Im-Politic: Chat GPT’s No Threat to My Job. Yet

Tags

AI, artificial intelligence, Chat GPT, Im-Politic, innovation, tech

Credit for the idea behind this post goes to my good friend Leon Hadar, a foreign policy analyst always worth reading. He recently decided that he’d heard so much about Chat GPT – the new artificial intelligence software that enables users to produce everything from research papers to works of art and music simply by making a request with some key search terms – that he decided to try it for himself.  (To date, it’s free.)

For reasons that should be obvious, this program has educators and anyone who earns income from creating content scared witless. Even someone like me, who writes as a hobby, has reasons for concern. After all, if actual and potential readers can access the information and analysis I try to provide without visiting RealityChek, then who needs RealityChek?

So Leon recently asked Chatp GPT to write “a column in the style of Leon Hadar.” He found the results, which came in seconds “unbelievable” (evidently in a good way).

Leon’s experiment inspired me to try one of my own, but I was not so blown away by the results, or even close. In fact, I was surprised at how many major mistakes the program made.

Here’s the response I got (in seconds) to my request to “Write an essay in the style of Alan Tonelson”:

“It is time for America to wake up and realize the threat that China poses not only to our economy, but to our very way of life. For too long, we have allowed China to take advantage of our open markets and weak trade policies, resulting in the loss of millions of American jobs and the erosion of our manufacturing base.

“China’s rise as a global economic power has been nothing short of spectacular. In just a few decades, it has transformed itself from a poor, agrarian society into the world’s second largest economy. But this rapid growth has come at a steep price for the United States and other nations.

“China’s economic success has been built on a foundation of unfair trade practices, currency manipulation, and a blatant disregard for intellectual property rights. The Chinese government has used state-owned enterprises and subsidies to dominate key industries, such as steel and solar panels, and has used its control of its domestic market to shut out foreign competitors.

“The result has been a massive trade deficit with China, which has cost the United States millions of jobs in manufacturing and other industries. In addition, China’s disregard for intellectual property rights has allowed it to steal American technology and know-how, giving it an unfair advantage in the global marketplace.

“But the threat from China is not just economic. It is also strategic and military. China is rapidly building up its military capabilities, particularly in the areas of naval and air power, in order to challenge American dominance in the Asia-Pacific region. It is also using its economic leverage to gain influence and control over other nations, particularly in the developing world.

“The United States must take strong and decisive action to counter the threat from China. We must use all available tools, including trade tariffs and other penalties, to level the playing field and protect American workers and businesses. We must also work with our allies and partners to counter China’s strategic and military ambitions.

“But most importantly, we must invest in our own economy and our own people. We must invest in education, infrastructure, and research and development in order to ensure that we remain competitive in the global economy. We must also reform our immigration policies to attract and retain the best and brightest talent from around the world.

“In short, we must be willing to take bold action to defend our economic and strategic interests and to ensure that America remains the leader of the free world. We cannot afford to continue to ignore the threat from China and the consequences will be dire for our nation.”

Certainly, the software captured my major overall worries about China’s rise (though in very generalized form), and the urgency with which I view the threats it poses.

But as RealityChek regulars know, I don’t view “investing in our own economy etc” as being more important for countering China than using tariffs. As I see it, both domestic and international responses are essential. Moreover, I’m completely unconcerned with “leveling the playing field” as opposed to doing whatever is needed to restore cutting edge U.S. industrial and technological competitiveness – whether this approach conforms to some abstract notion of fairness or not.

I’m fine with tweaking U.S. immigation policies to attract more of the world’s genuine geniuses, but believe that the real key to winning the so-called global talent war is developing the almost criminally neglected potential talent available right here at home among our 330 million people.

Regarding China’s use of “its economic leverage to gain influence and control.over other nations, particularly in the developing world,” my views are much more nuanced. If Beijing could call major shots by big developed economies in Western Europe and East Asia, that would clearly undermine American security and prosperity. Remaining kingpin of the Western Hemisphere is essential, too, for Monroe Doctrine-type reasons. And some third world countries are sources of key minerals.

But lots of developing countries in particular are little more than failed states to varying degrees, Therefore, they’re simply not worth trying to control. Much more important, even when it comes to competing with China for influence in places where it does currently count, I’d put much more emphasis than at present on America trying to maximize its own already considerable economic and strategic independence than on trying to win popularity contests around the world.

Similarly, I see no intrinsic value in the United States ensuring that it “remains the leader of the free world.” I simply want it to retain the power and wealth to promote and defend whatever international interests that it deems vital, and that can’t be secured with the kinds of domestic measures over which it will always have more control.

Finally, although I asked Chat GPT to write an essay in my “style,” I don’t see any resemblance here to my own particular voice. The prose is competent at best – nothing more.

At the same time, it is competent – demonstrating an ability that’s beyond that of most humans I’ve encountered. And it got lots right.

As a result, I can easily imagine a day in which Chat GPT or another piece of artificial intelligence software will be able to generate a piece of writing indistinguishable from the Real McCoy. I can even foresee it producing posts and articles on subjects with which I haven’t dealt, in the process using exactly the kind of reasoning and evidence I’d use.

Judging from what I just got from Chat GPT, that day is still a ways off. Still, I can’t help but wonder how far.

Advertisement

Im-Politic: Straight Talk on Police Racism and Violence Urgently Needed

Tags

African Americans, Brakkton Booker, Cerelyn Davis, crime, Im-Politic, law enforcement, Memphis, police, police brutality, policing, Politico, racism, systemic racism, Tyre Nichols

OK, now I’m really confused. The widespread claims that American policing and law enforcement itself are systemically racist have been muddied enough by perhaps the most startling fact about the five Memphis, Tennessee police officers who bodycam and CCTV footage from January 7 show beating an unarmed African-American so brutally that he eventually died: These cops are all African American.

Then yesterday, I read a Friday post from Politico with the eye-catching headline: “‘Diversity alone won’t change policing’”. Moreover, this claim wasn’t simply the view of one of the racial justice advocates quoted. Author Brakkton Booker stated categorically that “What is becoming evident is that diversifying a police force does not guarantee different outcomes when Black Americans come into contact with police.”

If true, of course, that completely eviscerates the allegations of systemic racism plaguing both policing and law enforcement. For if both white and black police are regularly mistreating African Americans they encounter, then something else must be going on.

Yet the piece got even stranger when it quoted Memphis’ (African American) Police Chief Cerelyn Davis as first agreeing with the above conclusion. The death of Tyre Nichols, she said, “takes off the table that issues and problems in law enforcement is about race, and it is not.”  But then she added, “It does indicate to me that bias might be a factor also.”

What kind of bias, however? Against people like Tyre Nichols? An African American? But that would be by definition racist. Or against African American men? Sounds pretty racist to me, too. Or against young African American men? Again, kinda racist. And why would African American men like the five accused Memphis officers adopt these attitudes?

Unless this is a problem peculiar to Memphis? Or Baltimore (where three of the five policemen implicated but eventually cleared in the 2015 death of another young African American man in their custody were black)?  Yet this development would be pretty strange, too, given, for example, that not only is Memphis’ police chief black, but so is 58 percent of the entire force.   

In fact, how common or rare are unjustified black police killings of other blacks? Does anyone know? Has anyone bothered to look? Not that I can determine.

The racial justice advocate mentioned above, Rashad Robinson, who heads a group called Color of Change, did provide one potentially useful insight when he told Booker “Policing will not get better without diversity, but diversity alone will not change policing. Something like this doesn’t exist without a culture that allows, rewards it, protects it.”

But just as Memphis Chief Davis needs to explain exactly what kind of non-racial “bias” may be at work here, Robinson needs to elaborate on the “culture” he finds so problematic. Is it one that fosters needless violence against suspects no matter  their identity? Yet if so, how come even this apparently happens so seldom?

Specifically, as of 2019, about ten million Americans were being arrested annually. According to an organization called Mapping Police Violence, however, the number of Americans killed by police last year was 1,186. And as best as I could tell, only 219 of all backgrounds were unarmed. (The interactive search engine isn’t easy to work). It’s terrible that anyone who’s unarmed is killed by police, but a number this absolutely and relatively infinitesimal (and don’t forget – people encountered by police can resist violently even when they’re not armed) shouldn’t scream “nation-wide culture of violence” to anyone.

All of which makes me wonder: Is America experiencing a crisis of policing? Or one of talking about policing sensibly?

Im-Politic: Where Republicans Should Definitely Listen to Trump

Tags

abortion, conservatives, Donald Trump, election 2024, entitlements, establishment Republicans, GOP, Im-Politic, Medicare, Populism, Republicans, Social Security

And now for a sentence I’m stunned to be writing (but maybe shouldn’t be stunned to be writing): Donald Trump has once again shown that he’s one of the most interesting politicians in America – and in a good way.

The reason: In just the last few weeks, the former President has just staked out moderate and commonsensical positions on two critical issues that are frontally challenging a hardening, politically foolish and substantively counterproductive Republican/conservative consensus.

I’m stunned to see this because last month, I wrote that his continuing, off-putting – and, I emphasized, apparently irremediable – personal behavior and poor judgment  meant that he no longer deserved even to lead the conservative populist movement, much less win the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.

But I shouldn’t be so stunned because Trump has been opposing decades of Republican and conservative dogma since he first threw his hat in the ring in 2015. Trade and immigration policies are the obvious examples – and due to his efforts, the GOP is no longer the mouthpiece of the Open Borders-friendly corporate cheap labor lobby and of the China-coddling corporate offshoring lobby.

At the same time, Trump’s achievement in this respect has been even broader. As I’ve written, the unusual combinations of policies he supported contained the promise of not only redefining American conservatism (by uniting its traditional focus on allegedly excessive taxation and regulation with those aforementioned populist approaches to trade and immigration) but of bringing some long Democratic-voting constituencies into a new national political coalition broad enough to govern effectively. These include both households with members of industrial unions and working class minorities.

So it’s been all the more dispiriting that, in particular, the former President hasn’t been able to overcome his tendency to embrace even the most odious or simply dodgy figures as long as they profess admiration for him, and to blurt out the first often ill-considered opinions that pop into his head.

Nonetheless, there was Trump the day after New Year’s, writing on his own social media platform that “It wasn’t my fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to expectations [in the last midterm elections]….It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters.”

And as known by RealityChek regulars, evidence indeed abounds that contributing mightily to the Democrats’ better-than-expected November showing was a sharp, widespread reaction against (a) the sweeping Supreme Court ruling striking down the previously cited Constitutional right to privacy that legalized abortion nationally in most cases (approved to be sure by several Trump-appointed Justices); and (b) to the consequent stated determination of many Republican abortion foes to lengthen the list of draconian state bans.

Then, last Friday, Trump warned in a video message, “Under no circumstances should Republicans vote to cut a single penny from Medicare or Social Security.” He added, “Cut waste, fraud and abuse everywhere that we can find it and there is plenty there’s plenty of it,” Trump says. “But do not cut the benefits our seniors worked for and paid for their entire lives. Save Social Security, don’t destroy it.”

The former President was referring both to statements by Republican members of Congress supporting the idea of winning changes in eligibility for these hugely expensive but politically popular entitlement programs before agreeing to lift the federal debt ceiling, and to similar criticisms of entitlement spending expressed during the last campaign.

And as noted in the above-linked Politico article, support for Social Security and Medicare versus establishment Republican calls for significant change has been a long-standing Trump position.

Once again, I don’t believe that Trump has the personal discipline to stay on these most recent constructive messages and to avoid committing damaging own-goals. But these new statements add another big question about the future of Republicanism and conservatism:  How genuinely Trump will leaders who have shown signs of championing “Trump-ism without Trump” actually be?       

Im-Politic: The New York Times’ DeSantis Hatchet Job Flunks Even the Competence Test

Tags

demographics, Florida, Im-Politic, Immigration, journalism, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Mainstream Media, MSM, Regime Media, Ron DeSantis, The New York Times

Memo to New York Times podcaster Lulu Garcia-Navarro, her editors at the paper’s opinion section, and indeed all journalists: If you’re going to do a takedown piece on a major politician, or anyone, try to display at least minimal competence.

Had Garcia-Navarro and her editors followed this advice, they’d have never published a recent hatchet job on Ron DeSantis, the Florida Republican governor and possible 2024 presidential candidate, that’s a monument to factual cherry- picking and outright misinformation trafficking, and a disgrace even to the increasingly debased practice of opinion writing.

Garcia-Navarro concentrates on debunking the claims of DeSantis and his supporters that the governor “has overseen a growing economy” and that. “Florida now has the fastest-growing population in the country.” (I reported on the latter and related developments here.)

Actually, the author claims,

“Florida is not a model for the nation, unless the nation wants to become unaffordable for everyone except rich snowbirds.

“While my home state’s popularity might indeed seem like good news for a governor with presidential ambitions, a closer look shows that Florida is underwater demographically. Most of those flocking there are aging boomers with deep pockets, adding to the demographic imbalance for what is already one of the grayest populations in the nation. This means that Florida won’t have the younger workers needed to care for all those seniors. And while other places understand that immigrants, who often work in the service sector and agriculture, two of Florida’s main industries, are vital to replenishing aging populations, Mr. DeSantis and the state G.O.P. are not exactly immigrant-friendly, enacting legislation to limit the ability of people with uncertain legal status to work in the state.”

One obvious reason for doubting Garcia-Navarro’s arguments is the lack of documentation. That’s likely because had the author decided to present the principal facts, or had her editors insisted upon this, they ‘d have watched this indictment melt away.

A balanced picture of Florida’s demographics would have begun by noting that DeSantis has only occupied the state house in Tallahassee since the beginning of 2019. Anyone familiar with the Sunshine States knows that it’s been a popular retirement destination for decades.

It’s possible that DeSantis has had such a powerful impact on Florida’s demographics that these patterns have changed dramatically in the last four years? Well, yes. But the statistics surely have been distorted – like virtually all U.S. data – by the CCP Virus.

In any event, Florida’s own state government shows that the state’s (higher-than-the-U.S. Average) median age rose 0.71 percent between 2019-2021 (the latest figures available) while that of the nation as a whole increased by 0.52 percent. For comparison’s sake, during the two years before 2019, Florida’s median age advanced by 0.48 percent versus the 1.05 percent for the entire United States.

So these limited samples do show that Florida has been aging at a relatively fast pace under DeSantis, both versus its own pre-DeSantis pace and that of all of America. But the none of gaps or the changes between them is the least bit dramatic.

Between 2017 and 2019, Florida’s median age dipped from 110 percent of its total U.S. counterpart to 109.375 percent. By 2021, it bounced all the way back to …109.585 percent. In other words, big whoop.

As for Garcia-Navarro’s charge that DeSantis’ governorship has benefited only “rich snowbirds” economically, that’s hard to square with what the exit polls told us about his 2022 reelection results. Specifically, fully 41 percent of Floridians who voted last year lived in households that earned $50,000 annually or less. Thirty-eight percent of these voters’ households earned between $50,000 and $99,000 per year. And 21 percent earned more than $100,000 each year. So clearly, lots of DeSantis voters weren’t one percenters or five percenters or ten percenters or even close.

It’s true that DeSantis clobbered his Democratic opponent among voters aged 45 or older – by 63 percent to 36 percent. But that group includes lots of non-geezers. And among the 18-44-year olds, DeSantis trailed by just 50-48 percent. So clearly lots of DeSanti voters weren’t wealthy seniors, either. Either all these non-super-rich and young and midde aged Floridians are too stupid to vote in thei own economic self-interest, or they know something that Garcia-Navarro and her editors don’t.

And has DeSantis really shut off the flow of desperately needed immigrants into Florida? Despite his efforts to “limit the ability of people with uncertain legal status to work in the state” (love that latest euphemism for illegal aliens!), U.S. Census data show that the answer is emphatically “No.”

For example, from July, 2021 to July, 2022 (the latest official data available), slightly fewer immigrants moved into Florida on a net basis (125,629) than into California (125,715). And that’s even though California’s estimated population last year (39.03 million) was much larger than Florida’s (22.24 million), and even though California is a self-proclaimed sanctuary state. (See the the fourth xls table downloadable from this Census link.) 

These data don’t distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants, but for the purposes of this post, who cares? Indeed, do the (not rocket science) math, and even if you believe that more immigrants (includin those with “uncertain legal status) are essential for adequate senior care, it turns out that Florida is in much better shape because it’s receiving nearly as many of the foreign born as California even though its population includes many fewer (4.69 million) seniors in absolute terms than California (5.93 million).

Moreover, these numbers are little changed in a relative sense from those of the last pre-DeSantis year.  In fact, the data in the fifth xls table available at this Census link show that from July, 2018 to July, 2019, more immigrants came to Florida (88,678) than to California (74,028) even though more seniors (just over six million) lived in the latter than in the former (4.54 million).  (Note:  this last data describes the situation as of April, 2020. These were the closest Census figures that seem to be available.)   

I was able to find all these highly relevant figures without undue difficulty. Why couldn’t Garcia-Navarro? Or her editors? No doubt because their intent was not to englighten but to smear. As a result, I feel better than ever about changing my nomenclature for such established news organizations from “Mainstream Media” to “Regime Media.”  

Im-Politic: Parents Should Ignore this Over-the-Top Woke Guide to Pop Culture

Tags

Im-Politic, Al Qaeda, political correctness, racism, The Washington Post, movies, families, parents, wokeness, children, white supremacy, Phillipines, popular culture, parenting

Even though the Washington Post has turned into a daily display of guilt-drenched, virtue-signaling wokeness and political correctness, I was still gobsmacked to read the following in yesterday’s edition of its weekly feature “Common Sense Media.”

These reports’ raison d’etre is helping “families make smart media choices” for their kids when it comes to “movies, games, apps, TV shows, websites and books,” and its latest group of reviews included this warning about a new action flick called Plane:

“[T]here are troubling aspects to how the film’s non-White characters are represented. Darker-skinned, Southeast Asian-presenting actors are cast as criminals, while lighter, more East Asian-presenting actors are cast as “good guys.” And Black characters are coded as heroic but violent.”

Now I actually consider “Common Sense Media” to be a great idea in principle. Who can doubt that popular culture offerings today are saturated with material that’s disgusting, perverse, and wildly inappropriate and even dangerous for the intellectual, social, and ethical development of kids of various ages? (The impact on grown-ups surely isn’t very beneficial, either.) So everyone should be all for alerting parents to this garbage.

But common sense – not to mention minimal logic and coherence – really is imperative, and if you think about it for more than passing moment, that’s exactly what this comment is missing.

After all, what’s the message that this review is trying to send? That Plane is a film created by folks with some major racial and ethnic prejudices. But they’re obviously bizarre kind of racists and bigots at best.

They don’t like “darker skinned Southeast Asians.” But they do like “lighter…East Asians.” And they seem to like “Black characters” yet more – even though people of subsaharan African descent are almost always darker skinned than Southeast Asians.

There’s no law requiring prejudice to be logical, but the assumptions evidently underlying this passage surely deserved at least some scrutiny. Like maybe by editors?

Nor do the review’s shortcomings stop there. For example, in real life, how much skin color difference is there between many East and Southeast Asians, especially since the population of the latter region contains large numbers of individuals of Chinese ancestry?

Maybe the writer is referring to the “dangerous separatists in the Phillipines” who are the movie’s villains? Well, according to this academic article, the archipelago is quite the demographic melange, having been peopled by at least five major migrations from all over Australasia, Southeast Asia – and Taiwan (which is located between East Asia and Southeast Asia). So exactly which of these numerous groups is allegedly being slimed?

Moreover, “dangerous separatists in the Phillipines” aren’t figments of some white supremacist screenwriter’s imagination. As explained here by the Congressional Research Service, separatism has been a long-standing problem in that country, especially in the southern-most islands. And these movements have included an organization with impressive-looking ties to Al Qaeda. Since that’s the group that planned and carried out the September 11 attacks, it sounds pretty dangerous.

In principle, one could ask why the film-makers decided to zero in on this country and this group. But the obvious, common sense answer is “Why not?” Should Filipino separatists – or any non-white groups – be exempted from the list of villains permissable in America? If so, why?

Or is the reviewer implying that American popular culture doesn’t regularly, and never has regularly, produced works featuring white villains? Just posing the question should reveal its absurdity.

In this vein, I also found myself wondering about the need to mention that “Black characters” are “coded as …violent”? Were Plane‘s white characters not violent, too? If so, that would be weird for a movie that “Common Sense Media” tells us from the get-go is “an action film” with lots of “violence.” Do such movies typically include characters seeking to resolve their differences through dialogue or role-playing or compulsory arbitration?

That this material made it into a leading American newspaper without a single editor apparently batting an eye –and does so again and again – makes you wonder what new lows in progressive pearl-clutching and sanctimony are just around the corner. But “Common Sense Media” also offers one reason for modest optimism: It includes no bylines, indicating that its contributors feel some sense of shame – even if unwitting -about purveying such divisive drivel.

Im-Politic: Republicans are Winning the Other Election

Tags

apportionment, Census Bureau, Democrats, demography, domestic migrants, Electoral College, House of Representatives, Im-Politic, politics, population, Republicans

Americans have always had two main ways to vote: at the ballot box and with their feet. Both are of course important, and in fact the second ultimately influences the first, as I’ll explain below. So it’s more than a little interesting that the Census Bureau has just released figures on “voting by foot” indicating that even though elections are telling us that the country is deeply divided between Democrats and Republicans, when it comes to desired places to live, the GOP could be building up a considerable advantage.

The Census figures supporting this claim are those showing domestic migration totals, which reveal how many Americans each year are literally picking up stakes from individual states and moving to others. According to the latest “National and State Population Estimates,” (more specifically, the fourth xls table downloadable from this link) which was released shortly before Christmas, seven of the ten states that lost the most domestic population to other states between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022 were governed by Democrats during that year.   They are (in descending order):

California:             -343,230  D

New York:             -299,557  D

Illinois:                 -141,656   D

New Jersey:            -64,231  D

Massachusetts:       -57,292   R

Louisiana:              -46,672   D

Maryland:              -45,101   R

Pennsylvania:        -39,957   D

Virginia                 -23,952   R

Minnesota:            -19,400   D

Nor is this trend limited to the last year. Census also provides cumulative data going back to April, 2020, and these show the same pro-Republican trend. Again, seven of the ten states with the greatest domestic population loss were governed by Democrats during this period:

California:           -871,217   D

New York:           -664,921   D

Illinois:                -282,048   D

Massachusetts:    -110,866    R

New Jersey:         -107,749   D

Louisiana:              -80,278   D

Maryland:             -68,287    R

Michigan:             -43,188    D

Ohio:                    -39,995    R

Minnesota:           -37,377    D

Moreover, the opposite is even “truer.” Of the ten states with the most domestic migration population gain between July 1, 2021 and July 1, 2022, nine were governed by Republicans:

Florida:             +318,855    R

Texas:               +230,961    R

No. Carolina:     +99,796    D

So. Carolina:     +84,030     R

Tennessee:         +81,646    R

Georgia:            +81,406     R

Arizona:            +70,984     R

Idaho:                +28,639     R

Alabama:          +28,609      R

Oklahoma:        +26,791      R

And the figures for the last two data years tell generate nearly exactly same list of population gaining states:

Florida:          +622,476       R

Texas:            +475,252       R

No. Carolina: +211,86        D

Arizona:        +182,362       R

So. Carolina: +165,948       R

Tennessee:    +146,403       R

Georgia:       +128,089       R

Idaho:             +88,647       R

Alabama:        +65,355      R

Oklahoma:     +56,807       R

As mentioned at the beginning, population trends can strongly determine election results. and they do so in two ways – by determining which states get how many seats in the House of Representatives, and votes in the Electoral College. In addition, in most states, the state legisature draws up the specific lines of Congressional districts, and parties are not at all reluctant to use (and sometimes abuse, in a process called gerrymandering) this authority power for partisan advantage. 

So if states in which voters choose Republicans as governors, and GOP majorities in the legislatures, are gaining population at the expense of their Democratic-controlled counterparts, that would seem to turn into ever more Republican victories in both Congressional elections and Presidential contests.

Not that that’s guaranteed. For example, the next House and Electoral College reapportionments won’t take place until the 2030 Census results are in, and clearly lots can happen between now and then. In addition, voters who move from Democratic- to Republican-run states sometimes take Democratic leanings with them – as apparently has been the case in states with strong histories of GOP support that have been popular domestic migration destinations that have swung markedly toward the Democrats. Arizona, Georgia, and Virginia are notable examples. At the same time, these domestic migrants could well be moving from Democratic- to Republican-controlled states because they’ve had it with the way that Democrats have been governing. Florida seem to typify this trend.

Finally, as demonstrated vividly by the latest midterm elections, various factors can foster ticket-splitting by voters.

But even if demography isn’t always political destiny, it’s hard to imagine many Democrats answering the question “Are you pleased that Democratic-run states seem to be losing population to GOP-run states?” with a “Yes.”

Im-Politic: A CCP Virus Lesson Learned and a Mystery Still Unsolved

Tags

Biden, CCP Virus, CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, coronavirus, COVID 19, Donald Trump, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, mortality, National Center for Health Statistics, vaccines, Washington Post, Worldometers.info, Wuhan virus

As the third anniversary of the CCP Virus’ arrival in the United States approaches, new data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have upended a widely held belief about the U.S. government’s response, even as other recent statistics have left another conclusion firmly in place.

The upended belief: that President Biden has handled the pandemic much better than former President Trump. Recently released figures from the CDC say it ain’t so – at least when it comes to the virus’ death toll.

According to the agency’s National Center for Health Statistics, in 2020, the number of American deaths attributable to the CCP Virus was 350, 831. According to its latest report on the leading causes of mortality in the United States, Covid 19 took 416,893 lives in 2021. That’s an 18.83 percent increase.

In other words, in 2020, when Trump was President and his policies toward the pandemic were widely considered an unmitigated disaster (except for the Operation Warp Speed policy that produced vaccines in record time), the virus killed many fewer Americans than in 2021, when Joe Biden’s administration has gotten much better marks.

But maybe these results are skewed by the fact that the Trump Covid year only lasted eleven months (because the first recorded American CCP Virus death didn’t occur till February 29, 2020, and the Trump administration ended on January 20, 2021)? Nope. Even when you make the needed changes, and peg the start of the Biden administration in February, 2021, you get the same 18.83 percent gap (with monthly deaths under Trump coming in at 31,893 and under Mr. Biden at 37,899).

The big bump up in deaths under Biden are even stranger when you consider that when the pandemic hit the United States, it was a truly novel coronavirus, meaning that it was difficult to figure out what it even was, much less how rapidly it could spread (thanks in part to China’s refusal to share reliable information), let alone how to treat it. So healthcare providers (and public health agencies) literally were flying blind. Moreover, there was absolutely no vaccine. And relatively few had the chance to develop natural immunity.

It’s true that the vaccine rollout took some time to complete (partly because, again, it was a novel challenge), and that once it was widely available, many Americans refused to be jabbed. But according to this source, by July 30, half of the population was fully vaccinated, and by year-end, this level had hit 62 percent.

Biden supporters can point to the fact that. in fall, 2021, the seven-day daily average of CCP Virus-attributable deaths peaked at 2,093 (on September 22). That was 37.47 percent below the peak under Trump (a seven-day average of 3,347 on January 17, 2021). (These figures come from the Washington Post‘s Covid tracker feature.) But again, there was no vaccine available at all in fall, 2021, under Trump. And natural immunity was much more widespread during President Biden’s first year.

Of course, deaths aren’t the only metric needed to evaluate the effectiveness of CCP Virus responses. Hospitalizations are important, too. A flood of severe virus victims can strain the healthcare system to the breaking point, both making each of them harder to treat effectively, and leaving fewer personnel and resources available for dealing with other serious medical problems.

So it’s more than a little interesting to observe that, according to the Post‘s virus tracker, the peak of reported Covid-related hospital admissions under Trump came on January 6, 2021, at 139,752. During President Biden’s first year, it was 101,865 on December 31, 2021. That’s 27.11 percent fewer. But again, the Trump peak came during a vaccine-less period. Moreover, that Trump peak was the peak for that winter’s wave. That Biden peak wouldn’t arrive until January 19, 2022, when reported hospitalizations hit 161,789 – 15.77 percent higher than the worst Trump figure. And these Biden-era hospitalizations reached such levels even though this was the time when the virus’ Omicron variant became dominant in the United States – strain that was the most infectious, yet the least severe, yet.

But the conclusion that’s been left in place is that, whoever the President, the United States’ virus response has been much less effective than that of many other countries in terms of saving lives.

As of today, the Worldometers.info website reports that the CCP Virus has killed just under 6.69 million globally. The death toll in the United States: Just under 1.12 million. So the United States has suffered 16.74 percent of the world’s virus-related deaths even though it represents just 4.25 percent of the world’s population. That’s a discrepancy so big that it can’t possibly be explained to any meaningful extent by national differences in how virus-related deaths are defined.

A new U.S. Congress convenes next month, and supposedly lots of investigations will be launched – especially by the new Republican majority in the House. Let’s hope that a serious probe of the nation’s clearly bipartisan failure to cope adequately with the CCP Virus is at or near the top of the list.  

Im-Politic: It’s Not Just the Twitter files.

Tags

ABC News, Alejandro Mayorkas, asylum seekers, Biden administration, Biden border crisis, border security, Department of Homeland Security, DHS, Gregg Abbott, Im-Politic, Immigration, Karin Jean-Pierre, Mainstream Media, Martha Raddatz, migrants, Regime Media, This Week, Title 42

Although understandably overshadowed by all the Twitter Files releases, another likely example has appeared lately of how thoroughly the nation’s most important news organizations have collectively turned into a “Regime Media” in service of mainstream Democrats (as represented nowadays mainly by the Biden administration) and their Republican partners in globalism.

I say “likely” because I don’t have a smoking gun. But the following sure would be a startling coincidence.

In late October, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who’s been under fire throughout the Biden years for insisting in the face of overwhelming evidence that the United States’ border with Mexico is secure, tried to turn the tables on his assailants.

In an interview with the Dallas [Texas] Morning News, Mayrokas charged that “the political cry that the border is open is music to the smugglers’ ears, because they take that political rhetoric and they market it” to desperate migrants.

In other words, those calling attention to a problem – as opposed to the reality of the problem itself – deserve the blame for the problem’s continuation and even worsening.

What could be more transparently and self-servingly ludicrous? Well according to Martha Raddatz, ABC News correspondent and sometime anchor of the network’s Sunday morning talk show This Week, plenty. Because in the program’s latest edition, Raddatz chided Texas Republican Governor Gregg Abott, a leading critic of Biden border policy with this claim:

“You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders, I don’t think I’ve ever heard President Biden say, we have an open border, come on over. But people I have heard say it are you, are former president Trump, Ron DeSantis, that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So they do get the message that it’s an open border and smugglers use all those kind of statements.”

Actually, candidate Biden said exactly this during his victorious presidential campaign: “All those people who are seeking asylum, they deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation who says, if you want to flee, and you’re freeing oppression, you should come.”

Indeed, candidate Biden also declared that

“We could afford to take in a heartbeat another two million [migrants]. The idea that a country of 330 million cannot afford people, who are in desperate need and who are justifiably weak, and fleeing depression is absolutely bizarre….I would also move to increase the number of immigrants able to come but also to deal with all those migrants.”

And although he wasn’t President then, soon after he became President, his chief White House press spokesperson said that “he still believes that he wants our country to be a place that there is asylum processing at the border.” That’s not an invitation?

Indeed, she made this remark in order to explain what the President supposedly really meant when, a week earlier, he told asylum seekers “don’t come over” because he aimed to set up a system enabling them to apply in their home countries – and because the southern border was rapidly crowding, at least partly due to his welcoming campaign rhetoric.

But for the purposes of this post, more important than documenting Raddatz’ (willful?) ignorance is noting how her accusation resembled DHS chief Mayorkas’ nearly verbatim.

Further, almost on cue, the very next day, current White House press spokesperson Karin Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily briefing that

“The fact is that the removal of Title 42 [the pandemic-period Trump administration directive permitting the United States to bar individuals from entering the United States to protect public health] does not mean the border is open. Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply doing the work of these smugglers who, again, are spreading misinformation, and which are — which is very dangerous.”

In fact, she resorted to this tactic twice.

Later yesterday, moreover, one of her assistants said in another interview:

“To be clear: the lifting of the Title 42 public health order does not mean the border is open. Anyone who suggests otherwise is doing the work of smugglers spreading misinformation to make a quick buck off of vulnerable migrants,”

I don’t know if Biden administration officials have been whispering into Raddatz’ ear or vice versa. But these remarks would definitely have problems facing the “duck test.” They look like collusion an sound like collusion, and unless and until this mutual support system is dismantled and the Mainstream Media stops serving as the Regime Media, I for one will be hard-pressed to be optimistic about American democracy’s future.

Im-Politic: Why It’s Time for Trump to Go

Tags

anti-semitism, Capitol riot, censorship, conservative populist nationalism, conservatives, Constitution, culture wars, election 2016, election 2020, election 2022, election 2024, Glenn Youngkin, Hunter Biden laptop, Im-Politic, January 6, nationalism, Pat Buchanan, politics, Populism, Republicans, Ron DeSantis, Ross Perot, social media, Trump, Twitter Files

There are several reasons I haven’t posted yet on Donald Trump’s absolutely terrible last few weeks, some obvious, some not so much.

Among the former – clearly, as someone who proudly voted for him twice, and considers his Oval Office record on the issues impressive, I’ve been crestfallen by the number of serious and completely unnecessary “own goals” the former President has committed lately. The two worst: the lunch at his Florida estate with two outspoken ant-semites, and his social media claim that revelations of major social media collusion with Democrats during the 2020 presidential campaign “allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

It’s not that I’ve been forced to conclude that Trump is an anti-semite. Not when his daughter is married to a Jew, when for so long, so many of his closest business associates have been Jewish, and when he’s arguably been the most pro-Israel President in U.S. history.

Nor do I believe that he really wants to suspend the Constitution because he believes that the 2020 election was stolen from him, his activity during the run-up to January 6^th notwithstanding. Instead, I write it off as the kind of thoughtless outburst that’s come from him many times, and that stemmed from a frustration over the “Twitter Files” disclosures that’s not entirely incomprehensible. (Even this blatant Mainstream Media Biden apologist doesn’t rule out the possibility that because the election turned on such small vote totals in a handful of states, Trump might still be sitting in the White House had the Hunter Biden laptop story been widely suppressed during the general campaign.)

My main evidence? In two days, Trump denied suggesting what he actually suggested. Which sounds to me much more like crappy judgment than like conviction.

But to return to the main point of this post (which isn’t fighting these battles), my main less-obvious reason for keeping off the subject is one I’ve referred to before: an unwillingness to write about something unless I can think of something original to say. And so many valid points have been made by so many commentators about what Trump’s latest blunders say about his qualifications for a second term and/or his electability.that I’ve had difficulty adding to them.

Finally, however, I’ve come up with two, and they’re important enough to me to make clear that Trump’s usefulness in American politics and policy – which I view as considerable – has come and gone.

The first point has to do with Trump’s longtime habit of associating himself one way or another with figures with odious views – like the two anti-semites. Although as I said above, there’s no serious reason to think he subscribes to those views. But these repeated episodes aren’t coincidental, either, and clearly stem from his tendency to gravitate, at least temporarily, toward anyone who expresses anything remotely positive about him.

This pattern must stem from a degree of personal insecurity that seems to have been noteworthy enough even before a presidency marked by a long, almost nonstop series of false charges like the Russia collusion hoax. But however natural this reaction was, it also produced an equally long series of controversies (like this) that (a) did nothing to shore up his support with the faithful; and (b) greatly and understandably antagonized plenty of middle-of-the-road voters (including Republicans) who are generally with him on the issues.

His latest misadventures only indicate that this habit will continue – if only because the baseless attacks will. So with Trump as its standard bearer, the Republican Party, and the populist stances now strongly favored by its voters (if not by its thankfully vanishing D.C.-centric establishment wing) will struggle mightily at best to reach its full potential – a working class oriented majority coalition big and durable enough to generate thoroughgoing, lasting change.

Moreover, Trump’s uncritical attraction to any and all admirers surely explains much about his increasingly lousy record in distinguishing political winners from losers – which was displayed so prominently during last month’s midterm elections. And good luck creating a durable political movement without strong Congressional coattails.

The second original-as-I-see-it point has to do with a phenomenon that’s been commonly observed in business: The person who creates something turns out to be incapable of running it longer term. And it’s no mystery why. The two tasks require two different skill sets.

Trump unquestionably was indispensable to the triumph of modern conservative nationalist populism. After this embyronic movement (or, more accurately, related set of impulses, grievances, and leanings), experienced false starts led by former Nixon White House aide-turned-pundit Pat Buchanan, and by businessman Ross Perot, Trump achieved the breakthrough via a combination of stylistic convention-shattering and exciting new combinations of policy positions (notably, some standard conservative tax- and regulation-cutting along with economic nationalist trade and immigration stances and America First-focused foreign policies). Moreover, it’s unlikely that a politician with a more conventional personality could have left so many self-serving establishment shibboleths dead and buried, and channeled popular anger at the too-often bipartisan national power structure so effectively.

But that battle has been won hands down. The challenge for conservative nationalist populists is, as the consultants say, to expand the base. And that inevitably means appealing to voters who sympathize with the content of its platform, but who also insist on leaders who won’t force them to keep their noses held, and who seem determined to enflame rather than ease national passions. (A focus on fostering division while projecting images of sobriety, by the way, is a good desciption of many Democratic and progressive culture war shock troopers.)

Those gettable non-Republican conservatives and moderate are voters afflicted with what’s been called Trump Fatigue. And despite the major policy successes of his administration (e.g., a solidly growing, non-inflationary economy; a far more secure southern border; a halt to the enabling of China; an avoidance of pointless new foreign wars), who can blame them? Why would they look forward to four more years of national turbulence – especially since, as was not the case in 2016 and 2020, they may well have alternatives who can give them both a rousing and successful championing of populist economic and selected culture war causes on the one hand, and qualities like sound judgement and self-discipline and rhetorical precision on the other.

Of course, I’m talking about politicians like Republican Governors Glenn Youngkin of Virginia and Ron DeSantis of Florida. The former, as I documented here, both won in an increasingly Democratic state and outpolled Trump’s failed reelection campaign even in rural counties chock full of hard-core Trumpers. I haven’t examined the DeSantis win last month in detail, but he achieved even greater success in a state that’s at least as diverse (though trending Republican lately).

And in fact, polls are now showing (e.g., here) not only that the former President has lost big-time ground to his possible Sunshine State rival among Republican and Republican-leaning voters, but that by large majoities, these groups “now say they want Trump’s policies but a different standard-bearer to carry them.” The inclusion of the leaners in such surveys is especially important, as they comprise a critical share of those gettable independents that could put a GOP candidate over the top in 2024 and enable him or her to shape the nation’s politics and policies for decades to come.

Here’s a way to look at these matters that I wish wasn’t so completely religious in nature but that probably makes the point like none other (and precisely for that reason): Trump was the guy needed to bring conservative nationalist populism to the mountain top of victory in 2016. But he’s anyone but the guy to lead it to the promised land of lasting political and policy supremacy.

Im-Politic: So Fauci Finally Gets It on Lockdowns?

Tags

Anthony S. Fauci, Biden administration, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, facemasks, Im-Politic, lockdowns, social distancing, Wuhan virus, Xi JInPing, Zero Covid

Retiring U.S. chief infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony S. Fauci told us over the weekend that he’s just shocked by what he calls China’s pointlessly “draconian” Zero Covid policy to defeat the CCP Virus. And the Biden administration has been critical, too. To which the only reasonable response is, “Seriously?”

Not that Zero Covid hasn’t been an epic fail by Chinese dictator Xi Jinping. But the criticism from Fauci and the Biden presidency sure looks like the pot calling the kettle black.

If you’re skeptical, here’s Fauci’s response to a question noting perceptively that “you’re seeing things that we saw in this country when people didn’t like how Covid response — What is going on in China, and why do they seem to be in a worse place than anyone else in the world?”

“[T]heir approach has been very, very severe and rather draconian in the kinds of shutdowns without a seeming purpose. I mean, if you’re having a situation, if you can recall, you know, almost three years ago when we were having our hospitals overrun, you remember the situation in New York City, you had to do something immediately to shut down that flow. So remember we were talking about flattening the curve and the social distancing and restrictions and shutdown, which was never really complete, is done for a temporary period of time for the purpose of regrouping, getting more personal protective equipment, getting people vaccinated. It seems that in China it was just a very, very strict extraordinary lockdown where you lock people in the house but without any seemingly endgame to it.”

No one can reasonably criticize any public official for urging extreme and sweeping anti-virus measures during the pandemic’s early days – before its nature and especially its highly granular lethality (overwhelmingly concentrated in seniors and others with major health problems) were understood. For it could have been like the Black Death.

But of course Fauci, the rest of the official public health establishment, and left-of-center leaders like Biden, were championing these policies long after these patterns became known.

And more important, when it comes to comparing U.S. policies during his tenure with Chinese policies today, Fauci’s claim that he was only urging “social distancing and restrictions and shutdown” essentially until vaccination was widespread ignores his stated belief in March, 2020 that “It will take at least a year to a year in a half to have a vaccine we can use.” And of course getting enough arms jabbed to turn the CCP Virus tide was always going to take months more even if the rollout went perfectly (which was far from the case). And what if the vaccines were major flops?

So Fauci himself clearly felt that pretty draconian policies – despite their devastating impact on the economy, on education, and on Americans’ mental health – would be needed over a very long haul. Therefore, when it counted, his differences with the approach taken recently by China (which lacks vaccines even as effective as America’s imperfect – especially against transmission – versions) was one of degree, not of kind.

Just as bad, as with Xi Jinping, this conviction of Fauci’s didn’t seem to be greatly affected by the proven potential of natural immunity per se to help end the pandemic (especially as variants, predictably, became more infectious but less lethal), or by the emerging evidence of sharp limits (to put it diplomatically) to the utility of social distancing in and of itself, and masking – and even of widespread lockdowns themselves.

Fauci’s declaration that “a prolonged lockdown without any seeming purpose or end game to it…really doesn’t make public health sense” comes way too late to impact America’s strategy during the pandemic era.  But hopefully it will dissuade both politicians and the public health establishment from repeating these grave mistakes when the next pandemic – inevitably – comes the nation’s way.