I see that the editors of the Washington Post are coming around on Saudi Arabia:

Start with the oil. Saudi Arabia, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, supplied 9 percent of U.S. petroleum imports in 2017, or about 960,000 barrels a day. But thanks to the shale revolution, the United States is essentially energy independent: It, not Saudi Arabia, is now the world’s largest crude-oil producer. Last year, U.S. daily oil exports averaged 6.38 million barrels, or nearly seven times the Saudi imports. If the Saudis cut back production or boycotted the United States, they could temporarily drive up prices, but the beneficiaries would be U.S. shale companies, which over time would fill the gap — and deal a devastating blow to the Saudi oil industry.

As for arms sales, someone needs to brief Mr. Trump on the actual results of the promises made to him when he visited Riyadh last year. As Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution sums it up, “The Saudis have not concluded a single major arms deal with Washington on Trump’s watch.” Moreover, an end to supplies of U.S. spare parts and technical support, something Russia cannot provide, would quickly ground the Saudi air force. That would have the welcome effect of ending a bloody bombing campaign in Yemen that a U.N. investigation concluded was probably responsible for war crimes.

and all it took was the murder of one of their own. That they perceive Jamal Khashoggi as one of their own is itself a sad commentary. He was a journalist but not a good guy.

Whatever measures they would take in the “fundamental reshaping of the relationship” would be pale by comparison with what I would do which would include ejecting the members of the Saudi royal family presently in the United States, preventing them from re-entering, and canceling the visas of Saudi clerics receiving stipends from the Saudi government.

In his New York Times column this morning David Brooks talks about a new report, “The Hidden Tribes”, from the organization More In Common:

Every few years one research group or another produces a typology of the electorate. The researchers conduct thousands of interviews and identify the different clusters American voters fall into.

More in Common has just completed a large such typology. It’s one of the best I’ve seen because it understands that American politics is no longer about what health care plan you support. It’s about identity, psychology, moral foundations and the dynamics of tribal resentment.

The report, “Hidden Tribes,” breaks Americans into seven groups, from left to right, with names like Traditional Liberals, Moderates, Politically Disengaged and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most active groups are on the extremes — Progressive Activists on the left (8 percent of Americans) and Devoted Conservatives on the right (6 percent).

These two groups are the richest of all the groups. They are the whitest of the groups. Their members have among the highest education levels, and they report high levels of personal security.

The seven groups identified in the report are:

• Progressive Activists (8%)
• Traditional Liberals (11%)
• Passive Liberals (15%)
• Politically Disengaged (26%)
• Moderates (15%)
• Traditional Conservatives (19%)
• Devoted Conservatives (6%)

I read the whole report, found it interesting and engaging, and it brought forth a number of observations on my part. The first was unsurprising to me and shouldn’t surprise anyone who reads much at The Glittering Eye: I don’t fit neatly into any of those “tribes”. I am empirical and rational in my approach not ideological. In varying degrees I fit into Moderate, Politically Disengaged, Passive Liberal, or Traditional Liberal but neither Progressive Activist nor Devoted Conservative.

Second, the report distinguishes between “the Wings” and “the Exhausted Majority”.

Third, consider these two graphs sampled from the report:

I have taken the liberty of highlighting Progressive Activists on each graph. What do you notice about them?

Here’s a similar graph on which I’ve highlighted Devoted Conservatives:

Keep in mind that the “chattering classes”—people in journalism, entertainers, college professors and the like—are overrepresented in among Progressive Activists.

We are not nearly as divided as some would like to imagine. There is actually considerable agreement. There is a very noisy, wealthy, small, and predominantly white minority trying to convince us that we’re divided.

What surprises me about this report from the New York Times on anti-black racism by the Chinese who come to Africa:

RUIRU, Kenya — Before last year, Richard Ochieng’, 26, could not recall experiencing racism firsthand.

Not while growing up as an orphan in his village near Lake Victoria where everybody was, like him, black. Not while studying at a university in another part of Kenya. Not until his job search led him to Ruiru, a fast-growing settlement at the edge of the capital, Nairobi, where Mr. Ochieng’ found work at a Chinese motorcycle company that had just expanded to Kenya.

But then his new boss, a Chinese man his own age, started calling him a monkey.

It happened when the two were on a sales trip and spotted a troop of baboons on the roadside, he said.

“‘Your brothers,’” he said his boss exclaimed, urging Mr. Ochieng’ to share some bananas with the primates.

is that anyone is surprised by it. Chinese racism is well known.

Clearly, all of that Chinese overseas investment has strings attached to it. The Kenyans and Sri Lankans have both learned that to their sorrow.

Although I suspect that the headlines about a recent Pew study of Americans’ identification of “pressing problems” will probably point to the wide gap between the two political parties on some hot button issues (immigration, climate change, gun violence, income inequality, etc.), I’d prefer to point out the issues that majorities of Democrats and Republicans agree are pressing problems.

The issue on which the most Democrats and Republicans agree is, tellingly, ethics in government although I suspect that their concerns vary somewhat.

Other topics of mutual concern:

• The affordability of health care
• Drug addiction
• The federal budget deficit

There are lessons in there somewhere.

The point I made in comments today was confirmed in a quote at Newsweek of an official of the Cherokee Nation:

After Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren took a DNA test to determine if she had Native American ancestry, a Cherokee Nation official responded, calling such a test “useless.” In a statement, Cherokee Nation Secretary of State Chuck Hoskin Jr. said the test was “not evidence for tribal affiliation.”

Warren released a DNA test on Monday showing that while the vast majority of her ancestry was European, there was “strong evidence” of Native American ancestry, “likely in the range of six to 10 generations ago.”

“A DNA test is useless to determine tribal citizenship,” Hoskin Jr. said in response. “Sovereign tribal nations set their own legal requirements for citizenship, and while DNA tests can be used to determine lineage, such as paternity to an individual, it is not evidence for tribal affiliation.”

Hoskin Jr. went on to say that the use of a DNA test was “inappropriate and wrong.”

The point here is that, while the Republicans especially President Trump are wrong to mock Elizabeth Warren for claiming Indian ancestry it is also wrong for Elizabeth Warren to claim Indian ancestry on the basis of what little information she has and even more wrong if she used that claim to gain special privileges.

American Indians are among the very poorest Americans and the most deserving of a leg up from the federal government. Arrogating programs intended to give such a leg up is a scandal and an outrage.

The Pentagon has a long history of “directed bids”, bids that are ostensibly opened but which only a single vendor can actually satisfy. In a post at RealClearPolicy Jerry Rogers observes that the Pentagon is doing it again, this time with a RFP that only Amazon can satisfy, and that the Congress is calling the DoD on it:

The content of the request for proposal and the appearance of cronyism raised red flags in Congress, which passed legislation to put the brakes on the process. It passed an appropriations bill that funds the Departments of Defense, Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services for the year, but only funds other parts of the government to December 7, 2018. This effectively punted some decisions to the Lame Duck session.

The defense portion of the bill, Section 8137, provided a funding rider that stopped the JEDI request for proposal for 90 days and required a transparent plan for cloud computing services procurement.

[…]

Congress, in other words, forced transparency on the multi-billion dollar contracting process in order to combat potential cronyism.

This is a classic case of Congress fighting federal bureaucrats in order to give the taxpayers some measure of confidence that this process will end up being fair and treat all contactors equally. Cronyism is still alive in Washington, D.C. and Congress has taken a strong step to address controversial lobbying efforts that allowed one of the biggest companies in human history to get an edge in contracting.

Three cheers to Congress for getting this one right and for addressing a scandal that had sidelined a number of the biggest American tech companies.

Here’s a modest proposal. I think the Pentagon should definitely get into a cloud but not the cloud. It should have its own private cloud, that cloud should only be interconnected with the public Internet at specific highly auditable and closely monitored points, and that vendors already in the web services business should be expressly disqualified from bidding.

There would still be plenty of qualified bidders. Just not the usual suspects. Sounds like one of the mass engineering projects I’ve been touting.

I can see the heads exploding now. The Economist thinks the Trump Administration is right to attempt to redefine the relationship between the U. S. and China:

THE National Security Strategy released by President Donald Trump’s administration last year augured a major change in China-US relations. Where its predecessors lauded the merits of co-operation with the emerging superpower, Mr Trump’s document promised competition and resistance to Chinese trade and other abuses. The tirade Mike Pence launched against China last week doubled down on that commitment. In a speech delivered at the Hudson Institute, a short walk from Congress and the ongoing Kavanaugh brouhaha, the vice-president castigated the Chinese for bullying investors, buying allies with cheap loans, “tearing down crosses” and much else. This may turn out to be Mr Trump’s most significant mark on the world. America’s new adversarial posture towards China is overdue, popular and probably irreversible.

and

Sooner or later, America’s shift on China was inevitable. After every big hot and cold war of the past century, notes Andrew Krepinevich, a security savant, America’s leaders trusted to collective defence. Woodrow Wilson created the League of Nations, Franklin Roosevelt the “Four Policemen”; Clintonians preached “co-operative security”. But, as surely as nations rise and fall, power politics returns, and this has been apparent in the current iteration for over a decade. China, like Russia, is testing an American-led system it feels constrained by. Distracted by jihadists and fearing the costs of a new superpower rivalry, America has merely been unusually reluctant to accept that fact. Under Barack Obama, the usual mini-cycle of creeping presidential disillusionment with China seemed even to be reversed. His administration drifted from scepticism about China to resignation.

Okay, I’ll bite. A redefinition is inevitable and long overdue. How should the relationship be redefined? IMO the minimum set of demands we should make of China is that China live up to the commitments it made when admitted to the WTO and adhere faithfully to the WTO’s requirements or resign from it. It’s had 20 years. That’s long enough.

That would be a start anyway.

Can you spot the flaw in Ray Mobius’s argument, made in his op-ed in USA Today? Here’s the argument:

Questions about the value of diversity will be very visibly on the line this week in a case against Harvard’s admissions policy brought by legal activist Edward Blum, who has frequently challenged civil rights measures and race-conscious admissions. It would be bad for students and the nation if this lawsuit succeeded. It would strip the freedom and flexibility that Harvard — and other universities — need to create the diverse learning environment that benefits all students, and it would leave these students less equipped to make a difference in the world.

There are two, actually. The first and most egregious depends on your definition of diversity. The claim by the plaintiffs in the lawsuit is that Harvard is unfairly and illegally constraining the number of Asians it admits in any given year. The implication is that the Harvard Admissions Department has established racial quotas to the detriment of Asian applicants.

If you define “diversity” as an admissions policy that admits more qualified applicants of different races, ethnicities, etc., it’s obvious how bad Sec. Mobius’s argument is. You can’t even justify the policy on the basis of making Harvard “look like America”. That would require admitting more whites not fewer. The only justification is in defining “diversity” as admitting more blacks and Hispanics or, in other words, the opposite of any normal person’s definition of diversity.

The other problem is that in the military you can order people to do things and they must do them or go to jail. That limits the applicability of the military as a benchmark.

I think I can summarize Bill Scher’s post at RealClearPolitics pretty succinctly. Democrats aren’t unhinged Alinskyite radicals. They’re just stupid. Note that his analysis is in support of Democrats.