What Mitch McConnell could do
I'm not a Mitch McConnell fan. Kim Strassel, however, makes a good case that he did an outstanding job keeping judicial slots open under President Obama and continues his winning streak in getting the same slots filled with conservative jurists under President Trump. It probably shows what he could be doing on other conservative issues if he actually cared about any of them. In any case, I'm glad he cares about this one.
Almost Home
I'll be back later today; just about eight hours' ride left in front of me. In the meantime, enjoy this piece by Joe Bob Briggs. It's at TakiMag, so there is some intentionally offensive language; that's how they roll over there. All the same, there are some very good points made about what is keeping some classes of Americans out of work.
Joe Bob's answer -- that eliminating illegal labor will force people to hire them, and accommodate their needs -- is not obviously wrong. At least for that subset of jobs that can't be outsourced or sent overseas, if you want the work done, it costs what it costs to do here. You might even employ a few people you didn't really want to, because they have some problems they need to figure out how to work around.
One of the best conversations I had on this trip was with an Iraq buddy I hooked up with for a lunch to celebrate his birthday. He's talked two of his three kids out of going to college, and gotten them into trades. They're pulling good money during apprenticeships, and looking at nearly six figures once they finish. He plans to semi-retire in a few years by setting up a company where he arranges the work that they do, and takes a percentage for his work arranging their work. Everybody makes out, and nobody is saddled with student loans.
It's not obviously insane.
But it gets worse. Ex-cons are not even the most forsaken job applicants.Read the rest over there.
Single moms with two or more children—forget about it.
These women apply for the lowest-paying jobs in America—manicurists, theme park employees, food servers, packagers at mailing centers, laundry workers, dishwashers, cafeteria workers, maids, tollbooth clerks—and constantly lose out because they have all these special needs. They need flexible hours. They need weird schedules. They need time off on short notice when their kids get sick....
What’s really ironic is that the people who are trying to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour are the same people who say, “Mexicans will do jobs that Americans don’t want.”
Get rid of the illegal Mexicans and see how fast that wage goes up to $15 on its own, no government intervention needed.
But, of course, that would require caring about the single mom, the ex-con trying to straighten out his life, the lonely elderly guy who wants to go back to work, the diabetes patient who needs a wheelchair because of his swollen feet, and the guy who finally kicked drugs and needs to start over.
Joe Bob's answer -- that eliminating illegal labor will force people to hire them, and accommodate their needs -- is not obviously wrong. At least for that subset of jobs that can't be outsourced or sent overseas, if you want the work done, it costs what it costs to do here. You might even employ a few people you didn't really want to, because they have some problems they need to figure out how to work around.
One of the best conversations I had on this trip was with an Iraq buddy I hooked up with for a lunch to celebrate his birthday. He's talked two of his three kids out of going to college, and gotten them into trades. They're pulling good money during apprenticeships, and looking at nearly six figures once they finish. He plans to semi-retire in a few years by setting up a company where he arranges the work that they do, and takes a percentage for his work arranging their work. Everybody makes out, and nobody is saddled with student loans.
It's not obviously insane.
West Point's Cadet Prayer
This has been referenced here and other places recently, so I thought it might be good to read the whole thing.
Cadet Prayer
O God, our Father, Thou Searcher of Human hearts, help us to draw near to Thee in sincerity and truth. May our religion be filled with gladness and may our worship of Thee be natural.
Strengthen and increase our admiration for honest dealing and clean thinking, and suffer not our hatred of hypocrisy and pretence ever to diminish.
Encourage us in our endeavor to live above the common level of life. Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half truth when the whole can be won.
Endow us with courage that is born of loyalty to all that is noble and worthy, that scorns to compromise with vice and injustice and knows no fear when truth and right are in jeopardy.
Guard us against flippancy and irreverance in the sacred things of life. Grant us new ties of friendship and new opportunities of service. Kindle our hearts in fellowship with those of a cheerful countenance, and soften our hearts with sympathy for those who sorrow and suffer.
Help us to maintain the honor of the Corps untarnished and unsullied and to show forth in our lives the ideals of West Point in doing our duty to Thee and to our Country.
All of which we ask in the name of the Great Friend and Master of all.
AMEN
Honor and Duty Dying at West Point
"Make us to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won."So says the Cadet Prayer, consistent with the best West Point tradition. Unfortunately, it seems that this ideal is on the rocks, and the recent revelations of goings on at West Point are but the tip of the iceberg- and the rot runs deep.
The good LTC (Ret.) Robert M. Heffington (yes, that same LTC that wrote up Cadet Rapone) has written an open letter revealing the deep and profoundly troubling problems at West Point in the last decade. He documents an institution a shadow of it's former self, stripped of any real sense of honor or duty, and that has left him- and he is himself an alumnus- considering that the institution should perhaps no longer remain open. You can read the letter here, but be warned- it's deeply troubling in it's implications about our military, our government, and in truth, our society.
Distributed intelligence
The hive brain has let me down. I was watching a medium-old BBC series called "Doc Martin" on Acorn TV (a good value on the net), when I found myself in a Cornish wedding scene thinking, "That's a better wedding band than the run of the mill. In fact, I like that song. What's that song?" Since I could get a few lyrics, I was confident the answer would be, as usual, a Google search away. Instead, what I got was a lot of hits to sites with people saying, "I was watching a wedding scene in that old show Doc Martin . . . ." No one ever did figure out what the song was, though the consensus was that it was sort of close to another song and might be a variation. Some band had its shot at the spotlight and missed.
Snippet of reggae-like song begins about 3:30, but if you like the whole scene you might try Acorn TV.
And the song it resembles:
Snippet of reggae-like song begins about 3:30, but if you like the whole scene you might try Acorn TV.
And the song it resembles:
ISIS surrender?
I admit, I've been paying almost no attention at all to the news. Someone mentioned a large ISIS surrender to the Kurds, and a Google search of those words does yield a fair number of stories about it. Would the rest of you say it's been getting much coverage? I must really have been under a rock.
In Las Vegas Shooting, Was the Medium the Message?
Mark Steyn posted an interesting theory from a reader:
1. His long planned and carefully executed purchase of a virtual armoury of unprecedented scope and scale guaranteed that very armoury would inevitably become the central focus of the media.
2. His assiduous removal of evidence of any tangible motive also removed the possibility that the news cycle might move on from guns - simply the means of the killing - to considering the more interesting issues of motive and message - be it political or economic or environmental or anything else.
3. This man was a highly methodical and systematic thinker. Nothing in the scenario that unfolded was left to chance - even down to positioning cameras to surveil the corridor. It is therefore inconceivable that this was all done in this precise manner for no reason. That there is no message.
But of course there is indeed a message. It only happens to be implicit instead of explicit. That message is 'guns'. And that message is being trawled over every minute of every day on every network in America. Given the nature of the man and the facts this is not a chance outcome. On the contrary given the known facts it is indeed the only possible outcome. An outcome so obvious that anyone given the full story beforehand would have predicted as inevitable.It makes as much sense as anything else I've read on the topic, though there is no hard evidence for it so far.
4. The people he chose to kill supports the hypothesis on 'guns'. Country and Western fans are virtually guaranteed to own or at least to defend the ownership of guns. By a certain logic this provides the gunman with two sound moral positions (because it is not beyond possibility he has a conscience):
First - While killing a very large number of innocent people is an horrendous crime it is nonetheless entirely justifiable - in moral terms - if it causes a restriction on guns. Because such a restriction would - it is widely held - save innumerable lives in the long run. There is no evidence for this but it is still a widely and passionately held belief.
Second - Since the people he is shooting are actively or passively defenders of guns and an obstacle to gun control they are by definition responsible in part for all the people who have been and continue to be killed by guns.