At GZero Ian Bremmer, presumably in reaction to Seymour Hersh’s breathless post, gives his two cents on who blew up the Nordstream pipeline:

My money is on Ukraine. Ukrainians had the most to gain from blowing up this multi-billion dollar, Russian-owned cudgel. They were also the most risk-tolerant. Russia poses an existential threat to them, so they are willing to do almost anything to prevail. They knew they couldn’t win without a strong and united NATO behind them, and they knew the alliance would be vulnerable as long as Russia could leverage its gas against Germany.

Five months ago, I would’ve been skeptical that the Ukrainians had the technical and operational capabilities to do something like this. But I also didn’t think they’d be able to blow up the Kerch Bridge connecting Crimea to Russia, itself quite a sophisticated operation. Nor did I imagine they could assassinate Darya Dugina just outside of Moscow. So it’s clear the Ukrainians are eminently willing and able to plan and execute high-risk reasonably complex operations.

possibly with assistance from Poland. However, for my money this is the most important statement in Mr. Bremmer’s piece:

More broadly, the very contention that the US would sabotage infrastructure partially owned by a key ally (Germany) in concert with another shared ally (Norway) without alerting Berlin beggars belief given what we know about Washington’s strategic interests.

At the time, the Biden administration was pursuing closer ties with Germany on a range of issues, including tech regulation, China decoupling, and reversing the pullback in transatlantic cooperation initiated by the Trump administration. Blowing up Nord Stream would have jeopardized all those initiatives and invited Russian retaliation for a questionable benefit: definitively ending Germany’s already-dwindling dependence on Russia to strengthen NATO unity.

Targeting Germany in cahoots with Norway also would’ve risked fracturing the NATO coalition Biden had explicitly focused on bolstering from day one — a risky move for a generally risk-averse administration.

That rings true to me.

John Halpin has two pleas for American education:

1. No discrimination and ideology in America’s schools.
2. Teach the basics—reading, writing, math, science, and fact-based history.

It made me wonder where he’s been for the last 50 years, as postmodernism and deconstructionism have made their way through American academic institutions. Had he been paying attention he would realize there is no such thing as “fact-based history”. Even science has not escaped.

Refocusing American education on what used to be called the “3 Rs”, is no joke. According to the ISBE Illinois Report Card for 2022 there were 30 Illinois high schools in which no students could read at grade level, 53 Illinois high schools at which no student could do math at grade level, and 10% or fewer kids could do math at grade level in a quarter of the high schools. That’s not explained by lack of spending. Quite a few of these underperforming schools have a per student spending level of $20,000 or more.

It can’t be explained by COVID-19, either—some of these schools were just as bad in 2019.

I should add that some of the lack of reading proficiency is easily explainable and should be taken into consideration. Almost 10% of K12 students have weak to non-existent proficiency in English. Expecting them to read at grade level in a language they don’t understand is a big ask.

Is the explanation for why Americans have such a low opinion of the present U. S. economy the difference between surviving and thriving as proposed by Henry Olsen in his Washington Post column?

The news is sobering: In 1985, it took 39.7 weeks of work each year to pay for these things, giving families plenty of room to enjoy other consumer goods and luxuries. But today, it takes 62.1 weeks of work to cover the same expenses. In other words, about 40 years ago, the median American family could enjoy a middle-class life on one earner’s paycheck. Today, it takes two.

One might argue that the move from one-earner to two-earner families is unimportant. That would be correct if families preferred it that way, but most do not. A 2021 survey showed that more than half of married mothers would prefer to have one parent in the home full-time with children aged 5 or younger. That preference is especially pronounced among lower- or working-class families.

Consider the following graph (from American Compass):

I found the way they subdivided the groups in the graph above confusing, indeed, even capricious. I think it would be interesting to see how Men 25-34 (HS Grads) are faring. If it is I expect it would explain a lot more than just why people say they’re unhappy with the economy in opinion polls.

At iai News Pavel Kroupa and Moritz Haslbauer report on a paper with a controversial finding: the standard cosmological model is wrong. We’re not as smart as we thought we were.

I’m not sure what the real world implications of this may be but I suspect it will have some.

George Friedman is puzzled by the mysterious balloons:

The problem I have is imagining the mission these objects could carry out, one that would be invisible, allow loitering if needed and be able to avoid detection. There could be some highly specialized targets, but the fleet that the Chinese appear to have, and that they claim the U.S. has, seems excessive to the task. One Chinese craft was over a U.S. Air Force base that is doubtless loaded with secrets, but how many of the secrets would be visible or broadcasting in the clear?

One theoretical mission would be to divert attention. Russia is much closer to Alaska than is China. It is engaged in a war where the United States has a role, to understate it. Having large, weird craft flying over the continental United States could, in this thinking, generate panic, with the public demanding that the government focus on national defense and not Ukraine. There are a hundred diversionary functions these objects could serve for a limited time, although the result of this episode is low panic and high confusion.

The fundamental question is how objects this large, at altitudes allowing enhanced visibility, could go unnoticed if U.S. and Chinese charges are even close to true. From available information, the craft move with the grace of an elephant and could be shot down by aircraft, missile or a well-aimed slingshot. They must be stunningly advanced, which would explain why the U.S. government is withholding answers. If national security requires it, then it should be. But the price is that the U.S. government is shooting down aircraft and, knowing from the beginning that they are Chinese, is unable to tell us what it found in the wreckage.

and spending probably $1 million a pop or thereabouts to do it. I agree with Mr. Friedman that it behooves the Biden Administration to explain what it’s doing. Sadly, I doubt we’ll ever receive a genuinely coherent explanation. The answer may be “letting them fly didn’t work so now we’re shooting them down to see if that works” which isn’t very satisfying.

Here’s Heather Long’s explanation for the state of the economy from her Washington Post column:

The most plausible explanation of all is that the pandemic and subsequent recovery were so unusual that the normal rules of economics don’t apply. Demand surged for everything from toaster ovens to used cars. Supply chains could not keep up. Prices spiked. Now, there’s a right-sizing. Goods inflation has come down for most items (even for eggs) as demand has subsided. The question is whether services inflation for travel, restaurants, entertainment, insurance and deliveries will follow.

It’s reasonable after a fashion to think that the phrase “the normal rules of economics don’t apply” has actual meaning. If it means anything it means that people don’t have preferences, don’t pursue their incentives, and behavior is completely unpredictable. And yet everywhere I go, on a daily even hourly basis, I see almost exactly the opposite. I see people buying things when they’re on sale, stopping their cars when the traffic light turns red (unless they think they can get away with running it), and picking Coke over the store brand of cola.

On the other hand I think it’s completely plausible, when the measured numbers are 10% or the reported numbers, to wonder if the calculations are completely reliable.

I found this interview by Brendan O’Neill at Spiked of Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor at Newsweek, refreshing. First, to place Ms. Ungar-Sargon on the political spectrum:

Batya Ungar-Sargon: I consider myself a left-wing populist. Routinely, people on the left would say that I’m a conservative and that the points I make are conservative talking points. I always laughed at this because, first of all, I don’t think ‘conservative’ is an insult. People expect you to act like somebody just called you fat.

In a way that hearkens back to one of my earliest posts here at The Glittering Eye. Because such statements are almost always subjective, they’re also almost always off target. Most people identify themselves as moderates because they’re in the center of their universes. However, when you analyze their views according to some objective standard, it may turn out quite differently than they might anticipate. Every year or so I check my own views over at The Political Compass and gosh dern it I’m actually centrist—almost smack dab in the middle.

I don’t know what Ms. Ungar-Sargon’s political views are but for that reason she probably doesn’t have a very clear notion of where she fits into the political spectrum.

Here’s an interesting exchange:

O’Neill: Do the elites really believe in the green agenda? Or do they just benefit from it?

Ungar-Sargon: I think they definitely believe it. I don’t think you can look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for example, and not see somebody who is deeply sincere. The only thing that makes me think that they don’t believe it is the private jets. If you believed so deeply in man-made climate change, surely the first thing you would do is ban private jets. But on the whole I do think they believe it. It would be very hard to pull off at this scale if they didn’t.

The way the elites think of the economy is very related to green ideology. They picture an economy in which the top 20 per cent keeps making over $100,000 a year and lives in nice neighbourhoods and nice cities. All production is done in China. All service-industry jobs are performed by slave-wage Venezuelans brought in by cartels. And everybody making under $100,000 a year – who used to be the working class – is on universal basic income. That’s the view that a lot of so-called progressives consciously or unconsciously have of their ideal economic system.

Of course, this fits right into the green movement. You can’t have a middle class without cheap, affordable fuel and energy. And climate activists don’t believe in cars, they don’t believe in trucks, they don’t believe in farming. They don’t believe in the jobs that we actually rely on to survive. They’ve essentially given up on America. They’re definitely not proud of America, they’re ashamed of it. They hate conservatives, religious people, Republicans, people who voted for Trump. To them, those people are anathema to the good life.

The green movement just fits so neatly into this worldview. We’re outsourcing the dirty jobs to China, so we can forget about the CO2 emissions. At the same time, we’re happy to sentence the people who do those jobs to impoverishment. It’s an incredibly dark and elitist worldview.

Of course the environment doesn’t care where the emissions are produced. If human action is the primary driver of climate change, it doesn’t make any difference whether that action is taken in the United States, China, or Brazil. In time it will spread across the entire world.

I honestly don’t know if that’s what today’s progressives believe. It certainly doesn’t comport with my idea of progress, indeed, it sounds a lot more like totalitarianism to me.

The greatest irony of all is that while a tremendous number of those in the top 20% of income earners, the so-called “creative class”, are completely expendable. Those are the jobs that will be replaced by artificial intelligence. They can be replaced but plumbers and UPS drivers can’t.

The editors of the Washington Post offer advice to the people of the drought-stricken Southwest:

Agreeing to cuts, while critical, is only the first step. Communities, including cities and suburbs across the Southwest, will then have to undertake the difficult process of reimagining their water use.

Some localities have already managed to dramatically reduce their reliance on water. Las Vegas has been a standout, banning ornamental turf, limiting water deliveries to golf courses and reducing swimming pool sizes. This comes after decades of effective advertising to get households to voluntarily reduce their water use. Local authorities have also invested heavily in water recycling: Approximately 99 percent of indoor water in the Southern Nevada Water Authority’s service area is recycled, meaning that even the resorts on Las Vegas Strip waste very little water.

Cities can also make existing infrastructure more efficient. That could involve reducing leakage in pipes by auditing water loss and setting up controls to reduce the drain. States could also establish high-efficiency standards for plumbing products so they require less water pressure.

In the long term, however, western cities looking to conserve water will need to find ways to reduce urban sprawl. Low-density development can cause more runoff, while lawns and parks require lots of water to maintain. Shifting development will take planning and foresight — and that work should begin now.

They go on to discuss water conservation in farming and possible desalinization.

The editors are quick to blame climate change. Maybe they’re right. However, the current drought is not the first in the history of the Southwest and not the most severe. Indeed, there was a “megadrought” in the late 1500s, right about the time the Spanish arrived. The difference between then and now is that in 1542 the entire population of the Los Angeles Basin was around 5,000 people. Now it’s more than 12 million. We need to adjust ourselves to the realization that the Southwest has never been suited to the enormous population it now hosts and no amount of conservation will change that. Not only is the population of the Los Angeles Basin enormous, the economy there is largely dependent on that population growing. I don’t honestly see how that can be made to work.

It’s not just Los Angeles, of course, or just California. It’s California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. The populations of those states must be regulated to what the environment will support. That’s not politics. It’s a statement of fact.

The editors of the Washington Post struggle to offer President Biden meaningful advice on the unknown object that all seem to be balloons:

Some are demanding a nationally televised presidential address. That seems unnecessary at this juncture, unless it’s to reveal new facts.

But it also makes sense to develop a framework for how to approach future such incidents. On Monday, Mr. Biden directed an interagency team, under the direction of the national security adviser, to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks. This effort could provide important perspective. Not every balloon that appears in the sky over North America needs to be fired upon by a costly missile. It’s harder still to see the need for an even costlier balloon defense program, although military contractors will certainly try to pitch them to lawmakers. To best protect the American people, it’s important to approach these incursions clear-eyed, calmly and without partisan gamesmanship.

IMO the source of the conflict is that you can’t have it both ways. Either the “objects” are completely non-threatening or they aren’t. If they’re non-threatening, why shoot them down?

I don’t think a “balloon defense program” is such a bad idea if by it is meant a face-saving and cost-effective way of dispatching these “objects”. Some military drones would appear to be capable of reaching the altitude at which these objects float. Now we need an alternative method for downing them, able to be carried by a military drone, that’s less pricey than $400,000 missiles.

Alternatively, we could have a military and political leadership with the guts to stand up to the criticism if the “objects” actually do turn out to be threatening in some way.