Which presidential candidate is "unloved and unstoppable"?

Did you really have to look? The description comes a briefing in the current issue of The Economist. [Why does The Economist call itself a "newspaper" when it's obviously a magazine? Just wonderin'. Ed.] The cartoon of Hellery heading towards her inevitable coronation is the work of the Globe and Mail's estimable Brian Gable.

The Economist's characterization of Ms Clinton as "unloved and unstoppable" is mild compared with some of the things being said about her by fellow Democrats. The Economist quotes a certain Dr Paul Song: "Medicare-for-all will never happen if we continue to elect corporate Democratic whores who are beholden to big pharma and the private insurance industry instead of us." Indeed. Dr Song is obviously a Sanders supporter.

The Economist had some unkind words for Donald Trump too, calling him a "foul-mouthed celebrity builder". But, they concede, the breadth of the Donald's victory in the New York primary was "impressive". Moreover, their analysis gives the lie to "the idea that it is mostly poorer, less educated voters who are attracted to Mr Trump..." They interpret exit polling from other state primaries as showing "that better-paid and better-educated voters have always formed as big a part of Mr Trump's base as those at the lower end of the scale..."

Today Republicans vote in primaries in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. The Economist expects Mr Trump to win all five. Walt concurs. Lifetime pct .988.

Trump supporter: "You'll be hearing from us again!"

Mark Kraschel, of Portland OR, wrote the following letter to the editors of The Economist. It appears on the letters page of the current issue under the heading "The Trump revolution" and is worth reproducing here in full.

You used so much ink trying to convince us that Donald Trump is not fit for office ("Time to fire him", February 27th). Do you think the type of person who reads your erudite publication would ever consider voting for him? Not likely. The people who will vote for The Donald are the disaffected bitter-clingers whom the last candidate you passionately begged us to vote for -- Barack Obama -- disparaged in his campaign. Those same disaffected people haven't been doing well over the past eight years, and in case you haven't noticed, they are mad as hell.

Government isn't working for us. There are few good jobs, we've been stuck with a joke of a health-care system, the few rights we still enjoy are under siege and the future looks dim for our children. We are powerless to foment a revolution while working two part-time jobs to make ends meet, so all we can do is register a protest against the Dickensian nightmare that the elites have created for us by voting.

Apparently, nobody listened to what we were trying to say in 2012. Come November, you'll be hearing from us again, louder and clearer.

UPDATED: The Economist on integrating Muslims into European society

This is a follow-up to "Speaking of integrating Muslims into European society...", posted here yesterday. The postman [letter carrier, surely! Ed.] just delivered this week's Economist (16/1/16), from which I've selected two interesting (and apparently contradictory) quotes.

A leader (= editorial, for North Americans) headed "Migrant men and European women", on p. 12 of the North American edition, has, as its subtitle: "To absorb newcomers peacefully, Europe must insist they respect values such as tolerance and sexual equality". Oh, hahahahahahahaha! See the last paragraph of yesterday's post.

From the same issue, "Cologne's aftershocks" (p. 57) concludes: "In retrospect it is clear that Mrs Merkel's hopeful New Year's address coincided with the appearance of immigration's dark side [Was that intentional? Ed.] on German streets, and that her warnings have not been heeded. Some refugees have not respected German rules and traditions. Germans are divided. Germany's neighbours, from Hungary and Poland to Switzerland and Denmark, have sneered at Mrs Merkel's 'welcome culture'. It now looks tenuous even at home."

Any further comment would be superfluous. However, thanks to Agent 3, we do have a

Footnote from Canada: Justin Trudeau, Canada's liberal Liberal new Prime Minister, won election in October on (among other things) a promise to bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada by 31 December 2015. The target date has since been pushed back to 31 December 2016. As of mid-January, about 10,000 have actually arrived, most being dumped into Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa. Yesterday the mayors of Vancouver and Ottawa asked M Trudeau and his Minister of Refugees, John McCallum, to please hold the Mohammed salads -- thanks to Mark Steyn for that line -- for a while because, errr, there's no more room for them.

UPDATED 20/1/16: Vancouver and Ottawa have asked for a "pause" in bringing in more Syrian "refugees". And now it's Halifax and even Toronto (!!!) admitting they can't take any more... for now... you understand... Of course it has nothing to do with the backlash against queue-jumping asylum-seekers which has manifested itself in such things as a huddled mass of them being pepper-sprayed in Vancouver by some terrible racist who's against diversity.

Vast majority of US young people unfit for military service

Some interesting statistics about the US military appear in this week's Economist. You've heard the old slogan "Our people are our greatest asset"? Turns out finding good "assets" is a big problem for the American services.

In an article headed "Who will fight the next war?", the newsmagazine reveals "a growing disconnect between American society and the armed forces that claim to represent it." No-one wants to join the navy and see the world, or join the army or the air force or the marines.

Even worse, if every young American (aged 17 to 24) were willing to enlist, chances are that less than 30% of them would be found able. Which means that 70% or more would be rejected as ineligible.

Ineligibility varies by state, according to Mission: Readiness, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization led by senior retired military leaders. If your state has an "unfitness rate" -- that's what I'd call it -- of 70% or less, you're not in bad shape... or at least, things could be worse. Unfortunately, only 13 of the Paranoid States of America have a "UR" that low. That leaves, errr, 37 states of whose young people 71% to 78% would be deemed ineligible.

What makes a person ineligible for military service? Here's the Economist's checklist, which Walt presents as a public service, not as a handy guide to staying out of the army (etc).

* Inadequate education - the result of  ever-declining educational standards. Nearly half of those who would otherwise be eligible are disqualified because they dropped out of high school, or, typically (the Economist says) because most young Americans cannot do tricky sums without a calculator.

* Criminal record - a particular problem for young black men, about a third of whom will have been convicted of something or other by the time they're 24.  That accounts, at least in part, for the high numbers in DC and the deep south.

* Obesity - a greater problem for women (especially BBWs) than for men, thus a headache [bellyache? Ed.] for the military as it strives for "gender parity". If you have any doubt about the fattening of America, take a look at Judge Judy sometime.

* Visible tattoos - on hands or faces, that is. Why this should be a problem, I don't know, but Harry-with-the-snake-on-his-face [John Candy character on SCTV. Ed.] will never get to wear a uniform.

If you're 17 to 24 and don't have any of the problems mentioned, Walt suggests you hie yourself off to the local mall, where a recruiter will be lurking [near the donut shop? Ed.] to pounce on you. Because it's so difficult to get anyone to join (the Economist points out), the military offers a seriously fine array of signing bonuses, training programmes and other perqs. Of course you may get killed for no good reason somewhere in the Middle East, but what the hell.

Islamic world disorder

Still more on what's wrong with the Muslims and their religion. Before you accuse Walt of being a racist [Surely not! Ed.], consider the argument that there must be something wrong with a people and a part of the world which is not progressing -- no matter how you measure "progress" -- as quickly as any other part of the world, not even sub-Saharan Africa.

The part of the world to which I refer is the Middle East and north Africa. At least three countries in those regions are actually regressing: Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Two others -- Somalia and Libya -- are "failed states". Somalia has been acknowledged as such for twenty years, and Libya was accorded that "status", more or less, in last week's issue of The Economist.

The people of those regions are followers of the Prophet Mohammed -- Muslims. So are their rulers, some fanatically so. (Hello, Saudis!) Is there, then, some link between their religion and the political, economic and social turmoil -- not forgetting civil and sectarian wars -- now raging in that area?

Thanks to Agent 3 for the link to "How the Muslim world is being left behind", in the current Maclean's. Read the article and judge for yourself. [Unless you're Pope Francis, of course. Ed.]

Scott Gilmore explains the meaning of the charts you see here, and concludes that the Islamic world is in decline. Where he goes wrong is in thinking that if we just reach out and embrace the Muslims, we can pull them up to our level. What do you think of that, gentle reader? Walt think Mr. Gilmore is wrong...WRONG!

Young Americans and foreigners disillusioned with Obama: imagine that!

In the current Economist, "Lexington" has a few words to say about what he calls the abolition of privacy in the USA. "Cyber-spying", the columnist writes "hardly dominates national debate" in America. He (or she) says the National Security Agency's snooping into every corner of our personal lives -- Americans and foreigners, VIPs and ordinary folks, rich and poor, anyone and everyone -- seems not to concern Americans, perhaps because they've become resigned to it.

But it should! "Lexington" continues:

Young Americans and foreigners...have made parallel journeys towards disappointment.... Young Americans and foreigners of all ages, notably in Europe, fell heavily for Mr Obama, thinking him a break with politics as usual. Both groups have had high hopes dashed....

Start with Mr Obama's foreign fans. There was always a dose of naivety to their zeal, not to mention clunking racial tokenism. Many Europeans mistakenly assumed that because Mr Obama opposed the policies of George W. Bush and so did they, he would be in some sense their president too. Now they have learned their lesson: their idol is, first and foremost, America's leader.

Mr Obama also faces domestic fallout. His approval ratings among young Americans fell markedly in 2013, making a once-loyal age cohort look more like other adult Americans.... Mr O bama needs the young to believe in government solutions.... Instead, the NSA saga has given America's most tech-savvy generation fresh reason for cynicism.

At home and abroad, Mr Obama can ill-afford this latest loss of faith.

Thanks to Agent 34 for sending the cartoon comment.

Race and poverty by the numbers

Pocket World in Figures comes with Walt's subscription to the Economist. It's a great little fact book, very appealing to the kind of people who enjoy reading dictionaries and telephone books. [Do telephone books even exist any more? Ed.]

You might think tables of "the world's biggest", "the world's worst", "the world's and so on" would be boring, but the trick is to read between the lines. At the same time, keep asking yourself questions that begin with "why". Look for correlations.

Here are some stone truths that "progressive thinkers" in the West don't like to talk about, except of course when they're laying that old liberal guilt trip on the rest of us.

Rich and poor in black and white. One of the most common ways to measure a nation's wealth is in GDP (Gross Domestic Product). The 19 countries with the highest GDP are all (ahem) "white", if we count the Arabs in Qatar (#5) as honorary whites. Japan is #20, Canada #14, the USA #12 and Australia #9. Luxembourg is on top of the league table.

The other end of the list -- the countries with the lowest GDP per head -- begins with Somalia. No prizes for guessing that one. You go on through another 13 African countries until you get to Afghanistan and North Korea, tied for #15. Could a liberal intellectual please explain to us the link between race and poverty/prosperity? Or does it all come down to colonialism?

Where's a good place to live? There's more to life than money, right? [Really? Ed.] GDP and the quality of life aren't necessarily the same. To measure the latter, you use the Disunited Nations Human Development Index (HDI), which combines stats on income, life expectancy, education and all the things we include when we say "Have a nice life."

Let's see now... Isn't this amazing... The top 10 countries on the HDI are all, errr, white. Norway is #1, beating out Australia (#2), the USA (tied with the Netherlands for #3) and Canada (tied with Eire and New Zealand for #5). First Asian countries on the list are Japan (#11) and Hong Kong (tied with Iceland for #12).

At the very bottom of the HDI is Congo (the bigger one, formerly known as Zaire, formerly known as the Congo, etc), followed by Niger, Burundi, Mozambique and so on. All black African states right through to Walt's old stomping ground, Zimbabwe, in 15th place. Afghanistan comes in at #16. Then it's all black Africa again through #23 (Djibouti tied with Zambia), which is where the fecal roster ends.

Wow, Walt is only up to page 28 of the 2013 edition of the Economist's Pocket World in Figures. This should be good for another two posts, minimum. More anon.

Being a traditional Catholic is trendy!

So says The Economist, traditionally not a friend of the Roman Catholic Church, in "A traditionalist avant-garde", in this week's issue.

The return of the old rite causes quiet consternation among more modernist Catholics. Timothy Radcliffe, once head of Britain’s Dominicans, sees in it “a sort of ‘Brideshead Revisited’ nostalgia”. The traditionalist revival, he thinks, is a reaction against the “trendy liberalism” of his generation.

Some swings of pendulums may be inevitable. But for a church hierarchy in Western countries beset by scandal and decline, the rise of a traditionalist avant-garde is unsettling. Is it merely an outcrop of eccentricity, or a sign that the church took a wrong turn 50 years ago?

Walt's answer to The Economist's question is that the Church definitely took a wrong turn at Vatican II, whose anniversary is being marked this winter. More than a wrong turn. In fact the Council has led the faithful into a serious break with the Faith of our fathers, as dogmatically defined in the past.

And not only that. By rejecting or, worse, attempting to countermand that which has been established -- for instance, the Mass of All Time and the dogma extra Ecclesiam nulla salus -- the fathers of Vatican II have arguably led those who followed them into heresy. 

It's very interesting, then, that the leaders of today's modernist, mainstream Catholic Church are telling us the opposite. In the second of a series of Advent Sermons, Father Raniero Cantalamessa -- the preacher of the pontifical household -- spoke about the proper interpretation of the teachings of Vatican II. He contrasted the “hermeneutic of rupture” with the “hermeneutic of continuity”, saying that the latter is what was intended.

If we may judge intentions by actions -- deeds rather than words -- we may be forgiven for believing that the true intention was an almost complete break with tradition in the interests of being trendy, of "reforming" the Church, recasting Her practices and beliefs in a more modern, more inclusive mode. On "the day when the priests turned around", virtually everything else was turned around, upside down, and every which way but loose!


Fr. Cantalamessa, it seems, expects us to accept all this without question. He must be thinking about St. Ignatius Loyola's dictum "If the Church tells us black is white, we must believe it to be white, and truly white." That was fine until the Church told us "No, that's all changed now. Black is black, after all."

Fr. Cantalamessa says the problems in the "implementation" of Vatican II arose from the fact that the two contrary hermeneutics came face-to-face and quarreled with each other. One caused confusion, he says, but the other, silently but more and more visibly, bore and is bearing fruit.

But, Walt asks, which is which? Let's go back to The Economist article and look at the fruits of Vatican II.
In the West -- where many hoped a contemporary message would go down best -- believers have left in droves. Sunday mass attendance in England and Wales has fallen by half from the 1.8m recorded in 1960; the average age of parishioners has risen from 37 in 1980 to 52 now.

In America attendance has declined by over a third since 1960. Less than 5% of French Catholics attend regularly, and only 15% in Italy. Yet as the mainstream wanes, traditionalists wax. [My emphasis. Walt]

Our Lord said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." Indeed.

Footnote: If the link to The Economist article doesn't work for you, please send an e-mail to Ed. and we'll try to send it to you as a .pdf file.

The perniciousness of bad grammar

Ed. here. Sometimes I wish I were editor of the Times (of London). They get excellent letters to the editor, so well-written, so witty, and frequently so odd. At least one book has been made of such interesting letters.

The Economist gets its share as well. This week's number includes one which I can't not share with you.

A new word order

Sir - I must object in the strongest terms to the use of the oxymoronic neologism, "bottomless shallows", in a Banyan column (August 27th). Please inform your Mr Banyan that oxymorons must be stamped out wherever found, and are particularly galling in a newspaper of your standing and heritage. I am certain that Messrs Samuel Johnson, Walter Bagehot and Henry Watson Fowler are all spinning in their respective graves at this slight, albeit at different speeds.

You know well how lapses like this affect school truancy, foment social disorder and encourage a preference for margarine on one's scones. Sin not again.

Ernie Jurick
Portland, Oregon

I cannot but admire Mr Jurick for his forthright stand against the dire effects of bad grammar. Good on yer, Ernie.

Your Muslims this week

Agent 6 wondered if "Islamization" by the numbers could be considered "fear-mongering". I don't think so. All that Peter Hammond has done is to present statistics as to the percentage of Muslims in certain countries -- not a Nobel-winning piece of research -- and look at recent political and social events in those countries. His inferences may be frightening to Christian Westerners, but that's not the good doctor's fault.

It has been suggested that Islam is not as bad as all that. Dr. Hammond and others who say there is a Muslim plot to "Islamize" the world are racists and xenophobes, some say...and don't much like strangers either! Let's look at the events of the last seven days and see if we can draw any conclusions.

Every week The Economist begins with "The world this week", a summary of the week's events in politics and business, one page of each. The 13 March issue has 21 items on the politics page. Here are seven of them, with comments from Walt.

• Bombs exploded in Baghdad to coincide with Iraq's election. Rival alliances of different Muslim groups are fighting -- literally -- for power. But that's democracy in the Middle East.
• Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims were supposed to hold "indirect talks", mediated by Joe Biden, over conflicting claims to Jerusalem. Let it be remembered that Jerusalem was first a Jewish holy city. Then it became holy to Christians because of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Centuries later, the Muslims came along. Christians are only a tiny minority there now, but Muslims and Jews both claim they should control, not share, the entire city.
• Hundreds of Christians were massacred by Muslims in the Plateau state of Nigeria. Plateau lies betweenthe Muslim north and Christian south of that lawless country. The state and national "governments" are powerless to halt the carnage.
• One of Egypt's senior clerics, Sheikh Muhammad Tantawi, died of natural causes (?) in Saudi Arabia. The Economist says "he was a force for moderation who angered radical Muslims by...rejecting their insistence that Muslim women should be wholly covered."
• The White House said it would take weeks more to decide where to prosecute Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of 9/11. His supporters and the usual Voices of Human Rights think he should receive a fair trial in an ordinary criminal court, rather than a military trial which one might think should follow an act of war.
• A British cartoonist was convicted by a Turkish court for drawing a caricature of the country's prime minister as a dog. He narrowly escaped going to jail. In the West, of course, we are free to depict our presidents and prime ministers as dogs, or jackasses or whatever fits.
• A suicide bomb killed 13 Muslim government officials in Lahore, Pakistan. And another six were killed when a foreign aid agency's office in Manshehra, Pakistan, was bombed. The Pakistani bomb-throwing team is expected to own the podium in the next summer Olympics.

So, that's seven (7) stories out of 21, or 33%. Percentage of Muslims in the world, according to Dr. Hammond -- 22. 22% of the population, 33% of the bad news...this week.

Follow-up: Afghanistan

This week's Economist has as its cover story "Afghanistan: The growing threat of failure". Inside, the magazine's "Briefing" on Afghanistan is titled "From insurgency to insurrection".

The story begins by describing a conversation between the writer and a local resident. "The Americans are just making trouble for us," the latter says. "They cannot bring peace, not if they stay for 50 years".

More telling is what happened next. The British correspondent started to say his goodbyes and offered his hand. The Afghan responded "with two distastefully outstretched fingers, and said 'I won't shake hands with a Kafir.'" ("Kafir" is a word commonly used in that part of the world to refer to any foreigner. ed.) The Economist says this exchange betokens a fast-growing resentment of the foreign-backed government, the Western troops who prop it up and Westerners in general.

Later, they say "Complete failure--withdrawal by NATO and a return to civil war -- seems unimaginable. But failure of some lesser sort...looks increasingly inevitable."

Walt says complete failure or "failure of some lesser sort" are the same thing. A rose is a rose is a rose. A thistle is a thistle is a thistle. The Western expedition in Afghanistan is nothing more or less than an egregious waste of money and lives. End it now!

Footnote: Yesterday more than 40 people were killed and 66 wounded when five car bombs detonated simultaneously in Kandahar, where Canadians are responsible for security.

Recommended reading: Jeffrey Simpson's column, "The Afghan mission was always destined for trouble. It's arrived", in Wednesday's Globe & Mail.

Afghanistan: what we're fighting for?

Here's a slideshow with audio commentary from The Economist entitled "The unhappiest day of her life". WARNING: Some of the images to be seen here are graphic and disturbing.

Walt's point is this. One can only empathize with the plight of these child brides and women in Afghanistan. But is it worth fighting with Afghan men about this? Do we really think that any Afghan government will change the customs of centuries? As Peachy Carnahan (a character in Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King") said, "They're savages here, one and all..."