The drought of opinion pieces continues. Let’s talk about Ralph Warnock’s successfully defending his Senate seat in Georgia, shall we? As usual I’m disinterested in the local politics aspect of it since I don’t live in Georgia but it does have national implications.

What good is one additional Senate seat to the Democrats? I think they’d claim a mandate for whatever they cared to do anyway just as the Republicans would in their shoes. I can’t see a chastened Chuck Schumer looking to forge a more bipartisan path for legislation in any event.

Enacting legislation will be difficult with a Republican majority in the House, even a narrow one. Especially funding bills viz. Article I Section 7 of the Constitution:

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Where I think the additional vote will help is in committee seats. They won’t need to play nice with the Senate minority. That in turn has implications for judicial, ambassadorial, and cabinet level appointments.

I agree with Carl Schramm’s point in his piece at City Journal: the CDC is in need of reform. IMO the matter needs to be considered a long-term project rather than the master stroke, one and done approach that Congress seems to prefer. I doubt that just increasing funding, Congress’s typical approach, will provide results other than increasing the pay of present people working at the CDC.

I’m not sure he realizes it but in this piece at RealClearPolitics John R. Lott, Jr. is making the case for the increasing importance of a if not new previously pretty rare form of terrorist: the eco-fascist:

Of the 82 mass public shootings from January 1998 to May 2021, 9% have known or alleged ties to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, or anti-immigrant views. But many of those, such as the Buffalo murderer, are environmentalist authoritarians.

Another 9% of mass public shootings are carried out by people of middle eastern origin, despite them making up only 0.4% of the US population. Whites and Hispanics are underrepresented as a share of the population. Blacks, Asians, and American Indians commit these attacks at a slightly higher rate than their share of the population.

Seventy-one percent of mass public shooters have no identifiable political views.

Even violence against pro-life people and organizations this year has been over 22 times more frequent that violence against pro-choice groups.

We’ve had a few homegrown “eco-fascists” over the years. They’ve been pretty prominent in Germany.

Here nobody closer to the mainstream wants to claim them. They consider themselves to be on the left but many Democrats are pretty quick to label them as “right-wing”. Has anyone seen any mainstream Republicans side with them, even to the extent of suggesting that they have a point?

Next up; the brouhaha about how Twitter and, indeed, major media outlets more generally molded the news to suit their political purposes. As you are presumably aware, Matt Taibbi at the behest of Elon Musk has published a series of tweets on how Twitter did its best to quash the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop. I don’t think that Twitter’s actions are that big a story and I don’t think that Matt Taibbi’s tweets are that shameful.

IMO you should recognize that Joe Biden has been engaged in influence peddling for decades. Politicians in high office no longer think that all sorts of corrupt activities are abuses of power any more. My sense is that they think they’re perks of the office. Pay to play in all forms, insider trading, probably even including outright bribery.

Just for the record I think that once a politician has reached a high enough office, he or she is all but unquestionably corrupt. I think the same of CEOs of big companies. In other words I think that Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett—all corrupt.

And the state of journalism is pathetic. I think the piece I linked to a week or so ago called it right. Media outlets are publishing what their target audiences want to hear rather than the news.

I’ve got a novel idea for how the Democratic primaries could be reformed: have all of the primaries on a single day. “Superdooper Tuesday”

We’ve been going through a period in which the opinion pieces published in the major media outlets and online have been particularly tedious. In the absence of something to react to I thought I’d give some quick takes on major stories in the news. First off: Ukraine, undoubtedly the biggest story now as it has been for most of the last year.

We know that Russia hasn’t won outright and we know that Ukraine hasn’t won outright. What else do we know? Other than that we’re being deluged with propaganda by both sides. I think we can say with confidence that the Russians are continuing to degrade Ukrainian infrastructure. I think we can say that the United States and our European allies are continuing to provide arms to the Ukrainians.

I think that’s about it. I don’t think there’s much else we can say with confidence.

Jack is six months old now. He is charming, loving, intelligent, and possibly the most difficult Samoyed we’ve had since the first Samoyed my wife and I brought into our home almost 30 years ago.

Jack prefers to be out of a crate. Most of the time that is perfectly fine but he still does not have good house manners. We work with him on a regular, systematic basis and those may come with time and maturity but meantime it’s a bit frustrating.

Long time Chicago political analyst Russ Stewart remarks on the Chicago mayoral election:

To be sure, the mayor postures as a bully, uses coarse language, and has delusions of grandeur, but the reality is that she is on her way to being a one-term mayor. It takes real effort for a Chicago mayor NOT to get re-elected. But Lightfoot has proven herself up to the task. She will follow Jane Byrne (1979-83) and William Dever (1923-27) into the history books.
Congressman Jesus (Chuy) Garcia (D-4) will be Chicago’s next mayor. Garcia is well-positioned to finish first in the Feb.28 primary, and then win the April 4 runoff. Paul Vallas will be the law-and-order candidate, Lightfoot will be lucky to get 25 percent, Willie Wilson has a shot; and Brandon Johnson cannot be discounted.

He goes on to say:

You can’t run for mayor if you can’t get on the ballot. It requires a minimum of 12,500 petition signatures to do so, and at least 20,000 to withstand a challenge. Wilson submitted 60,000 signatures on Nov. 21, the first day to file.

Millionaire Wilson got just over 10 percent in losing 2015 and 2019 mayor bids, is a copious donor to African American churches and got headlines in 2022 for paying for free gasoline in several Chicago neighborhoods.

Vallas came in with about 22,000 signatures, and both Garcia and Lightfoot filed on Nov. 28, the last day. Lightfoot came in with nearly 40,000.

Garcia had volunteers at Nov. 8 polling places, so signatures from actual voting voters are unimpeachable; he came in with 25,000.

“There was no resistance” to signing for Garcia on the Southwest Side and in Hispanic areas, said political consultant Frank Calabrese. “I am told there was a lot of resistance” to signing Lightfoot’s petitions.

In the last mayoral primaries Willie Wilson received a plurality of the black vote but neither he nor Chuy Garcia received enough votes to go on to the run-off. I wouldn’t be surprised if the general election came down to Lightfoot vs. Garcia, Lightfoot vs. Vallas, Lightfoot vs. Wilson or Garcia, Vallas, or Wilson against each other with Lightfoot eliminated in the primaries.

If Mr. Stewart is right, all is proceeding as I have predicted. Garcia will be the city’s first Hispanic mayor while Lightfoot may well be Chicago’s last black mayor. Hispanic and black voting blocs will vie with each other for power. The primary beneficiaries of all of the political infighting will be whites. In case you’re wondering the demographic breakdown of Chicago is white non-Hispanic 33.3%, black 29.2%, Hispanic 28.6%. The black population will continue to decline; the percentage of Hispanics, whites, and Asians will continue to rise.

I haven’t mentioned it yet. Objectively the worst mayor in Chicago history is running for re-election. Her campaign ads are running and are enough to turn the stomach.

At this point the following are actively running:

Willie Wilson
State Rep. Kam Buckner
Paul Vallas
Ald. Roderick Sawyer
Mayor Lori Lightfoot
Ja’Mal Green
Ald. Sophia King
Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson
U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García

Since the latest date to file has already passed, those are our choices. To the best of my knowledge Gov. Pritzker has demurred from endorsing anyone at this point.