News roundup
(1) I think Troy Jackson may be in trouble in Maine (I certainly hope so). Not only was he rude to Susan Collins in their debate, but he didn’t backtrack during a later interview.
But that’s not really what I’m basing my opinion on. Granted, I’ve got a sample of exactly one, but I was talking to a Maine resident friend of mine the other day and she – a very strong Democrat and TDS sufferer – said she had reservations about Jackson and was having trouble imagining voting for him.
(2) Neil Bush says he voted for Talarico in Texas.
Because of course he did.
“My vote was motivated by two things: deep concern about Ken Paxton’s record and genuine admiration for the character and principles I see in James Talarico,” Bush wrote in a Facebook post. …
In his post, Neil Bush wrote that he is “deeply troubled by Paxton’s conduct as Texas Attorney General, particularly his decision to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election in other states in an effort to help Donald Trump remain in power.”
January 6th and its aftermath – the gift that keeps on giving.
(3) This is a fascinating article in Tablet magazine that discusses why Israel is a fertility outlier among Westernized nations, with average birth rates considerably higher than the rest of the group.
(4) The DOJ has charged 28 non-citizens found on California voter rolls. Also, the DOJ is suing California about its reluctance to cooperate with determining the citizenship of its voters:
The Department of Justice on Thursday sued California for alleged “state-facilitated voter fraud,” seeking to block 20,000 people on the voter rolls suspected of being noncitizens. …
The DOJ specifically asked that the court bar California from tabulating mail-in ballots from likely noncitizens until the effective determination of that voters’ citizenship status.
But Los Angeles – where most of these people live – is saying it lacks a way to verify citizenship.
Don’t bet much on word that Russia is “ready in principle” to resume three-way peace talks with Ukraine and the United States next month; after all, thugocrat Vladimir Putin has been ready to end the war since the day he started it . . . as long as his victim surrenders.
Maybe, just maybe, Moscow is signaling something positive, since that statement emerged after presidential envoy Steve Witkoff briefed Putin on the latest US ceasefire proposals, which he’d already cleared with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and other allies at an Oslo sitdown the day before.
Indeed, Zelensky announced he’ll accept a cease-fire that freezes current lines in place, allowing Russia to continue occupying vast swathes of his nation.
On the other hand, Putin’s made plenty of ready-to-talk noises before, only to then demand unilateral concessions before any actual sitdown.
I have no expectation that any change will come of this.
But Los Angeles – where most of these people live – is saying it lacks a way to verify citizenship.
No problem. Farm out citizen verification to Texas, which has it figured out. 🙂
A lot of GOP establishment types would rather “lose with dignity” than do anything about the Bolsheviks in the other party. The Bush family, Thune, McConnell, Thom Tillis, the late John McCain, all of them.
Are they naive, willfully stupid, or are they actors being paid to play a part?
I have mixed feelings about the prospects for peace in Ukraine. On one hand this has clearly become a quagmire for Russia. It is now longer since their RE-invasion of Ukraine in 2022 than the entire Russian involvement in WWII from the German invasion to V-E Day. Though it’s hard to say Ukraine is “winning” since Russia still occupies part of the country Russia has made scant territorial gains at enormous expense. You’d think Putin would like a face-saving way out, especially if he gets to keep some territory as Zelensky has reportedly offered.
But Putin while not a communist ideologically is completely a product of the Soviet system. He served in the KGB for 15 years. So the only way he knows how to play is hardball. I’m not making any predictions.
(3) Fascinating. I read it rather carefully.
(The second graph in the article is an animated GIF that’s very cool. Anyone with a more serious interest in how quantitative data is presented graphically should check it out.)
The author suggests that Israel’s persistently higher than “western normal” birthrates is something of a uniquely Jewish phenomenon. A cultural thing that seems to persist in a way that many other cultural influences don’t.
I could ramble on about my German Catholic influences and how persistent those are for me. (They aren’t. In spite of my wife’s very Catholic family causing us to go to a Catholic marriage indoctrination retreat. Make babies y’all! 😉 )
Or the Jewish experience, of which my knowledge is quite limited though interesting to me. Knowledge mostly obtained from my east coast college friends and some media and celebrity bios etc.
One of those comes to mind, namely journalist David Gregory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gregory_(journalist)
Very secular, with a Methodist wife, he had little interest in the Jewish religion until his three children got a bit older. His wife was raising them as Christians amidst his disinterest, when he had his little epiphany. No, the kids need to know their Jewish history and a bit about the religion. A conversion from secular to traditional-religious, according to the article’s categories.
Actor Kevin Pollack had a similar “conversion” IIRC.
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I wondered how COVID lockdowns would affect birthrates. A downward blip followed by an upward blip. Largely a wash, with a very slight net upward effect that then dissipated.
CoPilot gives more detail with the query: How was the US birth rate influenced by COVID lockdowns? If anyone is interested.
Neil Bush and the younger Barbara Bush? Does anyone care?
I read somewhere that the Russian army is in real trouble in Ukraine at the moment. You wonder how long Russian mothers will send their sons into that meat grinder. Or maybe they don’t. But surely Russian prisons are nearly empty by now; and N. Korea does not have an endless supply of Martyrs to Communism.
On the other hand, it is becoming clear that in the age of drones, wars will be fought less on battlefields and more at long range against civilians and infrastructure. Putin may feel that he can still pound Kiev into submission with his rocketry and drone force.
‘What did you do in the most recent Great Patriotic War, Daddy?’ ‘I was a highly decorated drone pilot’.
If I’m not mistaken, Neil Bush was the only member of generation 3 of the Bush clan who was on the record in favor of DJT at any point.
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I wouldn’t insist that Bush vote for Paxton, who has all sorts of issues. There was no good reason for him to vote for Talarico, much less say he ‘admired’ him.
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Every time you think the Bush clan has finally hit bottom and cannot sink any lower, one of them proves you wrong. It’s time for rank-and-file Republicans to adopt the policy that a Bush or a Cheney scion is an antagonist until such time as they provide some piece of evidence they are not.
(2) Neil Bush says he voted for Talarico in Texas.
Web search: Neil Mallon Bush is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist…
In recent days, neo hammered home the importance of “virtue signaling” amongst many ardent liberals. Color me jaded, but I’d guess a guy like Neil Bush might say a lot of things just aren’t so. Kind of like a much younger Donald Trump saying he’s a Democrat. Trump could have changed, but I doubt it.
Neil Bush and the younger Barbara Bush? Does anyone care?
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Not interested in their opinions (though it peaked my interest to discover in an interview Billy Bush’s frank admission that figures at NBC released a twelve year old tape they’d surreptitiously recorded of DJT in order to damage his candidacy (“I was collateral damage”). It’s another indicator that the people who ran the Republican Party at its apex and center for 26 years (Messrs. Dole and Gingerich prominent exceptions) were actually hostile to the interests of Republican voters.