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.

Another piece that disappointed me was this complaint about President Biden’s bland responses to the demonstrations in Iran and China by Michael Rubin at 1945:

The Biden administration’s response was weak. “We’ve long said everyone has the right to peacefully protest, in the United States and around the world. This includes in the PRC [the People’s Republic of China],” a National Security Council statement read.

Once again, political appointees and professional diplomats responded as if by a computer algorithm rather than with an appreciation of the ideological battle in which the United States finds itself, the outcome of which will shape the fate of the rules-based order over the remainder of the century. The tepidness of the statement undermines any meaning it might have.

The reason for the Biden administration’s weak response is no mystery. After all, many of the president’s top aides also occupied senior national security or diplomatic roles during the Obama administration when, in 2009, Iran also erupted into protest. At that time, protestors chanted “Obama, Obama, ya ba o na ya ba ma” [“Obama, Obama, you’re either with us or against us”] as the White House remained largely silent.

Here’s the meat of his complaint:

The reason for the Biden administration’s weak response is no mystery. After all, many of the president’s top aides also occupied senior national security or diplomatic roles during the Obama administration when, in 2009, Iran also erupted into protest. At that time, protestors chanted “Obama, Obama, ya ba o na ya ba ma” [“Obama, Obama, you’re either with us or against us”] as the White House remained largely silent.

President Barack Obama wanted a restrained reaction for three reasons. First, he argued, there was little the United States could do. Many in his inner circle further believed that to speak out in favor of the protestors might delegitimize them by playing into Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s accusation that they were foreign agents. Finally, Obama had secretly reached out to Khamenei and did not want the Iranian supreme leader to use statements against his regime as an excuse not to negotiate.

In each case, Obama was wrong. Unfortunately, Obama alumni in the Biden administration today repeat the same mistakes.

I think he dismisses the thought that rousing U. S. support for the demonstrations might actually be counter-productive too quickly:

This brings us to the idea that offering moral support to protestors delegitimizes them. This is simply wrong. Protestors around the globe carry signs in English because they want to communicate with and receive the acknowledgment of the outside world. At the same time, dictators try to tar them with the accusation of foreign support regardless about whether they receive it or not. To deny them support is to play into the dictatorships’ hands by helping Beijing and Tehran isolate the protests.

Another possibility is that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible “dialects” of Chinese and English functions as a lingua franca even within China. I use the quotation marks because IMO there is a Chinese language family just as there is an Arabic language family, conventionally referred to as a single language because there is or was a single literary language.

What I found disappointing about the piece is that Mr. Rubin never actually succeeds in providing a credible explanation for why the Biden Administration is maintaining such a low profile with respect to the demonstrations. Clearly, the administration has decided that there is little to gain (or much to lose) by making stronger statements. What?

There is one thing that many of the pieces I read this morning have in common: I found all of them disappointing. For example, this piece by Roy Disney’s granddaughter, Abigail, lamenting that “125 billionaires” could put an end to anthropogenic climate change by changing the policies of the companies in which they have major stakes.

What I found disappointing was how abstract it was. The bottom line was that they should behave better even if it cost them money. Maybe. Maybe not.

I did a little checking (and I mean a very little) and found that of them have carbon footprints a hundred times mine. Now that’s a concrete way they could reduce carbon emissions: stop doing things that emit so much carbon. The preferred strategy appears to be buying carbon offsets. IMO those are almost entirely cons.