I make no predictions on this. But a lot of people reading the tea leaves think some sort of attack is imminent. There’s this, for example:
Now it appears that the State Department has begun moving non-essential options out of the way – a warning, perhaps, that Trump has tired of circular arguments from Tehran.
The timing and the choice both seem significant. First, the US has begun moving non-essential personnel from Iraq, likely the closest and most vulnerable target for Iran’s proxy militias …
More pointedly, the State Department ordered the same evacuation in Israel …
That seems like a very clear signal that the talks in Oman did not go well. The urgency of these moves is another indicator that the talks produced nothing more than the same demands from Iran to keep enriching uranium and the same refusals to discuss their ballistic missiles and terror proxies.
I have always felt the talks with Iran are some sort of stalling tactic. But I also think an attack will be very hard to pull off successfully (and it certainly won’t be an invasion), and that there’s quite a bit of disagreement within the administration on what to do, and when to do it.
Today commenter “Snow on Pine” offered this link on the subject, which says:
[Crime rates are] almost always statistical projections.
Look, if we can’t accurately quantify crime stats in a closed ecosystem like cybersecurity, we don’t have a prayer of tabulating crime rates everywhere else. Too many variables. …
Some states explicitly prohibit the police from asking about or tracking the data. You also have the problem of unsolved crimes: If you don’t catch the perpetrator, you’ll never know who did it.
Furthermore, it’s reasonable to assume that someone who’s cagey enough (or well-connected enough) to illegally cross the border, live in the shadows, and evade authorities would likely be a more successful criminal than your Average Joe. And if illegal immigrants are targeting other illegal immigrants, that increases the probability of the victim staying silent — for very obvious reasons.
There’s much much more of interest at the link. However, as the article points out, one indicator is the fact that the crime rate has fallen just about simultaneously with the deportation crackdown – although even that could be a coincidence, albeit an unlikely one. Social science research – which criminology research basically is – is very difficult to do in a way that indicates an unequivocal cause/effect relationship.
Remember back in 2015 when Trump first announced he was running for president and there was a huge megative reaction from the press and Democrats when he spoke about illegal aliens and crime? Funny thing, but the very first post I wrote about Trump’s candidacy, back in early July of 2015, was on that topic. It’s worth going back to it to see that one of the main points was how much flak Trump was getting for pointing out the phenomenon, and how very difficult it was to confirm whether or not he was correct, and to what extent.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best,” Trump said. “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
“And some I assume are good people,” he added.
But it’s not just Mexico that’s dumping all of it’s problems in the U.S., Trump continued. “It’s coming from all over South and Latin America and it’s coming probably, probably, from the Middle East. We don’t know.” …
Then I offered a bunch of links that to some extent backed up what he was saying. If you’re interested, go to the post and read the whole thing. One of the things I wrote was this:
The media and liberals are hyper-concerned with campus rapes whose high numbers are largely a myth. But they seem to show little concern for [women raped by illegal aliens, either while in transit or in the US] – as long as it’s Trump bringing it up.
And here we are nearly ten years later. What a long strange trip it’s been.
[NOTE: I was writing about the topic of the difficulty of getting statistics on illegal aliens and crime even before Trump’s candidacy. For example, please see this detailed post on the subject from July of 2014.]
(1) Schumer’s answer, when asked why Democrats didn’t stand when Trump said to stand if they believe that “The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens,” was: “Of course we support Americans; we’re not going to be a prop in Donald Trump’s little show.”
Chuck Schumer says Democrats didn't stand when President Trump said our government should work for Americans, not illegals because he didn't want to be a "prop."
Ah, but the Democrats love to put on their own “little shows” – wearing all white, dramatically ripping up the SOTU address, yelling at Trump, boycotting the address. The other irony is that, by refusing to stand, they guaranteed that they would earn a place as the villains in “Trump’s little show.”
(2) J. D. Vance makes this observation about the Democrats’ repeated refusal to stand during the speech:
But I will say, Bill, something that I saw that probably most TV viewers didn’t see was really the cowardice, because there were a few Democrats who sort of politely clapped. They didn’t want to stand up. I guess maybe they were worried about being primaried by the far-left fringe of their party. But they were all looking around. They weren’t actually saying, you know what, I’m going to stand and support this because this is a common-sense, obvious statement. They were all looking around for cues from their colleagues, because they didn’t have the courage to stand on their own.
I don’t doubt it. You can call it “party discipline,” but it’s actually quite chilling.
(3) Dueling Trump impersonators:
I prefer Kozak, although they’re both good. Kozak’s Tucker is astounding, though, and even more so if you’re really familiar with Carlson’s mannerisms. It seems like an exaggeration but it resembles the real Carlson quite closely.
Jon Phillips, the owner of Sonoma County winery Inspiration Vineyards and Winery, told The Post that the population decline of the industry’s top wine-consuming generation has led to a recent downturn in sales.
“A lot of people have a misconception that the Boomers are drinking less,” he said. “This cannot be emphasized enough: it’s not because the Boomers are drinking less, it’s because there are less Boomers.”
That would be fewer Boomers, not less. But you get the idea. As a non-drinker, I know next to nothing about this. Looking it up just now, I find the following:
The 2025 sample included nearly 5,000 U.S. adults over the age of 21, balanced to the U.S. census for age, income, education, gender, and ethnicity. It found that 31% of wine drinkers are now Millennials, surpassing Baby Boomers at 26%, whose share has dropped significantly from 32% in 2023. Gen Z’s share also climbed from 9% to 14%, despite only half the cohort currently being of legal drinking age.
“These findings show both opportunities and challenges,” said Liz Thach, President of the Wine Market Council, who presented the results alongside Research Director Christian Miller during a recent webinar for WMC members. “We’ve seen gains among Millennials and Gen Z; however, the industry is concurrently experiencing a decline in overall wine consumers.”
“What is interesting about this change is that despite all the talk about young consumers reducing alcohol, the largest erosion we found was in Baby Boomers – consumers over 60 years of age,” stated Christian Miller.
So again, is it because there are fewer Boomers around? It’s not clear. However, it’s part of an overall decline in alcohol consumption, with “beer, spirits, and wine sales all experiencing declines in the past year.” Is that because cannabis consumption is up? That’s my guess. And it appears to be a distinct possibility.
(5) Thune says the SAVE Act will come to the Senate floor. That does not mean it will pass; there aren’t enough GOP votes to go with the nuclear option or impose a talking filibuster, as far as I can see.
In a clear message to the region emphasizing the strength of their alliance, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Wednesday to work in lockstep to confront Islamist terrorism, with the Indian leader telling the Knesset in a historic address that his nation stands “firmly” with the Jewish state.
“India stands with Israel firmly with full conviction in this moment and beyond,” Modi told lawmakers during a special session in the Knesset honoring the Indian premier, the first time an Indian leader has addressed Israel’s parliament.
The two long-serving leaders have developed a famously close personal relationship — occasionally uncomfortably so — reflecting a strategic relationship that has been expanding steadily for decades. …
In the Knesset on Wednesday, Modi called Israel “a protective wall against barbarism,” echoing language that Netanyahu has used when speaking to Western audiences.
Netanyahu wants to create a regional alliance to counter Iran’s alliances.
From Modi:
The massacre of October 7 made it absolutely clear: either the jihadist axis of evil will break us, or we will break it …
If you want to learn more about the history of Israel/India relations, see this.
This is an interesting read: https://bipartisanpolicy.org/article/five-things-to-know-about-the-save-act/
Among the interesting information it presents, there is this:
“Although at least one of these documents are in theory available to most citizens, not all voters have them readily available. According to recent studies:
… 11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate.”
I’m sorry, your source is completely lying here. I followed the link in your link which goes to a Substack and it did not say this.
What it said was 89% of people in the survey said they had their birth certificate. It did not say they “do not have access” to their birth certificate or cannot get it. It is very, very easy to get a copy of your birth certificate, and you can get 100 copies if you want.
I did the same as Niketas, just to make sure. While it’s true that the article Betsybounds linked to did say “11% of registered voters do not have access to their birth certificate,” it included a link to this piece as the source of that information. That latter article makes it clear the reference is to people not actually having copies of their birth certificates in their possession, and not to people not having access to birth certificates. The latter group is nothing remotely like 11%.
Some sources I’ve seen use the term “readily available,” which is also misleading. No, the birth certificate might not already be in the person’s nightstand, but the document is ordinarily available with a modicum of effort. Fees are usually minimal, and can sometimes be waived entirely for various forms of financial hardship.
Some people who find it hard to get birth certificates are naturalized citizens who were born in war-torn countries where records have been destroyed, but those people would have naturalization papers and those can be used to prove citizenship.
Plus, most people discussing this issue completely ignore another alternate means of proving citizenship under the law:
Subject to any relevant guidance adopted by the Election Assistance Commission, each State shall establish a process under which an applicant who cannot provide documentary proof of United States citizenship under paragraph (1) may, if the applicant signs an attestation under penalty of perjury that the applicant is a citizen of the United States and eligible to vote in elections for Federal office, submit such other evidence to the appropriate State or local official demonstrating that the applicant is a citizen of the United States and such official shall make a determination as to whether the applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote in elections for Federal office in the State.
“(ii) AFFIDAVIT REQUIREMENT.—If a State or local official makes a determination under clause (i) that an applicant has sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote in elections for Federal office in the State, such determination shall be accompanied by an affidavit developed under clause (iii) signed by the official swearing or affirming the applicant sufficiently established United States citizenship for purposes of registering to vote.
There’s an awful lot of propaganda floating around about this and so many other things. When in doubt, best to go to the source, the original material if possible.
Why Spanberger? Maybe because she’s a relatively new face, she’s under eighty years old (actually, she’s forty-six), and she’s a white woman with various college degrees. Thus she represents a very large portion of the Democrat demographic.
Spanberger hammered home the message of “affordability,” which the Democrats apparently think is the way to win. After all, it helped get Spanberger into the Virginia governor’s seat, and it also made Mamdani New York’s mayor. From Spanberger:
She began her remarks by telling Americans that “tonight … we did not hear the truth from our president.”
After claiming that President Donald Trump’s tariff policies were making the price of goods more expensive, she told a whopper: “But here in Virginia,” she said, “I am working with our state legislature to lower costs and make the Commonwealth more affordable.” …
After campaigning on affordability, her administration unveiled a series of tax increase bills within the first 48 hours of her inauguration. And these tax hikes weren’t aimed solely at high-income earners; most targeted ordinary Virginians. The sheer speed and scope of this legislative blitz drew immediate criticism, with detractors branding it a classic bait-and-switch. The sweeping power grab quickly commanded national attention, dominating headlines for weeks. And no one has forgotten.
The bills included the creation of two higher tax brackets of 8% and 10% on people making over $600,000; a 4.3% sales tax on services like Uber rides, DoorDash, and Amazon deliveries; a 3.8% investment tax; an increase in hotel taxes; a new personal property tax on landscaping equipment; a $500 sales tax on firearm suppressors; an 11% sales tax on all firearms and ammunition; and more.
It’s almost as though Democrats consider “affordability” a magic word, an “open sesame” spell that gets them into office, after which they can redistribute wealth to their hearts’ content.
Trump knew they wouldn’t be standing or applauding for things that the vast majority of Americans favor, and he used that fact to castigate them. Some Democrats also yelled at him; John Fetterman had warned his fellow Democrats against that sort of thing, but they couldn’t resist:
“I mean, there’s just no dignity if you have paddles, if you are yelling and saying those kinds of things,” Fetterman said. “I mean, you can agree or disagree on things, but if you’re going to show up, just do it with dignity because, you know, really need to respect the office.”
So far, I haven’t been able to find out whether Fetterman actually stood for things like the following. If so, he would have been lonely:
There was more where that came from. As they say: the campaign ads write themselves.
Will it matter, though? Does that sort of thing change any minds?
[ADDENDUM: Here are four picks from the SOTU for campaign ads.]
I have long been afraid of avalanches. I don’t ski at all and never have, so my danger from the phenomenon is basically nil. But it’s a primal fear nonetheless, perhaps from movies.
That’s one of the reasons the news of nine people dead in an avalanche while back-country skiing in the Tahoe area filled me with dread and sorrow. Such young, vibrant people, their lives snuffed out in an instant – although such deaths are usually not instantaneous. The news reports didn’t tell us some things I’d like to know, such as whether they were all skiing at once, and where the survivors were positioned that allowed them to live, and why the decision was made to go despite avalanche warnings.
There was also a less-publicized death but no less horrible, of an 11-year-old girl in Utah, killed in another avalanche while back-country skiing with her family, and another in Utah of a father who was snowmobiling with his son. In both cases, family members tried to dig out the victims, but didn’t manage to save their lives. One can imagine the frantic desperate efforts, the terrible feelings of failure and grief and perhaps guilt.
Why do people engage in such activities? That’s not hard to imagine: it is beautiful in the mountains in winter, and ski resort areas can be terribly crowded. For a lover of nature, mountains, and outdoor activities in snow, back-country activities have a huge draw. And we all do plenty of other seemingly risky things, such as driving.
Then I learned that there have been many avalanche-related deaths in the Alps this year, and that although the number is high, the numbers are usually high (or what I would consider high):
Though the recent spike in avalanche deaths in Europe is worrying, it is not exceptional – according to European Avalanche Warning Services, 95 have died so far this season, compared to 70 in the whole of 2024-25 and 87 in 2023-24. The 2020-21 season, when 131 died, and 2017-18, when the figure was 147, seem comparable.
The articles I’ve read on the European deaths haven’t broken down the figures for back-country deaths, but my guess is that almost all are of that type. Here’s a video that goes into how and why avalanches occur, and how ski resorts prevent or at least reduce their occurrence. The second video is about the Alps avalanche deaths:
It seems to me that back-country skiing has increased in recent years, and that is the case (the article is from a year ago]:
Backcountry skiing has surged in popularity since the pandemic, but those wishing to leave the relative safety of busy resorts can find themselves at the mercy of an unforgiving wilderness. If something goes wrong — as it often does, with avalanches a constant threat — skiers do not have a first-aid team nearby, and rescue can take hours.
And yet Ennen, from Park City, Utah, says the peaceful isolation found up remote mountains is preferable by far to being stuck in lengthy lines at resorts, and he is willing to embrace risk for a sense of freedom.
“I love being in the mountains and surrounded by nature,” said Ennen, a 45-year-old cardiac anaesthesiologist. “It’s my time for my brain to relax and to decompress from the real world. When you’re skiing in a resort, you’re in a controlled environment but with an uncontrolled group of people.
“The backcountry is the opposite. You’re with a controlled group of people, your team, but in a very uncontrolled environment.”
It’s a decision an increasing number of people have been making. Advances in avalanche-related equipment, such as beacons, have probably helped give a sense of security- perhaps a false one? The Tahoe skiiers were thus equipped. In terms of relative risk, though, I don’t know what the figures are and I’m not sure there are figures for how many people back-country ski these days.
Writing this post made me think of the last verse of this poem by Emily Dickinson, which goes like this:
This is the Hour of Lead –
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow –
First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
