Monthly Archives: May 2025

“The best path to peace”

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The august editors at The Wall Street Journal ended their piece decrying Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to not show up for peace discussions with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (while trying to claim President Donald Trump (R) should be embarrassed by Putin’s absence) with this bit:

The best path to peace is to increase the pressure on Moscow. Mr Trump can start with secondary sanctions on countries that buy Russian energy. Former US Treasury chief economist Eric Van Nostrand wrote on these pages this week that removing a quarter of Russia’s oil exports from the market would cut the Kremlin’s oil revenue by 20%. Global oil production is high enough that it wouldn’t raise gas prices in the US by much.
Mr Trump could also announce his support for more military aid for Ukraine.

Sanctions hurt Russia, and increasing sanctions would hurt more. But the empirically demonstrated fact is that the pain is greater in western—and news opinionators—eyes than it is actually experienced by Putin. That’s because both Putin’s pain threshold is so much higher than that in the West and Putin’s give-a-hoot regarding pain suffered by his Russian subjects is so much lower than in the West.

Increase pressure on Putin? The only pressure he’s ever felt since he sent his barbarian hordes into Ukraine is the initial defeat at the gates of Kyiv and the mechanics of getting supplies of weapons and bodies to heave into the ensuing maelstrom. Those mechanics have long since been improved.

No, the best path to peace remains what it has always been: drive the barbarian hordes back out of Ukraine entirely.

That, however, requires more than empty words of “more military aid for Ukraine;” it requires actually providing more military aid, and rather than continuing the dribs and drabs and slow-walking of deliveries, that aid must be delivered in the types of weapons systems, ammunition, and logistic support needed by Ukraine; in the numbers needed by Ukraine; and at the rate needed by Ukraine—all as defined by Ukraine.

Full stop.

Another Reason Why

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The People’s Republic of China is demonstrating yet another reason why the United States—and Western Civilization nations generally—must revamp our supply chains to remove them entirely from the PRC. The PRC has resumed shipments of certain rare earth-based components critical to national defense and to the weapons systems implementing our defense capabilities. That resumption, though, comes with the PRC government’s strict control over the licensing requirements for export of those components.

Neha Mukherjee, a rare-earths analyst at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence:

It’s basically like a tap. They can decide when to export and when to not, and the control is in their hands, completely[.]

The control is in their hands, completely, not just through that absolute control of the required licenses, but more importantly because the PRC

mines around two-thirds of global rare-earth minerals and processes about 90% of the world’s supply.

That’s what needs to change. We need to develop our own sources of rare earth ores (we have lots, as do most western nations), develop our own processing capabilities, and develop our own alternatives to rare earth centric magnets for our systems along with alternative forms of magnets, even alternatives to magnets altogether.

The news writers of the WSJ article at the link profess a lack of understanding of the PRC’s shift.

The reason for the recent granting of export licenses couldn’t be determined.

The reason is self-evident. It’s nothing more than the PRC telling us and the rest of the West, in no uncertain terms, that they can cut us off entirely, or they can export these things freely—depending on how “friendly” we are to it, how much we comport our activities to its wishes.

The rearrangement of our supply chains will cost us several pretty pennies, but even at that, it will be far cheaper than being controlled by an enemy nation because we cannot defend ourselves.

“here’s an idea”

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Allison Leigh Cowan, late of The New York Times had one concerning college admissions and how to weed out lawbreakers. Do some actual prescreening.

Start by asking applicants to pledge that they will be respectful, law-abiding members of the community if admitted. Assuming no one quibbles with that minimal threshold, delve a bit further using moral-reasoning prompts drawn from recent headlines. Applicants can reply with a simple “yes” or “no,” or submit longer answers:

      • Is it ever justified to spit on another human being?
      • Is it ever justified to pull a fire alarm in a crowded auditorium to protest a speaker some find offensive?
      • Is it ever justified to mar public spaces with hard-to-remove graffiti? Should perpetrators pay to clean it up?
      • Is it ever justified for a private individual to assassinate another private individual?
      • Is it ever justified to burn a Quran? What about destroying a mezuza on someone’s door?
      • Is it ever justified to restrain custodians or other bystanders as part of a protest?
      • Is it ever justified to set fire to the homes of authority figures?

These are, as Cowan acknowledges, navel-gazing questions, but diligent reviews of the answers can serve as useful prescreening.

Here’s another idea: in addition to that prescreening, a good idea in concept but as with all prescreening, it’s imperfect, take the follow-on step: those inclined to foment chaos or who change and become prone, should be expelled promptly and with prejudice when they do start to foment chaos, and those who broke laws in the doing should be criminally prosecuted, equally promptly.

Is the Question Irrelevant for Children?

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Toothpaste manufacturers put fluoride in their toothpaste and market that as good for tooth health. They also recommend, through their toothpaste labeling among other pathways, to use only “pea-sized” dabs for children under six and “rice-sized” dabs for children under three.

Associated with all of that are concerns that too much fluoride can negatively impact IQ scores. My question: are fluoride and the question of IQ impact really relevant for children?

For one thing, those tiny dabs are extremely hard to dole out in any consistent fashion, especially as children are taught to brush their own teeth (and to apply their own toothpaste to their brushes), and it’s easy to err by adding increasingly larger dabs.

For the more important thing, though, children’s teeth are impermanent and start to fall out and be replaced with adult, permanent teeth around six and a little older. Maybe the answer, at least regarding children, is to duck the question altogether and use non-flouridated toothpaste for these. At that age, the important task is to train them in tooth hygiene and regular brushing. Any toothpaste adequate to the task of cleaning teeth would serve.

Another Misleading Claim

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This one by a Progressive-Democrat: California’s Alex Padilla. In his Tuesday letter in The Wall Street Journal‘s Letters section, he wrote regarding Republicans’ musings about overruling the Senate’s Parliamentarian on the matter of California’s legal right to set its own emissions standards (itself a misleading claim, since what’s in question is whether California, or any State, can set emissions standards more stringent than the Federal government’s),

Republicans are now considering overruling Ms MacDonough, essentially going nuclear and throwing out the rule book in order to get their way.
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If they can ignore the parliamentarian on this….

This is so broadly misleading as to approach being deliberately false. Far from ignoring the Parliamentarian, Republicans would be taking her eminently seriously and following Senate rules regarding her ruling, whether voting to overturn it or the Senate’s presiding officer overruling it.

Of course, Padilla knows this; he’s merely demonstrating, with his distortion, why it’s next to impossible to deal with members of his party.