To See the Himalayas

Today we drove out from Shimla -- you remember Shimla, the Brit hiill station that served for over a century as the summer capital of British India -- to an overlook where we could see the snowcapped mountains of the Greater Himalayas. So I got to see the Himalayas before I died.

You should too.

Of course we did not see any of the name mountains, your Everests, your Kanchenjungas, and all that rubbish. Just your ordinary working-stiff mountains in the 20,000 ft range. But they were magnificent.

I was also delighted to visit Shimla, with all its British Empire history, and the notorious shenanigans that were alleged to go on there behind the Brit stiff upper lip. But there is not much left of all that.

In fact, it is Shimla all the way from Kalka, last stop on the plains before entering the Himalayan foothills: mountainsides full of houses and condos and hotels, until you finally arrive in Shimla and inch along the crowded streets with the south-facing slopes cram-jammed with houses and condos and hotels.

Yes, India is rich enough now that middle-class Indians want to spend a bit of the summer at their own hill station. You gotta problem with that? Goodness knows what the road to Shimla will be like when India gets from its current $2,200 GDP per capita to China's current $9,900 GDP per capita.

(I know. By that time India will have a ferocious environmental movement and you won't be able to build anything anywhere. And as for the chaps lighting open fires in the street, well, Captain Hastings' comment that hanging is too good for some people will probably apply.)

After viewing the Greater Himalayas we went for a short hike and then went to the highest point in Shimla at 8,000 ft, a Hanuman temple featuring a giant 108 ft statue of the monkey god himself. I experience Hanuman as part warrior and part trickster, but I really need to do more research.

One of the things about Shimla on this New Year's Eve is that the crowds I see on the main shopping street, the Mall, are overwhelmingly Indian and not tourist. Goodness only knows what will happen as we get towards midnight and everyone starts partying.

Unlike Z-man I Don't Think We Are Doomed

The Z-man has an interesting piece comparing the empires of old with today's American empire. He says, rightly, that the old empires collapsed when the cost of maintaining the empire exceeded the loot and tribute. But at least the rulers had the long term interests of the empire at heart. The empire might start out with armed loot and plunder, but it would soften into a more civilized centre surrounded by tributary and vassal states. And the emperor was the "owner;" he had an equity interest in the long-term success of the empire.

Today's ruling class has more of a short-term view. Its members have to pile up the loot while they are in office, and can't take the long view.

"The next election could find them back in the dreaded private sector. In order to hedge against that eventuality, they must convert as much private property into public property, in order to distribute it to friends of government."

That is Z-man's line.

But I am not sure that I see the difference. Rulers of the old empires were as short-sighted as any damn modern politician. For instance the Mughal emperor that built the Taj Mahal here in Agra spent about $2 billion in today's money on a personal his personal grief at the death of his favorites wife. Not good for the long-term health of the Mughal Empire that represented about a quarter of global GDP at the time. His sons thought it was such a dumb idea that they confined him to barracks in a corner of his palace.

Then there was the Roman Empire. In my view, the Roman Empire ran on the loot and plunder from the conquests of the Roman army. But there came a time when the empire stopped expanding, probably because the emperors were too busy playing short-term politics in Rome, or because it was just to hard to direct military operations on the far-away border. That's when the financial problems started. And the Roman emperors were made and unmade by the Praetorian guard: no longue durée for them.

Now I think that the basic difference between yesterday and today is that loot and plunder no longer works. Hello Soviet Union and Venezuela. Take Venezuela. Chávez treated the state oil company as a piggy bank, replacing its managers with his political cronies and using its revenues to buy the support of the poor. Ok, so his daughter is worth billions, but Venezuela is toast because the national oil company does not deliver the goods anymore. The cronies are incompetent, and the petroleum engineers have all moved to Columbia.

The way to be a powerful ruler that struts upon the world stage is to have a strong economy. That is what the Reagan years and supply-side economics taught us. But to make that work you have to lay off the plundering enough to let the private sector flourish: hello the mess of Obamacare. It's a delicate balance and I dare say that many politicians and activists aren't up to the job. (The activists are definitely not up to the job.) In fact if you go read La Wik, they are determined not to learn the lesson of the 1980s.

Now, I am not saying that politicians have given up on loot and plunder; I am just saying that they just have to be more discrete about it. And they have to flat out lie about things, like President Obama lied about Obamacare. Anyway, if you look at total US government spending as a percent of GDP, it has basically been constant at about 35 percent of GDP since 1980.

Then there is President Trump. His schtick is to tell ordinary Americans that he cares about people like them, and will Make America Great Again. Then he cutd taxes, cuts regulations, appoints conservative judges, and brings the troops home. It looks like, for now, he can do this because his supporters trust him.

Another thing. Our politicians don't face ruin if they lose their seats. They just get reborn as lobbyists, and make more money than they did as politicians. And really there is not much power for anyone in our system, except maybe for the president. Our politicians have to be very circumspect about their power projects. So many special interests have to be squared away that glorious new spending give-aways are hardly worth it. Obamacare was supposed to help folks that couldn't afford full health insurance. But by the time the Obama administration had bought off the insurance companies and the healthcare providers and the activist community there was no money left for the uninsured.

So I am not as pessimistic as the Z-man. I think that the modern economy that has grown 3,000 percent per capita in the last two centuries makes up for a lot of political stupidity. In the old days of loot and plunder the plundered starved and died, or were sold into slavery if they were lucky. Today we seem to get a new technological revolution about once per generation that redeems the follies of the ruling class.

Still I grant that there is no accounting for the depth of human folly.

Smoke? What Smoke?

The basic fact about India is the smoke, wood-smoke from people burning wood fires anywhere the mood takes them, such as right on the street. But after three weeks I have been surprised that in the small heritage hotels you don't get to notice the smoke inside the hotel room.

But then we checked into the ITC Mughal, a five-star hotel in Agra, just down the street from the Taj Mahal. The corridor outside our room was noticeably smoky, and the room was detectably smoky.

I was outraged, as you might imagine. Here I was, staying in a fancy-pants five-star hotel and the pollution level in the room was worse than in hotels costing much less. The ITC Mughal is built to western standards with standard room A/C. So how could the hotel design and implement an air-conditioning system without the filtering capacity to filter out the wood-smoke from the outside? This is not rocket science, sports fans. It's an outrage and an insult!

So we complained to the manager on duty in the lobby and guess what? He said he didn't detect any smoke.

Well of course he didn't. He probably lived his entire life in Indian cities, and smoke is a way of life in Indian cities.

I have some Brahmin friends in the US to whom the air quality in the US is a revelation; they feel much healthier in the US.

But have no fear. The hotel was down with the environmental movement. There was a CO2 impact calculator in the room so you could, I suppose, calculate the environmental impact of flying to Agra in your private jet, darling. Because really, First Class these days...

Right now, after a morning tour of the Taj Mahal along with the rest of the world (yes it really is the most beautiful building in the world), I am sitting in a fancy-pants marble inlay store selling marble inlay tschotsckes after the manner of the inlaid marble at the Taj. The store is selling stuff made by the supposed descendants of the craftsmen that made the inlaid marble at the Taj in the 17th century. In here, no problem from the smoke.

How come Mr. ITC Mughal manager? What's yer problem, pal? Where are your engineers, your technicians, your environmental impact teams?👍 Are they all just churning out mindless conventional-wisdom propaganda instead of solving real problems to improve the experience and the quality of your hotel? The world wonders.

My feeling is that when corporate management starts worrying about fashionable ruling-class conceits, then it is no longer seriously in business, but just going through the motions. Sell, sell, sell.

Christmas Day in India

While our lefty friends are busy doing the immensely satisfying activism of deplatorming Christmas, we are here in India, on the way by a circuitous route to the Taj Mahal in Agra.

Well, actually today we are driving from Gwalior to Agra, and the Taj is scheduled for dawn tomorrow. Did you know, by the way, that the fort in Gwalior features the fine Man Mandir Palace built by the Raj in which to enjoy his eight wives, and on the wall is a row of yellow rubber duckies. Why ducks? Well, the peacock, or swan, or goose is the vehicle of Brahma, the creator god. I guess that the swan is a high-rent duck, or something.

But back to Christmas.

On arrival at our hotel, the Deo Bagh in Gwalior, on Christmas Eve, we were greeted by a Santa with a cotton wool scotch-taped beard, who gave us each a piece of candy. Then we had dinner outside in the Bagh (garden) near a plastic fake Christmas tree that culminated in Santa cutting a Christmas cake. Of course it was cold outside, so the hotel arranged a blazing fire in the middle of the dining area.

(This is India's Big Problem right now, if you ask me. When anyone feels baby it's cold outside they immediately light a wood fire, right there in the street. That is why Google rates nearly all Indian city air quality as "hazardous" every day.)

At the Gwalior Fort on Christmas Day we were greeted at one point by a group of giggling school-aged girls who wished us "Merry Christmas." Later, at the Jai Vilas Palace of the Scindes designed and built and furnished in European style with delicious Indian touches, we took selfies at an installation that included an impossibly thin Santa, a fake Christmas tree, a sleigh, and two cotton-wool reindeer. And a bowl of candy for the kids. They were playing "Jingle Bells" non-stop. We had to explain to our guide the cultural significance of the sleigh and the reindeer.

The Jai Vilas Palace featured two banqueting halls, one for dining sitting on the floor, Indian style, and one for dining at a long table, European style. Actually, in the European section there were three tables, one for veg., one non-veg., and one for drinking. The drinky table featured a model railway with a train carrying the decanters. To stop the train you grabbed a decanter and lifted it off the train. I am not kidding.

And while in the bus we saw some Santa hats for sale at a street-side store. I realized that I had forgotten to pack my Santa hat.

In the afternoon, back at the hotel, we watched an Indian father play cricket with his sons in the Bagh.

Well, now it's Boxing Day, and I don't think the Indians observe, or even notice it. It's a British holiday, and the Indians are in two minds about the Brits.

Democrats Think They Can Break the Rules

Democrats didn't start cheating with the post 2016 effort to remove President Trump.

Oh no; they started long before that. Let us count the ways. Let us start in 1960.

Democrats stole the close presidential election of 1960. Mayor Daley of Chicago delayed reporting the vote totals of his city until downstate Illinois had reported so he knew how many votes to manufacture. Then there was Lyndon Johnson in Texas. He made sure that the Democrats won there. The losing presidential candidate Richard Nixon gracefully conceded.

Democrats ran President Nixon out of office in 1974 on trumped up charges of campaign spying. As if nobody else does it. Republicans were shamed into abandoning the president after he was impeached in the House and a delegation of Republican senators went down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House and told him he had to go.

In the second term of President Reagan, after the Republicans lost the Senate, Democrats began investigating the Iran-Contra affair in which White House staffers had diverted monies from Iran to fund Nicaraguan rebels against the lefty Sandinista government of Daniel Ortega. It went nowhere because President Reagan -- who we were taught to believe was an amiable since -- played the amiable dunce and didn't give the Democrats a smoking gun with which they could impeach him. Also, the Democrats inadvertently made a national hero out of Col. Oliver North.

In 2000 George W. Bush narrowly won the presidential election in spite of a Democratic October Surprise featuring Bush's days as a drunk. After two terms of Clinton, it was time, you might think, for a change. But Democrats tried to steal the election with a recount in Florida featuring the now-famous hanging chads. After the US Supreme Court ruled in favour of Bush the left-wing activist community covered liberal cars with "Selected not Elected" bumper stickers. Not good.

Late in the Bush administration Democrats made a federal case out of Vice-President Cheney's aide Scooter Libby outing an intelligence agent and ruined him and sent him to jail. Only he didn't.

Finally we get to the 2016 election that Donald Trump won fair and square despite the October Surprise Access Hollywood tape that Democrats had procured to gross out nice suburban women.

We all know what transpired. Hillary Clinton decided not no concede on election night: I presume she was drunk. Then we got the Russians Are Coming narrative. Remember when Democrats used to accuse Republicans of looking for Russians under the bed? Now Democrats have turned their frustration at losing the election into a campaign to kick a duly-elected president out of office.

Now I think that Rule One of elective politics is alternation in office, and allowing the other side to take office.

Rule Two is not to use the power of government to harass the opposition party.

Democrats have been routinely violating these rules at least since 1960, and if they don't stop it is going to lead to blood.

I honestly think that most Democrats really have no clue how dangerous their abuse of power is becoming. They just believe in ruling-class conventional wisdom and what they read in ruling-class media and what they are hearing from their educated-class friends. They do not understand that the two rules are the way in which a wise ruling class avoids rebellion.

Because the point of my two rules is simple. Anyone on the receiving end of a ruling class that does not concede elections and uses police powers to harass the opposition will start to experience its rulers as cruel and unjust and pretty soon the ruling class will find itself facing a head of rebellion.

That is why it is in the interest of Democrats to follow the rules: Rule One to let the other guys alternate in office; Rule Two to refrain from abusing police power.

But I don't think that late-dynasty Democrats understand that. They are too full of their identity politics conventional wisdom to understand how they are playing with fire.

So it is up to us to teach them not to cheat.

What the Fed?

In the week ending December 21 the stock market fell out of bed, losing some 10 percent of value. But Chairman Powell of the Federal Reserve is still talking about higher interest rates.

Is he crazy? We have already seen a months long decline in housing prices, showing that at least where mortgages are concerned, the credit markets are showing a balance of buyers and sellers. And some investment banks are forecasting a slowdown in growth by the middle of next year.

Inflation in consumer prices is pretty moderate.

Yet the Fed still seems determined to fight inflation.

They say that the Federal Reserve operates only in one of two modes. It is either trying to fight inflation or fight recession. There is a third mode where it is acting as lender of last resort in a panic.

Usually, of course, the Fed is behind the curve. It keeps interest rates too low for too long after a recession, and then, playing catch-up, raises them too high and pitches the economy into a recession.

And then every generation or so in a credit crisis the Fed fails to act properly as lender of last resort and we get a 1929 Great Depression or a 2008 Great Recession where the credit system nearly collapses.

Now I suppose that right now the Swamp would like to kill Donald Trump's presidency and teach us deplorables to bend the knee to our overlords. After all, the president is in the middle of a fight with China on trade, is "shutting down the government" over "The Wall," is facing a Democratic House, the fury of Special Prosecutor Mueller, and I know not what.

So maybe the Fed is trying to teach President Trump a lesson, although I don't think you will find that power in the Constitution or in statute law.

Maybe there is something else that the stock market is telling us.

But come on Fed. When the market tanks by 10 percent in a week it is a sign that maybe, just maybe, you should switch from fighting inflation to fighting recession, if only for a month or two.

Or are you guys as dumb as a post?

So Trump is Rude

As we all know President Trump is notorious for his insults. And this is a very bad thing, as every liberal woman can tell you.

Really, I can't believe that America should stoop so low to elect a president like that!

Hey liberal girls! I can't believe that the Democratic Party would nominate a woman who would tell a gay group that half the country was racist, sexist, homophobes. In a word, deplorables! Really, what kind of a vile bigot would even think of half the country as beyond the pale of polite society?

And that is just the beginning. There are liberal politicians and activists thick on the ground that think nothing of ganging up on some conservative broadcaster to frighten off his advertisers. There are liberal activists all over that peacefully protest to prevent ordinary bland conservatives from addressing student groups at the university. And a nobody called Willis Eschenbach just got suspended from Twitter for uttering a few facts about Islam.

And you can forget about combining "conservative" and "professor" at the university.

And you girls think that Trump is the problem?

The point that needs making is that nobody is losing their job over Trump's insults. But they are when they utter a heretical comment against liberal orthodoxy. Nobody is being shunned and shamed by Trump's insults. But they are when some liberal activist decides to launch an accusation of racism or sexism. And so on.

Again. The reason that Donald Trump was nominated and elected President of the United States has a lot to do with his willingness to insult the powerful that claim the right to insult and name and shame and financially ruin anyone on the right. People like me, a proud racist sexist homophobe, and any other -phobe pejorative you have in mind, are nursing a deep sense of injustice about the power of liberal activists to exclude and marginalize people that don't repeat unthinkingly the latest liberal talking point.

Especially since we think that every word from the left is a lie, including "and" and "the," and has been ever since Marx's prophecy about the immiseration of the working class turned out to be false -- at least until the left turned against the working class about 1970.

And we are going to keep electing people to throw the liberal Billingsgate right back in their smug educated faces until someone cries Uncle.

Just saying.