This year gonna brine and smoke turkey breast and thighs. We all like the turkey smoked and doing it in parts allows for different ‘remove at’ internal temps. Also, it’s a lot easier to brine parts than a whole turkey.
    Part two of the plan is a gathering to charcoal grill prime rib burgers on the porch on Saturday afternoon.

  11. Russell

    So, is he a Trump copycat or do Liberals just cause that reaction everywhere?

    Not a Trump copycat. Among other things he’s for free trade.
    .

  12. Lucia,
    I do think the Liberal excesses are provoking an ‘off the hook’ reaction in many quarters. I personally am about to lose it.

  13. Russell,
    Well, this guy did beat someone from the Peronista party by a large margin. So people liked this better than the Peronista’s position. I don’t know how the other guy looked on camera. For all I know Argentine politicians are …. something else!

  14. The only thing keeping the US Presidential race close here is that so many people hate Trump.

  15. Russell Klier (Comment #226717): “The only thing keeping the US Presidential race close here is that so many people hate Trump.”
    .
    So why aren’t other Republicans polling better than Trump against Biden? Trump, DeSantis, and Haley have almost identical support. Haley looks a bit better since there are more undecideds when polls pit her against Biden. But even that is only a couple points.

  16. MikeM,
    I think Russell is referring to why people aren’t voting for Biden. People voting for Biden are why it’s close.
    .
    People are going to vote for Biden because they hate Trump. Some Trump haters will still hold their nose and vote for Trump.

  19. Mike M,
    Oh, that it might be so!
    .
    Desantis’ chance of winning the nomination is like an ice cube’s chance of surviving a month in Hell. To bad, because DeSantis as president would be a lot more effective at getting things done than Trump.

  21. Interesting [if you’re into this stuff] documentary about the first peoples inhabiting the Americas. It’s different in that native american scientists tell the story. It uses traditional archeology, native folklore, genetics, and linguistics—about 45 minutes in length. The scientists are very personally affected, so it’s not an abstract academic discussion.
    It’s produced by HistoryHit, normally a subscription-only service, but this one is free. The conclusions are not incompatible with traditional archeology [as I understand it].
    America B.C: How Far Back Does Native American History Go? | 1491: Before Columbus | Timeline
    https://youtu.be/olTClLF9JuQ?si=MOS4d9lQJiE9Nnvt

  22. I think DeSantis has a chance of winning the nomination. Not likely, but far from impossible. Trump’s support is softer than people think. He is the default candidate, so he gets a lot of support in polls from people who have not yet focused on the race. That is most people. The Iowa caucuses are still 8 weeks away. As people pay more attention, some will shift from Trump to other candidates, most likely DeSantis. If DeSantis starts to move up in the polls, he will start to pull support from the other challengers. So I think a big move is possible. It will probably be too little too late, but there is a chance.

  23. Mike M,
    The betting markets put DeSantis at 3.1% chance. That is probably not far away from right.

  24. “Universities should not be in the bullshit business.’
    Got to love it: https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4321195-universities-must-quit-with-the-bs/
    .
    Will the lefty administrators at colleges and universities listen and reform? Not a chance; their mission in life is to exert control over the unwashed “clingers”, or anyone else who disagrees with their political views. ‘Worthy of contempt’ and ‘arrogant’ don’t begin to describe them.

  25. Form the G20 virtual summit:

    Of course, we must think about how to stop this tragedy. By the way, Russia has never refused peace negotiations with Ukraine; it was not Russia, but Ukraine that publicly announced that it was withdrawing from the negotiation process. And moreover, it was a decree, a decree of the head of state, was signed prohibiting such negotiations with Russia.

    Putin.
    .
    I think he will get some pushback. But at least he isn’t saying negotiation can’t happen.

  27. SteveF (Comment #226726): “The betting markets put DeSantis at 3.1% chance.”
    .
    If I were a betting man, I’d definitely put my money on DeSantis at 30:1 odds or even 10:1. But probably not at 5:1.
    .
    RCP has Desantis at 7.5%. But Haley is at 12%, that is just nuts. And a variety of others with a total of 7%, which is also nuts. Interestingly, Trump is just 74%; that is probably not far off.
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/betting-odds/2024/republican-nomination/#!

  28. My nightmare [and likely] scenario :
    1-Trump wins the Republican nomination
    2-Trump gets kneecapped by Democrat lawsuits
    3-Biden wins the general election
    My dream [but unlikely] scenario:
    1-Trump gets kneecapped by Democrat lawsuits
    2-Haley or Desantis [or anybody else] wins the Republican nomination
    3-Biden loses the general election

  32. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

    I am grateful to the denizens at this site for the information they impart.

  36. The Russians may have run out of tanks around Avdiivka, they are sending waves of infantry on foot without armor protection.
    “The fields are just littered with corpses,” Oleksandr, a deputy of a Ukrainian battalion in the 47th mechanised brigade, told AFP. “They are trying to exhaust our lines with constant waves of attacks.”
    Pictures, not for the faint of heart:
    https://x.com/glasnostgone/status/1727715962521051174?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ

  38. Lucia,
    Yes, the presentation of a smoked turkey is quite enticing… and so is the aroma. If you don’t want all the fuss, you can find smoked whole turkey in some food markets. Our farmer’s market has them, and considering all the costs involved in the preparation, the store-bought is no more expensive.

  39. This week, at least three NATO countries in Europe are talking publicly about how long it will take Russia to REBUILD its war machine. This is not a coincidence; they are all singing the same tune.
    Talk about unintended consequences. Putin attacks Ukraine to stop NATO expansion and winds up expanding and strengthening NATO and destroying his own army in the process.
    It seems to be a foregone conclusion in Europe that the Russian military is in a state of disrepair:
    “Czech President Petr Pavel: Everyone perceives Russia as the number one threat in Europe. The conclusion from this is that we need to really prepare to respond to this threat. Moscow will need between five and seven years to rebuild its military capacity, depending on the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Czech President Petr Pavel said at a press conference on Nov. 22.
    German Society for Foreign Policy
    “Through its imperial ambitions, Russia represents the greatest and most urgent threat to NATO countries. After the end of the intense fighting in Ukraine, Moscow will need six to ten years to rebuild its armed forces. Within this period, Germany and NATO must enable their armed forces to deter and, if necessary, fight against Russia. This is the only way they can reduce the risk of the next war in Europe.”
    “Poland’s Deputy Defense Minister @MarcinOciepa warns that there is a high risk of Russia waging war on Poland “within 3-10 years”.
    He says that it all depends on how the war in Ukraine will end, but says that it will take up to 10 years to rebuild the Russian Army.”

  42. Lucia,
    Last year my cousin let his cat out at 8:00 PM on Cape Cod (a hotspot for coyotees), and she never came back. Cats are yum-yum they say.

  43. “Trump tells Argentina’s President-elect Javier Milei he plans to visit Buenos Aires”
    .
    Those populists have to stick together, don’t ya know?
    .
    I doubt much will come of it, save for the terrible tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth among the ‘elites’ in both countries. But Trump visiting Argentina should actually help Milei form a government…. nobody wants to get on the wrong side of a ‘crazy’ like Trump.

  44. Lucia,
    I am starting to think that the “coyote preying on housecats theme” is an old wive’s tale. We have two housecats that are occasional nighttime visitors. The black one has been around for two or three years, and the orange one about six months. The coyotes and bobcats have been here the whole time.
    Videos:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1728161063382720880?s=20

  45. Russell,
    I suspect Coyotes prefer to much on small dogs– easier prey. 😉
    But still, I think they will eat a cat if they can catch one. Freddy is really, really fat and I don’t think his coyote evasion skills would be great.

  46. Lucia, I watched that black cat go from a skinny kitten to a tub of lard. I think it may be because we have so many other food choices for coyote in the area. If I had my choice between rabbit or cat, I would choose rabbit.

  47. SteveF,
    .
    Rending of garments, too.
    .
    We’re going to be in BA in early January for a few days. May be more interesting than we had expected.

  48. Coyotes killing pets are a thing. I’ve seen a few surveillance camera excerpts from our local area. It’s rare, but not rare enough not to worry about. About the same as never let your dog swim in a Florida lake. Cats jut disappearing can be from lots of different things.
    .
    The biggest threat to my dementia dog is falling in the pool.

  50. Tom Scharf,
    ” Maybe I should bring a MAGA hat.”
    Maybe.
    But I doubt it will make much difference if you in the travel lanes of westerners.
    .
    Bring cash, which is the king’s king.

  51. John Ferguson,
    I’ll be getting my youngest daughter in Sao Paulo Dec 6. Sort of like 45′ boats passing in the night. 😉

  52. Another European NATO country chimes in on the “Russian army is in shambles” issue:
    French Institute of International Relations (IFRI)
    “Russia has effectively lost its position of power and the capacity to threaten its neighbors with projections of military power, and while for many Western policy planners these changes appear unnatural and transitional, in Moscow they are perceived as both unacceptable and irreversible,” he added.
    https://www.newsweek.com/russia-loss-military-superiority-report-1846854
    The Kremlin is tired of all this talk:
    “It is not Russia that threatens Europe, but Europe that poses a threat to Russia,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said in remarks to Russian state media journalist, Pavel Zarubin, which were posted online on Thursday.
    https://www.newsweek.com/russia-responds-nato-preparing-high-intensity-conflict-warning-1846429
    Perfect! Europe is taking over responsibility for its own security.

  53. Why you shouldn’t have vaguely worded hate crime statutes.
    .
    Ex-State Dept. official charged with hate crime after food cart vendor rants
    https://www.axios.com/2023/11/22/former-state-department-official-new-york-food-cart-harass-tiktok
    .
    Stupid person making stupid statements in public to a street food vendor parked in public. I very much doubt these charges will stick unless there is more to the story, but this will be another example of the process is the punishment. This is exactly what happens when you make laws like this. The threshold for violation keeps getting lowered until name calling is a felony, and there is an extreme selection bias in who gets charged based on prevailing momentary wisdom.

  54. Here’s one for Ken, ha ha.
    .
    Biden administration uses wartime authority to bolster energy efficient manufacturing
    https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4315744-biden-admin-wartime-authority-bolster-energy-efficient-manufacturing/
    “It said it was utilizing the Defense Production Act to mobilize the production of heat pumps — technology used to heat or cool someone’s home that is more efficient than traditional heating and air conditioning systems.

    The Defense Production Act gives the president the authority to mobilize a certain industry to advance national security, which the administration argues applies to producing more climate-friendly energy.”

  55. Thinking about why the coyotes leave the feral cats alone on our property …Could be all the birds. While the Northern coyotes are starving in winter and forced to subsist on cat meat (Yuckkk!), Florida coyotes have a smorgasbord of birds to choose from in winter. I have seen everything from giant sandhill cranes to tiny hummingbirds to flocks of robins in my yard in winter.
    https://a-z-animals.com/articles/birds-that-spend-their-winters-in-florida/

  56. Russell,
    I think cats are (a) harder to catch and (b) will fight back. Even if the Coyote wins, being injured is not good for a wild animal. Rabbits are safer prey. Heck, small dogs and kids are safer and easier. Well, safer short term; kill a kid and you’ll have a bunch of humans out to get you– but a small kid is pretty defenseless otherwise.
    .
    But they will eat cats.

  57. I posted last week that Russia may be running out of armor in the Avdiivka area because they were attacking with waves of infantry with no protection. Today ISW posted the same thought….
    “NEW: #Ukrainian officials reported that #Russian forces began a renewed offensive effort towards #Avdiivka on Nov. 22, although likely with weaker mechanized capabilities than in the previous offensive waves that occurred in October.
    5/ Russian forces have lost a confirmed 197 damaged and destroyed vehicles in offensive operations near #Avdiivka since Oct. 9, and the Russian military appeared to spend the end of October and all of November preparing for a wave of highly attritional infantry-led ground assaults to compensate for these heavy-equipment losses.”
    https://x.com/thestudyofwar/status/1728221551521370294?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ

  59. What gun would I use in that situation? The shotgun seems like the most prudent answer, although I’m not sure I’d get all the buggers with it. One of my handguns would be faster.

  60. “I did not come here to guide lambs. I came here to awaken lions.”
    – Javier Milei
    .
    Now that’s a quote! But I don’t think he has the votes in congress to awaken too many lions.

  61. Waking lions sounds like an interesting thing to do, until they start mauling everybody and eating the corpses. I hope the analogy doesn’t extend that far..

  63. SteveF (Comment #226764): “I don’t think he has the votes in congress to awaken too many lions.”
    .
    Do you have a source for the composition of the Argentina Chamber of Deputies?
    .
    I don’t know the balance of power between the Executive and Legislature in Argentina. Perhaps there is a lot Miele can do on his own. Especially since the government bureaucracy seem to be a big target.

  64. Steve,
    I know. Sometimes when reform is attempted there are unintended consequences, is what I was trying to say. Saying poorly I suppose. 😉

  69. Mike M,
    I have found no details following the election. But according to Foreign Policy:
    “Moreover, his La Libertad Avanza (LLA) party will hold just 39 of the 257 seats in the lower house and eight of 72 seats in the senate; thus, Milei will depend on support from more moderate forces to legislate. Even if all of Macri’s Republican Proposal (PRO) party legislators support Milei, the president-elect still won’t have a governing majority”
    .
    PRO is a right-center party. A majority of seats remain in the hands of the people who supported recent Argentine governments, and I suspect the knives are already out and being sharpened for Milei.

  70. Ranchers here (secretly) pay bounty for dead coyotes and I here you can legally sell the pelts

  72. Russell,
    .
    I’ve never hunted anything. Watching the video however, I realized I could easily bring myself to shoot coyotes hunting a cat. Most of my problem with hunting is that I have no desire to skin and clean a dead animal; killing coyotes I wouldn’t have to. Unless I wanted the pelts. But I’m sure I’d mess that up anyway, I expect there’s an art to skinning an animal properly to preserve the pelt.
    .
    I read that they are wily and fast and hard to shoot. Still, if I opened my front door and came upon them at point blank range, I wonder if I could wipe them out with a handgun, three quick BLAMs! But who knows. Probably it’d be best to blast them with buckshot. I also read AR-15’s are excellent for shooting coyotes, but I blush to admit I don’t possess one of those as of yet.

  73. Hi Tom,
    I used to think it would be good if the Claymores had “This side toward enemy” on the reverse in the language of the enemy.
    .
    It’s been a long time. I don’t think i’ve got the english message quite right.

  74. Mark, I don’t have a weapon of choice, but whatever I had would be aimed at the cat.
    edit: scratch that.. my weapon of choice would be a garden hose…aimed at the cat.

  77. Russell,

    my weapon of choice would be a garden hose…aimed at the cat.,

    How would that help? I guess you’re not fond of cats?

  81. I used to be primarily a dog owner, until I bumped into one of the cats I own now on vacation in North Georgia. He was a sweet little guy who followed us around and didn’t seem to have good survival prospects where he was, out roaming around all the time. His owner gave him to us for free. He gets along well with my dogs and I like to believe he helped train my dogs to tolerate cats, so we have another little Calico now as well.

  83. We miss our cats.

    Inspector, the female Tabby who lived with us on the boar, and Crocket the black cat (anmed by our daughter who was 7 art the time and confused as to who was who on Miami Vice). We believed Crocket was descended from ship’s cats. He loved to stand on the roof of the front cabin facing forward ans sniffing the breeze whiel we were uunderway.

    Alas, we are now often gone for a month at a time, and don’t feel it would be good for the cats, even with care from neighbors.

  84. My dog just turned 17, pretty low maintenance for a dog. 40 min walk, 20 minutes of eating, 23 hours of sleeping. Not even enough energy to beg for food. He is closer to a potted plant in his old age.

  85. To Shrink Learning Gap, This District Offers Classes Separated by Race
    High school in Evanston, Ill., offers so-called affinity classes, in which Black and Latino students are separated from white students
    https://www.wsj.com/us-news/education/to-shrink-learning-gap-this-district-offers-classes-separated-by-race-394d82dd?st=0ylwkv4raaglul5&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
    .
    It seems things have come full circle. The article doesn’t say, but apparently there is not an option for whites or Asians to have their own “affinity class”. The claim is this passes legal muster because it is optional.

  86. Rover, the sturdy watchcat, made it to 22. She came on the scene when my first spouse thought that being able to call out “Rover” in a loud voice would provide some sort of protection from the members of the local indigenous population who might try to burgle her Hyde Park apartment. As it happened, the place was burgled while the humans were out. The two watchcats apparenlty slept through the whole thing.

    An interesting aside was that clothes were taken. One of her rommates was quite distressed by the choices of what to steal made by the thieves – and that some of her favorite dresses didn’t make the cut – they were still there. Her taste in clothing had been insulted.

    As to Rover, she had an incredible memory and was able to remember me after an absence of 6 years. She liked me.

  87. Animal Control was part of my realm for about ten years. Feral cats are a serious public health concern. Combine that with the Crazy Cat Lover Society [CCLS] and it’s a nightmare.
    Feral cats are disease carriers. They attack domestic cats, decimate the local bird population, and cause property damage. Most residents don’t want them on their property. They are difficult to catch and the only thing you can do when you do catch them is kill them. Enter the CCLS which wants you to provide housing for every feral cat forever. They breed very quickly and a house cat can turn feral in just a few weeks. A real nightmare.

  88. Lucia, go for it
    Ragdoll – Wikipedia
    Ragdolls are large, weighty cats with a semi-long and silky coat of colorpoint. They have a distinctive color ring around their eyes and a semi-long tail. They are known for their docile, placid temperament and affectionate nature. They were developed in the 1960s by Ann Baker in California and have a semi-long history of breeding.
    These are fantastic cats hate going out.
    Far more friendly than the usual moggie.

  89. Wow! Disney ‘woke’ up to the problem, JONATHAN TURLEY:
    “In a new corporate disclosure, Disney acknowledges that its controversial political and social agenda is costing the company and shareholders.”
    “In its annual SEC report, Disney acknowledges that “we face risks relating to misalignment with public and consumer tastes and preferences for entertainment, travel and consumer products.” In an implied nod to Smith, the company observes that “the success of our businesses depends on our ability to consistently create compelling content,” and that “Generally, our revenues and profitability are adversely impacted when our entertainment offerings and products, as well as our methods to make our offerings and products available to consumers, do not achieve sufficient consumer acceptance. Further, consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brands.”
    https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/4326247-happy-birthday-adam-smith-the-invisible-hand-just-slapped-disney/
    The stuff they are currently putting out is still the same old worn-out crap, WSJ:
    “Disney’s ‘Wish’ Has Lackluster Thanksgiving Box-Office Debut”
    “The film’s meager performance came during a holiday stretch that the entertainment giant has dominated in past years.”
    Free link:
    https://www.wsj.com/business/media/disneys-wish-has-lackluster-thanksgiving-box-office-debut-4fd0fcb7?reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

  90. I’m no money guy but from the ”Walt Disney Company’s net income worldwide from 1st quarter 2010 to 3rd quarter 2023” chart, DIS seems to have tanked coincidently with the onset of COVID and never recovered. I bet it’s a double whammy, COVID and Woke. 2023 is only slightly better than 2022 and 2021.
    Image:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1729208258404245592?s=20

  91. A libertarian as President of Argentina gives me, as a libertarian, no great comfort and for several reasons. One of those reasons is that in the past it is the usual cycle, and not unexpected, to see a leftist regime fail rather miserably over a period of many years followed by a more rightist regime voted into power that either never gets out of the leftist route or brings temporary setbacks on a path to a freer existence that the press, intellectuals and people deem as a failure of capitalism – even though capitalism never took form. A leftist regime quickly thereafter gets back into power and the cycle continues.
    The problem with libertarian politicians is that the intellectual groundwork for convincing intellectuals and ordinary citizens of its benefits has not been laid and certainly not to the extent that the authoritarian leftist arguments (even when failing) have been made by the current intelligentsia.
    Libertarians, in my mind, must make the case for their philosophy at the intellectual level and to the ordinary citizen by presenting ideas and arguments that are well articulated and understood. Attempting to do this as a popularly elected politician becomes a more difficult mission. An elected libertarian should be content with one term in office and spend the time at the bully pulpit making the case for libertarianism and in particularly clearly pointing to the problems governments cause and how the problems come about, and doing so for even those from the best of intentions.
    I do not judge that libertarians, or even those politically right of center, can afford to go the populist route of making emotional and ill-tempered arguments. The political left has this luxury since their philosophy is bolstered by the intelligentsia that includes academia and the MSM.

  93. Ken Fritsch,
    “…presenting ideas and arguments that are well articulated and understood.”
    .
    Donno. “Leftists are shit!” and “The pope is the Devil’s agent on Earth!” are well articulated and obviously understood. We’ll see what happens, but I think Milei is going to face endless resistance at all levels when he tries to change how Argentina is governed. Powerful people hate to lose power. Milei may accept major compromises which in the end leave Argentina not far from the terrible state it is in today, but fundamental change (which is what Argentina actually needs) is likely out of reach with both chambers controlled by opponents. BTW, I don’t draw a lot of distinction between what Milei wants to achive and what any sensible (non-leftist) government would do.

  94. SteveF (Comment #226798)
    November 27th, 2023 at 4:39 pm

    I do not see much hope at this time for the Argentina political system to change to something less authoritarian. An elected leader at least has the bully pulpit to use for making some points even if action on those points is limited.

    I do believe that part of the rights problem all over the world and including the US is that they do not seriously consider, or perhaps even realize, that it is up to them to make their philosophical points because the left has academia and the intellectual class making points for them. There are intellectuals on the right whose thinking could be put to better political use, but I judge the politicians are not up to the task and particularly those of the populist bent.

  96. The current political strategy in the US seems to be to stop fighting the intellectual class on their turf and instead discredit academia, although academia is doing most of the heavy lifting there themselves. Academia has been very useful and our society needs centers for academic excellence but the capture by the political left has endangered this usefulness. They really need to try to fix this and the first step is recognizing it is a problem.

  97. Lucia,
    “I guess Snow White’s release has been pushed back to 2025.”
    .
    First sensible thing Disney did in a while. My guess is they may never release it, or if they do, just on cable. When you can’t bring yourself to use the word “dwarf” you are way too far out in the PC/woke weeds; just lost. That is Disney today.

  98. Tom Scharf,
    “They really need to try to fix this and the first step is recognizing it is a problem.”
    .
    The celebrations on campuses of Hamas atrocities may have started that process; if big donors insist on changes at schools, that will be a big step in the right direction.

  102. Love that the hated Ted Cruze has a cameo…. rubbing salt into the cut. The whole men-competing-in-women’s-sports campaign is so absurd on its face that it is only really worthy of ridicule.

  103. SteveF,
    I’d say late in the video, it appears the “lady ballers” in pink are suddenly confronted with another “women’s” team.

  104. Climate audit has come back to life…. finally resolving what data Mann actually used in his original hockey-stick paper, 25 years after it was published. Most credit goes to a Swedish engineer who figured out how to add some proxies Mann claimed he did not use and remove some proxies Mann claimed he did use. Manns 1998 “reconstruction” can finally be duplicated. Oddly enough, Mann didn’t help.

  105. Not for the faint of heart…
    Professional coyote hunters using loudspeakers and decoy dogs. The speakers lure the coyotes to the area with sounds like wounded rabbits or distressed coyote puppies. The dogs engage the coyotes. The coyotes chase the decoy dogs because coyotes are territorial. The dogs lure the coyotes into the hunter’s sights. BAM! …and the dogs finish off the coyote. They try only to kill the males, so they can come back to the same spot in six months and find some more.
    Video:
    https://youtu.be/rHCARqcIq5c?si=EdvW7kQKOdRCZ4OV

  106. Argentina
    Italian cowboys and bureaucracy.
    Generals.
    Chainsaws, Catholics and a globe trotting president elect.
    What is the difference between a Libertarian and an anarchist?
    I guess the former changes rather than destroys government structures.

  107. Luica,
    Apparently the long delay in release of Snow White is because they are reshooting most of the movie, with the bizarre collection of non-dwarf dwarfs changed to characters in consumes which hide gender and race of the actors inside, several of whom may in fact be dwarfs! (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F9d7xrTXcAAxGvo?format=jpg&name=medium). The Latina Snow White remains. Disney’s CEO seems to realize the company shouldn’t insist their customers embrace the latest woke rubbish.

  108. Willis Eschenbach was reinstated to Twitter today and immediately stared pushing the boundaries. Good ol’ Willis!
    “Well, this may be what got me banned before, but I’ll say it again.
    There is no climate emergency.
    The post below is fully cited and linked to the underlying science studies. I’ve posted it all over the web. Nobody’s ever found a single error in it.”
    https://x.com/weschenbach/status/1729421353986752854?s=46&t=ZvqHpxBnQGny72gLoGhKXw

  109. Ukraine has settled into a period of attritional warfare that will continue for some unknown period of time. Both sides are engaged in local offensive operations along the front line that seem to be causing both sides casualties.
    .
    As Russia has the predominant superiority in ammunition supply, artillery, air, armor, and drones, Russia is expected to bleed Ukraine proportionally much greater than Ukraine can bleed Russia. This imbalance increases over time as the western resupply of Ukraine decreases over time.
    .
    I did read one post on one of the news channels that mad me laugh
    .
    “God created war so that Americans would learn Geography”
    .
    🙂 Even high school teachers I knew couldn’t find France on a unlabeled map if their lives depended on it.

  110. Hi Ed,
    I can well remember Dad getting the Britannica Atlas from the bookcase in 1950 to help us find Korea when that action broke out. At 8 years old, i suppose i had an excuse for not knowing where it was. I have no idea whether my parents knew, but I suspect they did and this effort was for my benefit.

  111. Florida has voted to remove sociology as a required course at the universities. Another vote later will occur to make it formal. Academia activists indoctrination plans are backfiring.

  112. Tom Scharf,
    “Florida has voted to remove sociology as a required course at the universities.”
    .
    That is good, but since it is a super-fluffy, automatic-A course, (unless you argue with the lefty professor ;-)) there will still be a lot of students who opt for it.

  113. I went, very briefly, to a state school which required sociology. I was just as perverse then as now and like the rest of them, I was forced to take sociology.
    .
    A test was given the first day, and I quickly recognized that I knew which were the likely preferred answers including “T/F Sociology is a science equal in stature to chemistry and physics.”
    .
    I set about to get 100% and think I did.
    .
    I guessed correctly that I would see this test again. They gave it at the end of the course. This time I contrived to get a perfect zero – which actually wasn’t all that easy.
    .
    I must have succeeded because I got called in by the head of the department mkidway through the follwing semester and asked what I’d had in mind in getting the only zero they’d ever seen. I told them that I resented not being able to test out of the course, that it wasn’t all that informative and mostly I wanted to see how they’d deal with it.
    .
    I was askd to return for a private session with the head and learned that the requirement was established to provide employment for some of the department’s graduates and that I should have been more sympathetic to theitr plight. She was quite honest about it. And Yes, it was a racket.
    .
    I could go on with the continuing education requirement that afflicted many professions starting in the ’90s – more make work, of course.
    .
    I can look down and see the soap box i’m standing on and probably should cut it off before the I get foam on the rug.

  114. john

    “T/F Sociology is a science equal in stature to chemistry and physics.”

    False. It’s higher in stature!!! Right?

  116. Ed Forbes (Comment #226814)
    “Ukraine has settled into a period of attritional warfare that will continue for some unknown period of time. “
    Yes, the Ukrainian summer offensive was a disappointment. Noteworthy though, is that the Ukrainian summer offensive captured about 20% more territory than last winter’s Russian offensive captured. But, the actual sq km captured are low so the year has been a near stalemate.
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1729745783790981310?s=20
    Recapturing land isn’t the only reason Europe and the US supply arms to Ukraine. The destruction of the Russian war machine is a primary objective. By that measure, Ukraine has had a banner year. In 2023, Russia has lost enormous quantities of tanks, IFVs, artillery, aircraft, ships, air defense systems, and more. Our European allies have been saying Russia is no longer a threat to Europe and will need a decade to rebuild.
    The war industries of Germany, France, the UK, the US, and the rest of NATO have cranked up and Russia cannot begin to match their output. Russia cannot even replace its losses. They are scrounging basic war materials from places like North Korea. The longer this goes on the weaker Russia becomes.
    Finally, the Russian economy is in shambles and there is civil unrest stirring in the vast ethnic interior expanse of Russia.
    I think Russia is in a very bad way.

  117. Russell, I think these images say most that needs to be said on how likely a NATO proxy will defeat Russia. 🙂
    .
    https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F229f6797-0c7e-4f23-b620-a597d6530ff3_1024x1043.jpeg

    .
    https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Ffcf79b02-8b7b-4b49-a53e-68ee65c6a7e5_620x303.jpeg

    .

  118. John Ferguson,

    Hilarious story. Chemistry, physics, and…… sociology?!?
    .
    In his popular books, Feynman had a field day describing the uniformly non-scientific nature of fields like sociology and psychology.

  119. Hi SteveF,
    .
    Amazingly, that T/F question was also asked in the “required” sociology course in high school.
    .
    I think the high school course commenced with a discussion of the 6 (IIRC) phases of the scientific method. One of my classmates asked later on why it appeared that not one of the examples of sociological study had employed all, or even most of the elements.
    .
    Someone else asked why, as seemed so clear, that though sociologists did not do the full scientific effort, they were so committed to being thought to be “scientists”. Teacher maintained that nonetheless, what they did was science.
    .
    I asked why they couldn’t be satisifed that what they were doing was a branch of journalism?
    .
    “Cannot get grants if it isn’t science”
    .
    And that was in high school in 1959. And of course we had no idea what she was talking about.

  120. Ed,
    I agree. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia. Ukraine isn’t trying to defeat Russia, Ukraine is trying to kick Russia out of its territory. But it can slowly bleed Russia to a point of military insignificance. That makes NATO safer and keeps the US out of direct conflict.
    Russia was many enemies, both internal and external. A weakened Russia is a vulnerable Russia.

  121. john

    I think the high school course commenced with a discussion of the 6 (IIRC) phases of the scientific method. One of my classmates asked later on why it appeared that not one of the examples of sociological study had employed all, or even most of the elements.

    Similar questions can be asked of a large fraction of education studies. A small fraction asked defined questions that can be tested in a relatively short period of time. Like: “If we flash N separate letters on a screen for 10 seconds, then hide them, how many people will remember all of them?” (This does tell us something about working memory. )
    But many questions… well, you setting up a “N samples” and “N controls” is nearly impossible.
    .
    You want to find out if method A of teaching reading works better than method B? Under “some” condition?

    Well, it takes a while to learn to read — and I mean really read. You can’t do pre-and post tests separated by something as short as 1 week of instruction. (And devising the pre-and post tests can be a bit difficult too.) You’d probably want to have the “experiment” run at least a full school year — say 1st grade.
    .
    And a group of kids are generally taught by a single teacher.
    .
    So if someone tries this:

    * 10 randomly selected kids taught by teacher 1 using method A
    vs.
    * 10 randomly selected kids taught by teacher 2 using method B

    Taht isn’t “10 using method B” vs “10 using method A” because the teachers can differ in other very important factors. Classroom management might be more important than the method (and who’s measuring “classroom management”?).
    .
    If the fact that that’s closer to 1 sample vs 1 sample isn’t bad enough, parents make requests in a school system so it’s almost impossible to “randomly” select kids class assignments. If parents get feedback on their kids progress (which is sort of required) and one groups seems to be failing, parents are going to storm the building and demand their kids be switched. And some parents of kids doing badly will hire tutors (and not tell the person doing the experiment.) So method “B” might be “method B” for 1/2 the students and “method B plus tutoring” for the other 1/2 students. (And who knows what tutoring method got used. It might be “method A”. Or it might be some other method.)
    .
    And, often, if you read the “study” the comparison will be things like.

    * 15 kids in a single class taught by teacher 1 in school system ? using method A
    vs.
    * 30 kids in a single class taught by teacher 2 in school system ? using method B
    Now the entire school system differs in demographics, average class size, number of teachers aids in the class, yada, yada….
    .
    The outcomes of studies aren’t necessarily valueless, but you definitely need to say, “Well…. this might suggest method A might be better.” or more likely “Well, this doesn’t provide evidence that A is worse than B.”
    You can then ask: can we find 30 more of these and do a meta-analysis? Somehow? But 30 more tests of A vs. B almost never exist for oh, so many reasons.
    .
    I think sociology can be in the same boat. (And sociology also suffers from the “silly questions” problem. Because they can dream up anything about human behavior to study. )

  122. Russell,

    Ed,
    I agree. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia.

    When I read stuff Ed posts, I’m always left wondering whose idea he thinks he’s arguing with. I mean, I’ve never heard anyone say they think Ukraine (or even NATO) is going to “beat” Russia. I’m obviously not going to rush to read substack to find out all that “needs to be said on how likely a NATO proxy will defeat Russia”.
    .
    I do note that what Ed keeps posting is consistent with Ukraine doing much better than anyone ever expected. And Russian doing much worse. And that’s been the one consistent message I I get from Ed’s posts.

  123. Lucia,
    Yes, lots of complexity in evaluating methods for teaching something as complicated as reading. Fortunately, there are lots of kids and lots of teachers, so even though teacher 1 might be more effective than teacher 2 (or vice-versa), if you have N (large N) teachers randomly selected to teach by either method A or B, then after a year the relative effectiveness ought to be pretty obvious.

  124. It seems to me that the following are pretty much the same thing:

    (1) Ukraine seeks to drive Russia from its territory.

    (2) Ukraine seeks to defeat (or beat) Russia.

    Maybe someone will be kind enough to explain the difference to me.

  125. Mike,
    “(1) Ukraine seeks to drive Russia from its territory.
    (2) Ukraine seeks to defeat (or beat) Russia.
    Maybe someone will be kind enough to explain the difference to me.”
    I must be the only one who actually reads Ed Forbes links. His ‘Defeat Russia’ links were to statements by people who tried to march on Moskow and capture the country, like Napoleon and Hitler. That is a lot different than forcing Russia to retreat from the current front lines in Ukraine and go back to their own territory.

  126. Newsom vs DeSantis debate tomorrow night. I’d be more enthused if I didn’t think Trump was already a sure bet for the nominee. I might watch though, it might be good for laughs.

  127. Mark,
    “I might watch though, it might be good for laughs.”
    Yes, It will be the only debate I watch this cycle. The others are pointless.

  128. Russell Klier (Comment #226830): “I must be the only one who actually reads Ed Forbes links.”
    .
    I sure don’t.
    .
    Anybody saying that Ukraine seeks to overrun Russia has lost contact with reality. That is indeed very different from defeating Russia or driving Russia from Ukrainian territory. The last two are pretty much the same thing.

  129. The idea that “Ukraine is doing much better than expected ”
    is not the same as “Ukraine is winning”.
    .
    Ukraine is sinkhole that drains the finances of the American taxpayer as bad as did the stupid US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. About as much US strategic thought went into the US forcing the Russians into direct action to keep Ukraine out of NATO as was the US actions in both of these two other loser wars.
    .
    Russia sees their war in Ukraine as a matter of survival against a direct NATO attack against Russia by the NATO proxy of Ukraine. This war will not end well for either the US or Europe. As a expendable proxy, Ukraines welfare is unimportant to NATO.

    As a side note on the heroic president of Ukraine, I see news reports noting Z’s purchases of two new yachts, for the trifling sum of US $74M.
    .
    At least some Republicans in congress are acting like they have a pair in slowing down aid to Ukraine. Or at least requiring something be done on closing the open US border in exchange for more money down the Ukraine rat hole.

  130. Ed,

    Russia sees their war in Ukraine as a matter of survival against a direct NATO attack against Russia by the NATO proxy of Ukraine.

    You have said this before. Russia however has nukes, and not just a couple. The idea that NATO or anybody else would threaten the survival of Russia via a direct NATO attack is completely absurd so long as Russia has the nuclear arsenal it does. Russia knows this as well as everybody else. So no, Russia does not ‘see their war in Ukraine as a matter of survival against a direct NATO attack’. That remains B.S. as it has always been.

  131. Interesting analysis of Trump vs. Biden the Rematch:
    https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/11/29/2024_presidential_election_will_be_decided_by_double_haters_150124.html
    .
    Normally, an election with an incumbent is largely a referendum on the incumbent. But that might not be so if Trump is the challenger:

    So, the election is down to the so-called double haters, those who have an unfavorable opinion about both Trump and Biden. The consequence of this is that if the focus will be on Joe Biden next year, Donald Trump will win. If the spotlight is on Donald Trump, however, Joe Biden has a chance to survive.

    .
    Strangely, he does not mention the role of the media in controlling the spotlight. That will, of course, work against Trump. Also, in a poll the “double haters” have the option of choosing neither. Many will feel that in an election they must choose. I fear that most of those will hold their noses and vote for Biden.
    .
    I guess we shall see. Sigh.

  132. The negotiations on border controls and Ukraine aid is moving ahead in somewhat better terms. If the Republicans can hold the line on aid requirements, at least some good will come out of pouring aid money into a bottomless hole.
    .
    “The negotiations are now centered around three big issues:
    .
    Asylum standards: When migrants apply for asylum, they are screened to determine whether they have “credible fear” they will be persecuted or tortured if they’re returned home. Republicans want a higher standard, which would result in more migrants being removed.
    .
    Safe third countries: There are discussions about expanding the number of countries where asylum seekers would be required to seek protection first if they pass through on the way to the U.S. border. Canada, for instance, is designated as a “safe third country,” while Mexico isn’t.
    .
    Parole authority: Presidents have the authority to temporarily admit people to the U.S. for humanitarian or other reasons. For instance, Biden has used these “parole” powers to allow in thousands of people from Afghanistan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Cuba and elsewhere; Republicans want to vastly curtail this authority.”
    .
    https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/29/left-border-backlash-00129022

  133. Mike,
    NATO tried to destroy Russia with the “shock and awe” of massive economic sanctions. They failed, but not for lack of trying.
    .
    Plan “B” was to bled Russia economically with a war of attrition. They failed agin. The US has a national debt north of $30T and massive annual debt. Russia is paying for its war without major debt and has almost no net national debt.
    .
    So yes, the US & NATO are currently in a war with Russia. “War” can take many forms

  134. Ed,
    It is dishonest and frankly childish to pretend that this:

    Russia sees their war in Ukraine as a matter of survival against a direct NATO attack against Russia by the NATO proxy of Ukraine.

    was referring to an economic war. I’m clearly wasting my time talking with you. Ciao.
    [Edit: Either this or the hyperbole in suggesting that this was ‘a matter of survival’ was completely out of place, take your pick.]

  135. Ed Forbes,
    “As a side note on the heroic president of Ukraine, I see news reports noting Z’s purchases of two new yachts, for the trifling sum of US $74M.”
    This stinks of more Kremlin misinformation. It exploded onto social media from multiple sources all of which are of dubious heritage. Looks like a Kremlin hit job and you Ed Forbes are helping spread it.

  136. Ed Forbes, (Comment #226834)
    “Ukraine is sinkhole that drains the finances of the American taxpayer”
    Financing the destruction of Russia’s conventional war machine saves money for the US in the long run. Since the end of WWII, the US has spent countless trillions of dollars preparing to meet Russia in a ground war on the continent of Europe. Our whole war machine was geared for such a conflict. No more!
    Russia’s army navy and airforce have been decimated. It is no longer a threat to invade NATO. Additionally, the European NATO countries are much stronger militarily, more numerous, and more bellicose toward Russia than they have been for 50 years. Europe no longer needs the US to fight Russia’s army. Europe can handle it alone.
    The US can stand down.

  137. The fog of war is thick, and virtually all sources of public information are in fact sources of willful disinformation. I believe none of it.
    .
    The factual history of the war will not be told until long after it is over…. and maybe not even then. It is silly to try to evaluate what is happening on the ground in Ukraine in real time, and pronouncements about ‘reality’ say much more about personal prejudices, or about what propaganda is being read, than about factual reality on the ground.
    .
    Only the broadest of strokes are actually visible publicly: There has been little movement of the front lines for 6 months (see the maps from Institute for the Study of War). A kilometer or two one way or another makes close to zero difference….. save for the blood spilled and the treasure spent.
    .
    Eventually there will be a cease fire and (I hope) a negotiated settlement, but when is both unknown and unknowable. One thing is almost certain: nobody will be very happy with the terms of that settlement. It is the nature of negotiated settlements.
    .
    I once read that wars usually lead to negotiations when 10% of the men (on one or both sides) between 18 and 35 have been killed or seriously wounded; that might be 400,000 for Ukraine and more than twice that number for Russia. Hard to say how far from those numbers the casualties in Ukraine might be today (once again, all public claims should be presumed false), but I hope it ends long before those numbers are reached.

  138. mark bofill (Comment #226839),

    Indeed. And it is perverse of Ed to claim that the economic measures were an attack on Russia when they were a response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

  139. Thanks Mike. It is a weakness of mine that I occasionally become so flabbergasted by direct and blatant BS that I fail to clearly articulate what makes it BS. Your comment helps remedy that.

  140. Steve

    if you have N (large N) teachers randomly selected to teach by either method A or B, then after a year the relative effectiveness ought to be pretty obvious.

    Sure, but no one every seems to do this.
    .
    I do think somethings can be learned, but unfortunately, whenever someone points me to a “study” in education, it’s got problems like what I characterized above.

  141. Ed,
    Well at least the more recent comment contains words rather than just a link to portraits of Hitler, Napoleon B and others who tried to invade Russia and take Moscow.

  142. mark bofill (Comment #226831)
    “Newsom vs DeSantis debate tomorrow night. I’d be more enthused if I didn’t think Trump was already a sure bet for the nominee.”
    –
    The plan was and still is to remove both Biden and Trump before the nominations conclude.
    The only reason Republicans are running rather than uniting behind Trump is that they “know” he is going to be kicked out by the deep state, if at all possible.
    He is proving remarkably truculent but I am sure more ammo is on the way if the current lot fail.
    There would be no credible Republicans running if they truly believed Trump would remain on the ticket..
    –
    On the Democrat side the plan is simply for Biden to step down as late as possible and let Newsome step in.
    Fresh face, no debates, good looks, lotsa money, lots of green ideals.
    Party will nominate him over the vice president Harris.
    –
    The downside is that Hunter has no cover from possible charges, only the possibility of a pardon from the incoming Newsome.
    Since this could open Joe himself up to charges if Hunter cracked there is great reluctance on the Biden side to step down.
    –
    Overcome by the deep state allowing more Biden leaks to ensure he steps down.
    –
    The Newsom De Santis is the real thing, the real debate.

  143. Angech,
    I’ll grant that perhaps there is a swap in the works, Newsom for Biden, that I am unaware of. I don’t know of any specific evidence supporting this, but I don’t follow Biden / Newsom news that closely, so what the heck do I know.
    .
    I don’t buy that anything of the sort will happen with Trump. AFAICT, he is going to be the Republican nominee. Trump has confounded my expectations before, and nobody will be more pleased than I if he doesn’t get the nomination. I’m not holding my breath.

  144. International relationships between major powers and weak states have not changed much as one looks back in history. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War is more than an account of conflict between Greek city states. It is a thoughtful analysis of one of history’s earliest recorded great power rivalries.
    .
    As much as one may wish otherwise, in the power struggle between great powers, the smaller and lesser states are mere pawns and are very much expendable to great power interests.
    .
    https://thestrategybridge.org/the-bridge/2020/9/22/insights-from-the-past-thucydides-on-great-power-competition
    .

    “When great powers compete, the importance of their allies is heightened. Spurred by Corinth’s threats, the Spartan assembly decided the Athenians had violated the terms of their treaty and declared war on Athens. Corinth’s defection from the Spartan alliance was a credible threat because of the second insight we may derive from Thucydides—in the world of great power competition, alignments and power are dynamic.”
    .
    Sound familiar? It should. The US instituted a coup against the elected government of Ukraine that was an ally of Russia and installed a regime allied with the US against Russia.
    .
    “Thucydides’ claim that the war was caused by “the growth of Athenian power and Spartan fear of it” has spawned variations on hegemonic transition theory.[7] Graham Allison’s ersatz Thucydides Trap is a recent example. Allison postulates,“When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling power, alarm bells should sound: danger ahead.”[8] Logically sound, this advice highlights the danger of a potential showdown because of the growth and decline of relative levels of power”
    .
    Again, sound familiar? This is International Relations 101 and to say that the US and NATO didn’t instigate the war in Ukraine is directly contradicted by the last 2500 years of history. The US and its allies KNEW that moving Ukraine into NATO would produce a reaction from Russia from an action that Russia could not ignore.

  145. About as much US strategic thought went into the US forcing the Russians into direct action to keep Ukraine out of NATO as was the US actions in both of these two other loser wars.

    and

    The US and its allies KNEW that moving Ukraine into NATO would produce a reaction from Russia from an action that Russia could not ignore.

    I’d ask which is it, but what difference does it really make. The U.S. and NATO have an evil master plan to bring down Holy Mother Russia, no wait, the U.S. and NATO give no strategic thought to what they do. Whatever…

  146. Mark, these are not mutually exclusive.
    .
    One can have a bad strategic plan that incorporates both an “evil” master plan and “bad” strategy.
    .
    I give the US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan as examples.
    .
    9-11 is another. The aircraft hijackers were almost all Saudi, but we invaded Afghanistan that had NOTHING to do with it. Then invaded Iraq who were at war with the same Saudi faction that produced 9-11.

  147. Ed,
    You are such a weasel. You can pretend (once again) that in the first place you were talking about the US having a bad plan, when what you in fact said amounted to the idea that the US didn’t give the matter enough strategic thought. These are not the same thing.
    [Incidentally, not giving the matter enough strategic thought and having an evil master plan are essentially incompatible.]
    Personally, I think you are making all of this up as you go along and that that is the actual reason your remarks are inconsistent.
    It’s fine, be a weasel. You’re not fooling anybody though.

  148. I give the US wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan as examples.
    .
    9-11 is another. The aircraft hijackers were almost all Saudi, but we invaded Afghanistan that had NOTHING to do with it. Then invaded Iraq who were at war with the same Saudi faction that produced 9-11.

    And what was the evil master plan in those examples?

  149. I think what tends to happen in teaching studies is that small studies often prove to be successful and almost all of them don’t scale. This “suggests” to me that what is being proven here is that highly motivated teachers using a variety of methods will make a difference in outcomes. This is easily believable through most people’s experience. Mix in a bit of highly motivated p-hacking and you get a large number of studies that don’t replicate.
    .
    We just need to make sure all teachers are highly motivated master teachers, all significantly above average.

  150. Perhaps Russia invaded Ukraine to stop Ukraine from warming up to NATO. We will never know, but it’s possible. Well, Russia sure screwed that one up! Talk about unintended consequences.
    As a direct result of Russia invading Ukraine, the following happened:
    -Ukraine and NATO became joined at the hip.
    -Russia’s next-door neighbor, and previously neutral, Finland joined NATO
    -Poland began a huge military buildup specifically designed to go to war with Russia
    -Germany dramatically increased its military funding for the long-term
    -The remaining NATO countries renewed their commitment to NATO’s 2% military spending guideline
    -Previously neutral Sweden is nearing membership in NATO
    -Germany and the rest of Europe are no longer dependent on Russian energy
    -The war industries in NATO countries are in the midst of a huge buildup.
    -Previously fractured NATO is now united in its opposition to Russia.

  151. An external force marching to Moscow will result in nuclear war. This is implausible and a silly basis of a serious argument. However what Putin really fears is western cultural influence causing internal dissent which he may view as basically the same thing. You can’t stop that with T-72 tanks.
    .
    NATO money spent destroying Russian hardware via proxies is money well spent IMO. It would of course be better to not do it all but our hand was forced here. The only question is how much destruction is enough to deter future Russia aggression? We have probably already exceeded that amount.
    .
    Ed’s view of the economics of this situation is delusional and defies reality. One could look at Ed’s past economic predictions at 3 month intervals but why waste your time. All the money Russia has burned here could have gone to something more useful and they lost their most lucrative export customer, probably for decades.
    .
    This has been a bargain for NATO in the grand scheme, not just militarily, but in the global political isolation of Russia. Finland, Sweden. NATO is more united. The future Russian threat has been diminished. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this war is not going as planned by Russia.

  152. Disney has been trying to walk back their political situation lately but it looks like Elon Musk just launched an ICBM at that.
    “Don’t advertise. If someone is going to try and blackmail me with advertising? Blackmail me with money? Go f— yourself,” Musk said, adding: “Go f— yourself, is that clear? Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience. That’s how I feel, don’t advertise.”
    .
    DeSantis did much the same thing but in a slightly more balanced way. Musk should find a new hobby beyond Twitter. Advertising is voluntary as I recall. The progressive coalition is out to get him but you have to wear big boy pants anyway. Nobody will come out of this flame war better off.

  153. I dont want to go into bat for socialogy since its never crossed my radar and I am hazy about what it is, but I think the so-called “soft” sciences (eg psychology, medicine, economics??) are actually the “real hard” sciences. For reason’s Lucia outlined, it is very tough to test hypotheses. When you see a inadequate study, it pays to think about why it was inadequate. No excuse for poor analysis, but sample size, variables tested etc. are limited by time and budget especially for graduate students. If the question is interesting enough, sooner or later someone will do a meta-analysis and that might lead to better (funded) study. I really felt for my sister grappling with tough question in cognitive psych, while hypotheses I was interested in got tested in very short order by someone drilling a well.

  156. Phil,
    Yes. The “soft sciences” are difficult to do scientifically. And yes– that’s because it’s just to hard to really test hypotheses. (And that’s before you even worry about any ethics controls for working with human subjects.)
    .
    One of the problems that then arises is many working in the “soft sciences” do seem to forget what’s really required to test a hypothesis.
    .
    So the science part gets all fuzzy.

  157. Lucia,
    You are much kinder than I am about the “soft sciences”.
    .
    The lack of technical rigor (which shows up as results which can’t be replicated) is only part of the problem. An even bigger part is that the practitioners seem all too ready to twist ‘results’ to match their personal prejudices/preferences/politics. This does real damage, especially when results from the “soft sciences” are used to justify, indeed, insist upon, specific public policies. It is a case of garbage-in-garbage-out, with the input garbage the prejudices and preferences of the ‘researchers’….. and those scare quotes are meant to impugn their legitimacy.

  158. The fog of war has lifted. Gone are the days when battlefield information came solely from the combatant’s propaganda machines. Today there are many independent sources, some in near real time. It has a name, OSINT, or open-source intelligence. These are usually computer geeks doing it for kicks, but some better ones have monetized the information.
    They use videos, still shots, and satellite imagery. The sources are commercial satellite companies, uploaded drone videos, news photos, and a gazillion individuals with cell phones. They use various image enhancement techniques and geolocation programs to verify their conclusions.
    A recent example:
    “Avdiivka: Russian Losses from October 10th to October 20th”
    This is a free sample Geospatial Vehicle Loss Assessment from the pay site ‘Frontelligence Insight’, a site started by a former Ukrainian Intelligence Officer.
    “After conducting a thorough visual assessment of the available satellite imagery, our team successfully determined the extent of losses incurred by Russian military vehicles in the Avdiivka area in the period from October 10 to October 20. The results reveal that the number exceeds 109, indicating that within the span of a week and a half, Russia suffered the loss of approximately a brigade-sized force.”
    It details their methods, with many illustrations.
    Have a look:
    https://frontelligence.substack.com/p/avdiivka-russian-losses-from-october

  159. I’m sure definitive research in the social sciences is hard. There have been far too many papers that fail to replicate and too many recent high profile fraud cases over the past decade such as Francesca Gino. There have been multiple cases of intentionally faked papers being accepted by journals. The honest researchers suffer here.
    .
    To beat a dead dog again, the social sciences in the US has also been definitively captured by the political left. It is plausible that this also aggravates the above problem by not allowing for actual challenge of any results that fit a preferred narrative. It is common for this area to now medicalize political ideology from the right (see Everything et. al. about the 2016 election).
    .
    Experts discuss it recently here: NYT: The Unsettling Truth About Trump’s First Great Victory
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/22/opinion/trump-racial-resentment-2016-2020.html
    They use the word race 50 times.
    .
    Vox: The past year of research has made it very clear: Trump won because of racial resentment
    https://www.vox.com/identities/2017/12/15/16781222/trump-racism-economic-anxiety-study
    .
    Social sciences somehow get these studies funded. Shocking! The compliant media then cover them wall to wall. I’m sure all the studies about the moral deficiencies of Biden’s voters are just about to be released. Any.time.now. For.sure.
    .
    Regardless of how much one believes in these results (I believe these studies are specifically designed for the preferred result, those reaching unpreferred conclusions don’t get published, etc.), one cannot deny that this alienates a large section of the populace from the alleged science here. Maybe they can’t handle the “truth”, and maybe they don’t won’t their taxpayer dollars spent on political ideology cloaked as science.
    .
    Phil’s point does stand, the science is hard and honest researchers are the ones getting hurt by this. The reality though is this is hurting their area of science and they need to gather the courage to fix it or the electorate may use blunt tools to do it themselves.

  160. Tom Scharf,
    Trump’s share of black votes increased between 2016 and 2020 (6% vs 8%). To the extent polling can be believed, his support among black voters is now higher than it was in 2020. Somehow, a rise in support among black voters doesn’t seem to fit the narrative that Trump is a blatant racists. Rapid arm waves follow, of course. As with every ‘analysis’ made by the left, they start with the conclusions, and work their way backward, inventing whatever shit they need to.

  161. Trump voters aren’t racists, they just have “racial resentment”. Most of the time they don’t define this term but I read it to mean “fails the explicit racist test but recognize cultural differences and disparate outcomes between races and make value judgments on them”. I have never seen the questions used to derive this conclusion but suspect its purpose is heavily concealed.
    .
    Clearly the increase in Trump support from minorities are from those who also have racial resentment, ha ha.
    .
    The 2016 election was very close so one can choose any degree of freedom among hundreds that showed slight variations and correctly say “this was a cause”. Comey’s treatment of Clinton near the election, etc.
    .
    What is telling is the fixation on a couple possibilities that conveniently paint political opponents in the worst light. Perhaps they should study that mental impulse.

  162. SteveF

    An even bigger part is that the practitioners seem all too ready to twist ‘results’ to match their personal prejudices/preferences/politics.

    .
    I agree this happens. And it’s easier to do precisely because it’s an area where applying true science to real questions is often impossible.
    .
    It’s not social science– but I read the /r/teachers subthread on reddit. It’s often rather amazing how they believe somethings they (or others) claim are “best practices” have been shown to achieve something that is nearly impossible to demonstrate and that has been shown by “science”.
    .
    In a recent thread, people were discussing teaching addition. One of the “new” ways are the one shown near time marks 0.40- 0.60 here

    .
    This is not the way I was taught. (Given our ages, I doubt it was the way most of us were taught.)
    Now, I don’t know if it’s better or worse than the “stack the numbers, add the one’s column, carry the “tens” thing to the 10s column and so on. And if it’s better or worse, I don’t actually know in what way it might be better or worse.
    .
    But lots of teachers were advocating this as a “best practice” and appeared under the impression that this view was based on “science” or “studies”.
    .
    But what struck me is the sorts of claims teachers were making. Like learning it this way (in like… oh 1st, 2nd grade) helps them prepare for algebra (in like oh… 7th grade or 8th) better than learning the other way. No one posted to studies. And I am reasonably confident there is no study where someone kept track of which addition algorithm kids were taught and then how prepared for algebra they actually were when they hit 6th grade, or how well they did in algebra when they took it.
    .
    But I’m pretty sure these people thought this specific hypothesis– prepares them better for algebra– was something that was based on “science” or “systematic observation”.
    .
    While I know that technically “absence of evidence” (that this was studied scientifically) is not “evidence of absence”, my Bayesian prior is that — in this case– there are no studies of that hypothesis.
    .
    On to a digression from the idea that the preference for one method over the other is based on some sort of “science”….
    Other teachers had all sorts of other claims for why the method in the video is better. Some I know are just wrong: like you can’t teach why you carry the a number in the 10s spot in the “column” algorithm. So this method supposedly teachers you the “why” of place numbers while the others does do so at all. The other method is evidently entirely rote.
    .
    But that claim is just wrong.Teachers taught “why” we carry when I learned to add. Admittedly, once you were applying you didn’t thinkabout it constantly. But place values, what they mean, what carrying means was discussed.
    .
    Others made other claims that just left me ???? They claim the method in the video creates a population that can add three digit numbers in their head without using paper or tools accurately and very quickly than the stacking numbers method. And their claims are pretty explansive: it’s not just 324+215 you can add in your head more accurately and quickly, but things like 324+215+783+942+….. = _____
    .
    I doubt that has been studied. (I also doubt it’s true. The main problem with adding the latter quickly in your head is keeping all storing in your head. If you flash “B X O q R V e 7” on a screen for 10 seconds, turn it off and ask people to write down what they saw, most people can’t do that. Because almost no one’s working memory will hold 8 separate indiviual items in their head. They only seem to be able to do that by chunking — so if read ennglish you could for example “chunk”, “cat”, “dog”, “armadillo” into three things. )
    .
    But even if it was true you could add 324+215+783+942+….. = _____ faster and more accurately using the method in the video– so what? This isn’t the dystopian universe of Dune. Is adding that sort of thing in your head without paper or pencil an important goal? I don’t think so!
    .
    Education does have many papers that purport to be “studies” and make some handwaving to “science”. Often, just interviewing teachers who got good results (in more or less difficult populations) would be more useful.

  163. I think what most people would benefit from is that you don’t need to get the exact right number for most applications. If you can quickly estimate the answer in your head that is good enough. Some people just can’t do this strangely enough. I add the leading digits then make a quick estimate on what the carry might be and am done.
    .
    So I think the old school method of starting at the lowest numbers to get exact results with carry doesn’t work for this (imagine adding 6 digit numbers).

  164. Lucia,
    That is really screwed up. I solve such problems essentially by inspection, but really, that is based on knowing (and understanding!) the mechanism of column addition with carries. Kids REALLY need to understand the basics of a base 10 number system (1’s, 10′, 100’s etc) or the add and carry procedure is only procedural and superficial not based on understanding. I doubt many teachers are explaining number systems along with addition.

  165. Tom,
    Yes. If you are in a situation where you are doing something in your head, the most you ever need is two significant figures. One might be enough.
    .
    My “old school method” is to just round everything either to 2 or 1. Honestly, if I have more then 4 numbers, the mistakes will be related to not being able to remember what the 4 numbers were. If someone presents me with this oral quiz and reels off the question fast: “What is 3 plus 5 plus 6 plus 9” and I have to answer in my head, the hard part is remember “3,5,6,9”, not adding them. I might be able to do it, but I’m much rather that question was on a flash card! And if they say, “What is 3 plus 5″….. pause…. plus 6….. pause…. plus 9 I will be able to do it– provided the pauses are sufficiently to let me add 3+5, which is not difficult. The pauses don’t need to be very long– just long enough.
    .
    If someone gives me the oral quiz “What is 3 plus 5 plus 6 plus 9 plus 3 plus 4 plus 6″, I’m pretty sure I’ll get it wrong. And the hard part is keeping”3,5,6,9, 3,4,6 ” in my mind. Once again– if they pause between each number, I can do it.

  166. SteveF,
    My grade school teachers definitely explained what 10 and 11 meant in terms of
    “IIIII IIII” = 9
    “IIIII IIIII” = 10.
    “IIIII IIIII” + “|” = 11
    .
    We learned what the “tens place” meant. I’m pretty sure that preceded addition and “carry the _” in the 10s place. It wasn’t entirely “along with” addition. But the “why” of carrying was explained when we learned the method. It wasn’t just “this is what you do”.
    .
    There are lots of possible ways to teach things. I certainly don’t know what is ‘best’. But what I do know is some things aren’t studied “scientifically” at least not in the sense of hypothesis testing, isolating factors and so on.
    .
    I do see things I would call “case studies”. That’s observational and so scientific in that sense. But often they amount to little more than documenting “This is my experience. YMMV.”

  167. Tom,
    I should also add: it’s pretty rare that you really need to do a lot of arithmetic “in your head”. There’s nothing wrong with using the back of an envelope or napkin. If you can’t do it in your head, you can do the calculation for a tip on the receipt itself.
    .
    Pre-light weight calculators, some people used these to keep track of grocery prices as they added things to a shopping cart

    https://www.pinterest.com/pin/368661919492964425/

    (Hope the image loads.)

  168. Today, NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg wraps up a meeting of Foreign Ministers:
    “As Ukraine has moved forward, Russia has fallen backward. It is now weaker politically, militarily, and economically. All of this underlines Putin’s strategic mistake in invading Ukraine.”
    “Ukraine is closer to NATO than ever before”
    Secretary of State Antony Blinken at NATO foreign ministers meeting ”NATO today is bigger, stronger, more united, more capable than ever.”
    Another NATO news item today… Note that they no longer need the USAF for routine guard duty:
    “Fighter jets from Belgium, France, Germany, Poland and Türkiye will take up NATO air policing duties on the Alliance’s eastern flank starting in December. The long-scheduled deployments demonstrate NATO Allies’ commitment to support each other and strengthen the Alliance’s collective defence.”

  169. One of my chores when we had kids at home was doing the weekly grocery shopping. I started trying to tally the total cost of the items in my head as they went into the cart. I eventually landed on a system of adding the dollars and then the cents. After years of practice I got pretty close to the totals the cashier rang up. Usually not to the penny, but often the tens column was right and almost always the dollars were right.

  171. Greasy Gavin is truly impressive in his own perverse way. DeSantis is doing well, but he is handicapped by respecting the truth and actually answering the questions.

  173. I know this is repetitive, but the “New and Improved” NATO is taking the initiative to stand up to Russia. Another new long-term European military mission with no US involvement:
    “Ten European countries bolster military presence in Baltic Sea”
    “Around twenty warships will be deployed in the Baltic Sea but also in areas of the North Atlantic to take into account the security situation and better protect crucial underwater infrastructure,” Swedish Defense Minister Pal Jonson said on public channel SVT.
    “Ten northern European states that form the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) decided on Tuesday to activate a “defence clause” enabling the deployment of additional military assets to protect infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.“
    “We must be able to carry out this type of operation to defend our vital infrastructure, but also to send a signal to Russia,” Jonson added.
    Focused on operational defence in northern Europe, the JEF is a coalition of 10 countries led by the United Kingdom. It includes Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

  174. Re: debate

    DeSantis was a lot more adept at this than I expected which makes me think that my expectation has been affected by not reading more broadly.

    As to who is moving where, I wonder how many people are leaving both states because of rapidly rising home insurance costs. Friends in Cal are shopping condo insurance right now having been non-renewed by current carrier. Same thing seems to be happening a lot here in Florida and if the pool is accessible it is very expensive.

    We sold our condo in St Pete 18 months ago and moved into a rental high-rise. landlord owns 100 or so projects like ours across the US and I suspect self-insures. it’s a 2016 building which as nearly as i can tell is completely code-compliant and sited above any plausible storm driven high water line.

    Newsome could have beat up DeSantis on doing nothing for the insurance squeeze, but then he’d have to explain why he isn’t doing anything either.

  175. John Ferguson, Kevin Drum at Jabberwocking has made a convincing case that cost of housing explains outward migration from California in a number of posts over the past two years. He briefly mentions that in a post today, but has explored the issue in detail in a number of posts.

  176. Tom Fuller,
    Good to hear from you. I wonder what the constituency of the “leavers” is. Retired? Or now teleworkers? Anent an earlier discussion here about the credibility of sociology as a science, this topic seems susceptible to a careful “sociological” analysis.
    .
    Who is moving? who can move but isn’t? income levels? age?
    .
    I don’t know how you would get at the data, maybe cell phone locations although I suppose that would be illegal. Most of us keep our cell phone numbers when we move,or do we?
    .
    Son and daughter-in-law work entirely tele. They’ve been doing it for almost 30 years. The physical office is 600 miles away and they’ve only been there a half dozen times in all those years. They collaborate with colleagues all over the world – there are a lot of zoom meetings now but weren’t earlier.

    There may be a lot more of this going on now which would make choice of location a lot more flexible.

    btw, are you now with NYT?

  177. John Ferguson,
    DeSantis was accepted at Yale as an undergrad, and that wasn’t because he was wealthy or a ‘legacy’ applicant. Then Harvard Law. He is no dummy. Newsom attended Santa Clara in California, a reasonably selective school, but nothing like Yale. Lots of people who disagree with DeSantis politically assume he is not very smart: they are mistaken.

  178. John Ferguson,
    30 years ago my wife interviewed for a research job at a biotech startup near San Francisco. House prices and income taxes killed the deal; houses were utterly insane….. 2.5 times the cost where we were then living (Chester County outside Philadelphia), and that with a 1.5 hr commute each way. I later spent a week working in Santa Barbara, and the people I worked with were spending 70% of their two-income take-home on their mortgage. A tiny house you wouldn’t want to live in was then about a million dollars. Throw on a heavy income tax, and it is obvious why lots of people leave California.
    .
    It does have very nice weather near the coast.

  179. SteveF,
    friend in St louis in 1970 +.- was working for IBM, living in a very nice old Georgian (style) house north of the WU campus which I think he bought for $40k.
    .
    They wanted to move him to Palo Alto. Equivalent house there was $175k. He never left St louis.
    .
    There is something to be said for the heightened ointellecutal energy out there – it’s exciting and not available everywhere. In Delray Beach it was diffilut to find. Boca a little easier – FAU don’t you know – or Max Planck a bit north. better here in St Pete, but Cupertino was really exciting as I remember – probably still is.
    .
    alas.

  180. Hiya John–good to see you on these pages.

    I don’t know the composition of leavers from California–I know some tech companies put up locations in places like Austin, which took some people. I know a lot of conservatives moved to more congenial climes and people upset with homelessness in SF and LA took off. I’m sure that was a significant part of it.

    But as SteveF noted (and it’s so nice to see SteveF make sense–dude, you should just quit talking about the Russia Ukraine war!) home prices are, I think, the major factor.

  181. Thomas Fuller,
    I believe I almost always make sense. Appreciation of a written argument, or lack thereof, is often just in the head of the reader.
    .
    WRT the war in Ukraine: I very much think it was a war that could have been (and should have been!) avoided through more sensible foreign policy. Realpolitik has that name for a reason.
    .
    In the end, many tens of thousands of young soldiers will die, along with many thousands of civilians, and hundreds of $billions spent, with no commensurate benefit. The end of hostilities will bring a situation on the ground not terribly different from what could have been negotiated in April 2022, save for all the loss of life, destruction of infrastructure, and cost. I see it as a terrible, pointless, waste and one that could have been avoided.

  182. SteveF, your admirable concern for the loss of life that could have been avoided still steers you in very strange directions when describing events on the ground (and in the air).

    Russia invaded a sovereign country with the express intention of conquering it. Ukraine had the right (and many would say the duty) of opposing this invasion.

    Calls to end the conflict should begin and end with the demand for Russia to withdraw from Ukrainian territory. Absent their acquiescence, we should support Ukraine in every possible way.

    You want this to stop? Don’t tell Ukraine. Tell Russia. If they don’t listen, we all will watch as Russia slips from the 19th century back to the 16th. They can have Muscovy.

  183. John Ferguson,
    One of my uncles was a executive at Raytheon; he was deeply involved with early phased array radar and air-to-air missile development. A short time after Raytheon bought Beech aircraft, they wanted to move my uncle to California to run Beech. He lived in a very fancy house in the Boston suburbs, but the only way the transfer would work was Raytheon extending a very low interest rate loan to buy a comparable house near Santa Barbara, essentially covering the difference in cost… my vague recollection was the loan was three times the value of the house near Boston. He was only at Beech for 4 of 5 years…. the company had many problems he was unable to fix quickly enough for Raytheon.
    .
    California housing is insanely expensive because California restricts building of houses…. restrict supply and prices rise. Shocking.

  184. Thomas Fuller,
    Want to bet? I say the conflict ends with very close to the terms Russia would have accepted in April 2022. What say you?

  185. HI SteveF,
    We were living in Devon 30 years ago. For a number of reasons I lost interest in my role as Chief Architect at Amtrak. We decided to return to Miami.
    .
    It took almost a year to sell the townhouse we’d bought 2 years earlier and then at a loss. I think part of the problem was the swath Chainsaw Al had cut through middle-managment at Scott Paper and the massive Rif at the electric utility (forgot the name). We thought there about 10K middle managment types on the street and they would not have been buying townhouses in Devon.

  186. The inusrance mess in Florida does bring self insuring under serious consideration. You can’t have a mortgage and self insure so it is limited. The current rates are such that the inusrance industry is expecting every house in Florida to require complete replacement costs over the next 100 years or so which doesn’t seem reasonable. You are of course still paying for insurance indirectly when renting.
    .
    Hurricanes and storm surge are destructive but with new building codes the area of serious destruction is somewhat narrow and the number of properties that experience a complete loss isn’t that high.
    .
    The problem may be related to investors not being very eager to invest in a commodity where you get 20 years of decent profits followed by one disastrous year. There is an reinsurance industry that bankrolls the entire industry.

  187. SteveF, I hope and believe you are mistaken in your prediction. If you are correct it will be a horrible outcome, not just for Ukraine but for the wider world.

    Let’s postulate what happens if you are correct. What happens in the occupied portions of Ukraine after a treaty is signed? Who will rebuild in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, etc.? Do you think Russia will?

    Do you think a treaty will stop the conflict? Do you think Russia can administer the territories it gains? Do you think partisan activity of the sort we’re seeing right now in Russia will diminish?

    What will happen in Moldova and Taiwan as a result of Ukraine’s acceeding to terms?

    I see a nightmare and I don’t want it. Ukraine still wants to fight. As long as they do we should support them–and more diligently than we have to date. We still have tens of billions of dollars in surplus military equipment and ordnance that Ukraine could use. Let’s give it all to them and then start giving them some of our newer stuff as well.

  188. Tom Scharf,
    Yes, the rates are absurd, and do indicate a complete insurance-loss of every house in a century. Nutty. I don’t have a mortgage, so I eliminated hurricane coverage, leaving only other losses (like fire) and personal liability covered. Cut the annual cost by a factor of 4 or 5 IIRC. Since my house structure is hurricane rated (to 135 MPH), and I have anti-shatter film on all the windows, the only major hurricane loss likely is a screened enclosure for the patio/pool. I can absorb that loss if it happens.
    .
    Part of the problem in Florida is fraudulent (or at least very dubious) insurance claims following any hurricane, usually involving full roof replacements based on minimal damage. It doesn’t take too many $40K claims before insurance rates go crazy.

  189. Florida’s housing not being expensive has always been a bit mysterious to me. People have been piling into Florida for decades now. Pop 1950 = 2.7M, 2021 = 22M. It wasn’t until recently that real estate started to spike.
    .
    Everyone’s favorite sport on relocation is to blame government policy but I very much doubt that in most cases. It’s pretty much work, weather, and cost of living. Some of these are indirectly affected by government. No income tax states still have to get their money from somewhere so it’s better to examine overall level of taxation.
    .
    The question I ask when examining a high cost of living or taxation state is whether you are getting something for your money. If you are paying high HOA fees then most of the time you know what you are getting. Some high taxation states in the Northeast don’t look like great values, CA is better. There are some real problems where “fixing” homelessness ends up attracting more and increasing costs.
    .
    For this moment in time it would be optimal to get hired from a high cost of living area and work remotely in a low cost of living area. I don’t think corporate has quite caught up to that and adjusting salaries based on where you live.

  190. Roof replacement im post-hurricane Florida.
    .
    We lived in Coconut Grove, south side of Miami. In the course of Hurricane Andrew in 1992, the new tile roof of our neighbor’s house relocated to atop our concrete tile roof. Many of our tiles were broken and as we soon discovered were no longer available. The best we could do was “high-profile” (don’t ask) shingles that met the then current code which had not yet been upgraded based on this new local experience.
    .
    We had no other damage other than discovering that the storm shutters we’d lowered for the event required electricity to go up and we had none. We eventually brought home an UPS from the office to lift them all.
    .
    When the insurance adjuster appeared, we conceded that the old roof was coming up on 30 years and we would be happy if the insurance company kicked in 10% of the replacement cost. We were not covered for full replacement cost.
    .
    The adjuster told us that this would be impossible, their policy was to pay for the whole thing which they did. I was astonished and asked why. He told me that their company had run into so much flack after the Charleston Hurricane doing what I had requested and which few people would have accepted, that they now just paid for the whole thing.
    .
    It’s possible that this practice continues.

  191. I see George Santos has been expelled from the House. This is a great victory for Democracy, where Democrats in the House have overridden the will of Santos’s constituents in order to protect the voters from themselves. Clearly, it would never do to allow any obvious liars or frauds in Congress. It’s a good thing they’ve taken care of the problem.
    SARC.

  192. Tom Scharf, another benefit of living in Florida and owning your home is that it cannot be taken from you in a bankruptcy action as it can in most other states.
    .
    The value of the home is not a consideration, so if you’ve run afoul of the system, the thing to do is move to Floerida and convert whatever assets you still have control of to a residence. And then wait out the statute of limitations.
    .
    I briefly employed someone who was doing this which I discovered as I wondered aloud how he could finance this Miami Lakes palace he was living in on what he was earning with me.
    .
    We used to laugh about filing Chapter 911. You get to keep the Porsche.

  193. OMG Mark, 105 Republicans agreed with the Dems that Santos should go. Isn’t that about half of them?

  194. John,
    Yup. About half of the Republicans, and virtually every Democrat. What’s your point, that half the Republicans in the House stink too? I might agree with you there.

  195. As I said from the very start of the war NATO’s strategic objective would be to bleed Russia down and that appears to be exactly what has happened whether by plan or luck. Support to Ukraine looks suspiciously like it is being throttled to continue the war and not win it. It is better to have an active stalemate until Russia is sufficiently weakened to deter future special operations. Make the war a battle of economies.
    .
    This is not to say that is how the war should be prosecuted based on other objectives, only that this serves the NATO organization’s goals better. This viewpoint doesn’t really care much about Ukraine’s ultimate disposition and I would also state nobody actually cared much about Ukraine prior to the invasion.
    .
    So for many this is mostly about keeping Russia inside its borders in the future. Ukraine and NATO are allies of convenience. Perhaps this will build a closer relationship for the future.

  196. Thomas Fuller,
    “What happens in the occupied portions of Ukraine after a treaty is signed?”
    .
    No doubt some areas will remain occupied, and some returned to Ukraine. Crimea is going to remain part of Russia (just as it has been for most of the past 350 years). Donetsk, and Luhansk will likely remain under Russian influence, although they may remain “part of Ukraine” but with almost complete political independence.
    .
    “Who will rebuild in Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, etc.? Do you think Russia will?”
    Well, seeing that Russia has already declared those regions to be “forever part of Russia”, yes, I expect they would rebuild. But even if those regions remain nominally part of Ukraine, I expect Russia will help with reconstruction in the areas they still influence.
    .
    “Do you think a treaty will stop the conflict? Do you think Russia can administer the territories it gains? Do you think partisan activity of the sort we’re seeing right now in Russia will diminish?”
    .
    Short answer: Yes to all three questions. Longer answer: All depends on the detailed terms which are negotiated, and it is impossible to know those.
    .
    “What will happen in Moldova and Taiwan as a result of Ukraine’s acceeding to terms?”
    .
    Moldova’s break-away region Transnistria will likely continue as the effectively independent country that it has been since the early 1990’s, when a ceasefire was negotiated with Russia and Moldova.
    .
    Taiwan is a much more complicated situation, since the West depends heavily for integrated circuits from TSMC. The USA has clear strategic interests in making sure TSMC continues to produce critical integrated circuits, so maintaining the current status of Taiwan as an essentially independent country, while avoiding a war with China, is very important, at least until integrated circuit manufacturing capability can be established in other places. Taiwan calls for the kind of clear-eyed strategic statecraft that has been absent in Ukraine. The very last thing to do is to allow China to think we do not have a clear strategic interest in preserving the status quo in Taiwan, while we have no such clear strategic interest in Ukraine.

  197. It’s probably OK to allow people to be expelled from the House as long as the bar is sufficiently high, and it needs to be very high. It was a 2/3 vote. It doesn’t look like Santos was going to get re-elected. A recall by his district is a much better way to go, perhaps Congress could force a recall election instead of expelling him or something. I would also say a recent felony conviction must have happened or some other material measurement must accompany the ejection. Making up the rules as you go along is a bad plan.
    .
    However this is not usually how it works, the bar for expelling someone keeps getting lowered along the lines of the Alex Jones to Donald Trump social media bans.
    .
    One could easily envision one party getting a 2/3 majority and expelling the other party. There has to be a sufficient trust in government to believe that won’t happen.

  198. Tom,
    Sure. I just marvel that Democrats who seem to make no end of noise about threats to Democracy are very comfortable nullifying the choice that voters made, that’s really it. The guy is no doubt as crooked as.. well, crooked as a Congressman actually. But otherwise this isn’t any sort of big deal or impact.
    [Edit: Democrats and half of Republicans, to be sure.]

  199. Lake NATO, That’s what some are calling the Baltic Sea. Until Sweden and Finland joined NATO, the Russian Baltic Fleet dominated this body of water—no more. A visual picture of the sea change can be seen on the map. Russia is confined to two small access points, Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg. Note the narrow straits between Sweden and Denmark—also the strategic location of the Swedish island of Gotland.
    Maps here:
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1730617257586245740?s=20
    At the start of the Cold War NATO’s only presence was Denmark and a sliver of Germany. Now, Russian ships run a gauntlet from home port to the North Sea. Europe’s recent deployment of an armada of 20 warships to provide security is another poke in the eye of Russia.

  200. Babylon Bee: “Newsom-DeSantis Debate To Be Sponsored By U-Haul”
    .
    Great humor, especially the biting kind, always contains a shred of truth.

  201. Mark,
    I don’t know if Santos’ constituents have any mechanism for as a group deciding whether he should be gone, but it seems possible that what has been done here could be the preference of the majority in his district.

  202. I don’t believe removing Santos was a move by Democrats to protect democracy, ha ha. This was a political move to force a wedge issue on Republicans entering an election year to go on the record supporting Santos. It’s not clear why this vote was even allowed, perhaps part of bigger deal. Santos was probably instructed to resign, or else. I’m certainly not sad to see him go, but the clown ratio in Congress is still pretty high.
    .
    The Democrats are free to expel NJ’s Senator as well.

  203. SteveF, I find your last comment more copium than anything else. When I ask if Russia will rebuild destroyed regions, I meant ‘with what?’ Russia is going through a slow motion economic and demographic collapse. Do you think sanctions will be magically lifted at the end of the conflict? Do you think Europe will suddenly begin to buy Russian oil and gas again? Do you think the million plus Russians who fled the country will blithely return? Do you think the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers will return to the land of the living?

    Or have you started believing Russian official statistics? Have you heard of Jeffrey Sonnenfeld? Hmm.

    How will the USA convince China that this time we really mean it if we add Ukraine to the list of countries we failed?

  204. Tom Scharf,
    “The Democrats are free to expel NJ’s Senator as well.”
    .
    Nah, unlike the senator from NJ, Santos didn’t have the class to deal in gold bars. Whole other situation.

  205. John,
    That may be possible, but I think it’s certainly nothing to assume without evidence. The null hypothesis looks to me like Santos was a bit too blatant and reckless and open in indulging in many of the bad behavior[s] that many politicians everywhere have always indulged in, and got expelled for it. Did he ‘trick’ his constituents somehow is the sort of thing that requires positive evidence in my book.

  206. “Well, seeing that Russia has already declared those regions to be “forever part of Russia”, yes, I expect they would rebuild.”
    That’s ridiculous!
    Half of Russia’s current population lives without paved roads or indoor toilets; Russia needs to rebuild Russia first. Just look at what happened to East Germany after reunification. It was a ghetto until West Germany rebuilt it. Many former Soviet states, like the Czech Republic, have been transformed since they joined the West.
    Russia will spend the next decade scrambling to rebuild its military. Rebuilding Ukraine will not even be on the list.

  207. “Well, seeing that Russia has already declared those regions to be “forever part of Russia”, yes, I expect they would rebuild.”
    That’s ridiculous!
    Half of Russia’s current population lives without paved roads or indoor toilets; Russia needs to rebuild Russia first. Just look at what happened to East Germany after reunification. It was a ghetto until West Germany rebuilt it. Many former Soviet states, like the Czech Republic, have been transformed since they joined the West.
    Russia will spend the next decade scrambling to rebuild its military. Rebuilding Ukraine will not even be on the list.

  208. Thomas Fuller,
    Was that thirteen or fourteen questions you just asked Steve in the space of two comments, my eyes aren’t what they used to be and I might have miscounted.
    Also, while I appreciate sarcasm as much as anybody and maybe more than most,

    Do you think the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers will return to the land of the living?

    is obviously rhetorical.

  209. If you could maybe focus in by asking one or two questions, it’d help the simpletons such as myself keep up.

  210. Thomas Fuller,
    I think you may be a little too emotionally invested. I am not sure you really want answers, because I think they are raised only rhetorically, but in case you do:
    .
    “Do you think sanctions will be magically lifted at the end of the conflict?” If there is a negotiated settlement, lifting of sanctions (perhaps gradually) will for sure be part of it.
    .
    “Do you think Europe will suddenly begin to buy Russian oil and gas again?”
    Suddenly, no; their gas pipelines have been sabotaged. But petroleum is fungible on the market, and gas partially fungible. Then there is this: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/aug/30/eu-imports-of-russian-liquified-gas-leap-by-40-since-ukraine-invasion
    .
    “Do you think the million plus Russians who fled the country will blithely return? Do you think the hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers will return to the land of the living? Or have you started believing Russian official statistics?”
    .
    I think it is you who need to start questioning your sources. Hundreds of thousands of dead Russian soldiers? Where do you get that number and why would you ever believe it? All sources of war casualties are false while the fighting continues, in this war and every other one.
    .
    WRT to the Russian economy: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=RU They appeared for 2022 to be almost back to where they were in 2013, before they seized Crimea. No available data for 2023 yet.

  211. The EU may eventually start buying gas again if it is in their economic interest after everyone has forgotten about this war. What they won’t do for a very long time is buy enough to cause a major disruption if it suddenly gets cut off. Trust with Russia has been completely lost. This also goes for foreign investments in Russia which had to be written off. Some of this might change if a more compliant government comes to rule Russia but I think it will take decades to recover regardless.

  212. A post that explores some of the Realpolitik governing the war in Ukraine and one expected outcome.
    .
    The End of Cabinet War
    Putin and Moltke grapple with the limits
    https://bigserge.substack.com/p/the-end-of-cabinet-war?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1068853&post_id=139312668&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo3NDAxMzM5NCwicG9zdF9pZCI6MTM5MzEyNjY4LCJpYXQiOjE3MDEzODk5MzgsImV4cCI6MTcwMzk4MTkzOCwiaXNzIjoicHViLTEwNjg4NTMiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.fkmTFK7FalRu3mvly7Qvs4uxDxcR9OyPFbzUvEbwoEk&r=182d3m&utm_medium=email
    .
    Ukraine may now not have an option to surrender and still survive as an independent and sovereign state.
    I highly suggest one read the full article, but the main point is that once a nation resorts to a full war mobilization, the war reverts from a “professional ” war of limited goals to a “people’s war” of total destruction. “Professional” wars are limited, where “people’s” wars are not.
    .
    The main point, but the articles lead up to this point is important.
    .
    “In the debate between Moltke and Bismarck, Putin has chosen to follow Moltke’s lead, and wage the war of extermination. Not – and again we stress this – a war of genocide, but a war which will destroy Ukraine as a strategically potent entity. Already the seeds are sown and the fruit begins to bud – a Ukrainian democide, achieved through battlefield attrition and the mass exodus of prime age civilians, an economy in shambles and a state that is cannibalizing itself as it reaches the limits of its resources.
    There is a model for this – ironically, Germany itself. After the Second World War, it was decided that Germany – now held to account for two terrible conflagrations – could simply not be allowed to persist as a geopolitical entity. In 1945, after Hitler shot himself, the allies did not demand the spoils of a Cabinet War. There was no minor annexation here, no redrawn border there. Instead, Germany was annihilated. Her lands were divided, her self-governance was abolished. Her people lingered on in a stygian exhaustion, their political form and life now a plaything of the victor – precisely what Moltke wanted to do to France.”

  213. john ferguson (Comment #226906): “I don’t know if Santos’ constituents have any mechanism for as a group deciding whether he should be gone,”
    .
    They most certainly do have such a mechanism. It is called an “election”. The next one is scheduled to take place in about 11 months.
    .
    Can someone tell me which specific House rules Santos broke? Because if there aren’t any, the courts might overturn his expulsion. I seem to recall that happened with Adam Clayton Powell.

  214. Oh, Steve. I’m wondering if there’s a bit of projection involved in your asking if I’m emotionally invested… I’m not. I’m an interested observer and I hope Ukraine is victorious. That’s about it.

    How many troops do you think Russia has lost? Really–I think you should give us your best estimate. “In August 2023, U.S. officials estimated that Russia’s military casualties were approaching 300,000, including as many as 120,000 deaths and 170,000 to 180,000 injured troops. These estimates are based on a variety of sources, including intelligence reports, open-source data, and discussions with Ukrainian officials.” Maybe they haven’t lost a soul since August… That estimate accords with everything I have read. Again, how many Russians do you think have died or been gravely injured in almost two years of combat? Maybe all the burnt out shells of tanks and troop carriers were unmanned when hit…

    In October 2023, Re:Russia, an independent Russian organization, estimated that between 820,000 and 920,000 people had left Russia since the start of the war.

    The World Bank fell into the trap I warned you about–believing in Russian official statistics. I suggest you broaden your horizons. A country with double digit inflation and 15% interest rates is not likely to be growing robustly. If you haven’t done so, I suggest you read some of Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s work.

    Other commenters have made cogent points about Russia’s efforts at improving infrastructure in captured lands, as well as in their own hinterland.

    You talk about the partial fungibility of gas, which I suppose is partially true. But it has to be transported, and I don’t think they’ll be using Nordstream 2 any time soon.

    I’m sorry, SteveF–I don’t find your arguments at all convincing.

  215. Mike M.
    I suppose the best way to look at the Santos enforced departure is how would any of us like it if it was done to someone we respect.

  216. The U.S. Constitution expressly grants each house of Congress the power to “punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.” Expulsion is the process by which a house of Congress removes one of its Members after the Member has been duly elected and seated.

  217. Thomas Fuller,
    “I’m sorry, SteveF–I don’t find your arguments at all convincing.”
    .
    Nor do I find yours at all convincing, they sound to me more like parroted drivel from politically motivated sources. If you think those sources for Russian casualties are credible, I am sure there is nothing I can say that will change your mind. I can’t estimate losses on either side, because I know there are no reliable sources for casualties.
    .
    This stupid, pointless, costly war will end; my guess is within the next 24 months, although I hope it is sooner. I rather suspect you won’t like the terms it ends under. I have not much more than that to say.

  218. John Ferguson,
    Absolutely. And I hope neither party ever gains a 2/3 majority in either house.

  219. john ferguson (Comment #226920): “I suppose the best way to look at the Santos enforced departure is how would any of us like it if it was done to someone we respect.”
    .
    Right. So “we don’t like this guy” is insufficient reason. On the other hand, a criminal conviction would be reason. If criminal charges are enough, then the accusations against Senator Menendez are more serious than those against Santos.
    .
    I misremembered the appropriate clause of the Constitution. But it still arguably requires a specific violation of House rules. Article 4, section 1, clause 2:

    Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

    It sounds to me like “disorderly behavior” means a violation of the rules and that punishment for such behavior can be as severe as expelling a member, but only with a 2/3 vote. I don’t think it reasonable to read that as saying that a member can be expelled just because 2/3 feel like it.

  220. Disorderly behaviour is whatever 2/3’s of either house decide it is. And I couldn’t agree more with SteveF that one party controlling 2/3 of the house would be a disaster.
    .
    My Dad used to advise that one needed to worry more about the people one agreed with than the other guys.

  221. Ya got me on that ol’ parroting drivel thingy. Reminds me of the climate conversation way back when.

    I also think the way will last another year and I also think it is a tragedy. I just think the eventual outcome will be vastly different from your predictions.

    Have a nice weekend.

  222. Santos can run for office again.
    .
    I don’t find any of the reasons to do this immediately very compelling. The alleged trigger was him being charged with some election related crimes, but one would think a conviction should be necessary. He may deserve to be out of office but it is the usual question of exactly who should get to decide.
    .
    The danger to democracy crowd is silent, it’s almost like this is just empty rhetoric.

  223. Tom,
    Yes. But also, I’m going to mock those who expel him every time they make any further sanctimonious pronouncements about protecting Democracy. While this is perfectly legal and maybe even perfectly legitimate and proper, it is still NOT an example of Democracy being protected preferentially as a priority over other concerns.
    [Edit: I posted before you added the last part of your remark. LOL]

  224. Climate conversation, way back when…
    .
    Despite lots of hair tearing, teeth gnashing, and garment rending, not a lot has happened to change the trajectory: https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2_data_mlo.pdf
    .
    The helpful Chinese, with multiple new coal fire plants each month, will keep that trend in tact… not to mention Africans, when they have the economic means to do so.
    .
    Are you Thomas Fuller of the famed NYT’s?

  225. john ferguson (Comment #226925): “Disorderly behaviour is whatever 2/3’s of either house decide it is.”
    .
    It shouldn’t be. Arguably that is unconstitutional. Expulsion should require violation of a previously established rule. Then is takes a 2/2 vote to decide if the violation occurred and if it merits expulsion. The practical difference might be small, but the difference in principle is enormous.
    .
    john ferguson: “And I couldn’t agree more with SteveF that one party controlling 2/3 of the house would be a disaster.”
    .
    The Dems had a 2/3 majority from 1974-1978. But in those days, they still had respect for the rule of law.

  226. I’m not the NYT Thomas Fuller, although we got each other’s mail when I worked for the International Herald Tribune.

  227. Mike M.
    I think the Constitution does not establish a right to a seat in Congress. I suppose that means that there is no requirement for due process establsihed in law which would mean thatthe expulsed if that’s a word) would have no basis to resort to the courts.

    It’s hard for me to imagine that the proceedings which resulted in an expulsion would not look a lot like due process.

  228. john ferguson (Comment #226932): “I suppose that means that there is no requirement for due process”.
    .
    Then I think your reasoning is clearly flawed.

    Article 1, section 5, clause 1:

    Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members

    So could the House refuse to seat a convicted felon?

    The answer is “no”. Powell v McCormick.

  229. Mike M.
    Powell v McCormick speaks to exclusion not expulsion. The house may not exclude except for a constituionally established qualification problem but once the member is there may expulse. And I would assume that would be for something done after becoming a member.
    .
    Exclusion and expulsion are not at all the same thing. I agree with the conclusion of Powell v McCromick as I’m sure you must.

  230. john ferguson (Comment #226932): “It’s hard for me to imagine that the proceedings which resulted in an expulsion would not look a lot like due process.”
    .
    Well, they sure tried that. An expulsion resolution was brought to the floor a month ago, without waiting for the Ethics Committee report. It failed, with a couple dozen Republicans voting for it and a somewhat larger number of Democrats voting against. That was clearly an attempt to circumvent due process.
    .
    Due process would, at a minimum, consist of accusing Santos of violating specific House rules, finding that he did so, and deciding that expulsion is an appropriate punishment. Did they do that? If they did, then what rules did Santos break?

  231. john ferguson (Comment #226934): “And I would assume that would be for something done after becoming a member.”
    .
    Yes and for something that the rules specify as grounds for expulsion. I don’t think that is the case with Santos.

  232. john ferguson (Comment #226934): “I agree with the conclusion of Powell v McCromick as I’m sure you must.”
    .
    I am curious as to why you sure I must agree.

  233. Thomas Fuller,
    I suspect the upward trend in CO2 concentration will slowly (very slowly!) diminish, if only because of gradually improving technology, but very likely will reach over 560 PPM by some time in the late 2000’s, before gradually falling. Average temperatures will likely peak at 2.5C to 3C above pre-industrial, some time in the early 2100’s. People living after 2100 will probably laugh at our follies, just as much as we laugh at the follies of people from 1910. That is OK with me. I hope my great grandkids and their kids have the humility to recognize that hindsight is always much better than 20/20.

  235. I see the miasma of stalemate emanating from the Ukraine war. On one side you have the incompetent military of Russia and on the other side the outmanned Ukraine military that depends on the West to maintain the battle. The West has not provided carte blanche weapons for fear of WWlll.

    With no negotiations in sight and what I judge as unrealistic expectations for victory on both sides, I see the killing, maiming (physically and mentally) and property destruction continuing into the foreseeable future. That writing and talking about the horrors of war has apparently been suspended for this war, the observers of the war and involved politicians can carry on without that distraction.

  236. SteveF (Comment #226938): “Average temperatures will likely peak at 2.5C to 3C above pre-industrial, some time in the early 2100’s.”
    .
    That is too pessimistic. Exponentially rising CO2 will produce a linear increase in forcing and temperature. If we extrapolate the T trend over the last ~60 years to 2100, we get a 2C rise over pre-industrial; perhaps a bit less. If the log plot of CO2 starts to curve downward (it will), then the T rise will be less. The observed T trend implies that double CO2 should produce a T increase under 2.0 C, maybe under 1.5 C.

  237. Interesting postscript on the debate:

    Behind the scenes, however, the Newsom team was reportedly furious over the outcome of the debate, with Newsom adviser Sean Clegg claiming: “The debate was rigged.”

    https://www.dailywire.com/news/were-done-newsoms-wife-intervened-to-end-debate-against-desantis-report-says
    .
    During the debate I thought that Hannity was a good and fair moderator. But I thought the questions were ones that showed Florida in a good light compared to California. But I don’t know that it would be possible to come up with a list of questions that did not do that.

  238. uestions were ones that showed Florida in a good light compared to California.

    Are there any questions that could show the opposite? Yeah… rhetorical. But sort of real question. Because I can’t think of any based on recent government decisions.

  239. According to the 2001 census ethnic Ukrainians constituted a majority of the three mainland oblasts occupied by the Russian army:
    Donetsk Oblast 2,744,100 (56.9%)
    Luhansk Oblast 1,427,673 (58.0%)
    Kherson Oblast 872,370 (82.0%)
    The 2021 Crimean census estimated ethnic Ukrainians at 284,522 (12.7%)
    It is unknown how many of these Ukrainian people are still alive and living under the brutal Russian occupation.
    One recurring theme from Ukrainians, from President Zelenskyy down to the soldiers in the trenches, is that they will not abandon their brothers and sisters to the Russians. I believe them.

  240. “Everyone was afraid of the Russians, but then the Ukrainians intervened and broke the world order.”
    Interesting ideas from “The Dead District”:
    https://x.com/thedeaddistrict/status/1730785608925114437?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ
    Switching back to the topic of rebuilding…. Russia built its military during the Soviet heyday. Most of the armor being destroyed these day in battle is from that era. In 2022, Russia’s GDP was about the size of Canada’s. Now that that Russian military is wrecked and the Soviet Union is gone rebuilding with a tiny economy is probably not possible, me thinks.
    https://www.worlddata.info/largest-economies.php

  241. Mike M,
    It looks like ~ 0.18C per decade since 1980, so another 1.4C by 2100. https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/wti/plot/wti/trend
    .
    Of course that can change if the curve becomes less than exponential and that probably will happen. But we should keep in mind that about 0.6 watt per sq meter is still going into the ocean, and any slowing of the rate of temperature rise would likely reduce that rate of uptake somewhat, leading to a bit more surface temperature increase. In the very long term, that uptake has to stop. We are already at ~1C over pre-industrial (https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl), so I don’t think a maximum near 2.5C early in the next century is unlikely. Could be a bit less, but not a lot unless people start geoengineering to reduce the maximum temperature.

  242. SteveF (Comment #226946): “It looks like ~ 0.18C per decade since 1980, so another 1.4C by 2100.”.
    .
    Two problems with that. One is that it looks like land T, not global T. Over almost the same interval, satellite data says 0.14 C/decade global and +0.19 C/decade over land.
    https://www.drroyspencer.com/2023/12/uah-global-temperature-update-for-november-2023-0-91-deg-c/
    .

    The second problem is that part of that increase is natural. There is a natural T oscillation linked to the AMO and the global stadium wave. The time interval used includes an entire warming cycle but not an entire cooling cycle; the full cycle takes 60-70 years. So if you start the analysis a decade or two earlier, the global trend drops to something like 0.12 C/decade, so another 0.9 C by 2100.
    ——

    SteveF: “about 0.6 watt per sq meter is still going into the ocean, and any slowing of the rate of temperature rise would likely reduce that rate of uptake somewhat, leading to a bit more surface temperature increase.”
    .
    True. But any decrease in the exponential growth rate will increase the fraction of CO2 going into the ocean. The two effects should nearly cancel.

  243. A series of rhetorical questions (much like Shakespeare does in the Merchant of Venice)…
    How do you operate a sabotage unit 6,000 kilometers behind enemy lines?
    How do you operate a sabotage unit in the middle of Siberia in Winter?
    How does a sabotage unit blow up two military trains, one in a tunnel and one on a bridge, in the same area in the same week?
    Answer, You can’t.
    but, Ukraine said it did and Russia confirmed it (sorta). Videos:
    https://x.com/dana35300026/status/1730718746216419424?s=61&t=q3_InP1nXWdPIXqj8656mQ

  244. Lucia,
    .
    Newsom seems to have brought a peashooter to a gunfight.
    .
    At the same time, it seems difficult to pin Florida’s problems on DeSantis or the Republican approach to state management.
    .
    Residential insurance is becoming less available and much more expensive in Florida. So far it doesn’t look like DeSantis is doing anything about it, but how would you have broached that in that messy debate? Your points need to be simple and at least indisputable to some part of the audience.
    .
    I don’t see how Newsom could have made any headway with the things DeSantis has done that I don’t like; the “private” army brigade, shipping iimmigrants from Texas to Martha’s vineyard at state expense, sending National guard to Texas, picking a fight with Disney, and finally reducing support for covid precautions midway through the crisis.
    .
    This last one is tricky because there are any number of amateur statistitions who assert that thousands more died in Florida due to his policies than other states which were more cautious, but if you really look at the numbers the populations of the states used for comparison are not the same. Florida has much higher proportion of old people than comparison states and they were/are much more vulnerable to this thing. If you factor age into the calculation, it’s possible that there really wasn’t that much difference and reducing the precautioons had no downside and a lot of upside.
    .
    And besides, how could Newsom have surfaced that issue? too complicated and not necessarily favorable to him.
    .
    As usual, it’s all in the denominator. If you don’t really understand ALL of the components of the denominator you can’t be sure it’s apples to apples.
    .
    My conclusion from the 1/2 hour of the debate we could stand to watch was that DeSantis was ready and Newsom wasn’t – maybe not even capable of being ready. Which makes me wonder why all of the usual media sources claim Newsom won or put another way DeSantis didn’t.

  245. If you attend a debate moderated by Fox News / Hannity then you know what you are going to get. It’s good to fine tune talking points in an adversarial environment but playing the victim card is a bit much.

  246. john ferguson,
    “If you factor age into the calculation, it’s possible that there really wasn’t that much difference and reducing the precautions had no downside and a lot of upside.”
    .
    Not just possible, that is in fact the case. Age normalized rates of death were virtually identical in California and Florida, but significantly worse in New York, New Jersey, and Texas. High rates in New York and New Jersey seem mainly the result of foolish state policies early in the pandemic (forcing nursing homes to accept confirmed covid infected patients, for example), while high death rates in Texas appear to be mainly due to a greater fraction of elderly people who refused the vaccines. The only other factor which looks consistently important is population density, with sparsely populated states having generally lower death rates than their population age and vaccine acceptance rate among the elderly would suggest.
    .
    I had no problem with DeSantis deciding to eliminate many of the early “precautions” and getting kids back in school; he said at the time he did so because he was reading original publications on transmission and concluded the initial policies were ineffective and economically/socially damaging.

  247. Newsome could have said the usual things about climate change and how his policies were going to stop hurricanes from ever happening (massive arm waving commences…).
    .
    The reality is FL tried to force insurers to be “reasonable” through regulatory control and they instead chose to leave the state as is their right. FL’s property insurance market is different than things like auto insurance, it has a very high variance and the future trend is in question because of scaremongering from climate science. Insurance does not like uncertainty. At all. Auto insurance is very predictable in large numbers.
    .
    Age adjusted covid death rates puts FL about in the middle. They had more late stage deaths per capita (after vaccines) than many other states. Some of this is because FL in general had it major covid waves later than other states, some is lower levels of vaccinations. However most of the people trying these political attack vectors are from NJ / NY / CN / CA which have very little to be proud of.
    .
    DeSantis’s covid policies were a major risk at the time. He didn’t know how it would turn out, he only knew that the “experts” didn’t know either and were way over their skis at the time. It worked out for him, everyone eventually implemented the same FL policies they excoriated him for. It was a major win for him. Very few of the usual suspects talk about this now, specifically how they expressed more certainty than was warranted and how that has resulted in less trust of the expert class.
    .
    This looks very silly now:
    https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/us/grim-reaper-florida-beaches-trnd/index.html

  248. Mike M,
    There could be a contribution form long term oscillation, but I find the available data less than convincing.
    .
    With regard to what the figure of ~0.18 per decade represents: it is from an average of multiple global data sets, including the satellite data (the Wood for Trees index). It is not a land only data set. The average of land only data shows a higher rate of warming for the data sets which make up the Wood for Trees index. Here is the Hadcrut 4 land only data from 1980: https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1980/plot/crutem4vgl/from:1980/trend
    showing ~0.24C per decade. The satellite data from Spencer and company shows 0.2C per decade on land. We can quibble about the relative accuracy of the satellite data versus other data sets (https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1980/plot/uah6/from:1980/plot/rss/from:1980/trend/plot/uah6/from:1980/trend), but if we use an average of all, the land-only warming is certain to be significantly higher than the global.
    .
    So where people actually live, I think the warming will very likely be greater than 2.5C above pre-industrial.

  249. Tom Scharf,
    “It worked out for him, everyone eventually implemented the same FL policies they excoriated him for.”
    .
    It wasn’t that it “worked out” for him, as if he was gambling. It was that his judgment (based, he says, on reading original literature) was better than that of “the experts”. Actually, I think any reasonably sentient person could have looked at the schools remaining open in most of Europe and known instantly that the “experts” were wrong about transmission.

  250. What really took a hit here was the “experts” who tell us what the legitimate experts say through the media lens. This is really in tatters. There are actual experts out there who understand uncertainty, the legacy media just doesn’t prefer that narrative in their fight for eyeballs.

  251. SteveF (Comment #226953): “So where people actually live, I think the warming will very likely be greater than 2.5C above pre-industrial.”
    .
    No, the data are not weighted by population density. So they are not “where people live”.
    .
    The number used for these discussions is global average. That is the correct number to use for comparisons. You could multiply by 1.6 or whatever to get the land number or by 0.7 to get the ocean number of by 1.8 to get Fahrenheit. None is better than any other as long as one is consistent. Consistent means using global average in Celsius.
    .
    The effect of the stadium wave is uncertain. The way to minimize that effect is to take data over one full cycle, roughly 70 years. Here is global average over the last 70 years:
    https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1953/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1953/trend
    Looks like 0.12 C/decade to me.
    .
    Here is the data back to 1880 with the same trend line:
    https://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1880/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1953/trend

    T rises from 1900 to 1940 with very little CO2 increase. Then it decreases for a few decades in spite of increasing CO2. Why? Natural variation is why. You should not ignore it.

  252. Mike M,
    I agree, the correct number to use is the global average. You said that the number I used from 1980 to present looked like it was “land only”; it wasn’t.
    .
    There are lots of explanations offered for variation, and not all natural; eg lack of pollution controls before the 1970’s increasing atmospheric aerosols… decreased the amount of sunlight reaching the surface.
    .
    The next 25 years of data will either help confirm the ‘~70 year’ oscillation or refute it. I doubt we will both be around to see that (likely neither?), but I remain skeptical of a 70 year oscillation.

  253. Byron York makes some good points regarding the hasty George Santos expulsion:
    https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/the-rushed-expulsion-of-george-santos
    .
    Since the Civil War

    the House has only expelled members after 1) the member was convicted of a crime and 2) the House Ethics Committee recommended he be expelled. Today, the House ignored those two precedents in getting rid of Santos.

    I had not realized that the Ethics committee did not recommend expulsion.

    the evidence against Santos seems strong. But the Ethics Committee decided not to recommend Santos’s expulsion. That would have required a committee vote, and Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) explained that doing so would have involved a “much longer process.”

    In other words, they did not follow precedent since that would have taken too long. So much for due process.
    .
    FWIW, I agree with York’s assessment of Santos:

    The point was not that Santos deserved to remain in the House of Representatives. Indeed, Santos had no business being in the House, and it was an embarrassment that he was elected in the first place. But he was elected and he was a member of Congress, and it should have been important that lawmakers give him a full and fair process if they wanted to expel him.

  255. Mike M,
    Dems have no alternatives to Pres Alzheimer. They will do whatever needed to increase his chance of re-election.

  256. 538 gives Biden lowest ranking of all presidents polls done on this time of term. Had to beat Jimmy Carter to do so which was looking impossible.
    Our anti Trump national broadcaster ABC has a segment called Planet America.
    Said that Air Marshall’s sole jobs now are keeping tabs on all Americans and foreigners who flew in or out of Washington on Jan 6th.
    Whenever they book or go to board on a plane.
    Even Democrats.
    Even a 6 week old baby.
    And need to continue to surveil for 15 years!
    Home of the Free, not.

  257. I reaaly hope Trump is not the candidate.
    .
    The liberal press is full of admonitions not to worry about early polling etc. My guess is that the Democrats don’t understand that with Trump’s many defects, if Biden was at all comptetitve he’d be way ahead, not close. Even this early that does signify.
    .
    And then there’s the drop-dead cure, Harris, who is probalby the least attractive candidate to get this far in years.
    .

  258. john ferguson,
    Unfortunately, I will be very surprised if Trump is not the nominee.
    .
    WRT Harris: Seems even less likable than Trump, and based on her senseless word-salad answers to every question, appears as dumb as a box or rocks… which might be a little unfair to the rocks. She sept her way into power with Willie Brown’s help; not a good look for her.

  259. Kamala Harris is the second dumbest politician currently holding national elective office. That makes her the smartest person currently holding national elective office.

  260. One might wonder where Willie Brown’s taste might have been.
    .
    I’m reminded of the wonderful line spoken by Joe Don Baker in Charlie Varrick, to wit: “I never knowingly sleep with a moron”
    .
    I guess Willie hadn’t seen the movie.
    .
    BTW if you haven’t seen Charlie Varrick, do.

  263. john,
    No, not smarter, just prettier. I don’t think Willie Brown was looking for the intellect of Isaac Newton.

  264. Harris can not possibly be as dumb as she seems. She served two terms as San Francisco DA, two as Attorney General of the largest state, got elected to the Senate, then picked as VP. There must be something there.
    .
    Sure, being woman of color was a big help. But there must be a substantial number of such with political ambitions who are at least one of articulate, likeable, or smart. There must be more to her success than her sex and skin color.
    .
    Public speaking, especially extemporaneously, is a skill. Excelling at that is not the same thing as being smart, struggling at it is not the same as being dumb. A lot more people struggle than excel.
    .
    My guess is that Harris is a very talented backroom politician. In a one party state, like California, that is enough to be successful, even if one does not present well in public. Because the real decisions are made in backrooms, not in public. So she never developed the skills to needed to impress the public.

  265. Mike M,
    I’d be a lot more convinced if there was an instance of a thoughtful (even moderately intelligible!) answer from Harris. Never seen one. If she didn’t have someone else sit for the bar exam, then I guess passing it suggests some level of intellect. But really… what are you gonna believe? She comes across as dumb and dishonest. Her answer to most any question is painful to hear; tooth drilling without Novocain is an apt description.

  266. I was unimpressed with her performance at the Kavanaugh session.
    She asked Kavanaugh a question about his involvement in some sort of interaction in California.
    .
    Kavanaugh sat there for a moment and then said something like.
    “Senator, I have no idea wha.t you are alluding to, could you provide a little more detail?
    .
    She didn’t and the session moved on.
    .
    Isn’t it Trial Lawyer 101 never to ask a qustion of a witness that you don’t already know the answer to.
    .
    Nothing was made of this in the press. I wonder why. Did no-one covering the hearings recogmnize what had happened?.
    .
    Maybe those who did were too consumed with the Ford assertions to pay attention to anything else.

  267. john ferguson,
    The entire hearing was a hatchet job designed to damage Kavanaugh. That Harris asked stupid questions (“Judge Kavanaugh, did you in fact participate in multiple gang rapes of classmates when you were 17?”) was not even an issue in the coverage of the MSM.
    .
    Even if you put aside her apparent stupidity, she is a dishonest scumbag and should be flipping burgers, not next in line to be President.

  268. The cost to the US for military aid to Ukraine is much less than the ‘book value’ reported in the media. We’re sending much stuff that had been [or soon would be] mothballed.
    At the conclusion of hostilities, the US and Europe will have military arsenals full of shiny new weapons and the Russian arsenal will be depleted.
    For example, the European F-16 armada going to Ukraine is being replaced by American F-35s.
    From @randymot4:“The Ukraine military aid is relatively costless to the United States: the monetary value is credited toward new upgrades that are made in the US and can be used anywhere. So it basically advances US jobs and defense prepareness for conflicts elsewhere.
    Incidentally it is audited and Europe now provides twice as much aid to Ukraine as the United States.”
    More:
    https://x.com/randymot4/status/1731575064561078600?s=20

  269. “The Florida Anti-Democratic Party has decided to cancel their primary and declare Biden the unanimous winner.”
    .
    The danger to democracy crowd strikes again, ha ha.

  270. News Alert, this just in. The Atlantic imagines what a second Trump presidency would look like. 24 of their esteemed staff opine.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/01/donald-trump-second-term-policies/676176/
    “Trump’s second term, they conclude, would be much worse.”
    .
    Wow, that’s pretty bad! Can we get a few open letters from the highly credentialed professional class to help out? I bet we can. What a bunch of pretentious strutting peacocks.

  271. I don’t trust opinion polls taken in the US, so I really don’t trust polls taken in Russia.
    However, ISW seems to trust this one:
    “A recent Russian opinion poll indicates that the number of Russians who fully support the war in Ukraine has almost halved since February 2023 and that more Russians support a withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine than do not. “
    https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-november-30-2023
    The same poll, Euronews:
    “Russians’ support of Ukraine war collapses, finds poll”
    https://www.euronews.com/2023/12/02/russians-support-of-ukraine-war-collapses-finds-poll

  272. Here is another way modern warfare is different…
    Rebekah Maciorowski, @bekamaciorowski is an American combat nurse who volunteered to serve at the front with the Ukrainian army. She has flaming red hair and a large presence on social media.
    Pic and link: https://x.com/rklier21/status/1732115817448276006?s=20
    She uses social media to solicit donations of medical supplies, warm clothing, and other stuff. She scrounged a Toyota SUV to use for transporting the wounded and a Range Rover for herself. She has a network of helpers for getting the stuff to the front. She solicits money to help pay for logistics. She gives the donated medical kits to raw Ukrainian recruits [she calls them ‘My Soldiers’] as they arrive at the front and teaches battle emergency care… like how to apply a tourniquet. It’s all surreal.

  275. Headline in The Atlantic: “Ron DeSantis Does Not Seem to Be Enjoying Himself”.
    .
    Q: “Why are you running for President?”
    A: “Because it is so much fun!”
    .
    Right. I am pretty confident that reading that would make most people dumber.

  276. John,
    In your case, experience and critical thinking probably makes you immune to the Atlantic. 😉

  277. Ominous-looking Florida bobcat on the prowl!
    https://x.com/rklier21/status/1732222199929389419?s=20
    Something must be up. This is the third bobcat visit in five nights. Bobcat sightings are normally rare, maybe once a month or so. We hope his or her targets are the two stray cats we have seen seeing. Rabbit and possum sightings have been very low [maybe because of the cats]. The housecats and a solitary large raccoon have been our only regular [almost nightly] visitors.

  278. Lucia,
    You might get a laugh out of this
    “The comedy film “Lady Ballers” by DailyWire+ has received over 1,000 audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 97% at the time of this report.”
    The anti-woke crowd gamed the system and bombed RottenTomatoes with 5-star reviews before the film even came out. RottenTomatoes has put the brakes on it.
    https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/lady-ballers-earns-stunning-97-review-score-on-rotten-tomatoes/ar-AA1kZznw

  279. Another debate tonight, 8 p.m. eastern on something called NewsNation. Just 4 contestants, fewer is better. I’ll watch, but I am not sure why. Maybe because I am a hopeless optimist or maybe I am just a glutton for punishment. Or both.
    .
    A Trafalger Iowa poll is out with Pence and Scott off the ballot. DeSantis is up to 22%, still well behind Trump at 45%. Haley and Desantis combined get 41%, just 4 points less than Trump. They were 11 points behind Trump in the same poll in November and 25 points behind in September. I read that as a strong indication that consolidation could produce a serious challenge to Trump.

  280. This has got to frost the narcissist Meghan Markle….
    Kate, Princess of Wales, the lady destined to be Queen of England has gotten notoriety by dipping into the Crown Jewels to wear enchanting tiaras to Royal affairs:
    “Kate Middleton Has Her Second Tiara Moment in 2 Weeks at Buckingham Palace Reception” “For this year’s event, Princess Kate chose a special tiara: the Queen Mary’s Lover’s Knot Tiara.”
    This is in stark contrast to the dust-up Meghan had with Queen Elizabeth over the tiara she wanted to wear for her own wedding:
    “The Queen Had a Very Good Reason for Denying Meghan Markle’s First Choice Wedding Tiara”
    To rub salt in Meghan’s wounds, Kate really knows how to sport a tiara:
    “Every Time Kate Middleton Has Worn a Tiara — See the Photos!”
    https://people.com/kate-middleton-tiara-buckingham-palace-diplomatic-reception-repeats-jordan-royal-wedding-look-8410266

    https://www.marieclaire.com/celebrity/a34473047/the-queen-good-reason-for-denying-meghan-markle-wedding-tiara/

    https://people.com/royals/kate-middleton-tiara-photos/

  281. Mike M.
    My usual liberal friends are convinced that a wmoan could not get the GOP nomination no matter who she was. What do you think?
    .
    It’s obvious that a woman can get the Dem nomination. As to the election, Hillary might have won if she’d worked a little harder and maybe not have suffered the server-gate disclosures, which she handled incredibly badly.
    .
    But a GOP woman?

  282. john ferguson (Comment #226986): “My usual liberal friends are convinced that a wmoan could not get the GOP nomination no matter who she was. What do you think?”
    .
    I think that a GOP woman would have just as good a chance at getting nominated as a Democrat woman. There is certainly no evidence to the contrary.
    .
    Many liberals believe all sorts of silly things about conservatives.
    —-

    Let me amend that. I refer to a qualified female candidate. An unqualified candidate (looking at you, Kamala) might have a better chance with the Dems.

  283. Many liberals believe all sorts of silly things about conservatives.

    Yes. IMO the reverse is often true as well. It’s easy to forget that the most extreme progressive viewpoints are the ones that get a lot of air time, because they are outrageous and that drives clicks. But most liberals I know are very poorly represented by the most extreme progressive viewpoints we often seem to read about online.

  284. It is interesting that the GOP would support a qualified woman but from recent experience appear not to have such a standard for a male candidate.
    .
    I concede that on paper, Obama did not look all that qualified.

  285. mark bofill (Comment #226988): “But most liberals I know are very poorly represented by the most extreme progressive viewpoints”.
    .
    True. Most liberals are not crazy. It is easy to forget that since they are willing to vote for people who promote craziness.

  286. Mike M,
    “It is easy to forget that since they are willing to vote for people who promote craziness.”
    .
    Yes, it is easy to forget. But maybe the abortion punishment the GOP has taken over the past couple years makes it a little easier to remember. Most conservatives do not support draconian restrictions/bans, but bans are all you hear about when the subject comes up. And as Lucia (I think) noted, if forced to choose, most voters go with crazy-liberal abortion positions than severe restrictions/bans. Same with Hamas and Israel: Dems are cowed by the crazies who support killing jews, and this is going to cost Alzheimers Joe a lot of votes. But I don’t think most Dems actually hate Jews….. even while the party fringes obviously do hate Jews.
    .
    So how can a political party pitch a bigger tent and ignore the most extreme voices? I don’t know the answer, but I suspect changing the dynamics of primaries (where only the most extreme/dedicated actually vote) is a key issue. I mean really, how could a crazy like Alexandria Ocassio-Cortez get elected? Answer: A primary where only the crazies vote, and they vote for crazies.

  287. Is it ramped primaries? I must have the wrong term. But it is clear that we have serious problems at the primary level in both parties where gerrymandering had given the control to the craziest constituents. It is certainly a problem with the GOP as much as it is with tht Dems.
    .
    AOC – Ugh, although unlike some of the others here, I think bartending could be good training for a congressional seat . So you suppose bartenders become skilled listeners or equally likely skilled at tuning out.

  288. john ferguson (Comment #226992): “But it is clear that we have serious problems at the primary level in both parties where gerrymandering had given the control to the craziest constituents.”
    .
    I doubt that primaries are the problem. “Jungle primaries”, like In CA and WA, were supposed to make things less partisan when used. Didn’t work.

  289. I think it’s a mix of complicated factors. One of them is that complex, nuanced thinking is hard, whereas simple, black and white ‘slogany’ thinking is easy — it’s like the demagogue’s appeal. Differentiating oneself from the opposition significantly as opposed to being more moderate probably appeals to the ‘us vs them’ tribal nature we carry around with us. There’s probably ways our political system amplifies these tendencies and reinforces them. There’s probably more to it than this, but I suspect this is a piece.

  290. Sigh. Christie is working hard (with a lot of success) to drag the debate down into the mud. I guess he is comfortable there.
    .
    Vivek to Haley: “Foreign policy experience is not foreign policy wisdom”. Spot on.
    .
    Christie to Vivek: “You are the most obnoxious blowhard in America”. Yeah, look in a mirror Chris.

  291. Vivek is off the rails.
    “Gov Haley, would you like to respond?”
    “No. It’s not worth my time”.
    .
    Give her points for that one.

  292. john ferguson,
    “But it is clear that we have serious problems at the primary level in both parties where gerrymandering had given the control to the craziest constituents. It is certainly a problem with the GOP as much as it is with tht Dems.”
    .
    Absolutely, and I was not trying to suggest it is only dems with this problem. Anywhere that a primary election essentially chooses the office-holder there is a high probability that only the most extreme (and motivated) of voters in the dominant party will actually choose the officeholder. These districts/states are poorly represented (since most people do not share the extreme views) and make rational compromise only more difficult.

  293. SteveF (Comment #226997): “Anywhere that a primary election essentially chooses the office-holder there is a high probability that only the most extreme (and motivated) of voters in the dominant party will actually choose the officeholder.”
    .
    Except that does not seem to be the case, at least not always. Many deep red states (like Texas, Wyoming, and South Carolina) struggle to pass things like school choice that are high on the conservative agenda. What seems to happen is that the moderates in those states tend to vote in Republican primaries giving so-called “RINO’s” a good chance of getting elected (think of Liz Cheney).
    .
    So far as I know, the corresponding phenomenon does not occur in deep blue states. But maybe that just indicates the limitation of my knowledge.

  294. Mike M,
    There will be exceptions, of course, but in general, a solidly Dem or Republican district will be decided by the most extreme/motivated of the dominant party in a primary election.

  295. mark bofill (Comment #226988) what we often see is what, I’ve heard called, ‘nut picking’. It is like cherry picking only the data that supports your argument. People pick the nuts, the crazies, on the other side of a debate to attack ignoring those on the other side that might say something sensible or logical.

  297. “If anything resembling a normal political environment existed in the United States, Ukraine’s battlefield successes to date would be trumpeted as an enormous return on investment.
    “Russia has lost over 2,500 tanks, according to open-source trackers, and has been reduced to pulling 70-year-old relics from deep storage to make up for their disastrous losses. The most capable and highly trained units in Russia’s military — including the VDV airborne forces that spearheaded Russia’s blitzkrieg on Hostomel airport on day one of the invasion, and the Fourth Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division that was bogged down around Sumy — have been decimated. Whatever the amount of investment Putin makes in Russia’s military, rebuilding it to pre-February 2022 strength – even in simple terms of materiel — will likely take at least a decade.”

  299. Russel,
    I do like people bombing Rotten Tomatoes before the movies comes out. It doesn’t even matter where on the woke-not woke spectrum the outcome was. It’s just hilarious to prove that these ratings systems are subject to bombing.

  301. The insurge of migrants is keeping the American economy buoyant but at what cost.
    The polls seem to be on a little upwards march against Biden and those women leading all the top Universities seem so divorced from reality.
    Here’s hoping for a a good Xmas present.

  302. john ferguson (Comment #227005)
    “Russell, it’s a whole lot worse than decimated (1 in 10?)”
    John, only the Russian military knows, and they aren’t talking [and we wouldn’t believe them if they did].
    The 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division hasn’t been a factor anywhere since their defeat early in the war in the Sumy region.
    Generative AI:
    “The 4th Guards Kantemirovskaya Tank Division was an elite armored division of the Russian Ground Forces. It was one of the two elite tank divisions defending Moscow. “
    Photos of the carnage showed they were using the latest T-80 main battle tank equipped with Drozd active protection system. They were defeated by the “93rd Mechanised Brigade Kholodnyi Yar, with the help of territorial defence forces and local partisans”. They were using outdated Ukrainian armor and artillery but were augmented with modern man-portable anti-tank weapons from the West, like the US Javalin missle. The Russians had superior air power but the Ukrainians had superior satellite and electronic surveillance from NATO aircraft. The Ukrainian artillery was being assisted by 100,000 Ukrainian citizens with cell phones.
    I am left with only questions, no answers:
    Were the Ukrainian soldiers better trained, disciplined, motivated, and led than the Russian soldiers? I think so.
    Are traditional tank divisions no longer useful on the modern battlefield? Maybe.

  303. I haven’t seen “Napolean” yet. But foreign affairs has an interesting take. It disicusses how the movie (and many books) mischaracterize war. The article is explaining that wars are not won (or lost) by “decisive battles”.

    No matter what these works have taught us to think, the decisive battle is a myth. Wars between major powers are not decided by great battles but by attrition of soldiers and materiel, which in turn is determined by such things as force size, logistics, production, and technology. Battles, large and small, are important only to the extent to which they accelerate attrition and wear down the other side. Yet the myth of the decisive battle—the idea that an adversary can be defeated in one big and bloody but short engagement—remains powerful. It’s also dangerous, because it affects not only ordinary moviegoers but military and political leaders as well. In other words, the very people deciding whether to start and how to fight a war.

    It has a paragraph commenting on Putin falling for the “decisive battel” myth when invading Ukraine.

    More recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin thought one decisive push toward Kyiv in early 2022 would quickly and painlessly conquer Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, the grinding war goes on.

    https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/12/02/napoleon-ridley-scott-review-movie-battle-military-historical-accuracy-myth/

  304. angech,
    “…those women leading all the top Universities seem so divorced from reality.”
    .
    It was almost painful to watch; they clearly sold their souls to the DEI Devil long ago.
    .
    But I think you have to remember that these university leaders effectively serve at the pleasure of the tenured faculty, who can move quickly to force anyone out of their job if they deviate from the approved political narrative (just ask Larry Summers!). My guess is nothing will change on campuses unless Congress makes the spending of Federal funds (student loans, research funding, tax exempt status, etc) conditional on colleges and universities allowing truly free speech on campus, with sensible, minimalist rules uniformly applied to everyone: left, right and center.
    .
    Unfortunately, the chance of that happening seems small. But each embarrassing performance like we saw this week from those three ‘leaders’ increases that chance.

  305. It might be useful to see a sample of rules-in-force and penalties for mispeak at say Harvard. It may be an exageration but I think you can find yourself in trouble for not guessing a pronoun right.
    .
    Or when asked your race, writing “Marine Marathon”

  306. Lucia,
    During WWII in the Pacific, both Yamamoto and Bull Halsey believed in the “Decisive Battle” theory… They raced all over the Pacific and never found it.

  307. Russell,
    I’m not a war history buff. But my impression is General Washington knew war was about attrition. His prime objective was not having his troops obliterated.

  308. Russell Klier (Comment #227013): “During WWII in the Pacific, both Yamamoto and Bull Halsey believed in the “Decisive Battle” theory… They raced all over the Pacific and never found it.”
    .
    What about Midway?

    I suppose you could argue that was about attrition since Japan was unable to replace their lost aircraft carriers.

  309. Well, well. Wall Street Journal:
    “Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan—who chairs the Wharton School’s advisory board—said in October he would halt further donations to his alma mater unless Magill and Bok were removed. Diplomat Jon Huntsman Jr., said his family would halt contributions, and cosmetics tycoon Ronald S. Lauder sent a letter in October saying he was reconsidering future gifts.

    On Thursday, financier Ross Stevens said he would rescind a $100 million donation made in 2017 unless Magill was ousted.”
    .
    Followed by:
    .
    “The president of the University of Pennsylvania (McGill) and the chairman of its board of trustees (Bok) resigned Saturday, capping a tumultuous week at the Ivy League school stemming from statements the president made about antisemitism at a congressional hearing Tuesday.”
    .
    Or in the common vernacular: money talks, moronic bullshit walks. Still, I think it is the first sensible thing I can remember an Ivy has done in a very long time. May the other two moral morons at the Congressional hearing soon meet the same fait.

  310. The problem with the U Penn firings is that they have a near infinite supply of equally woke idiots to take the place of the newly departed. If this is to be more than mere public posturing by the likes of Rowan and Huntsman, they will have to insist an a very different type of replacement.

  311. Mike,
    At Midway, the Japanese thought they were going to destroy what was left of the US fleet and that might have been their “decisive battle”. It went the wrong way and did turn the tide of battle, but did not end the war.

  312. Mike M,
    Let’s hope Huntsman et al do insist on very different replacements. They have the financial power to insist on that. It is not clear they have the courage (intestinal fortitude?) to take the resulting social heat they would inevitably suffer if they insist on real change.
    .
    It was kind of nice to see Harvard grad Rep Stefanik skewer the three moral midgets. They all had a deer-in-the-headlights reaction to a simple question with an absolutely obvious answer, and they confirmed they are exactly as immoral as their campus policies suggest.

  313. Mike/Russell,
    But isn’t one reason the Japanese thought Midway would be decisive in their direction is they didn’t imagine The Yorktown would be back in service? They had some justification in thinking the US had already suffered enough attrition for the battle to be a final decisive one.
    .
    Then Nimitz did got the Yorktown up and running and brought it along and used it to some good advantage.
    .
    And of course it was awfully bad luck for them we’d partially broken their code.
    But…well… we also caught some breaks at Midway.
    .
    I’m sure “decisive battles” do happen from time to time. But it’s natural for these to be overblown in movies. They are so useful to movie plots. Mostly war is just hell.

  317. Battle of Midway, Japanese Perspective
    This is an interesting three-part dissertation on the Battle from the Japanese perspective, and the need for the elusive “Decisive Battle”. I learned quite a bit from looking at the battle from the other side. [It will take a couple of hours]
    https://youtu.be/Bd8_vO5zrjo?si=kZZVtvAqPOerWx3o

  320. I just rewatched those Midway Youtube videos I linked above because it’s been several years since I had seen them. I really recommend it if you are interested in learning the details of the battle. The timelines and situations that led to the Japanese admiral’s decisions are thoroughly explained and laid out on maps. The final outcome is a mixture of luck, happenstance and military decisions made by both sides. The producer is a military history guy, not a Hollywood type.
    https://youtu.be/Bd8_vO5zrjo?si=kZZVtvAqPOerWx3o

  321. Okay statistics geeks…. This is a statistical analysis verifying the Ukrainian reports of Russian battle causalities . I have no idea if he knows what he is talking about but the Russian KIA and WIA reported by the Ukrainians are astronomical.

  323. After a couple of years, I just rewatched the Midway Battle from the American commander’s perspective. If you are curious as to the tactics, happenstance, and outcome this is the cliff notes version. It takes 21 minutes. Well worth your time.
    “The Battle of Midway: The American Perspective and The Strategic Consequences of the Battle (3/3)”
    https://youtu.be/WHO6xrSF7Sw?si=7vG517hq24pw7t7R
    The narrator uses copious maps and displays the battle as it unfolds from the American Admiral’s perspective. You see and know what he sees and knows—a refreshing approach.
    If you have 1-½ hours watch the whole thing:
    Battle of Midway, Japanese Perspective
    This is an interesting three-part dissertation on the Battle from the Japanese perspective. I learned quite a bit from looking at the battle from the other side.
    https://youtu.be/Bd8_vO5zrjo?si=kZZVtvAqPOerWx3o

  325. Lucia,
    I am thinking of finally doing a follow-up on the (insane!) seal level rise projections (Rhamsdorf et al) of 10 years ago. Can you send to me a private email with instructions to author a post?

  326. Babylon Bee:
    Claudine Gay Responds To Plagiarism Accusations By Giving Inspiring ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech buff.ly/3uTh9nk

  327. I got the new RSV vax yesterday. So far just a little sick, similar side effects to the flu vax.

  328. One can get a fairly good overview on how well either Ukraine or Russia is doing in their war by which side is declaring the conflict a stalemate or pushing for a ceasefire.
    .
    As its Ukraine supporters who are vocal on both declaring the conflict a stalemate and pushing for an immediate ceasefire, I would say that Russian prospects look pretty good.
    .
    I still see the current war attrition of continuing until the Ukraine army collapses. The Russian artillery and air superiority continues to widen and Russia sees no reason to kick the can down the road and allow NATO time to rebuild and rearm Ukraine.
    .
    With NATO admitting that they lied to Russia on implementing the Minsk accords on Ukraine, Russia has no reason to trust any assurances made by NATO. The currency of diplomacy is trust, and NATO flushed their currency down the toilet.

  329. Ed Forbes,
    “Ukraine supporters who are vocal on both declaring the conflict a stalemate and pushing for an immediate ceasefire”
    No, they are not. European NATO countries are adamant in their support for the Ukrainian war effort. Also in support are the US President and a majority of the US Congress. Only Trumpsters and some Conservatives are opposed to aid, and I haven’t even seen them big for a ceasefire. I think that is just another Kremlin disinformation talking point.
    “The Russian artillery and air superiority continues to widen”
    While the Russian Air Force is, for the time being, superior to the Ukrainian Air Force, the Russian Air Force is reluctant to engage. They, for the most part, remain on the ground far from the front…. Out of HIMARS range. Change is in the wind. The F-16 air armada will be a game-changer.
    The artillery tide has long since changed. Ukrainian artillery and rockets are more plentiful, longer range, and more accurate. Recent article:
    “Russia’s Rising Artillery Losses in Ukraine Leave Forces ‘Totally Depleted”
    “For the last five months or so, Russia has very actively been using old-style artillery. Not late-Soviet era, but mid-50s and mid-60s—D30 and the D20-type of towed artillery, with a maximum range of around 9 to 11 miles,” Stupak said.”
    https://www.newsweek.com/russia-rising-artillery-losses-ukraine-totally-depleted-shells-1846415

  330. Ed Forbes,
    .
    The fatal weakness in your suggestion that the relative situation of each of the combatants can be appraised by comparing public observartions is that the environments in which such public statements are made are not equivalent.
    .
    What you suggest might work if freedom of speech were equivalent on both sides. Do you really think it is?

  331. US Intelligence has released an assessment of Russian losses. Their NATO counterparts did this a few weeks ago. The conclusions are similar:
    WASHINGTON, Dec 12 (Reuters) – A declassified U.S. intelligence report assessed that the Ukraine war has cost Russia 315,000 dead and injured troops, or nearly 90% of the personnel it had when the conflict began, a source familiar with the intelligence said on Tuesday.
    The report also assessed that Moscow’s losses in personnel and armored vehicles to Ukraine’s military have set back Russia’s military modernization by 18 years, the source said.
    Russia has also sustained huge losses in equipment, with 2,200 tanks destroyed out of a force of 3,500 even bringing 50-year-old T-62 tanks onto the battlefield.
    https://www.reuters.com/world/us-intelligence-assesses-ukraine-war-has-cost-russia-315000-casualties-source-2023-12-12/
    https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russia-suffered-dramatic-casualties-ukraine-us-intelligence-says-rcna129354

  332. US intelligence bases their public statements on what Ukraine gives them. The same people who unapologetically gave us ” The Ghost of Kiev “. As Ukraine admits to lying to bolster morale, why should anything coming out from them be accepted as fact?
    .
    The US government also gives out “misinformation ” (lies) to further its own agenda. This technique is common to all sides in war. It will be years after the war ends before any true assessments can be made. There are still arguments over areas of WWII and this conflict is fast approaching 100 ys in the past.
    .

  334. John
    Not necessarily BS to BS
    .
    There are a number of open source items one can realistically assume as true.
    .
    Russia is much a much larger state with a much larger population than Ukraine.
    .
    Ukraine has effectively no internal arms manufacturing and is totally dependent on foreign arms manufacturers where Russia has had a robust military export economy for decades.
    .
    All sides concur that Russia has a considerable superiority in artillery, artillery ammunition, and air force.
    .
    Wars of attrition favor states with the larger resource and military manufacturing base. all sides concur that Russia is outbuilding NATO, the major suppliers of military equipment to Ukraine.
    .
    Casualties in a war with both sides entrenched see the major cause of casualties from artillery.

    As the above all favor Russia, and by large amounts, projecting that Russia is at a major advantage over Ukraine should not be controversial. It takes much more proof than self serving propaganda to move the needle on these facts.

  335. Ed Forbes,
    “US intelligence bases their public statements on what Ukraine gives them.”
    Verifiably wrong! Ukraine MOD estimates Russian tank Losses at 5,682. US intelligence estimated 2,200 and Independently verified [ORYX] Russian tank losses [minimum] 2,541 [Through October 1, 2023] Note this 341 More than US intelligence estimates
    From ORYX:
    “Russian Tanks (2541, of which destroyed: 1668, damaged: 141, abandoned: 185, captured: 547)”
    “This list only includes destroyed vehicles and equipment of which photo or videographic evidence is available. Therefore, the amount of equipment destroyed is significantly higher than recorded here.”
    Attack On Europe: Documenting Russian Equipment Losses During The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine
    https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html

  336. From the Kyiv Independent, (I have no verification of this):
    “Ukrainian cyber units hacked into thousands of servers of Russia’s tax system, extracting sensitive information before destroying the tax database, Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) said on Dec. 12.
    According to HUR, defense ministry and military intelligence cyber units hacked into the central server of the Federal Tax Service, as well as 2,300 regional servers in Russia and Russian-occupied Crimea, infecting them with malware.
    The entire database of the tax system was destroyed, as well as backup copies, HUR said. Intelligence suggests that “Russia will not be able to fully resuscitate its tax system.”
    How does a government function if it’s tax system is destroyed? ….especially a country where fraud and duplicity is the norm!
    https://kyivindependent.com/military-intelligence-hacks-russian-tax-authorities/

  337. Ed Forbes,

    Wars of attrition favor states with the larger resource and military manufacturing base.

    Sure. Everyone accepts that this as the reason the British beat the Colonies during the American revolution. 🙂

  338. Ed Forbes

    With NATO admitting that they lied to Russia on implementing the Minsk accords on Ukraine, Ru

    What precisely did NATO admit? Do you have a link with precise quotes of what “NATO” admitted? Listing specific? (Real questions.)

  339. Ed Forbes (Comment #227043): “Wars of attrition favor states with the larger resource and military manufacturing base.”
    .
    Which is why the US eventually won in Vietnam and the Afghans eventually lost to both Russia and the US. Or not.
    .
    The US estimates of Russian loses do not come from the Ukrainians. Those claims are much larger. For instance 341,500 Russians killed and 5682 Russian tanks destroyed.

  340. On the Minsk agreements, quite a bit was written. Goggle is your friend.
    .
    Quite a bit was written on this at the time. This was cover heavily at the time.

    One article

    https://news.yahoo.com/putin-disappointed-merkels-words-minsk-140859136.html
    .
    “The former Chancellor recently said that the Minsk Agreements, signed in 2014, had given Ukraine “precious time” to become stronger, and the results of this could now be seen. She emphasised that Ukraine in 2014-2015 was very different from Ukraine today.”
    .
    Details: Putin stated that Merkel’s words meant that he had done “everything right” by starting the war in Ukraine.

    “Quote: “It appears to me that nobody planned to live up to these Minsk agreements… They [the participants – ed.] lied to us, and the only reason for these processes was to pump Ukraine up with weapons and get it ready for military action. Well, we can see that. Maybe we were too late to realise what was happening. Maybe this [the war – ed.] should have been started earlier.””
    .
    “

  341. Wars are politics by other means.

    The examples given above of mismatched states with the stronger losing wars were political defeats, not military defeats.
    .
    The US won EVERY significant battle In Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq with the vast majority of casualties suffered by the enemies of the US. The US was not forced out of any of these states by FORCE The US lost the political will to continue occupations where the US had no overreaching strategic interests and the costs outweighed the benefits.
    .
    The American revolution was won by the US against the British due to the British colonial administration having always been at a net loss. No such calculations existed in the British control of India where the real money was located. Britain retained control of India until Britain was weakened and lost its great power status at the end of WWII. If the colonies produced an equivalent amount of positive cash flow as did the holdings in India, America would have lost their war as happened several times to Indian aspirations for freedom from the British.
    .
    Russia perceives Ukraine to be of vital strategic interest. As such, Russia is prepared to expend vast amounts of blood and treasure to secure these strategic interests.

  342. Ed Forbes,
    “Russia perceives Ukraine to be of vital strategic interest. As such, Russia is prepared to expend vast amounts of blood and treasure to secure these strategic interests.”
    To secure these “strategic interests” Russia has also:
    -Lost it’s lucrative energy deals with Europe
    -Has Finland as a NATO next-door neighbor
    -Soon to have Sweden in the NATO fold
    -Relinquished control of the Baltic Sea to NATO
    -Has Europe arming for war, particularly Germany and Poland
    -Has the arms industry in the West in high gear
    -Has sanctions that cripple his own arms industry
    -Has Ukraine and NATO joined at the hip

  343. Ed Forbes

    “The former Chancellor recently said that the Minsk Agreements….

    I’d seen that article. But it doesn’t show what you claimed. First: Angela Merkle is not “NATO”. Second: She doesn’t even say NATO lied. Third: Putin complaining about what Merkle said doesn’t mean NATO lied.
    .
    If you make a claim, you should show your specific claim is true.

  344. Ed Forbes: From the excerpt you supplied, it is *Putin* who claims that NATO did not intend to live up to the Minsk agreement.

    Quite a bit different from your claim that NATO admitted they didn’t plan to live up to the agreements.

    Further googling, Wikipedia [yes, I know] says:

    On 15 February 2022, the Russian Duma voted to appeal to President Putin to recognise the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR.[113] The next day, a Russian government spokesman acknowledged that officially recognising the Donbas republics would not be in keeping with the Minsk agreements.[114] However, he also told journalists that Putin’s priority in regulating the situation in Donbas is the implementation of mechanisms adopted under those agreements.[115] Russia went on to officially recognise the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics on 21 February 2022.[9] Following that decision, on 22 February 2022, President Putin said that the Minsk agreements “no longer existed”, and that Ukraine, not Russia, was to blame for their collapse, accusing Ukraine of genocide in Donbas in his comments[116][117][10] – a statement largely seen as baseless and factually wrong by the wider world, academics studying genocide, and the United Nations.[118][119][120][121] Russia then invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.[11]

    Again, not supportive of bad faith on *NATO’s* part. As a matter of fact, NATO was not even a signatory to those agreements.

  345. The US, British, France, and Germany are all NATO when it comes to dealing with Russia.
    .
    As Lord Ismay said at NATO’s founding, it is to keep the US in, Russia out and Germany down.

  346. Ed Forbes,
    “The US, British, France, and Germany are all NATO when it comes to dealing with Russia.”
    Russia is over as a conventional military power.
    The great boon that Russia has given to the US has been the ascendancy of European NATO military power. This, combined with the shredding of Russia’s military, means Russia is no longer a threat to Europe, WITHOUT US forces.
    All of the military hardware Europe gave to Ukraine is being replaced with newer and better armaments…eg F-35s, Bradleys, Apaches, Javalins, HIMARS, Patriots… The US military manufacturing sector is gearing up for the long haul.
    And if Russia looks to rebuild its conventional forces, it only has a GDP equivalent to Italy; Europe will outspend it… on superior US arms.
    Russia is over as a conventional military power.

  347. Ed

    The US, British, France, and Germany are all NATO when it comes to dealing with Russia.

    Angela Merkle isn’t even “Germany”. One person from one country saying something vague is not NATO admitting anything!
    .
    Keep making silly claims and people will take your claims less and less seriously.

  348. Lucia,
    For Harry and Meghan the ‘Annus Horribilis’ is ending poorly. The Hollywood Reporter has named them to their ‘Biggest Losers’ of the year:
    “But after a whiny Netflix documentary, a whiny biography (Spare — even the title is a pouty gripe) and an inert podcast, the Harry and Meghan brand swelled into a sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped — and South Park was the pin.”
    https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/hollywood-winners-losers-2023-1235712279/
    Clip from the South Park take-down ‘The Worldwide Privacy Tour’:
    https://youtu.be/2N8_5LDkZwY?si=q0OvIuhJpBXOTR4K

  351. Tom Scharf,
    Too long. And repetitive. Could have said everything in 1/3 the space. The odd thing is that he seemed genuinely surprised how biased and dishonest the NYTs had become. It had been obvious to most people many years ago.

  352. Steve,
    I thought that too, but I wasn’t sure of my impressions. But surely it wasn’t new in 2020 that the NYT was hopelessly leftward biased, was it? I didn’t think so either although I can’t cite any specific supporting stories or incidents.

  353. He left out the 2016 article by I think the publisher himself that was front page saying journalists had to drop objectivity to beat Trump.

  354. mark,
    I know I’d gotten some telemarketer trying to sell me the NYT. I said no. They said why and I told them it wasn’t a good paper sometime after I moved back to Illinois– but long ago. So likely in the ’00s.
    .
    There was that story of the reporter who just made up stuff? And got caught? Can’t remember the name. But their process doesn’t catch stuff.

  355. Jayson Blair
    https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/11/us/correcting-the-record-times-reporter-who-resigned-leaves-long-trail-of-deception.html

    CORRECTING THE RECORD; Times Reporter Who Resigned Leaves Long Trail of Deception
    .
    A staff reporter for The New York Times committed frequent acts of journalistic fraud while covering significant news events in recent months, an investigation by Times journalists has found. The widespread fabrication and plagiarism represent a profound betrayal of trust and a low point in the 152-year history of the newspaper.

    The reporter, Jayson Blair, 27, misled readers and Times colleagues with dispatches that purported to be from Maryland, Texas and other states, when often he was far away, in New York. He fabricated comments. He concocted scenes. He lifted material from other newspapers and wire services. He selected details from photographs to create the impression he had been somewhere or seen someone, when he had not.
    […]

  356. Thanks Lucia! So I’m not crazy. Well, I might be crazy, but my recollections here probably aren’t evidence of that.

  357. mark bofill (Comment #227061): “But surely it wasn’t new in 2020 that the NYT was hopelessly leftward biased, was it? I didn’t think so either although I can’t cite any specific supporting stories or incidents.”
    .
    Their leftward editorial bias has long been evident, but I don’t think it became all inclusive until Trump. That is when they dropped even the pretense of objectivity. It was especially obvious in their coverage of Russia! Russia! Russia!.
    .
    I think the editorial to which MikeN (Comment #227062) refers happened a couple years into Trump’s term, not in 2016.

  359. Joshua,
    I haven’t quite decided if I think Milei is a nut or if he’s on the right track. The two things aren’t necessarily exclusive I guess. I haven’t been following very closely though.

  360. Mark –

    I haven’t been following closely either but what little I’ve seen makes be think it’s pretty clear he’s a nut, even outside the political aspects.

    Of course we’d likely disagree on the political aspects but I have to say I’m pretty surprised you’d give his politics the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I need to look more but he seems pretty starkly like a hardline authoritarian – not the type I’d think would appeal to someone with some libertarian sympathies.

  361. Is he? Sorry, like I said, I haven’t been following very closely. I wasn’t aware of that. I’ll go read a bit in a little bit.

  365. Joshua,
    I’m not quite gullible enough to take either what politicians or reporters claim at face value, so I start off with a certain amount of uncertainty as to what the heck is really going on. But just for the sake of argument and acknowledging that this may have little to do with the facts on the ground in Argentina, I don’t know that I have any fundamental problem with governments preventing people from blocking the streets.

  366. It’s too late in the year for this s*it!
    A low-pressure system is heading my way off the Gulf of Mexico. It’s probably not going to be severe and this storm is probably more related to the El Nino in the Pacific than Global Warming in the Gulf.
    NOAA Storm Prediction Center:
    “However, highest severe probabilities may ultimately become focused near and just inland of coastal areas between Tampa and Fort Myers Saturday evening, and near/offshore east central and southeast coastal areas overnight, where low-level forcing and destabilization will be most favorable.”
    https://www.spc.noaa.gov/products/outlook/day2otlk.html

  367. Milei had a long interview with Tucker Carlson (with live translation). He didn’t seem too crazy during the interview. He made it clear he thinks the left is consistently destructive.

  368. Mark –

    > , I don’t know that I have any fundamental problem with governments preventing people from blocking the streets.
    .
    I can understand that. But as you suggest, increased authoritarian positioning by politicians can obviously be problematic and all of that. I’d say maybe particularly in countries with a history of authoritarian extremism.
    .
    There’s a whole lot of room for movement there; they say they will temper the use of force in proportion to the level of resistance, but announcing such an explicit intent suggests to me much potential for escalation. Especially given the fairly dramatic economic steps they’ve taken. I dunno the answer exactly but my general response is a sarcastic “What could go wrong?”, especially since he lacks anything approaching a legislative majority and won with a large voting percentage but only in a second round runoff (against the finance minister of the existing government with a 1000% inflation) after doing pretty poorly in the first round.
    .
    Looks to me like potential “recipe for disaster” is pretty high, and I’m inclined not to trust strongarm decrees from politicians, particularly in such circumstances.
    .
    Do you think you’d have a different inclination if it were a leftwing government with a questionable public mandate and level support?
    ..
    I wonder how much this could come down to priors. For all my disagreement with many who self-identify as libertarian (not saying you do), I do think they sometimes look as askance at this kind of scenario across the political spectrum.

  369. So far, the biggest ‘red flag’ I bump into consists of allegations that he’s some sort of apologist for the junta of the 70’s and the Dirty War. But once again, the devil is in the details. It’d take me a lot more reading to form a strong opinion here.
    [Edit: Sorry. link here]

  370. Joshua,
    Sorry, cross posted.

    Looks to me like potential “recipe for disaster” is pretty high, and I’m inclined not to trust strongarm decrees from politicians, particularly in such circumstances.

    I agree with you there. From the second article you linked, it seemed the government was going to create some sort of new security force from four different sources – right there, that alone smacks of naivety if not incompetence. There’s a lot of work that’d have to go into coordination, training, communication, etc. and there’s a lot that could honestly go wrong there, even if everyone had only the most noble intentions. Also, more generally, there is going to be a lot of short term pain involved with Milei’s remedies and people are not going to go with him quietly.

    Do you think you’d have a different inclination if it were a lefteonf government with a questionable public mandate and level of support?

    So I would like to first reiterate that I don’t think I’ve really expressed much in the way of support for this guy in the first place.
    But this said, to avoid dodging your question, I will say yes. I am predisposed to view leftist governments in a more negative light than others, there’s no real doubt there. I am after all not a leftist, for various reasons.

  371. Joshua,
    As the son of Cuban political asylum seekers and refugees, I have been raised with a worldview that leftism particularly in Latin America is anathema and is essentially synonymous with oppression and tyranny. The conclusions my parents raised me with given their first hand experiences with Castro seem as good a set of priors as any, and maybe more informed than most.

  372. Mark –
    .
    Good catch there. No, you did reserve judgement and I just projected your support.
    .
    And my awareness of your background is prolly to some degree why I projected that.
    .
    So the remaining question for me would be how to we distill principles here for assessment rather than just being prisoners of our priors. As you support, the first step would necessarily be a thorough investigation.

  373. ~grins~
    Setting aside for a minute whether or not Milei is an authoritarian who is going to trample human rights or whatever, there is also the question as to whether or not we think his economic agenda will be successful. I’m equally (possibly more interested, honestly) interested in that as well.
    [I gotta run. I don’t always run when I’m supposed to. But I’m going to make some effort to be good right now. BBL!]

  374. .Lucia “Angela Merkle isn’t even “Germany”. One person from one country saying something vague is not NATO admitting anything!”
    .
    Merkle is much more than “one person from one county” for the Minsk agreements .
    .
    .The leaders of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France, and Ukraine at the 11–12 February 2015 summit in Minsk, Belarus
    .
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsk_agreements#/media/File:Normandy_format_talks_in_Minsk_(February_2015)_03.jpeg

  375. Joshua, Mark,
    .
    To me it looks like those on the left (and especially those on the left who Milei says he will put out of a job), are going to “protest” endlessly and do their best to disrupt any and all changes that Milei might attempt. I am reminded of the “resistance” protests following Trump’s election in 2016. Whether or not the government’s response is sensible (and legal!) remains to be seem. But I do not at all trust the reporting of people who are sympathetic to the protesters and adamantly opposed to Milei…. any more than I trust the NYTs to report stories accurately.

  376. mark,
    “….is anathema and is essentially synonymous with oppression and tyranny.”
    .
    Yes, on this we completely agree. I have seen the left do terrible damage to both personal liberty and overall economic wellbeing.

  377. Steve,
    Maybe I should have said communism instead of leftism or leftist. I guess all communists are leftists but not all leftists are communists.
    I don’t think it is controversial anymore to say that communism in the 20’th century was terribly destructive to personal liberty and economic wellbeing. As it happens, in Latin America it seems that leftists governments often were explicitly supportive of communism or espoused communist ideals, so I feel like in this discussion there may be enough overlap to ‘go there’, so to speak.
    On the other hand and unfortunately for me, I am not well versed in Peronism or the history of Argentina, so I’m not terribly comfortable generalizing about it as of yet.

  379. Despite the un American repression of free speech [banning the communist party] which seemed a good idea at the time, most if not all political movements, parties and ideas are actually directed at helping the majority of people they push these ideas towards.
    –
    Often forgotten or obliterated because of the bad things that all parties do when they get into power which are basically against the principles they promote.
    –
    It does not matter whether left or right wing, people in power trample on those with opposite views.
    –
    The idea that left wing ideas go along with suppression of rights is historical and cannot be denied but is not due to left wing ideas per se but due to the manner of implementation of said ideas.
    –
    Javier has cut ministries from 18 to 9, great , devalued the peso,good, and put his sister in charge of one of them, nepotism..
    –
    El Nino is over as of today, you heard it here first, even beat Russel to the punchline.

  380. mark bofill,
    “not all leftists are communists”
    .
    True, but I think it is in the region of splitting hairs. What is clear is that anyone who believes they are absolutely correct, and so will not compromise (and this includes most all of the “left” and communists), is therefore willing to do most anything to impose their values/politics on everyone. There are a few on the right who think the same way, but they are indeed few and completely lack political power.
    .
    The real danger to liberty today is consistently from the left and from religious fanatics; mostly Muslims. Of course, “religious fanatics” can describe many on the left as well, as the recent events on college campuses show…. there is not a sliver of daylight between the crazy left in the USA that chants “from the river to the sea…” and the Hamas rulers who throw people from rooftops for being “apostates” of one sort or another; intolerance is intolerance.

  381. angech,
    “….but due to the manner of implementation of said ideas”
    .
    Please. That is pure nonsense right out of the mindless people in the faculty lounge at Yale… it’s the “communism has never actually been tried”…. argument. All the ideas of the left are contrary to human nature, and every effort to implement them is bound to lead to a totalitarian nightmare, something we have seen over and over again around the world.

  382. Steve,
    While I get where you’re coming from, I don’t know that I’d draw the lines quite the same way. But I do understand the sentiment, I think, and why you say that.

  383. Rudy is in deep doo-doo:
    “Jury Orders Giuliani to Pay $148 Million to Election Workers He Defamed”
    He had been having financial difficulties before this judgment. I bet he rolls over in the Fulton County case against Trump. He is one of the co-defendants who still hadn’t cut a deal. There were two big fish left who might turn on Trump. I don’t see how Rudy will have any choice now.
    https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/15/us/politics/rudy-giuliani-defamation-trial-damages.html

  384. SteveF (Comment #227090)
    “Please.
    That is pure nonsense right out of the mindless people in the faculty lounge at Yale… it’s the “communism has never actually been tried”…. argument”.
    –
    The “Its the context” argument.
    I will leave it alone.
    I note your previous comments on Trump [way back] getting a bump with the Democrat trials but still being unelectable.
    Do you still hold that view if he runs against Biden?

  385. angech,
    It is a very long way from the election, and prediction is hard, as they say. Biden does his best with every incompetent decision and foolish policy to help Trump get elected. This has helped Trump poll better, but even with a dementia patient as his opponent, Trump has very high unfavorable ratings, and a huge number of people will never vote for him, regardless of his opponent. If Trump is a candidate, the election will very likely come down to half a dozen ‘swing states’ that will be decided by a percent or less of the votes. Could Trump win? Sure. Is it likely? I’d still say there is less than 50% chance. But things can change.

  386. SteveF, I am very much a leftist. I am not a communist and in fact I loathe communism.

    You also write, ““religious fanatics” can describe many on the left as well, as the recent events on college campuses show…. there is not a sliver of daylight between the crazy left in the USA that chants “from the river to the sea…” and the Hamas rulers who throw people from rooftops for being “apostates” of one sort or another; intolerance is intolerance.”

    There might be even more than a sliver of daylight between the two, actually.

  387. Tom Fuller,
    In your view, what does it mean to be a leftist? Real question, and thanks in advance should you choose to offer an answer.

  390. What do I think it means to be a leftist? I’m not certain, in part because I don’t think I am one. I can’t define it very precisely. It seems to me to be a combination or rough union of possibly unrelated characteristics:
    1) Leftists tend to advocate for social and economic changes to ‘increase equality’ or egalitarianism, at least from their perspective.
    2) Leftists tend to oppose traditional hierarchical structures, this seems to often relate to #1
    3) Leftists tend to oppose capitalism. Possibly the free market in general? I’m not quite clear on this item.
    4) Leftists tend to champion the oppressed or minorities, at least from their perspective.
    .
    Thanks for the link.
    [Edit: Leftists tend to be more radical or extreme than liberals in the pursuits of the items identified above?]

  391. Did the addition of the qualifier ‘tend to’ make my statement too weak? Rereading it I sort of think so. Maybe I should have said, GENERALLY SPEAKING:
    .
    1) Leftists advocate for social and economic changes to ‘increase equality’ or egalitarianism, at least from their perspective.
    2) Leftists oppose traditional hierarchical structures, this seems to often relate to #1
    3) Leftists oppose capitalism. Possibly the free market in general? I’m not quite clear on this item.
    4) Leftists champion the oppressed or minorities, at least from their perspective.
    .
    Better?

  392. Thanks Mark –
    .
    Re:#3 in particular, I think the definition of “free market” makes that one a bit tricky.
    .
    Inherently, “leftist” has an aspect of being relative, imo. It’s to some degree a location on a scale (as would “rightist” or “centrist”). That adds a tricky aspect.
    .
    As I think you know, I find these terms of dubious utility outside of marking in- and out-groups for largely tribal purposes. That given, as someone who’s broadly comfortable with a label of “leftist.” I find your list acceptable as a limited slice of inclusion/exclusion criteria. Again, even there, I think it’s more useful to see those criteria on a scale rather than as absolute metrics.

  393. Sorry, cross posted. I will take your comment 227101 to refer to 227099 rather than 227100. Not that there is a ton of difference. 😉

  394. Re the interview with Nimrod, the one broad piece I found problematic was the paternalistic or condescending nature of some of his syntax. I can look beyond that somewhat surface aspect to focus on the deeper content and I suppose he’d use different language if interacting with a Palestinian directly, but I don’t think anyone would get very far with his ideas (except unilaterally) if using such language with Palestinians. I was kind of surprised that he seemed insensitive to that issue.

  395. [Edit: Talking about leftism here, not Nimrod / Israel]
    Nobody likes to take a firm stand anymore and nail down and explicitly define their own position, seems to me. I blame a lot of stuff on postmodernists. Can I blame this on them too? Maybe it’s a bridge too far. I get it; once something is fully articulated and defined, it’s closed. It’s vulnerable to review and refutation, to deconstruction. It is much more difficult to attack something when nobody can say exactly what that something is, so ambiguity has some defensive utility. Still, it hampers good faith analysis, IMO.

  396. Mark –
    .
    No, I thought your use of “tend to” was a strength, and I thought a more uniform application of that framing would have made it more accurate (as a broad characterization, of course. For some “leftists”
    the use of a relative frame could make the description less accurate).

  397. Hi Mark

    It’s a fair question. To me, the difference between a state/culture and a bunch of people who just occupy the same piece of land comes down to a rather famous set of criteria:

    Feed the hungry
    Shelter the homeless
    Heal the sick
    Comfort the afflicted

    Amazingly that is now considered left of center.

    I don’t have much use for a lot of the woke stuff (but some of it makes real sense) and the idiots hollering ‘from the river to the sea’ are just that–idiots.

    I thought I was just a secular humanist until the worst of the conservative movement told me I was a leftist, so I embrace the term. I loathe what they have done to a country I love and loathe even more what they want to do.

    I’ll just close with the only thing I’ve ever written that I think deserves attention:

    “It is because I love my country that I want her to be just, humane and worthy of respect.”

    Kinda like what parents feel about their kids, right?

  398. Joshua,
    I’ve scanned the transcript through one time. I’ll think about it and check some stuff, but little struck me as outrageous or radical or obviously wrong though. The man might be largely talking sense and I might agree with him.

  399. Thanks Tom Fuller. In particular:

    I thought I was just a secular humanist until the worst of the conservative movement told me I was a leftist, so I embrace the term.

    Here we speak a common tongue. I referred to myself as a ‘denier’ for years, even though there was never a technical sense in which I was anything of the sort.
    I appreciate your answer.

  400. Mark, I wish all commenters were more like you (and I include myself in that). It’s always good to interact with you.

  401. Thanks Tom. Many of us have gotten a little crankier and more impatient with age, I know I have. Still, it was a gracious thing to say and I appreciate it.

  402. Mark, up above you wrote: 1) Leftists advocate for social and economic changes to ‘increase equality’ or egalitarianism, at least from their perspective.” I agree
    2) Leftists oppose traditional hierarchical structures, this seems to often relate to #1. Don’t really agree on this… for every structure we try to tear down, we seem to replace with one with a similar function.
    3) Leftists oppose capitalism. Possibly the free market in general? I’m not quite clear on this item. I don’t think that’s the case–I think most of us just want more and better regulation. Which I know can seem like a straitjacket, but… better than another Gilded Age.
    4) Leftists champion the oppressed or minorities, at least from their perspective. Agree, but we often fall into a trap similar to #2… for every minority we champion, we seem to find another set of scapegoats. Something about human nature in that, I fear.

  403. Mark –
    .
    An interesting aspect of this discussion is that despite all of my polical differences with you, I consider myself more ideologically aligned with you than I do with Tom.
    .
    Now I know that’s an unusual perspective but I thought it worth articulating nonetheless.

  404. Tom,
    Gotcha. So my list actually poorly characterizes you except for the first item, and maybe the last to an extent. It might be that my definition list needs refinement.

  405. Joshua,
    That’s an interesting statement! I’m sure you’re aware I’ve long wondered why people turn right instead of left or vice versa when people are often strikingly similar in many respects on both sides of the aisle. I still do wonder about this, actually.

  406. ****. I’m supposed to be working. Quit making interesting remarks for a bit, everyone! I’ll check in later.

  407. Tom

    Feed the hungry
    Shelter the homeless
    Heal the sick
    Comfort the afflicted

    Amazingly that is now considered left of center.

    Depends who is supposed to do it, how it is supposed to be done and the extent to which things are taken. I mean… Jesus also said “There will be poor always”.
    .
    Few people are against private charities.
    .
    Communism generally goes further that “shelter the homeless”. It tends to approach (or be) everyone gets the same amount of shelter as a home. And everyone has access to the same amount of food. And, more over, all the decisions will be funneled through a central government. (And the reality is that those controlling the pot often make themselves exceptions and take more for themselves.)
    .
    In many instances that idea fails because people who can work know they’ll get the same amount of stuff. So now no one works. Or if they do, it ends up in the underground economy where stuff isn’t taking by the hands in the pot and the person doing the work can decide who gets the benefit.
    .
    Then we can also have a question of “What’s healing?” and “What sicknesses?” do we heal. The fact is, we can’t heal all sickness. And if we don’t set some amount of limit, the amount of collective money and time available can mean we might need to devote more than 100% of people’s time and effort to “healing” leaving no time to other things– like say, growing food or building shelters. So systems of universal care sometimes end up with “rationing”– meaning some diseases or some categories of people don’t get healed. It’s just different categories from before.
    .
    What, precisely does “comfort the afflicted” mean? That’s sort of rhetorical. But my point is that it’s pretty open to interpretation. Give motorized wheel chairs to everyone? Pay for really, really, fancy top notch limb replacements instead of peg legs. Buy everyone $7K hearing aids? Instead of $600 ones? Sit them in a room, hug them and say “Poor baby! My dear, dear boy?”
    .
    It’s all well and good to try to say something generous sounding. But you need to be more specific when actually deciding what the government is going to do and how it is going to achieve it.

  409. Tom Fuller,
    “Feed the hungry
    Shelter the homeless
    Heal the sick
    Comfort the afflicted”
    .
    Well, that’s a pretty good description of the social safety net, on which most people, left and right, agree, even while there are disagreements about the details (Does providing too much a safety net motivate people to not work? Yes, I think it clearly does.)
    .
    Where I see the biggest difference is in “equality of outcome” (the left) versus “equality of opportunity” (the right), and the disagreement is very clear. If there are fewer (percentage wise) Pacific Islanders doing nuclear physics research, compared to, say, Jews, then “the left” presumes the only possible explanation is discrimination against Pacific Islanders. Every discrepancy in outcome (AKA any “underrepresented group” in any field) is automatically assigned to a failure of society, rather than any other cause. People on the right simply reject that premise, and believe instead there are many causes for differences in outcome, most of which are completely outside the competency of government to eliminate. I think the pursuit of always equal outcomes (in a group sense) is a fools errand. Insisting on it through laws and regulations is nothing more than legalized discrimination against innocent individuals.
    .
    WRT regulation of business: as someone who has dealt with it for many years, my perspective is that most regulations, and especially environmental regulations, are overkill, and those who enforce the regulations are pretty much always supporters of ever more and ever more restrictive regulations. What is more, regulators tend to ignore the clear original intent of federal (and state) laws which allow regulation, and substitute the most extreme and burdensome interpretation possible…. abetted, unfortunately, by the “Chevron deference” (1984) from the Supreme Court. (I suspect Chevron will be overturned by the Court some time in the next couple of years, because it has allowed regulators to effectively write law, rather than regulate under the law.)
    .
    The final important difference is in taxation. Those on the left (at least since John Kennedy) want higher taxes, those on the right lower taxes. Which is perfectly consistent with the left/right differences in opinion on the proper role and scope of government. A generous social safety net always entails much greater costs….. which can only be paid for with high taxes or accumulating debt (what we have done for the last two decades). If taxes reach 100%, personal liberty is effectively destroyed. Many on the left also want the government to seize existing wealth (wealth taxes), which is strenuously opposed by those on the right. Obama’s “You didn’t build that!” is about as honest a statement as I have ever heard from the left…. and of course, is the “moral justification” for confiscation of wealth. Obama never built anything. Others have.

  410. Hmmm. We may have to talk about this. I just started but Coleman’s initial paraphrase of the authors’ perspective sounds like he he could be describing mine?

  411. HIya Lucia. Will we get a Christmas haiku this year?

    Well, you astutely point out one of the reasons I loathe communism.

    More broadly, though, I don’t see where I wrote that the state should be the sole provider of what I consider the essentials. It should be part of the ethos. The military preaches they leave no-one behind. Their practice is somewhat less universal… George Bush piloted No Child Left Behind–one of a handful of good things he did.

    Yes, the government should do a lot–and we should support our government’s efforts. But I can’t conceive of and would never support a state where charities wither and individuals don’t act with compassion at the core of their interactions.

    To try and address what seems to be your core question–the people should elect a government that tells them how much it will spend on humanitarian services (and holds its feet to the fire to make sure it does it well). The remainder should be shouldered by faith-based organizations, not-for-profits and individual efforts.

    What distresses and depresses me is that we have all the pieces in place to deliver what I have described. But to me it seems that all the actors are just either going through the motions, siphoning resources for personal gain or picking favored populations at the expense of the rest. We have created a Potemkin village of a caring society without emotion or commitment.

  412. SteveF, I (and most leftists) advocate equality of opportunity. But that equality doesn’t start with a job application or university application.

    When kids don’t grow up in poverty with one parent on a diet of lead paint chips and random bullets, when their primary schools aren’t crap and their neighborhoods are not hell holes, then we can talk about equal opportunity.

    Mistakes from my party (I’m a proud Democrat) have in some cases worsened these things, although the good we have done IMO outweighs the bad.

    But at least we recognize that it is both cynical and destructive to say equality of opportunity only counts once.

  413. Leftists are starting to sound like my Catholic school catechism book….
    “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, “I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
    “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
    “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” (NIV)
    MATTHEW 25:34-40

  414. Tom Fuller (Comment #227106):

    a rather famous set of criteria:

    Feed the hungry
    Shelter the homeless
    Heal the sick
    Comfort the afflicted

    Amazingly that is now considered left of center.

    There is nothing left of center about those criteria other than, perhaps, the claim of ownership of such concerns by the left.
    .
    Most on the right are Christians, so those concerns surely do matter to them. Or at least should matter.
    .
    There is a left/right divide as to how to best address those concerns. In particular, those of us on the right often point out that many leftist policies actually hurt the people they are supposed to help. One example is leftist policies that encourage the homeless to live on the streets and permit them to continue the maladaptive behaviors, like drug addiction, that brought them to that sad place. Another would be undermining law enforcement out of supposed concerns for minorities with the result that minority communities end up plagued with high crime.

  415. Mark –
    .
    Not that far in to the pod yet, but just wanted to say re our previous discussions on this topic, you’d probably guess that they lean into the “hereditary” psychology component more than I would but I’m not sure how much further, and I’m not sure how much difference that makes anyway.

  416. Mark –
    .
    If you’re interested in discussing and think your blog would be the more appropriate forum just let me know here and I’ll move over there.

  417. I (and the overwhelming majority of parents I’ve known) have always tried with the best effort I could make to provide my kids with every advantage to excel in life. Another, possibly more complete way of phrasing this might be ‘every advantage over other kids. It seems to me that most parents would not recant this or change their position in this regard, confronted with the observation that their actions tend to increase inequality in our society. I certainly wouldn’t.
    .
    I want people to be equal before the law. But in almost every other way, I neither want nor expect equality. Isn’t it virtually inevitable that there will be something you’re good at that I’m not as good at, and vice versa? Rhetorical; I think this is generally true. But even were this not the case, I think the equality focus (other than equality before the law) is generally misplaced. It’s not the correct metric, to be focused on comparing individuals against the rest of the herd, except for cases when society has by and large already gone badly wrong. America before [strike typo] the Civil Rights movement is a good example of this, but this IMO is the exception and not the rule.
    .
    Our societies have always been out of necessity complicated, [strike typo] multi-level nested frameworks of cooperation and competition. As Tom observed, hierarchies will never be destroyed; tear one down and a different ranking system will inevitably rise to replace it.

  418. Joshua,
    I’ll give that a listen on my way home this afternoon. I don’t know where the best place to talk is. Maybe over in my corner would be best I guess, unless people here express interest in Coleman’s podcast.

  419. Tom Fuller,
    These seem to me a little over the top:
    “diet of led paint chips”…. lead based paints have been outlawed since 1978. Show me where kid’s blood lead levels are inhibiting their intellect today.
    .
    “one parent”…. huge problem. But you actually think government can solve that problem?
    .
    “random bullets”… ya terrible, and 100% the fault of the leftists who run every big city and allow crime (especially gang crime) to run rampant. Getting rid of the leftist would actually help.
    .
    “when their primary schools aren’t crap”…. once again, 100% the fault of leftists who run big cities.
    .
    “their neighborhoods not hell holes”….. a destructive criminal culture combined with leftist policies lead to the existence of those neighborhoods which are “hell holes”.
    .
    I’m all for improving things in the “hell holes” you describe, but that depends on the voters in those places electing people who will actually address the problems, not maintain the policies which have allowed the problems to grow ever larger. Even if sensible politicians could be elected in the “hell holes”, and right now they can’t be, it will take a change in culture/values among the populace to make the kinds of cultural/values changes needed. Blatantly discriminating against people who are 100% NOT responsible for the problems in those “hell holes” is neither fair, sensible, nor constructive…. the problems will continue until their root causes are addressed.

  420. Mark –
    .
    I take it back – they’re pretty skeptical of the inherited psychology explanation for the left/right taxonomy, in much the way I am (although they didn’t actually mention a critical weakness of that explanation, imo).

    .
    I’ll wait to see if any comments pop up. Given that the authors’ thesis is so antithetical to so many of the views regularly expressed here it may not be a viewpoint that’s of much interest.

  421. mark bofill (Comment #227114)
    “Joshua,…. I’ve long wondered why people turn right instead of left or vice versa when people are often strikingly similar in many respects on both sides of the aisle. “
    –
    Some people change direction or are capable of changing direction, often multiple times.
    As we see when elections are held.
    Is a leftist someone who sympathises with Tom’s sensible points on trying to help people or are they motivated by jealousy and envy of other people’s opportunities and success?
    One is trying to raise people up less well off up, the other is seen as trying to drag people better off down.
    Some people demand help perceiving themselves as victims in life, others resent offered help as they see themselves as needing to take responsibility for their lives.
    –
    The aim of most ideologies is to improve the human experience for everyone, not to hurt people.
    I do not see any right or left in that.
    As Lucia said it is implementation of policies by governments that determine outcomes.
    –
    Help others first then look after yourself, or look after yourself first then help others should both achieve the same result.
    One is the heart, the other the head.
    –
    Both need to find a balance between pragmatism and caring

  422. Tom

    More broadly, though, I don’t see where I wrote that the state should be the sole provider of what I consider the essentials.

    You didn’t. And I didn’t mean to imply you did.
    .
    You ended with this: “You just wrote that wanting these is seen as ‘left’. Since that refers to left, I went onto discussing the idea that really are generally seen as left– and it’s not healing the sick and so on. Whether it’s “left” has to do with how we do it. So I was commenting on the ‘what’s really left’ aspect.
    .
    What tends to be seen as “more left” is wanting the state to be the provider. As the state is not generally an actual creator of housing, food, medical care etc, that can generally only be done by the state taking from one group to transfer it to the other.
    .

    Yes, the government should do a lot–

    That leaves of with “define a lot”. I mean, the state could do “a little” and private charity would not be the “only” provider. Whether “a little” or “a lot” is the correct amount really depends on what either of those means.
    .

    What distresses and depresses me is that we have all the pieces in place to deliver what I have described. But to me it seems that all the actors are just either going through the motions, siphoning resources for personal gain or picking favored populations at the expense of the rest.

    Well… syphoning off tends to happen in big organizations. That includes the government. And have you read about the Catholic Cardinal?
    .
    https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/vatican-court-convicts-cardinal-on-embezzlement-and-fraud-159d800a
    .

    Vatican Court Convicts Cardinal on Embezzlement and Fraud
    Verdict marks a stunning fall for Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, once spoken of as a possible pope

    Siphoning happens!
    .
    There was an accountant in some small town in Illinois who syphoned from the city coffers. I’m sure there is syphoning lots of places.
    .
    (I have a rather naive friend so joined some charitable organizations and only really realized that part of the money you give to the charitable organization goes to running the charitable organization– not actual charities. I was like…. uhhmmm… Yeah. That’s why if a charitable organization– say “The rotary” tells me they give to combat malaria and I want my money to combat malaria, I find the organization the rotary gives money to and give to that organization directly. (And btw. I’m not talking malfeasance here. It’s just that the “giver” organization does have operating costs. They don’t hide this directly– but they don’t exactly tell you “For every dollar you give, $0.90 will go to the charity”. (Or whatever the amount is.)
    .
    I know some money might still be syphoned, but that’s fewer hands between me and purchase and distribution of nets.

  423. [Joshua, re the podcast]
    I’ve finished what I was working on and listened. I’m pretty sure we’ve actually discussed this one before. I said then, and I’ll repeat now, ‘Meh’. I think there is some validity to their position but I think they are overstating the case. The fallacy seems to be this: Showing that many or most people care more about tribal / social group concerns than philosophical considerations doesn’t mean philosophical considerations are invalid, or aren’t a thing. Yet what the authors claim about the left and right ‘not really existing’ seems to amount to this. What most people base their decisions on doesn’t prove or disprove a coherent philosophical basis for left and right political ideologies, only that most people don’t care all that much about that putative coherent philosophical basis.
    Anyways.

  424. mark bofill,
    “Isn’t it virtually inevitable that there will be something you’re good at that I’m not as good at, and vice versa? Rhetorical”
    .
    Yes rhetorical, but clearly true.
    .
    The thing that makes me crazy is that the “equality-of-outcome” crowd doesn’t give the tiniest shit that professional sports like basketball, baseball, and football are dominated (FAR in excess of their % of the populace) by African Americans and Latinos. That is perfectly OK, but that the number of Latino PhD’s in chemistry is smaller than their % of the populace is not? It is the craziest thing I have ever heard of. Grade school teachers are dominated by women. Is that because men are being discriminated against, or that more women are interest in early education? Rhetorical, but yes, more women are interest in early education.
    .
    The reason minorities dominate some professional sports is BECAUSE THEY ARE BETTER! Why are they better? Hard to say for sure (interest? physical capacity? practice? motivation?), but better they are.
    .
    Wayne Gretzky was often said to “have eyes in the back of his head” when he played hockey, and always went to the right place for the next play. He explained that he only knew from thousands of hours of practice what would happen next… even if he could not actually see it happening behind him.

  425. Steve,
    Great examples, I agree. More power to them! It’s got a lot to do with merit. And merit can often be fundamentally unfair in some senses.
    The trouble is, we aren’t gods, we are humans. We didn’t design this reality, we’re just doing the best we can here living in it. We actually need people of ability to do things to help us (societally speaking) regardless of whether or not it is fair that some people have vast ability or merit. Because life is hard and the universe is fundamentally indifferent to our suffering or wellbeing.
    It’s difficult for me to articulate [this idea] clearly. But a respected heart surgeon (for example) generally isn’t at the top of his hierarchy for arbitrary reasons, it wasn’t easy for him to get there, and we should all be thankful for him, not resentful of his success. At least, those of us who experience heart problems! Apply this to almost every field.

  426. Mark –
    .
    I don’t think they’re saying that there’s no such thing as philosophies. Only that there’s zero evidence that philosophical differences are anywhere near uniformly associated with the “left” and the “right.”
    .
    Not sure where else we’d go with that then, as while I think that logically their argument makes sense and conforms to my priors, at some point their argument is basically an empirical and statistical argument based on data. Feelings about their arguments, I’d say, don’t go very far one way or the other. A good critique, it would seem to me, would need to be based on data and evidence. Coleman approached with a broad scientific/statistical critique but I think fails. Thar could be because he’s mostly engaged in a podcast hot take critique and not an actual scientific approach. Or it could be because, as they argue, the science he referenced is weak. I think it’s both, actually (weak science used to support a podcast hot take)
    .
    Anyway, if most people don’t care about, or don’t have consistent philosophical framss that mine up with their putative ledt/right orientation, what does being on the left or the right mean?

  427. Joshua,

    Anyway, if most people don’t care about, or don’t have consistent philosophical framss that mine up with their putative ledt/right orientation, what does being on the left or the right mean?

    It might just mean that most people have superficial philosophical and political convictions. I don’t think it speaks to what it means to be on the right or left for a minority of people who don’t have superficial philosophical or political convictions. I’d like to see their studies and methodologies and data, but I’m left with the impression that they don’t rule this out, only that they make observations about a majority of people.
    [Edit: I probably need to listen to the end, which I’ve yet to do. I’ll try.]

  428. Lucia, you forgot to address the most important point I made: Will we get a Christmas haiku this year or not? (You can ask AI for help–I won’t object…)

  429. Mark –
    .
    > I’m left with the impression that they don’t rule this out, only that they make observations about a majority of people.
    .
    Could be. Or it could be that most people who have strong and consistent philosophical orientations aren’t strongly and monotonically aligned along a left/right axis but mix it up according to the issue at hand and how it maps onto that axis.
    .
    Or it could be that some people generally orient along that axis, but are aware of how it demands a less dogmatic definition of their philosophical orientation.

  430. Joshua,
    Yes. I’m sure that they have a point to an extent, I just think they may be overstating the case somewhat. As you note, it’s potentially pretty complicated.

  432. mark bofill,
    If history is just (and there is no certainty it will be!), people will look back on our era and marvel at how reluctant so many were to value excellence over mediocrity, productive over unproductive, and honest over dishonest.

  433. Mark –
    .
    At the risk of being pedantic, I’d suggest that your suspicion that they’re overstaying the case could be at least partially explained by your own strong identification along the left/right political axis (or maybe more, a strong foundational negative judgement of “the left”).
    .
    That’s not to single you out. I get a lot of resistance from lefties to this argument, and I think it’s largely because for so long they’ve integrated a lefty identity into their self-concept.
    .
    [EDIT:] I felt that was applicable to Coleman’s resistance to their argument, it felt to me like he kind of agrees with them but was reluctant to give up on his lefty hate.

  434. Joshua,
    Fair enough. I certainly don’t want to believe that my convictions are a meaningless accident of what tribal groups I happened to land in, and that would certainly provide motivation for rationalizing around the argument. Could be. The trouble with our blind spots is they always seem to contain things we can’t see. 😉

  435. Mark –
    .
    I wouldn’t interpret it that way at all. It’s not that your philosophy is incoherent, but that the way that you map it into a left/right axis isn’t valid, and a product of tribal biases.

  436. I’d like to believe that examples of people breaking with their tribe because of their convictions demonstrate that there has to be more to the story than these guys are telling. I supported Trump. Eventually I withdrew my support because I deemed Trump to be violating what I held to be sacred principles, to put it plainly. I didn’t get any sort of kudos from my tribe for this, quite the contrary; it’s put me at odds with a lot of people I didn’t used to be at odds with.

  437. Joshua,

    I wouldn’t interpret it that way at all. It’s not that your philosophy is incoherent, but that the way that you map it into a left/right axis isn’t valid, and a product of tribal biases.

    Well fine, again, I’m sure that’s true to some extent, in some cases. I’m still not sold.

  438. Tom

    Will we get a Christmas haiku this year or not? (You can ask AI for help–I won’t object…)

    Dunno. But… I would think using AI would be cheating. On the other hand, seeing what AI can do might be interesting.

  439. Lucia,
    ” I would think using AI would be cheating.”
    .
    What?!? Ask the president of Harvard for guidance. AI would be OK

  440. Mark –
    .
    > i’d like to believe that examples of people breaking with their tribe because of their convictions demonstrate that there has to be more to the story than these guys are telling.
    .
    I think you’re constructing a false binary. They aren’t arguing that no one ever breaks with their “tribe” to any extent. It would be absurd for them to argue otherwise.
    .
    But I suppose their argument would just be that some people are more inclined than others to reconcile breaking with their tribe even as they may, or may not, still maintain an inaccurate, monolithic taxonomy of how philosophy maps onto a left/right axis. In this case your break with Trump in many ways which in theory would align you with “the left” but yet maintain that you’re not of “the left.” Therefore, that would be inconsistent with the idea that being of the “left” philosophy or the “right” philosophy explains your views on Trump. That’s actually in line with their argument that neither a coherent “left” philosophy or a coherent “right” philosophy actually exist. They they are just illusions of the post hoc ergo propter hoc variety (or is an ecological fallacy or….oh, I dunno, but a fallacy anyway).
    .
    > quite the contrary; it’s put me at odds with a lot of people I didn’t used to be at odds with.
    .
    Sure. But that doesn’t mean you updated your priors. Perhaps when Trump was elected you felt a split on Trump was inherently a function of a “left” vs. “right” philosophical divide but didn’t update that prior after you realized that supporting Trump wasn’t consistent with YOUR philosophy via a vis your prior on what those different philosophies were.
    .

  441. So I see I can’t edit a comment if someone is responding to it (or has responded).
    .
    So that means that if your respond quickly you’ll have to awed through even more incoherencies and errors than usual.

  442. Hi Bard. I would like you to write a haiku about Lucia. Lucia is quite an exceptional person. She is expert in higher mathematics. She is a bit prickly–she doesn’t suffer fools gladly. She is very detail oriented and is an excellent internet companion. What can you come up with?

    Mind like starlit peaks,
    Logic’s blade cuts fools to mist,
    Web whispers with you.

  443. Joshua,
    Maybe I misunderstood what those guys were saying. I’ll listen again at some point. [Edit: part of the reason I prefer transcripts! Oh well]

  444. Mark –
    .
    I’ll frame it another way. There’s no shortage of people commenting online whom I would never consider to be philosophical cousins but would generally consider to be of the left.

    I’m not sure there are many folks I see commenting online whom I would consider to be of the right and would also consider to be close ideological or philosophical cousins. But they certainly would be closer than many on the left, and I’m willing to consider that maybe my reluctance to consider them close cousins is more a function of bias than anything I can really justify.
    .
    What if i turned that around and asked how you would apply that frame?

  445. Joshua,
    That’s not a reframing of what I understood them to be saying. I’ll listen again for sure. Doubtless I misunderstood something.
    .
    How much difference does it take to make a radical difference in otherwise similar systems of thought? I’m not sure of what the answer to this question is, but where I am going with it is, perhaps not all that much. We could adhere to the same epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, so on – and come to very different conclusions about a great many things with only a difference regarding say, whether or not life is meaningless. Possibly?
    .
    I don’t know. Maybe I’m wrong. It seems to me that it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of difference to produce significant incompatibility. But I’ll chew on it for awhile. Thanks.
    .
    [Edit: Maybe this doesn’t matter with regards to what you were trying to get at. It’s not unlikely that I didn’t understand what you were trying to get at. So, there’s that.]

  446. Joshua,
    I can at least get this far. Both the right and the left are comprised of disparate groups of people. For example, religious right, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians maybe.
    There’s probably little to no underlying philosophical unity or coherence between many of the ideas of these groups, sure.

  447. Mark –
    .
    Well, let’s not assume I understood it either????
    .
    I’m not saying that frame lines up with their viewpoint. It’s just a frame I was thinking of.
    .
    FWIW, I thought at the end of the pod they got kind of incoherent when they started talking more about party than about left/right. But they do make it clear they’re not saying that no one philosophical (or consistent in philosophy).
    .
    Like all theories, there are going to be some shortcomings. I haven’t looked at how they present their supporting data, so there’s that. But all-in-all, when I see people not of “the left” describing what they think “the left” believes it almost invariably fails to line up with what I know many, many people I’ve interacted with on “the left” throughout my life actually believe. Sometimes violently fails to line up.
    .
    I’m going to assume that’s generally the case also, when people on “the right” usually hear people on “the left” describing the views of “the right.”
    .
    So it could be that I’m just in denial about what everyone on “the left” actually believes, and everyone on the left are ignorant dolts when it comes to their understanding of “the right,” and no one on “the right” is deluded about what people on “the right” believe.
    .
    But I don’t think that cognitive or psychological attributes really line up very strongly in association with ideological self-identification. And I have yet to see ANY of what I consider to be plausible theories about the causal mechanism by which those attributes would be differentially distributed across ideological/political boundaries (either through nurture or physiologically by nature).
    .
    Putting all that together, I’ve long believed what these guys are describing. It’s somewhat vindicating to see them present their theory so obviously, I’m vulnerable to confirmation bias here.

  448. Wow. Weird stuff happens when I make repeated updates. Previous edits disappear when I make new ones and update. Can’t figure out why that would be but it has happened repeatedly.

  449. Fair enough. It may comfort you to know that in a sense, it is my actual technical job to be wrong something like +90% of the time and eventually try to converge on being right by successive approximation, so. The odds aren’t against you just because I’m not on the same page. 😉
    [Edit:

    Previous edits disappear when I make new ones and update.

    Yes. You have to reintroduce all of your edits every time you edit. I have the same experience. It’s become second nature almost for me.]

  450. Mark –
    .
    > I can at least get this far. Both the right and the left are comprised of disparate groups of people. For example, religious right, fiscal conservatives, and libertarians maybe.
    .
    Sure. But that doesn’t solve the problem. As they discuss in the pod, many on the religious right who felt personal character and “family values” wwre fundamental planks of their identity on “the right” did a basically total 180 from Clinton to Trump. Same with “fiscal conservatives” pre- to post-Bush and pre- to post-Trump. My own favorite is how “personal responsibility” was an indespensible attribute of a “rightwinger” when they viewed Romney’s Healthcare policies but it became “tyranny” under Obama when he talked about a personal mandate.
    .
    Not to pick on the right. The same dynamic plays out on the left
    .
    I don’t see any other coherent way to explain these dynamics than the basic model they present. .

  451. > and eventually try to converge on being right by successive approximation.
    .
    I like that. I’m going to borrow it.
    .
    OK, enough for now. I’ve avoided doing stuff long enough for a while.

  452. OK, one more. Just ’cause I wanted to refresh my memory and Googled and came across this an it’s just too perfect.
    .
    >”Speaking to reporters that year, he characterized the mandate as “the ultimate conservative idea.” It’s based on a principle, he said, “that people have responsibility for their own care, and they don’t look to government to take care of them when they can afford to take care of themselves.”
    .
    Personal mandate = “ultimate conservative idea.”
    .
    Really, it doesn’t get better than that.

  453. Joshua,
    “Previous edits disappear when I make new ones and update.”
    .
    Has been that way as long as I remember. Make a copy of everything before going to re-edit, erase the old and paste in the new, then make the changes you want. A little awkward, but not terribly.
    .
    Being of a clear single mind helps to avoid too many edits.

  454. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
    Yesterday near Avdiivka, in daylight, Russia again sent an armored column in single file down a road dialed in by Ukrainian artillery. Results are preliminary, but look grim for the aggressors. I expect video confirmation in the days ahead.
    https://x.com/NOELreports/status/1736102722879832329?s=20

  455. Fear of being wrong is a real progress preventer. I spent an evening with a guy whose job was to determine whether some problem they were facing at the torpedo factory was soluble. He had a phd in this from brown.

    More on this when I can get to a real keyboard

  456. Joshua

    Joshua,
    “Previous edits disappear when I make new ones and update.”

    Yes. I don’t know why, but same here. If I edit, submit, say “dang”… reedit… The first edits are gone. I don’t know if refreshing the page would work. I don’t know how the plugin works.

  457. Mark bofill,

    I (and the overwhelming majority of parents I’ve known) have always tried with the best effort I could make to provide my kids with every advantage to excel in life.

    I think that’s what good parents should do. And yes, they want the kids to have advantages over other kids. That will often involve assessing what the kids strengths are and excelling in that. I also think parents should certainly not stop giving their kids advantages because it would result in more inequality.
    .
    Some kid is going to be the movie star instead of flipping burgers. Why not my kid?
    Some kid is going to get into the Ivy League. Why not my kid?
    Some kid is going to be president of the United states. Why not my kid?
    .
    No parent should be reasoning: “But if my kid gets the gold ring, another kid won’t. So I’m not going to bother pushing my kid to achieve or getting him access to resources.” Sadly, I think there are a few parents who don’t try to promote their kids. Those are bad parents. Some are too worn down to help much; that’s sad. But parents all deciding to not try to help their kids advance would result in really poor outcomes for a society.
    .
    Will parents (or communities) thinking this way result in some inequality of outcome. Yes. But the opposite will result in the general level being very low, which is not better than some inequality.

  458. Joshua,

    As they discuss in the pod, many on the religious right who felt personal character and “family values” wwre fundamental planks of their identity on “the right” did a basically total 180 from Clinton to Trump.

    Yeah…. Didn’t particularly surprise me.
    .
    “Family values” is a catch phrase. Like any catch phrase, the meaning is…. flexible.
    .
    When I hear some people trumpet “family values” thing the “Men don’t cheat on their wives” plank rarely seems to be the top one. I usually see “Wives subordinate to husbands” and higher on the list. “Men bring home the bacon.” is also often pretty high on that list. Also, “no divorce” seems to be up there on the list. (Given that wives file something like 70% of all divorces, “no divorce” is often “women shouldn’t get to divorce their husbands”. So Ivana divorcing Trump for having an affair might not be seen as TRUMP’s problem.)
    .
    That said: I’m not religious, so, the whole “religious right” thing is often a mystery to me. I don’t grasp how they organize which things are more important “right things” vs. other things.
    .
    On the “philosophy vs tribe” thing– I haven’t formed much of an opinion because I don’t know precisely what it means or what any study supposedly showed. (I mean… some philosophical ideas some people consider important strike he as “why would I care?” Others, I think more important. I’m not likely to hold a strong position on the ones I consider unimportant, so… yeah “tribe” could easily influence that.)

    I know I have ideas of what I prefer the government or government agencies do and not do. These are generally based on what I think will result in better outcomes. Most of the time neither party and no candidate is well aligned with what I think is best. Sometimes, I have to pick based on what balance seems most important right now and that can change based on recent composition of the elected body or what seems practical.
    .
    I think I’m not alone in the above. I think it partly explains why some people who don’t like Trump vote for him anyway. And this isn’t limited to Trump– but he’s an extreme example because it can be a real “hold your nose vote”.
    .
    I also recognize that often decisions must be made based on incomplete information. In that situation, people will rely on “tribe” because they feel or think that– perhaps– the “tribe” has somehow thought more collectively. (And the person taking this short cut could be right or they could be wrong.)

  460. Lucia,

    Will parents (or communities) thinking this way result in some inequality of outcome. Yes. But the opposite will result in the general level being very low, which is not better than some inequality.

    Exactly. I think a low quality outcome is the inevitable result of stepping too far in the direction of maximizing equality, and that we can see plenty of other examples of this if we look. It’s the classic reason communism fails so abysmally in fact.
    .
    But I give the left its due. There needs to be some mechanisms in our societies to keep things balanced to some extent. Thousands of years ago, we already knew that the rich and powerful and successful tend to become more rich and powerful and successful and the poor and weak and unfortunate tend to get zeroed out, as evidenced by various gospel writers (see also the Matthew effect).
    .
    I suspect that the seemingly ad hoc or haphazard differences between the left and the right (in regards to the issue Joshua and I were discussing) arise from this, that the things required to keep our society ‘balanced’ to some reasonable extent vs the things required to keep us alive and productive and successful changes over time. Our political discourse is just us trying to steer or navigate our way from where we are now around the obstacles and destinations we encounter as a country as time goes on, so naturally the particulars of ‘left’ and ‘right’ change. But I don’t think the underlying concepts are totally arbitrary or completely change over time.
    .
    Jeez I’m writing a book. Sorry bout that.

  461. Mark

    that the things required to keep our society ‘balanced’ to some reasonable extent vs the things required to keep us alive and productive and successful changes over time.

    Yes. Which I think is what I was thinking when I said this about who or what to vote for:

    Sometimes, I have to pick based on what balance seems most important right now and that can change based on recent composition of the elected body or what seems practical.

    I mean…. to me, it doesn’t make sense that “feed the hungry” means tax Jeff Bezos down to “equality” so “the hungry” can afford caviar. It may seem outrageous to people that he has more money than anyone can really use. (And some mechanisms for avoiding taxes are a bit much. ) But just insisting on equalizing everyone will be counter productive. The rule will never only hit Jeff Bezos and quite a few people will step back from work and/or find ways to barter or do things underground. Some people can’t do it. And bartering can be pretty inefficient. But people can get pretty creative trading some goods and some services.

  462. Lucia,
    “Can we say “attrition?”
    I don’t claim to understand the Russian approach to this war. This article says their plan is attrition and it’s working….
    “Putin’s plan to wear down support for Ukraine in a war of attrition seems to be working, though it’s not risk-free”
    “https://www.businessinsider.com/analysis-putins-ukraine-attrition-plan-seems-to-be-working-2023-10

  463. Lucia –
    .
    > the whole “religious right” thing is often a mystery to me.
    .
    What was interesting to me re the religious right and Trump wasn’t the specifics of what they prioritized per se, but the evidence that what specifically they prioritized changed dramatically pre- vs. post-Trump. Personal integrity had been absolutely a key factor and then no longer was key. But “personal integrity” was actually a marker for tribalism or in- vs. out-group status, or so the theory goes. The particular issue in and of itself is kind of irrelevant.
    .
    But it’s not particular to the religious right. It’s a larger pattern that applies widely. Some people love to discuss what they consider to be hypocrisy in the left vis a vis electoral politics.
    .
    .
    .
    Mark –
    ..
    > I don’t think the underlying concepts are totally arbitrary or completely change over time.
    .
    Not sure if you’re saying that’s their theory, but I think it isn’t. They aren’t saying that the underlying concepts are arbitrary or just change in association with politics – but that the way people map the concepts I to a political taxonomy has no real validity. That would be why “the left” viewed Russia as less evil and then more evil pre- and post-Trump. It’s not that their views on dispotic autocrats did a 180, but the way they mapped their views on dispotic autocrats changed in association with tribalism and vagaries of the political landscape.Anti-war views would be another similar issue where the dynamic is fairly evident on the left. It’s not really that “the left” who were anti-war suddenly became pro-war when Russia invaded Ukraine (nor that “the right” suddenly turned from pro-endless wars and pro-nation building in Iraq to suddenly becoming anti-endless wars and anti-nation building in Ukraine, and then pro-endkess war and pro-nation building in Israel.
    .
    Of course, there are those like the neo-cons and many lefties whose views on Iraq and Ukraine and Israel were broadly consistent across all three conflicts. But that doesn’t really invalidate the theory, imo, as I think we could find ways that they, too, map principles differently as the landscape changes. One that comes immediately to mind would be on how “the left” who might seem like the more consistent segments of “the left” on those issues might have some inconsistencies when, say, they look at the priority of ending oppression of women in the West versus in Afghanistan.

  464. Joshua,

    Not sure if you’re saying that’s their theory, but I think it isn’t. They aren’t saying that the underlying concepts are arbitrary or just change in association with politics – but that the way people map the concepts I to a political taxonomy has no real validity. That would be why “the left” viewed Russia as less evil and then more evil pre- and post-Trump. It’s not that their views on dispotic autocrats did a 180, but the way they mapped their views on dispotic autocrats changed in association with tribalism and vagaries of the political landscape.

    Oh. If you’re right about that then I’ve badly misunderstood and agree to a large extent with them.
    I might have gotten this completely wrong. I have poor listening skills. Pretty good reading skills, but not fantastic on processing auditory info for sure.
    [Thanks!]

  465. You know, now that I think it through, I’m still not sure I understand what that actually means. It’s OK though.
    [Edit: My problem remains that I don’t understand how they get from that point to the conclusion of saying ‘there’s no left or right actually’. I get that tribalism colors the mappings and affects judgements, as in how evil Russia is. But that is a far cry from determining everything on the left or right as far as I can tell.]

  466. Joshua

    Personal integrity had been absolutely a key factor and then no longer was key.

    Well, I think you are referring to this?

    https://www.brookings.edu/articles/has-trump-caused-white-evangelicals-to-change-their-tune-on-morality/

    Sure. For some reason, the existence of Trump changed their answer to this

    “Do you think an elected official who commits an immoral act in their private life can still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life?”

    Why he changed their answer I can’t say.
    I don’t understand Evangelicals in general, so I really can’t say.
    I should add: I don’t know why they saw Trump as “their tribe”– unless possibly it had to do with him wanting to get Roe V. Wade thrown out? Dunno. (And of course, that didn’t quite work out they way they thought.)

  467. Here, it helps me to be able to quote something. Here is the blurb about their book on Amazon:

    As American politics descends into a battle of anger and hostility between two groups called “left” and “right,” people increasingly ask: What is the essential difference between these two ideological groups? In The Myth of Left and Right, Hyrum Lewis and Verlan Lewis provide the surprising answer: nothing. As the authors argue, there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. Far from being an eternal dividing line of American politics, the political spectrum came to the United States in the 1920s and, since then, left and right have evolved in so many unpredictable and even contradictory ways that there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of “liberal” and “conservative.” Powerfully argued and cutting against the grain of most scholarship on polarization in America, this book shows why the idea that the political spectrum measures deeply held worldviews is the central political myth of our time and a major cause of the confusion and vitriol that characterize public discourse.

    Now maybe that is a misleading summary intended to sell copy. But if its not (and honestly I feel like it’s pretty consistent with what I thought I heard in the podcast) then I’m sticking with my guns. These guys are overstating their case IMO.

  468. Mark –
    .
    Probably the most obvious example recently would be the whole world of “words are violence” and “cancel culture” and “free speech,” where large segments (not all of course) of “the left” and “the right” have basically exchanged places.
    .
    Greenwald is an interesting counter-example as he’s been pretty consistent on those issues but there are plenty of issues where he’s been a hypocrite in how he maps issues on to the political landscape, and he frequently applies principles selectively across contexts. I listened to him the other day when he decried how “the right” mocked snowflake lefties for crying about “words” during George Floyd protests but now are themselves crying about criticism of Israel when uttered by critics of Israel. But that’s a joke because (1) Greenwald was at the head of the line when the mocking was taking place and (2) he’s always taking basically anything anyone he says that he disagrees with in totally bad faith. The point being that he’s consistently rhetorical and dishonest in order to fit situations into his preferred political framework.

  469. Joshua,
    Nah, still not buying it. Look, I’ve been a conservative for awhile. I assure you, my views on free speech haven’t changed. Cancel culture changes IMO are in response to a changing socio-technological world with social media impact that had no historical analog whatsoever even 15 years ago. People are often hypocritical and inconsistent, but they have always been – this doesn’t prove anything about the validity of left / right mappings IMO.
    It’s all good. I don’t want to bore you with my ongoing disagreement, but in good conscience I gotta tell you I still don’t buy it.

  470. Mark –
    .
    I don’t understand how you think that blurb is different than what I’ve been saying.
    .
    Their argument isn’t that people don’t have philosophies or even consistent philosophies, but what’s a myth is in how people map onto the political landscape.
    .
    So, “the right” stood for the importance of political integrity of politicians until it didn’t. “the right” argued that an individual mandate was the ultimate conservative idea until it became tyranny, words were violence on “the left” until they weren’t, “endless overseas wars” were insupportable on “the left” until they were, etc.

  471. Joshua,
    Merely because Mitt Romney found it expedient to spout some horsehockey about an individual mandate being the ultimate conservative idea does not make that so. It is not the ultimate conservative idea, has never been and will never be. This is an example with explanations beside the ones that the authors put forward. In this case, hypocrisy and political expediency.
    All of their arguments are like this. It isn’t valid to point at evidence that could be explained in at least three or four different ways and then leap to conclude that some point has been proven.
    I absolutely don’t want to be rude or discouraging, so I hate saying this- I’m not much interested in pursuing this one with you. I do enjoy talking with you in general, but we aren’t getting anywhere on this.

  472. Mark –
    .
    They aren’t arguing that everyone reverses themselves all the time.
    .
    They’re describing what happens in the broad context of how people describe “the left” and “the right.”. In this particular example how “the right” wants to “cancel” people for words, and unambiguous words that, while on “the left,” people who were sensitive to “microagressions” lack that sensitivity if an Israeli is offended when Israelis are accused of genocide or when someone says Palestinians should be free from the river to the sea (IOW, within the borders of a non ethnostate Israel).

  473. They are arguing this:

    there is no enduring philosophy, disposition, or essence uniting the various positions associated with the liberal and conservative ideologies of today. … there is currently nothing other than tribal loyalty holding together the many disparate positions that fly under the banners of “liberal” and “conservative.”

  474. My views on free speech also haven’t changed. I think people should be absolutely free to make anti-israel or anti-jewish sentiments. Im the 70s, I thought the Nazis had a right to march in Skokie on the same basis as other groups. I think people should equally be able to express their ideas that Lia Thomas is a man and call Lia a he.
    .
    What I think the congressional questions showed is that some universities want free speech for some groups but no free speech for others. Observing this is not changing my stance on free speech.
    .
    I have no idea if my view is “left” or “right”. My impression is neither left nor right has a lock on “free speech” and neither ever had one. I think both have wanted to surpress speech they don’t like and allow speech they do like. As far as I can tell the thing that makes them “left” and “right” is which speech they want to surpress. Showing they amount of times they say “freedom of speech” changes means nothing.

  475. It is fine to say that some of the positions are due to tribal loyalty and are arbitrary and in essence accidental. I’m sure that is true. The case they raised in the podcast of people with one issue they care about ‘anchoring’ into a party and then adopting the rest of the positions is no doubt true. But this means some. They say ‘there is nothing else’. They overstate their case.

  476. Mark –
    .
    Don’t worry about being rude. I don’t take offense.
    .
    The Romney example was just one that I added because I think it’s perfect. An iconic, life-long, intergenerational “conservative” who long represented a quite “conservative” region of the country, the presidential nominee that beat all the others to represent a “conservative” electorate, crafted a policy that he described as the ultimate “conservative” policy because it was based on the “conservative” principle of individual responsibility and not depending on government.
    .
    Whether you might agree or not, as an individual, is I would say if limited relevance.
    .
    Another iconic example is Dick Cheney, another iconic “conservative” saying that “deficits don’t matter.”
    .
    Of course we could always find contet matters with respect to who or who isn’t a true “conservative” or what truly is it isn’t a true “conservative” policy, but their point is with respect to the larger, general discourse.
    .
    Romney also said:
    .
    > “we got the idea of an individual mandate…from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation.”
    .
    At some point I don’t know how you define “conservative” if you cull out Romney, Gingrich, the Heritage Fondation, and more.

    .

  477. Mark –
    .
    > anchoring’ into a party and then adopting the rest of the positions is no doubt
    .
    That’s not how I see their main point, really. I think it’s more that the “anchoring” is largely about how they map the policies on to the political landscape. Not that they ONLY reverse their opinions to match their party orientation once they’ve anchored to it, but also they change how they map a concept into the landscape. So “personal responsibility” takes on a different shade so that the “personal responsibility” that once supported the individual mandate as a “conservative” bedrock takes on a different meaning. But maybe it better to look at the examples they gave rather than the ones I added into the mix.

  478. Joshua,
    Authorities don’t define reality by consensus. If every scientist in the world was wrong about some aspect of science, say pre-Einstein physicists predicting what would happen as a rocket accelerates towards the speed of light in space, reality would exhibit the same, cheerful indifference it always does towards their hubris.
    I think it’s much the same with philosophical principles. People can say whatever they like about them. They can make incorrect or inconsistent formulations regarding them. They can be recognized as authorities in our societies. It doesn’t make them right when they are wrong.
    It all comes back to the sins and failures of modern philosophy in the end, that we argue about these things. Eighty years ago this would never have been at issue.

  480. Mark –
    .
    I think this is a pretty fair take on the individual mandate question..
    .
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/02/07/the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/.
    .
    The issue is nuanced and not exactly in line with how I leveraged it. That said, it’s a good example for how an issue like “personal responsibility” maps differently onto the political landscape, when people aren’t dealing with nuances of how the individual mandate might have been different under Romneycare and Obamacare. Someone who might scoff at personal responsibility as manifest as an individual mandate under Romneycare might very well applaud it under Obamacare without actually knowing the detailed differences. Or visa versa.

  482. Lucia,
    I thought your points were valid in 227183, in particular:

    I have no idea if my view is “left” or “right”. My impression is neither left nor right has a lock on “free speech” and neither ever had one.

    Absolutely. There are some things that don’t really exclusively ‘belong’ to the right or the left, conceptually speaking. This isn’t evidence of much of anything.

  483. Joshua, no problem. I like that you elect to discuss things here. It’s a pleasure talking with you.

  484. Lucia –
    .
    My views on “free speech” haven’t changed either (although they may not line up 100% with yours they’re prolly not that far apart).
    .
    But the point would be that (1) there’s been a broad shift, “left” vs. “right, ” in how the “free speech” issue has played out in the public discourse in recent weeks and (2) people map their views to nonetheless still align with the “ledt” or “the right” as they had previously.
    .
    Our individual stances aren’t really informative. In the interviewx they described Coleman as being “philosophical” in his approach to these issues. I might not agree entirely there, but they point us they weren’t saying that it never happens. They were basically saying that the broad conceptualization of what “the left” and “the right” are, is fundamentally incoherent when you track issues over time.

  485. Greenwald has been talking for weeks on his show about how the long line of people from “the right” who would come on his show to talk about the dangers of “the woke cancel culture” attack on free speech won’t come on his show now to reconcile why they now view criticism of Isreal, even if you think it’s just thinly-veiled antisemetic calls to exterminate jews, as something that should not be tolerated..
    .
    I get that there’s a separate issue of what some people view as the hypocrisy of liberals on the issue of free speech, advocating tolerance for “anti-white” free speech only, or finding “conservative free speech” intolerable but tolerating anti-Israel free speech, etc. But again that’s a related but nonetheless separate point.

  486. Joshua,
    It is the lack of honestly and consistency that is the issue. Like Lucia, my views on speech have not changed for all of my adult life. People should get to say what they think, and others should judge the validity of what they say. If I want to say I think Asians are a few % smarter than Europeans (on average) because of their genetics, I should be able to say that without the world coming to an end.
    .
    It is the forbidding of selected speech that is the problem. The three (now infamous) presidents (MIT, Penn, Harvard) looked like lying sacks of sh….. well they looked like bald faced liars, because it is obvious to any conscious observer that only certain speech (“not hateful”) is allowed on their campuses, while they defended students demands for the elimination of Israel and its populace as “protected” speech.

  487. Steve –
    .
    That may well be your issue, and you’re entitled. But the main focus in the public discourse in recent weeks is on canceling people for what they say about the ME conflict, and limiting “free speech” of anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian or if you’d prefer, pro-Hamas advocates.
    .
    And it was entirely predictable. Many of the loudest who have been exclaiming about “free speech” were obviously using the issue for political expediency. It was easily predictable that when it became an issue of “free speech” they didn’t like, it would turn around. It’s like the nonsensical view that Musk was some kind of a “free speech” absolutist when he had long demonstrated his hypocrisy on “censorship” even well before he made it so obvious after he bought Twitter.
    .
    For all of my criticism of Greenwald, he serves as a good example of the relatively few people of high profile in the public domain who has been consistent on this issue and maintained a similar stance on “free speech” after 10/7 as he did previously.
    .
    If you listened to one of his shows recently he rails on and on about it constantly and does a decent job of supporting what he’s saying with examples.
    .
    For me, Bari Weiss is the best example of the hypocrisy since she has such a high profile on the whole anti-woke, anti-cancel culture crowd even though she’s been a leading member of the anti- anti-Israel speech police for decades. This issue stands aside of whether you think that any or all of anti-Israel advocacy is antisemitic. For Christ’s sake, in Congress they passed legislation saying that anti-Zionist advocacy is antisemetic and thus subject to regulation. BDS is legislatively prohibited in many states. This is a long-standing issue independent of anything related to “woke,” and a large segment of the “anti-woke” crowd was obviously highly selective in their targeting, but the recent developments have made it even that much more transparent.
    .
    Discussing the issues of “cancel culture” and “censorship” is entirely legit, imo. Although I think it’s more nuanced than is often framed (e.g., does government have a legit role in monitoring social media, or is government preventing social media from monitoring how their product is used reallly appropriate, or is a private sector limiting terms of service really “censorship” when government isn’t involved or has limited involvement and people can have myriad other venues for expressing themselves, etc.) I think it’s legitimately an important issue to address comprehensively. Sure, interrogate college presidents and tech execs about whether they are infringing on “free speech” or whether they’re inconsistent in their approach. All fair game.
    .
    But that’s independent of how the issue has been exploited by political advocates and tribalists for the sake of political expediency.
    .
    And my point, again, is about how it fits with those author’s points about how issues don’t actually map into the left/right axis although people in both sides will be absolutely certain that it does.
    .
    Anyone who wants to raise the question of consistency should absolutely go for it, but don’t dress it up as a “free speech” issue while being blatently inconsistent and exploitative of the issue.

  488. Joshua,
    Foolish people can chant whatever they want… and Hamas supporters will continue to for sure. There is no need to prevent them from displaying their stupidity in all its glory. We need instead to counter their chants with reasoned speech. Say like this:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP-CRXROorw
    .
    Of course, if the things someone says shows clearly that they have poor judgement (or maybe are just very dumb), they may find many hiring managers reluctant to hire those who are dumb or display very poor judgement.

  489. Joshua

    But the point would be that (1) there’s been a broad shift, “left” vs. “right, ” in how the “free speech” issue has played out in the public discourse in recent weeks and

    But I think the more important point is that “free speech” is not the “philosophical issue” either most “left” or “right” sides care about. So of course it gets bandied about when it’s convenient to advance other issues. Switching is to be expected.
    .
    To find coherency, you need to identify the issues they care about. Focusing other other things that might see to be issues will look incoherent.

  490. Lucia –
    .
    > But I think the more important point is that “free speech” is not the “philosophical issue” either most “left” or “right” sides care about. So of course it gets bandied about when it’s convenient to advance other issues. Switching is to be expected.
    ..
    That would make sense. Except I think that issues often also move up and down the hierarchy. Because it became politically expedient for “conservatives” “free speech” moved up the issue tree. Conversely, as the “violence of speech” moved up the hierarchy on “the left,” “free speech” moved down a few branches on “the left.”. Maybe some @30? or so years ago I think almost all of the rhetorical (and advocacy) energy around “free speech” was centered on “the left.”
    .
    So let’s run with that idea, though. Then which issues would be of that kind of centrality that “anchor” “the left” and “the right” respectively, in some kind of dichotomous way, that has remained consistently dichotomous over some extended time? The authors on that pod argue that there are none. I am hard pressed to think of any, although most people on “the left” and “the right” would argue vehemently that there are some – maybe like family values or caring for the oppressed, etc.? I’d argue that there’s no real dichotomy on those issues in association with location on the left/right axis. The people I know in my life are much more similar on those issues than they are different irrespective of where they identify on that left/right scale (of course, self-report and anecdote don’t make a good argument, too much selection bias and reporting bias).
    .
    Of course some argue that the problem is more one of semantics – that a more sophisticated scale would display a more consistent constellation within a taxonomy. Like the Cartesian coordinate system that Dan Kahan used to lay out world views: Individualism-Communitarianism on one axis and Hierarchy-Egalitarianism on the other.
    .
    I don’t think that really works either (I think people are inconsistent there also) but I think it would be closer to working,

  491. A snapshot of Kahan’s grid (the particular items in the grid don’t really matter)
    .
    https://www.researchgate.net/figure/FIGUre-A1-Cultural-Cognition-of-Risk_fig7_272368624
    .
    I think it gets towards reconciling Mark’s objection to the authors’ thesis. But while I think it’s much closer to holding true than the left/right constellation of world views, like I said I think there are still problems of the same sort of consistency problem that there is with the left/right constellation.

  492. The term religious right is a pejorative term used by the Godless Left to smear all Conservatives and all People of Faith. I coined the term Godless Left a few years ago when I started seeing the Godless Left use religious right indiscriminately to throw mud at anyone who didn’t agree with them politically. I retaliate with Godless Left every time I see the term.

  493. Russell –
    .
    > The term religious right is a pejorative term used by the Godless Left
    .
    .
    Indeed, what more evidence could we ask for than the words of the founding father of the Godless left himself, Jerry Falwell?:
    .
    .
    >Falwell offered an optimistic public opinion about the Moral Majority’s dissolution. Disbanding the Moral Majority in 1989 in Las Vegas, Falwell declared, “Our goal has been achieved… The religious right is solidly in place and […] religious conservatives in America are now in for the duration.”[20]
    .
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Majority#:~:text=Falwell%20offered%20an%20optimistic%20public,now%20in%20for%20the%20duration.%22
    .
    .
    For some history from an episcopal priest:
    .
    .
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133

  494. Joshua,
    You can’t expect issues to be entirely stable over 30s– 15 max. And also, “right” and “left” are to some extent coalitions. The “religious right” is a particular groups that tends to be social conservatives in some sense — but even there, evangelicals are not Catholics are not Mormons. So, for example, looking at Romney’s idea of “conservative” and the “mandate”– Mormons have a streak of collectivism– it’s just usually within the Mormon “tribe”. That is Mormons help other Mormons and also expect Mormons to plan for disasters in the future. There is a lot of requiring people to prepare for problems in the future. There is a whole putting up food thing. (Note: I’m not saying they are necessarily unhelpful to others. But there is a lot of community working together. )
    .

    Like the Cartesian coordinate system that Dan Kahan used to lay out world views: Individualism-Communitarianism on one axis and Hierarchy-Egalitarianism on the other.

    Note– this may not tell us where “free speech” is going to land. (Or does it? Maybe it’s i”individualism”– because we each individually get to say what we think? And Egalitarianism because higher ups don’t get to decide what is said? )

  495. Joshua your Comment #227202 is justifying the use of the term ‘religious right’ by a quote from 1989. 1989! The term ‘religious right’ no longer means what it did 35 years ago. The Godless Left has hijacked it. In 1989 People of Faith used it as an endearing term to refer to like-minded souls. It was a comforting moniker. Now it is used to sling mud, much like the term ‘climate d….r’ is used. The term ‘religious right’ is never used innocently in 2023, it’s always a pejorative and used almost exclusively by the Godless Left.

  496. Deep thinking from Dilbert:
    Scott Adams, @ScottAdamsSays
    Dear Democrats,

    I’m sorry your media has done this to you. I realize you have no mechanism for knowing how brainwashed you are, and as a trained hypnotist, I am genuinely empathetic about it.

    I mean no disrespect, because brainwashing is more powerful than brains. That’s why it works.

    One way out of your mental prison is to ask yourself which countries are okay with changing the basic nature of their societies via unchecked immigration.

    If such countries exist, and unchecked immigration is working out great for them, you might be right that the Right Wingers and Trump are like Hitler.

    If no such country exists, consider that you have been the victim of brainwashing — the real kind — and that this type of manipulation is the basic nature of American society, and has been for decades.

    Next, ask yourself if anyone has ever used a complex model to predict anything about the future — climate or otherwise. You will learn it isn’t a thing, and never has been. Models do not predict the future. Nothing else does either.

    Your real enemies are the brainwashers in charge, not the so-called Right Wing. There is a common enemy.

    The political right can be deluded and wrong too, but it never looks like the result of organized brainwashing, just an attraction to conspiracy theories, too many of which have proven true.

  497. Speaking as one of the godless left, I don’t think I have used the term ‘religious right’ since, well, the 1980s.

    Given the number of shameless hucksters and con men that have ascended to the pulpit in furtherance of hard right politics and occasionally policies, my characterization of that tribe has been somewhat ruder.

    Sadly, I can offer no excuses for the shameless hucksters and con men on my side of the aisle, but I can assure you I know they’re there–you don’t need to cite chapter and verse.

  498. Tom Fuller,
    My Godless Left insult is aimed solely at lefties who insult me first with the term religious right.

  500. Russel

    My Godless Left insult

    Well…. I guess I’m the Godless Right.
    Not sure why you think “religious right” is an insult.
    .
    The people who are conservatives who also promote prayer in school, block teaching of evolution and get bent out of shape about school kids dressing up for Halloween, are a different groups from conservatives who just want lower taxes, limited government, having the government stay out of our private lives and prefers to keep prayer out of school.
    .
    I mean… like in Wheaton, there are conservatives who block liquor sales in general don’t allow restaurants to sell beer or spirits and so on due to their religion.
    .
    If we are going to discuss the difference between these two groups both seen as “right”, we are going to need an adjective. Religious seems the best possible choice– since all those differences have to do with religion. But if you want a better one you are going to have to suggest one. And it better actually be descriptive.
    .
    I honestly don’t think calling religious people religious is an insult. But if you want a different word, please suggest one!

  501. Lucia,
    “I don’t think “Religious Right” is a slur.”
    You are in no position to judge. A lot of rednecks don’t think the “N-word” is a slur. A lot of climate scientists think “Climate De…r” is an accurate term. I’ll be the one to judge when I think someone is using a slur against me and I think “religious right” is a slur.
    Also:
    “But if you want a different word, please suggest one!”
    I’ll do no such thing. If you want to use a broad brush to label people you disagree with I will not help you. All people who oppose alcohol abuse are not doing it because of religion [AA and MADD]. All people who support abortion restrictions are not doing it because of religion [Me!].

  502. Russell –
    .
    > Joshua your Comment #227202 is justifying the use of the term ‘religious right’ by a quote from 1989. 1989!
    .
    Yes, a quote where Jerry Falwell used the term. Obviously not remotely a slur used by the “Godless left.”
    .
    Your version of the etymology of the term seems unfounded. I provided a link that gives a version of the relevant history going further back, referencing a deliberate political strategy to capitalize on a large voting block, to make them more of a coherent political force.
    .
    Do you have something more than an argument by assertion?

  503. > All people who support abortion restrictions are not doing it because of religion.
    .
    In fact, that article presents some interesting history re the linkages among abortion, politics, and religion.
    .
    I found this fascinating, and it goes to the earlier discussion about how issues map onto the political landscape over time..

    > Today, evangelicals make up the backbone of the pro-life movement, but it hasn’t always been so. Both before and for several years after Roe, evangelicals were overwhelmingly indifferent to the subject, which they considered a “Catholic issue.” In 1968, for instance, a symposium sponsored by the Christian Medical Society and Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of evangelicalism, refused to characterize abortion as sinful, citing “individual health, family welfare, and social responsibility” as justifications for ending a pregnancy. In 1971, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention in St. Louis, Missouri, passed a resolution encouraging “Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.” The convention, hardly a redoubt of liberal values, reaffirmed that position in 1974, one year after Roe, and again in 1976.

    When the Roe decision was handed down, W. A. Criswell, the Southern Baptist Convention’s former president and pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas—also one of the most famous fundamentalists of the 20th century—was pleased: “I have always felt that it was only after a child was born and had a life separate from its mother that it became an individual person,” he said, “and it has always, therefore, seemed to me that what is best for the mother and for the future should be allowed.”
    .
    Although a few evangelical voices, including Christianity Today magazine, mildly criticized the ruling, the overwhelming response was silence, even approval. Baptists, in particular, applauded the decision as an appropriate articulation of the division between church and state, between personal morality and state regulation of individual behavior. “Religious liberty, human equality and justice are advanced by the Supreme Court abortion decision,” wrote W. Barry Garrett of Baptist Press

  505. Russel,

    You are in no position to judge. A lot of rednecks don’t think the “N-word” is a slur. A lot of climate scientists think “Climate De…r” is an accurate term.

    First: of course I can judge whether something is a slur even if a term doesn’t apply to me.
    .
    Also: you are a bit confused here. At in the US, “rednecks” darn well knew the N-word was a slur when they used it. (Redneck is, by the way, also a slur, which most people know when they use it.) Also: Climate scientists know they intend “denier” to be a slur. Other slurs: Kike, Mick, Frog, Polack, camel jockey… All were made slurs by those who used them terms.
    .
    These things are slurs because people who used them actually intended them to be slurs. The terms didn’t just become slurs because those who were called that thing didn’t like that word. (And, by the way, some slurs can become not-slurs if the slurred party embraces the term. )
    .

    I’ll do no such thing.

    Ok. Then I’ll continue to use the adjective “right” to describe people votes favor a constellation of choices seem as being on “the right” and I will add the adjective “religious” to the ones who also push for social issues like prayer in school, no evolution in schools, no halloween costumes in schools and so on and so on.
    .
    And I don’t buy the notion that using adjectives to distinguish different groups inside the right is using a “broad brush”. It is precisely using a small brush to highlight the different colors of “right”.
    .
    You can’t just single handedly decree a term that is not a slur is a slur and have that be so.
    .

    All people who oppose alcohol abuse are not doing it because of religion [AA and MADD].

    Of course not. And I made no such claim. Nor does using the term “religious right” suggest any such thing.
    .
    As for your response to my bringing up Wheaton College: I think you are not familiar with Wheaton College. They don’t merely oppose “alcohol abuse“. They oppose any and all sales of alcohol. Since they dominate Wheaton, restaurants can’t sell liquor. At. All. (Or couldn’t unless that has changed recently.)

    Only recently has Wheaton College started allowing their students to dance. (See https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-mar-08-me-religwheaton8-story.html ) This is a religious college and they have very unique rules that are inspired by their religion. They don’t make any bones about that. (Nor does the Vatican apologize for being Roman Catholic!)
    .
    In contrast, a few miles south of Wheaton was more religiously diverse and has always allowed drinking. The local college is Benedictine University, and Roman Catholics allow drinking. The don’t encourage abuse, but the do allow drinking.
    .
    Here in Lisle, we have a beer tent at the 4th of July fireworks– right there inside the official area, no fence. Wheaton…. well… new people have moved in and they fought to get some beer at their Festivals. But it’s a 1/2 milk walk from the main part of the event!
    .
    I didn’t put abortion on my list of issues that were unique to the “religious right”. So I don’t know why you are informing me that people’s views on that are not necessarily religious. I know perfectly well there are a range of views– heck, I’ve know people whose motivation is to punish women for having had sex. That doesn’t mean most peoples is– and certainly not yours. But there are a lot of people and people’s idea about abortion span a huge range.
    .
    Obviously, everyone on the “right” shares some political stands.

    Some views– like prayer in school– is unique to a particular block. That is the religious one.
    .
    I have no idea why you want to avoid distinguishing these groups — Nor why you think insisting no not distinguishing is using the broad brush. But there is a branch of “right” that is specifically informed by “religion”. And “religious right” is the best possible descriptive term.
    .
    I don’t consider it a slur to point that out. It does not have a history of being used asa a slur. And I assure you the people in Wheaton College don’t consider it a slur to be called religious or right! They proclaim it.

  506. Merry Christmas from those of us with ambiguous religious speculations!
    [I know the holidays are a ways off. I’m trying not to dwell on that observation though.]

  508. I also wish everyone happy holidays,
    Lucia
    (big-haired, godless, Trump-disliking, leans-small-l-libertarian, right-ish willing to embrace adjectives person.)

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