The coming crash and what it portends

If we continue on the present course, we will enter a depression that might make the 1930s a distant competitor. The number of jobless Americans could reach tens of millions.

WSJ: Rethinking the Coronavirus Shutdown:

Yet the costs of this national shutdown are growing by the hour, and we don’t mean federal spending. We mean a tsunami of economic destruction that will cause tens of millions to lose their jobs as commerce and production simply cease. Many large companies can withstand a few weeks without revenue but that isn’t true of millions of small and mid-sized firms. ...

The deadweight loss in production will be profound and take years to rebuild. In a normal recession the U.S. loses about 5% of national output over the course of a year or so. In this case we may lose that much, or twice as much, in a month.

Our friend Ed Hyman, the Wall Street economist, on Thursday adjusted his estimate for the second quarter to an annual rate loss in GDP of minus-20%. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s assertion on Fox Business Thursday that the economy will power through all this is happy talk if this continues for much longer.

This is the first time ever that the US Government has deliberately shut the economy down, and the idea that it can just be turned back on like flipping a switch is delusional.

Consider: We will never be able to determine how many lives were saved from the virus. But we will easily know how many people died because of the economic crash to come - just count increased suicides and even some homicides, to say nothing of untold numbers of people thrown into permanent poverty.

The lockdowns and stay-at-home orders are saving lives now. But if they continue much longer, they will cost lives later and cause economic, literal suffering for years and years to come.

Also, The Atlantic, "Suicide and the Economy."

On April 12, 1937, the express train to New York roared across the New Jersey countryside. The train, a Pennsy Railroad electric locomotive the color of bull’s blood, usually passed through the station at Elizabeth at about 50 miles per hour. On this particular morning, it came to an unanticipated stop. As the express rounded the curve, my great-grandfather jumped down from the platform, where witnesses reported he had been pacing for 10 minutes, and lay down across the tracks.

When the engineer was finally able to halt the train 100 feet past the platform, Roy Humphrey had disappeared beneath its wheels. His last act: raising his head to look at the oncoming train.

Roy was one of at least 40,000 Americans who took their own lives that year and the next, the two-year span that suicide rate spiked to its highest recorded level ever: more than 150 per 1 million annually. 

Update: "US unemployment could surge to 30% next quarter and GDP might plunge 50%, Fed's Bullard warns"

Also relevant: "The luxury of apocalypticism -- The elites want us to panic about Covid-19 – we must absolutely refuse to do so."

The point is, there is such a thing as doing too little and also such a thing as doing too much. Doing too little against Covid-19 would be perverse and nihilistic. Society ought to devote a huge amount of resources, even if they must be commandeered from the private sector, to the protection of human life. But doing too much, or acting under the pressure to act rather than under the aim of coherently fighting disease and protecting people’s livelihoods, is potentially destructive, too. People need jobs, security, meaning, connection. They need a sense of worth, a sense of social solidarity, a sense of belonging. To threaten those things as part of a performative ‘war’ against what ought to be treated as a health challenge rather than as an End Times event would be self-defeating and utterly antithetical to the broader aim of protecting our societies from this novel new threat. To decimate the stuff of human life in the name of saving human life is a questionable moral approach.

Bombs away! The Obama years

Map shows where President Barack Obama dropped his 20,000 bombs --outgoing US leader carries out 3,000 more strikes in 2016 than year before

And as the world gears up for a seemingly more violent four years, it is worth reflecting on President Obama's tenure.

According to newly released figures, President Obama had already upped the number of bombs on foreign countries.

US forces dropped over 3,000 more bombs in 2016 than 2015, taking the grand total of strikes for the year to at least 26,171.

This map by Statista shows you where they were:

Vast majority of strikes carried out in Iraq and Syria

The figures are likely to be an underestimate, since the only reliable data only comes from a handful of countries, and multiple bombs can be classed as a single “strike” under the Pentagon's definition.

Lt. Col. Vindman is a tool

I mean that Army Lt. Col. and National Security Council staffer Alexander Vindman is being used as a tool by House Democrats, not that he is trying to do so - although the evidence that he is trying is not absent, see below.

The impeachers are accusing Republicans of attacking Vindman's service and patriotism. Funny thing is, I have not seen any such attacks, I have seen only Democrats' accusations of them. But let's humor them:

Pick the one, single officer whose patriotism is off limits to any possible criticism.

Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman
Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn
Maj. Tulsi Gabbard

But back to Vindman. I have some pointed comments about him and his testimony yesterday to Congress. I will only offer my own bio as a founding for what I am writing here.

Today the AP reports, Colonel testifies he raised concerns about Ukraine, Trump. And in the first paragraph (my boldface):

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defying White House orders, an Army officer serving with President Donald Trump’s National Security Council testified to impeachment investigators Tuesday that he twice raised concerns over the administration’s push to have Ukraine investigate Democrats and Joe Biden.

That alone shatters his credibility with me. Officers do not get a choice of what orders they get to obey. The Supreme Court of the United States wrote in Parker v. Levy, 1974, “An army is not a deliberative body. It is an executive arm. Its law is that of obedience. No question can be left open as to the right of command in the officer, or the duty of obedience in the soldier.”

The armed forces' Manual for Court Martial, the instruction of how to implement the statutes of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, states plainly, “the dictates of a person’s conscience, religion, or personal philosophy cannot justify or excuse the disobedience of an otherwise lawful order.”

The Manual also puts a soldier's obligation to obey this way: "An order requiring the performance of a military duty or act may be inferred to be lawful and it is disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate."

Yet Vindman disobeyed his order not to appear before Congress simply because he wanted to. His entire credibility is utterly shattered and his willful disobedience reveals him as a partisan hack in uniform.

This officer is being hailed as a hero because he placed country above Trump etc. etc. as required by his oath of commissioning in which swore to "protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." His advocates skip right over the part where he also swore, "I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter...."

I took the same oath of commissioning that Vindman took, and in my view he clearly violated it in doing what he did. The "duties of the office" absolutely include obedience to the orders of the President and officers within his chain of command, unless they are clearly and unarguably illegal. Difference of opinion does not count.

According to the AP report of his testimony, not once - not. one. time. - did he raise any Constitutional issue with the phone call or ever claim  - again: not. one. time. - that Trump's conversation ever constituted an illegal order to him that he had no choice but to refuse.

All of Vindman's dissent with the content of the phone call is over policy.

“I was concerned by the call,” Vindman said, according to prepared remarks obtained by The Associated Press. “I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine.”

He has no authority as a military officer or as an NSC staffer to assess whether a policy position of the president is "proper." He has absolutely zero authority to oppose a president's position regarding US support of Ukraine or any other nation. Foreign policy belongs solely within the White House as advised by the State Dept. The NSC has no charter - and therefore neither does Vindman - for original formulation of US foreign policy.

Vindman, or any other military officer, is completely free to disagree privately with administration policy or the orders he is given, I encountered that myself many times in my military career. But that means exactly bupkus. The "duties of the office" remain unchanged: to execute directives and orders and to carry out policy to the best of an officer's ability.

He [Vindman] wrote, “I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security.”

That is of course pure speculation. And even if entirely correct, it is irrelevant to the discharge of his duties. Let me emphasize again: Lieutenant-colonels do not set policy and absolutely have no business even considering "partisan politics" in the performance of their duties. That is literally not his problem.

BTW, I can read his ribbons, too, and this is by no means a "highly decorated" lieutenant colonel. He holds the Combat Infantry Badge, signifying that he served at least 30 days in a designated combat theater occupying an infantry personnel slot. Which one would expect since he is an infantry officer, but the CIB is awarded for being physically present in theater, not for seeing actual combat. That he also holds the Purple Heart (for IED wound in 2004, when he would have been a junior-grade officer) would indicate that he did see combat. He also was awarded the Ranger tab, which is not a decoration but an achievement (and a very difficult one, too). So his creds are no better than ordinary for an infantry LTC.

The top two ribbons in his photo in the AP article are, viewer's left to right, the Purple Heart and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal. In the second row are a single Army Meritorious Service Medal, then Army Commendation Medal. After that a series of "place" ribbons, denoting service in certain deployment areas of the world, but not linked to doing anything there but getting off the plane. Literally, if you show up you will get the ribbon. (I have some of them, too.)

But there is not one combat decoration there except the Purple Heart. The MSM is not very impressive, actually. I have three myself; they are normally awarded at the end of a tour as a "thanks for being here" award, sometimes though rarely for outstanding achievement. I am sort of curious why he has only one Army MSM; the single Defense MSM would come from service on a joint-service assignment. (I have a different joint-service ribbon.)

That said, dummies do not get assigned to either joint staffs or the NSC. So he is unquestionably a smart man, but IMO he definitely went outside his lane in his reaction to the phone call. And definitely  in appearing before the committee.

Update: Here is Lt. Col. Vindman's opening statement to the committee. IMO, it's a nothing burger. And with the actual transcript of the call made public a month ago, what did Vindman tell Congress that they didn't already know? Nuthin'.

Update: A retired officer who knows Vindman personally has some choice words.

And a retired Army lieutenant colonel explains why he had Vindman, then a major, step outside for some private, one-way counseling of what professional conduct means, during a Combined US-Russian exercise in Germany.

Update: Alex Vindman’s Impeachment Testimony Completely Rested On His Personal Opinions

My take on Syria, Turkey, and the Kurds

Link to article

I worked with Petraeus when we were both at the Pentagon. He was a major then, promoted to Lt. Col. not long after I came to know him. I respect him immensely. He and Gen. Mattis were the key, essential players in redirecting US strategy in Iraq away from the disastrous Rumsfeld model. I have never met Mattis, but have nothing but greatest respect for him. Marines I have known who worked with him are in awe, and that says a lot. 

So when Petraeus and Mattis both sharply disagree with the administration's decision, I have no choice but to pay attention. 

But having said that, I would say their view is very solidly an establishment one. Senior military officers prosper very well. They gain their rank and status not only because of the military skills, but their political skills as well. They retire as comfortable members of the country's political class and often wind up with lucrative corporate consultancies and defense-related boards. I have seen this play out with three- and four-star generals I worked for. I do not blame them, actually, but we need to understand that they are far too invested in the status quo to try to change it. It what got them their rank and positions in the first place. Their incentives to change it are exactly zero. (This also applies to senior diplomatic personnel.)

I wrote a long essay in 2008 on why the US should exit NATO but of course, with both the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations, there was so much Old Guardism at work that there was (and is) no chance. Petraeus and Mattis (and I, for that matter) were raised militarily and strategically with a Cold War, organizational mind-think that has not significantly subsided. They still think that what G. Washington warned against, "entangling alliances," should be normative and are simply the MO for how things get done. 

Fourteen years ago Petraeus and Mattis were the Young Turks. Now they are the Old Guard. And that should temper how we assess what they say. None of this is to say that all will turn out well today. In fact, it would be insane to say so. Things never work out well in the Middle East! 

But it is also a real error to assume that had a mere 50 US troops been left in place, than everything would now be unicorns and rainbows. Turkey did not ask our permission to incur. They simply announced they were doing it. Turkey did not ask Trump to withdraw the troops; Trump just got them the heck out of the way. It would be nice for Petraeus and others to say how they would have responded to Turkey's announcement that it was coming, instead of just clutching their pearls in protest. They know better because they many times had to think through questions such those as I pose later in this essay. They know how to do it, but now they do not need to do it because the media will smile kindly upon them if they don't. And that is a problem.

My take: 

There is no solution to the problem of the Kurds. The Kurds have been screwed, they are being screwed, and they will continue to be screwed, because only Iraq, Turkey, and Syria (and Iran, as if...) can resolve the issue and all of them see the Kurds as tools to be used for their own purposes against the others. No Western nation can possibly have any effective role - not the USA, not Britain, not NATO, not nobody.

The Kurdish PKK is Turkey's main target. The PKK, Partiya Karkerên Kurdistan, is a Marxist faction that has been launching cross-border raids into Turkey since 1984 - as have other Kurdish factions. The PKK is classified as a terrorist organization by the Turks. And also by the US, the EU, NATO, and even Japan.

Turkey did not ask Trump to move 50 US soldiers out of their way. (Yes, 50.) Turkey simply announced that they were coming in. Would you rather those US troops stay there and resist the Turks by force of arms?

Anyone who is denouncing the withdrawal of a few dozen US troops from the affected area of Turkish operations, insisting they should not have been withdrawn, should first answer one basic question:

If you were president, would you have ordered US troops to resist the Turkish incursion by force of arms? 

Then proceed to these:

• If you would have given that order:
• What is your strategic goal?
• How many US troops are you are willing to have killed to attain that goal? 
• Once US troops are killed, what would be your response? 
• How many Turks are you willing to kill to attain the strategic goal? 
• Would you escalate the violence if the Turks do not withdraw? If so, would you restrict US combat strikes to only the incursion area, or would you strike Turkish forces still inside Turkey proper? For either answer, explain why.
• How will you ensure the safety of thousands of US Air Force personnel, aircraft, special weapons, and family members at the Turkish air base at Incirlik, Turkey? There are also large numbers British and Spanish military personnel there. 
• Would you ask for a congressional authorization of use of military force against Turkey? 
• If yes, are you really willing to go to war with a decades-long, US-ally member of NATO? 
• If not, why not? Would you wage war against Turkey anyway?
    
• If you would not have given that order:
• What is your strategic goal?
• Why would you leave the troops in place rather than withdraw them, if they are not to fight?
• What would you have done specifically different from what the administration has done, and why?

Anyone who will not address those topics before slamming the administration is not thinking about this seriously at all. And yes, that includes congressional members of both parties and, sadly, many of my ministry colleagues who have posted about this topic.

Democrats: Trump must never use US troops to secure America's border with Mexico!

Also Democrats: Trump must use US troops to secure Syria's border with Turkey!

Update: This article is pretty well balanced and explains why Trump did not sell out the Kurds while also pointing out that Erdogan is pretty much a thug himself. (But we knew that.)

Update: "Missing the Bigger Picture in Kurdish Syria," by Lt. Col. (ret.) Bob Maginnis, is an instructor at the Army War College. "He oversees a team of national security experts in the Pentagon and has more than 800 published articles on national security and geopolitical issues."

Four Several impeachment reads (updated)

A list of valuable links.

Impeachment is regime suicide
The ruling class still believes in a consensus that doesn’t exist. Their legitimacy is vanishing

We're in a permanent coup
The author is a Rolling Stone writer, but the article appears on his own site.

Anti-Trump Psychodrama 10.0? by Victor Davis Hanson

Our Constitution Is Clear on Powers, and We Really Should Read It

The Cultural Civil War and Trump Derangement Syndrome
And what happens when politics becomes culture.

It's Not All About the Bidens: Why Trump Has Ukraine on the Brain

WaPo's scorn on Pelosi's impeachment move

Glenn has it covered. WaPo thinks the whole impeachment charade in the House it will rebound onto Biden, and then there is this:

It got almost no attention, but in May, CNN reported that Sens. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote a letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, expressing concern at the closing of four investigations they said were critical to the Mueller probe. In the letter, they implied that their support for U.S. assistance to Ukraine was at stake. Describing themselves as “strong advocates for a robust and close relationship with Ukraine,” the Democratic senators declared, “We have supported [the] capacity-building process and are disappointed that some in Kyiv appear to have cast aside these [democratic] principles to avoid the ire of President Trump,” before demanding Lutsenko “reverse course and halt any efforts to impede cooperation with this important investigation.”

So, it’s okay for Democratic senators to encourage Ukraine to investigate Trump, but it’s not okay for the president to allegedly encourage Ukraine to investigate Hunter Biden?

And the answer from every Democrat everywhere is, "Yes, it's quite okay."

Also, when you have lost MSN, well, good luck: Nancy Pelosi just made one of the most colossal blunders in modern American politics.

On Tuesday evening Nancy Pelosi made one of the most colossal blunders in the modern history of American electoral politics. Rejecting the accumulated wisdom of a long and successful career in the House of Representatives, she set aside her own instincts and announced the beginning of formal impeachment proceedings against President Trump on the basis of a third-hand rumor about a phone call with the president of a Eurasian republic.

Pelosi knows this will not be popular. She knows more than that. She knows that it will be a disaster for the Democratic Party, that it will inflame the president's base and inspire even his most lukewarm supporters with a sense of outrage. She knows that in states like Michigan, upon which her party's chances in 2020 will depend, the question of impeachment does not poll well. She knows, further, that Joe Biden will not be able to spend the next 14 or so months refusing to answer questions about the activities of his son, Hunter, in Ukraine, and that increased scrutiny of the vice president's record in office will not rebound to his credit. She and her fellow Democratic leaders had better hope that someone like Elizabeth Warren manages to steal the nomination away from him before this defines his candidacy the way that Hillary Clinton's emails and paid speechmaking did during and after the 2016 primaries.

It goes on to say that Pelosi did this because "her hand has been forced" by young Members such as AOC, Omar, and a few others. I am wondering, though, whether Pelosi appeared to fold because she knows how this will turn out (the Dems will look like the coyote chasing the road runner) and that will be her club to pound the Young Turks into submission once and for all. Because Pelosi is never going to go quietly into that good night, and she's been playing this game a lot longer than they have.

Syria gas attack and "zero evidence"

Syria Sarin Attack a Hoax?

Update: A few readers have pointed out that the linked article herein actually refers to last year's sarin attack, not last week's. I regret my error. I plan to post a follow-up soon.

Is Trump being played by anti-Assad elements who staged the recent sarin attack in the hope that Trump would go his usual bananas at being defied?

Well, that would depend on the attack being a staged or hoaxed attack to begin with. And an MIT expert claims that the chemical weapons attack in Syria was staged.

A leading weapons academic has claimed that the Khan Sheikhoun nerve agent attack in Syria was staged, raising questions about who was responsible. ...

Theodore Postol, a professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [said] ... "I have reviewed the [White House's] document carefully, and I believe it can be shown, without doubt, that the document does not provide any evidence whatsoever that the US government has concrete knowledge that the government of Syria was the source of the chemical attack in Khan Sheikhoun, Syria at roughly 6am to 7am on 4 April, 2017.

 Referring to the photo above,

His analysis of the shell suggests that it could not have been dropped from an airplane as the damage of the casing is inconsistent from an aerial explosion. Instead, Postol said it was more likely that an explosive charge was laid upon the shell containing sarin, before being detonated.

Read the whole article. Postol is a former science adviser to the defense department.

Among the credentials of my military career was that of nuclear and chemical target analysis. I was trained and qualified to determine the manner of attacking a target with chemical weapons, including sarin, attack calculations that would include amount of agent and technical attack profile.

Sarin is heavier than air. It has been many years since I worked such a problem, but I cannot recollect solving an attack profile with a ground burst. Lay persons simply do not know that enormous quantities of gas are required. Some of the problems we worked to attack Soviet formations actually required more nerve agent for one attack than the US had in its entire inventory.

Actually, sarin is not a gas, but a liquid. The warhead's charge is designed to explode the liquid sarin into basically a mist that is borne by prevailing winds over the target area, where the mist settles. Sarin can evaporate into a vapor, but doing so lessens it lethality by lowering the concentration in the air.

The linked article implies that a sarin delivery warhead explodes the way a high-explosive projectile would. That is not the case. Such an explosion would destroy much of the sarin content. Instead, a shell or bomblet would be designed to basically disassemble, releasing the interior container to dispel the sarin liquid in mist form.

However, the pieces  of the projectile simply drop to the earth. The article's photo shows what appears to be an intact casing, deformed in a crater in a concrete or asphalt street.

Um, no. First, while some delivery systems did retain an intact projectile (such as the US 155mm artillery projectile), cratering would be most unlikely in impact. There would be no HE to explode. Furthermore, having also been trained in crater analysis at the US Army Artillery Center and School, I absolutely guarantee that no such casing causing such a crater would conveniently remain nearly intact in the middle of the crater.

So I think that MIT Prof. Postol is correct. And sane heads within the defense department probably have been heard at the White House (I am guessing here) so that Trump has backed off his initial outrage.

Maybe they need to remember the old adage: "First reports are always wrong."

How many fingers does Obama have?

The NYT swoons over the just-revealed portraits of Barack and Michele Obama at the National Portrait Gallery.

Well, fine. But I do not recall ever seeing the former president's left hand with no thumb and five fingers, as his portrait portrays.

You be the judge.

Two thousand words of politics photos

The NFL lies down on its deathbed and forbids itself rise

It has been going around the internet that pp. A62-A63 of the NFL's rule book states this:

The problem is that the "league rulebook" (note the imprecision of the term) has zero to say about the anthem - if you are referring to the rule book governing game play. That rule book, available online, never mentions the national anthem and does not have any such pages as A62 or A63.

However, there is another NFL book called the Game Operations Manual, not available to the public, that does have those pages. And according to none other than The Washington Post (!), there is indeed such a rule:

Under the league rule, the failure to be on the field for the anthem may result in discipline such as a fine, suspension or loss of a draft pick. But a league official said the key phrase is “may” result, adding he won’t speculate on whether the Steelers would be disciplined.

The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league’s game operations manual, according to a league source. 

The WaPo is firewalled (it's owned by Bezos after all), but Time magazine confirms it. At this point, though, I would say that the rule of the Game Operations Manual no longer matters.

Three teams on Sunday stayed inside their locker rooms rather than take the field sidelines for the anthem, the Steelers in Chicago, the Seahawks and Titans both playing in Nashville. Attendance at the Titan's home game yesterday was 69,127, only 16 short of every seat. I'll try to remember to post the next home game's attendance here, too. (I have abandoned the NFL so I do not even know when their next home game is.)

In Chicago, a lone Steeler, former US Army officer and Ranger Alejandro Villanueva, left the locker room and saluted the flag while the anthem was played. His reward was two-fold:

First, he was excoriated by that empty suit of freedom respectfulness, his own head coach, Mike Tomlin.

But the second reward is, well, a reward: Sales Of Alejandro Villanueva Jerseys Skyrocket After Being Only Steeler To Stand For National Anthem

I posted 23 days ago that The NFL continues its slow suicide, with both attendance and TV viewership having declined for a few years in  row now. With this weekend's demonstrations, the NFL has made full transition from an athletic organization to a political one. So what will attendance and viewership do now? Well, Sunday night's game  - after the full afternoon of televised abstentions and kneeling - was down eight percent from just last week and was the worst this year.

LA Times reporter Lindsey Thiry tweeted this shot of last Thursday night's game stadium at kickoff time - this was before the Trump-storm and fury:

Also, remember that the stock market is a futures market: "NFL Broadcasting Stocks Slump As Protests Rise And TV Ratings Fall."

During the past month the overall stock market is up more than 2% but shares of companies that broadcast NFL games--Comcast, Walt Disney, Fox, CBS--are all down between 1% to 8%. ...

Towards the end of last season some felt the NFL's ratings dip would be temporary and therefore would not ultimately hurt the networks by forcing them to reimburse advertisers. Instead, the opposite has happened.

Ratings for the the NFL have been worse this season and attendance for some games has also been disappointing. The networks will pay over $5 billion this season to televise the NFL and were already facing unflattering margins on advertising profits. An article in The Hollywood Reporter reckons the drop in NFL ratings could trim the broadcaster's earnings by $200 million. Disney's ESPN, meanwhile, also continues to get hammered by cord-cutting.

I commented elsewhere that one thing the protesting players have done is lead viewers to look at the game and the league with new eyes and a new perspective. Even before this season, millions of them already concluded that they don't miss watching the games after all. Now with political conventions by disgruntled multi-millionaires being held every Sunday when there used to be football games, how many more millions will decide to use that time for other things?

It might be worth pondering some demographics here. One is that Millennials are not watching the games in anywhere near the same numbers as their parents.

Some observers believe that American football is dying a slow and painful death. ...

The threat to American football is no illusion. In a recent study, four out of five millennials stated that they were less trusting of the NFL than basketball, baseball, hockey or NASCAR. Out of those surveyed in the study, 61% identified the NFL as a “sleazy” Organisation, while 54% saw it as being anti-gay.

In another study, teenage interest in the NFL was found to have fallen from 26% to 19% over the last two decades.

And that was written in February of last year. Another demographic supports the case that the NFL laid down on its death bed long before the kneelers started kneeling.

“Just four years ago, we had so many boys signing up for football, we had five teams at this fourth-grade level,” says John Herrera, a dad, software engineer and football coach of the Wheaton Rams in the Bill George Youth Football League in the western suburbs of Chicago.

“And from five teams of fourth-graders four years ago, what do we have now? One team. Just one.”

Out on the field, the Wheaton Rams and the Lyons Tigers were going at it, having fun. Parents and grandparents watching, sipping lattes, a few dads nervously pacing the sidelines as dads always do, willing prowess on their sons.

But what do the numbers from the hometown of the “Wheaton Ice Man,” the great Red Grange, tell us about football in America?

“If dropping from five teams of fourth-graders to one doesn’t tell you what’s happening, nothing will,” Herrera said. “Football is such a great game, it teaches great lessons to young men. But I’ve got a sense of dread for this game of football that I love.”

But take heart! There is hope that the NFL season may end well after all! Doomsday Rescheduled: ‘Researcher’ Moves End Of The World To October.

And not a moment too soon.

Update:

I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh but I think he nailed it here:

I did not watch the National Football League yesterday, and it was the first time in 45 years that I made an active decision not to watch, including my team, the Pittsburgh Steelers. It was not a decision made in anger. It was genuine sadness. I realized that I can no longer look at this game and watch this game and study this game and pretend, you know, fantasize, everything a fan does. This whole thing has removed for me the ingredients that are in the recipe that make up a fan.

The mystique is gone. That actually started vanishing a while ago. The larger-than-life aspect of it is gone. The belief, the wish, the desire that the people in the game were the best and brightest and special, and that’s why they were there, that’s gone.

Also Law Prof. William A. Jacobson: Dear NFL: I’m not “boycotting” you. I just don’t care anymore, about you.

I’m officially over the Cowboys, the Patriots and the NFL. You were once one of the loves of my life. But now we’re breaking up, and it’s you, not me.

I’m not “boycotting” you. I just don’t care anymore.

You tried to make me care, but now I don’t care at all, about you.

Pretty much, yeah.

Update: Thanks to Donald M. who emailed me to point out that the Steelers played at Chicago's Soldier Field, not Pittsburgh (correction made above). He added, "So effectively, on Gold Star Mother Sunday - a day set aside to honor the families of soldiers who died in battle - at Soldier Field - named such to honor soldiers who died in the field - the Steelers refused to honor the flag and the National Anthem."

Update: My followup is here: "The NFL and the Wizard of Oz humbug"

Update: Well, I have to admit that this never occurred to me:

Peak professional football was probably a dozen years ago. It was around then that white mothers, especially divorced middle-class mothers, started turning against youth football. They did not want their little baby being run over by black kids. That’s why the concussion hysteria gained traction. It’s a ready made excuse for pulling the white kids out of football, that lets white women pretend it is not racism driving their decision. After all, they loved Will Smith in the concussion movie!

It’s why the NFL’s decision to let their blacks kneel during the anthem is going to be a disaster for them. The owners signed off on it thinking it added drama and would therefore draw in girls, because girls and girly-men like drama. Instead, those kneeling black players are a stark reminder to white women that the sport of football is for violent black men, not nice suburban white boys. Youth participation in football is collapsing and this will only serve to accelerate it. The NFL has now made football anti-white and un-American.

Hmm.

CNN will apologize any century now

The American media have lost their minds

The American media have lost their minds. Dozens of media outlets are reporting that TRUMP LOOKED AT THE ECLIPSE WITHOUT GLASSES! The horror! The Horror! Time, Newsweek, People, NY Post, the list is endless. Just Google trump looks at eclipse without glasses and see the results.

Well, here is the video. Further deponent sayeth not. Nor needs to.



Funny thing:

They need to read this: "How To Know You’re In a Mass Hysteria Bubble."

Trump learns he has no friends

Ten days after promoting Anthony "Mooch" Scaramucci to White House communications director, President Trump has told him, "You're fired!" 

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci last just 10 days.

The dismissal comes only days after Mooch launched an extremely profane tirade against the rest of the White House staff and after Mooch set about torpedoing the hapless Reince Priebus, who was then White House chief of staff. Priebus was fired last mid-week.

Could the last few days have been a time when Trump learned the most valuable lesson any new president can learn? It is simply this: A president must have no friends.

Every president entering the first term should study what President Dwight Eisenhower told President-Elect John F. Kennedy in 1960. Eisenhower spent many hours with him. One of the key lessons was this: "All the decisions you will make," said Eisenhower, "will be hard decisions."

Dwight went on to explain that the easy things will be tended to by cabinet secretaries and others of the administration with executive authority. But the tough ones will always be kicked to higher levels to be decided. At every level, the decisions become more and more difficult until, at last, the presidential inbox is filled with nothing but the most difficult items.

The most difficult items require the most hard-minded man (or woman, when that day comes). Former sentimental attachments are worthless and meaningless. Former personal bonds are valueless. There is the weight of the country bearing down upon the president's shoulders and no one else's in the administration. No one, including decades-long friends, associates, campaign loyalists, who is not helping to bear that weight, can be protected or retained just because s/he was once close or valuable.

I am hoping that President Trump has learned that lesson. I also have to think that this topic - and Anthony Scaramucci personally - was on the agenda when former DHS Secretary John Kelly, a retired Marine four-star general, discussed Kelly taking the chief of staff slot, which he did today.

John Kelly not long after being sword in as President Trump's second chief of staff.

Maybe retired Marines and retired Army officers think alike, but I commented elsewhere at the time that the first thing Kelly needed to do is take Scaramucci to the woodshed, hard. And it looks like he did:

Mr. Scaramucci had boasted about reporting directly to the president, not the chief of staff. But the decision to remove him came at Mr. Kelly’s request, the people said.

The notice to the staff went out shortly after Kelly took over.

He told aides gathered in early-morning staff meetings that he intended to impose a new sense of order and operational discipline that had been absent under his predecessor.

The real question, though, is whether Trump will allow Kelly to exercise oversight and have directive authority over persons named Ivanka, Jared or Junior. If not, well, he can probably start to prepare three envelopes.

Bill Nye proves he doesn't know environmental science

Bill Nye: Older people need to 'die' out before climate science can advance

Bill Nye specifically targeted the elderly this week as he spoke out against climate change deniers, saying that climate science will start to advance when old people start to "age out," according to a report.

The "Science Guy" said that generationally, the majority of climate change deniers are older.

"Climate change deniers, by way of example, are older. It's generational," Nye told the Los Angeles Times. Nye said that he is calling them out with "due respect," acknowledging that he is "now one of them."

"We're just going to have to wait for those people to 'age out,' as they say," Nye went on, adding that "age out" is a euphemism for "die." "But it'll happen, I guarantee you — that'll happen."

See, that just proves that Nye doesn't know climate science. Presumably, since Nye included himself in the denier generation, he means Boomers like me. (Nye is two months, 20 days younger than I.) The oldest Boomers are only about 72 years old, the youngest are not even 55. That means that it's going to take about 35 more years for us to be gone, and many of us will linger on well after that.

Thirty. Five. Years. Before anything can be substantially done to arrest climate change, according to Bill Nye.

We do not have that long to save the planet, and if Bill Nye is really a "science guy" he should know that. After all, "experts say we have three years to get climate change under control. And they’re the optimists."

A group of prominent scientists, policymakers, and corporate leaders released a statement Wednesday warning that if the world doesn’t set greenhouse gas emissions on a downward path by 2020, it could become impossible to contain climate change within safe limits.

I am not a scientist, but I play one on TV.

So don't listen to Bill Nye any more. He does not know the science!

Remember, though, that the Left's newly-approved position on controlling climate change is to get rid of people: "Want To Slow Global Warming? Researchers Look To Family Planning."

A recent study from Lund University in Sweden shows that the biggest way to reduce climate change is to have fewer children. 

"I knew this was a sensitive topic to bring up," says study co-author Kimberly Nicholas on NPR's Morning Edition. "Certainly it's not my place as a scientist to dictate choices for other people. But I do think it is my place to do the analysis and report it fairly." 

The study concludes that four high-impact ways to reduce CO2 gas emissions include having fewer children, living without a car, avoiding airplane travel and eating a vegetarian diet.

Get that? "Certainly it's not my place as a scientist to dictate choices for other people." Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Her disclaimer would not be necessary if she really believed that.

The article says that Ms. Nicholas is engaged to be married, but when asked, she declined to promise reducing the number of children she and her future husband plan to bear.

So, as the saying goes, I'll believe it's a crisis when the people who say it's a crisis themselves act as if it's a crisis.

Reducing the number of children the proles have can hardly be sufficiewnt to save the planet for the nomenklatura's future paradise. After all, if saving the world depends on cutting the population, then why settle for passive measures and merely hope that we proles will obey?

Remember John Holdren?

He was President Obama's Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Co-Chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a.k.a. the president's "Science Czar."

Here is what Holdren said in his book, Ecoscience, co-authored by Holdren and his colleagues Paul Ehrlich (yes, that Paul Ehrlich) and Anne Ehrlich. This is the totalitarian mind in full flower:

But this is entirely consistent with the whole world view of the Left: You are the problem and there are simply too many of you. Remember: When they say they want to "change the world," what they mean is they want to change you. As columnist David Harsanyi has pointed out, they are convinced "we have too much freedom with which to make too many stupid choices."

BTW, "In 1985 Holdren predicted a billion deaths from climate-related famine by the end of this decade." Try as I might, I cannot find any reference to such a massive die-off.

State of the Republican Nation

And here we are:

 P.J. O’Rourke is right: “The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”

A bumper sticker that is ever true:

I posted some time ago that the new logo of the Republican party should be this.

But maybe it should be this:

Update:

 

Dear President Trump: The West has already surrendered

In Poland Thursday, President Trump gave a speech that was truly historic. It was a speech that was near-Churchillian in focus and tone and world view. And it basically renounced successive American administrations of either party going back to at least Reagan's.

President Donald Trump waves to the crowd in
Krasiński Square, Warsaw, Thursday.

Speaking to a huge crowd in Krasiński Square, Warsaw, the president spoke of Poland's many decades of war against tyranny and oppression, but mainly he spoke thematically about what made Western civilization strong to begin with and why it must recover and reinforce its roots to prevail against Islamist imperialism, but also to suppress the waxing bureaucratic statism that grips every European country today. An excerpt:

Finally, on both sides of the Atlantic, our citizens are confronted by yet another danger -- one firmly within our control.  This danger is invisible to some but familiar to the Poles:  the steady creep of government bureaucracy that drains the vitality and wealth of the people.  The West became great not because of paperwork and regulations but because people were allowed to chase their dreams and pursue their destinies.

We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will.  Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have.  The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.  Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost?  Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders?  Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it?

We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive. [Italics added]

Almost at the end, the president said,

 I declare today for the world to hear that the West will never, ever be broken.  Our values will prevail.  Our people will thrive.  And our civilization will triumph.  

Ah, how I want to like this speech. And at a very basic level, I do. A lot. But President Trump is sadly calling for ramparts to be manned that were abandoned decades ago and for which there are no human resources left to rebuild them. "Strong families" have disappeared from most of Europe, Mr. President, because families themselves are simply disappearing.

Put simply: Europe long ago broke itself. Its values will not prevail (they are barely hanging on now, and being weakened daily - by design and on purpose. See: Merkel, Angela).

And European civilization will not triumph. It is in full retreat now. Whether Western civilization can survive is still open to question, but if it does it will not be to Europe's credit and will almost certainly not survive there at all. Europe's future is distinctly non-European as history has known it and will be definitely non-Western.

Let's start with Poland. David Goldman posted on FB today,

There won't be a Poland in 100 years. At a total fertility rate of 1.29, Poland will have one retiree per working-age citizen by 2075. Poland in fact has one of the world's very lowest fertility rates, which means (in Mary Eberstadt's way of looking at the problem) that it is losing its religion. President Trump's speech was magnificent, but it brings to mind Schiller's dictum that history brought forth a great moment, but the moment encountered a mediocre people. Trump is doing the right thing, but we should remember that Europe is a case not for cure but for palliative care.

I have written a lot of demographic trends in the world, concentrating on Europe and the US. Nine years ago in, "What has NATO done for us?" In 2008, Russia was making military incursions into Georgia, on which Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin decided that NATO should bring Georgia into membership. I assessed not only why NATO is a strategic nullity but asked a pointed question concerning Europe's demographic death spiral:

There is another point that Mark Steyn touched on when discussing Sarah Palin's bright idea to bring Georgia into NATO. I can't find a link now, but Steyn pointed out is that Georgia's birth rate has tanked more than practically any other country in the world. In fact, by 2050 there will be only 100,000 Georgian women of childbearing age, if current trends continue. So, he said, if Georgians won't have children to grow up to defend Georgia, why should Americans have children to grow up to defend Georgia? I can't think of any good reason.

And the same question can be asked of every other European NATO member, except perhaps Britain and France. The birth rates of Germany, Spain, Italy and every other NATO country except Turkey are below the stable replacement rate of 2.1 average births per woman, most far below. Italy’s rate is 1.23 births per woman , for example, meaning that Italy’s population could shrink by one-third by mid-century. (Turkey’s birth rate is about twice as high as Italy's.)

Again the question for NATO’s countries: if you will not have enough children to preserve your country, why should American women bear children to make up your deficit?

Demographers agree that a minimum rate of 2.1 live births per woman is required to maintain a level population from one generation to the next. And what is the demographic trend across Europe?

When a culture decides not even to reproduce itself, then it had already surrendered. It had decided to go quietly into the night and fade away. That is what Europe is doing now. Despite the president's soaring rhetoric, there will be no recovery from this decision. There is far from enough time left to do so. Tens and tens of millions of women in Europe are not going to decide suddenly to start having and average of more than 2.1 children each. The Europeans economies cannot support such a change anyway. In fact, they cannot support their present, aging populations now, which is why so many Euro nations decided long ago to reply on "The Mohammed Retirement Plan" that will nail the continent's coffin shut.

Europe is not just millions of square miles of terrain. Our affiliation with Europe, and the reason our military shed so much blood on Europe's soil, was not to defend dirt. It was to defend and preserve a cultural heritage the was the wellspring of human flourishing of the modern era. That the Europeans themselves sometimes seemed hellbent on killing one another in carload lots did not negate the fundamental virtues of the Western heritage of faith and reason.

But those are the very virtues that most of Europe has abandoned. That is why I really want to like President Trump's Warsaw speech but cannot. It's at least 50 years behind the times and for all its rhetorical inspiration, there is almost no one left in Europe to hear it with understanding of what it really would have to mean, and I doubt that Trump himself knows, either.

Update: "... of the six founding members of what evolved into the European Union, five are now led by childless prime ministers or presidents." See more at Powerline.

Top Ten Reason Mattis Should Be President

Via email from S. M. Saintsing, author of the outstanding novella, Winter Three:

Think of all the bennies we would get if Secretary of Defense and retired US Marine General James Mattis became president. Don't worry about how it might happen, just relish the idea:

1. The Secret Service would no longer need to protect the President from the crazies.  Instead, the Secret Service would have to protect the crazies from President Mattis.
    
2. The use of PowerPoint would be a federal crime.
    
3. Bipartisan gun legislation will finally be passed. All persons purchasing a gun will be required to watch a video of President Mattis pleading with them, with tears in his eyes, not to misuse their weapon, or "I will kill you all."  Following that, President Mattis explains proper sight alignment and sight picture.  Gun crime goes down, marksmanship goes up!
    
4. President Mattis' would turn ISIS into WASWAS because his daily schedule would read: 
1. Breakfast:  Kill ISIS
2. Morning: Kill ISIS
3. Lunch: Kill ISIS
4. Afternoon: Kill ISIS
5. Dinner:  Kill ISIS
6. Evening entertainment: Kill more ISIS
    
5. President Mattis would never get a 3 a.m. phone call. Instead, Chinese President Xi Jinping’s phone would ring at 3 a.m. with North Korean psychopath Kim Jong-un complaining that President Mattis keeps him awake at night.
    
6. White House press briefings now with 100% more knife hands.
    
7.  The verb "to kill" would be replaced in the dictionary with "to Mattis" after the US military Mattised all our enemies ushering in Pax Americana for hundreds of years.
    
8. Congress would pass a budget after President Mattis says “I’m only going to ask you once.”
    
9. The White House bowling alley would be replaced with the White House shooting range, open to the public.
    
10. The presidential limo would be replaced with an up-armored HMMWV with President Mattis riding in the turret manning the dual .50 cal.