A contrast with the recruiting ad for the Army we recently saw.
Imperial & American Pints
This came up in a recent discussion. I am in a pub that serves them, so here is an Imperial Snakebite versus an American pint glass with water.
Friday Night Concert
Chilling out on a Friday with an hour and a half of Nathaniel Rateliff and the Night Sweats
Don't Go Quoting Chairman Mao
Joltin' Joe Biden ignores the Beatles' advice in his commencement address to the Coast Guard. It's a silly thing to do, for two reasons.
First, it's Chairman Mao.
Second, the Chinese don't in any sense live up to the idea that women are equally important to men. Even when Mao said it, it was just a pat on the head. Women in China continue today to be treated as second-class subjects, though they are now free of the forced abortions of the 'One Child' period (except the Uighur women, who are still enduring forced abortions and sterilizations). To cite the Chinese Communists as an aspirational model to American women who are now college graduates is madness: these American women are already going to enjoy vastly greater privileges than their Chinese counterparts.
Third, why not follow that up with an insult aimed at the graduating class?
Rock 'n' Cynicism
I have always loved rock, but some of my favorite rock songs are pretty cynical about the business of it or the lifestyle or even the audience. Here are four of those I came up with. If you know others, please post them in the comments.
This Certainly Won't Calm Conspiracy Fears
Soros kicked in $2M to elect Maricopa County sheriff now stonewalling election audit
More than four years before Maricopa County Sheriff Paul Penzone used his law enforcement credibility to resist subpoenas in the Arizona Senate audit of the county's general election, he was running for the office he now holds.
Crucial to the Democrat's victory over incumbent Republican Joe Arpaio: $2 million from progressive megadonor George Soros.
It was the largest single donation Soros made in a local race in the 2016 election cycle, according to a Politico report at the time. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' widow, Laurene Powell Jobs, kicked in another $250,000 to the pro-Penzone effort.
...
Liberal Media Viewers Are Misinformed About Crime in America
At least according to Rasmussen Reports:
Fewer than 50 unarmed black suspects were killed by police last year and more people were killed with knives than with so-called “assault weapons,” but viewers of MSNBC and CNN are far more likely than Fox News viewers to get those facts wrong.
Miss Unsinkable
According to Wikipedia, Violet Jessop (1887-1971) survived not only the sinking of the RMS Titanic in 1912, but also the sinking of its sister ship the HMHS Britanic in 1916. She was a stewardess on both ships, and she continued working on ships afterwards.
In competition with her record, "Wenman Humfrey 'Kit' Wykeham-Musgrave (1899–1989) was a Royal Navy officer who has the possibly unique distinction of having survived being torpedoed on three different ships on the same day," 22 September 1914. Torpedoed and sunk on three different ships, I should point out. He was saved by a Dutch trawler.
Capitol Police Appear to Have Given Permission to Buffalo-Hat
In this newly released video, police clearly negotiate terms for a peaceful entry and protest with a group including the infamous "shaman."
That's going to be a problem for the prosecution.
UPDATE: The defense, however, is its own problem.
Internal Security
They've cracked the code for dodging constitutional protections -- those only apply to government. As long as the government hires it out, no constitutional protections need apply.
You'd think the courts would object to that reading, but so far they've gotten away with it. Now the plan is to spy on US servicemembers for 'concerning' 'extremist' thoughts.
An extremism steering committee led by Bishop Garrison, a senior adviser to the secretary of defense, is currently designing the social media screening pilot program, which will “continuously” monitor military personnel for “concerning behaviors,” according to a Pentagon briefing in late March. Although in the past the military has balked at surveilling service members for extremist political views due to First Amendment protections, the pilot program will rely on a private surveillance firm in order to circumvent First Amendment restrictions on government monitoring, according to a senior Pentagon official....[A possible candidate firm] has drawn criticism for its practice of buying bulk cellular location data and selling it to federal national security agencies like the Secret Service, who rely on the private company to bypass warrant requirements normally imposed on government bodies seeking to collect data.
Our FISA process has proven so full of holes that it's not clear why the government doesn't just lie to the court again to get the warrants it wants -- there appears to be no penalty for having done so. But I suppose this is easier still; they don't even have to bother to lie to get a warrant, because they no longer have to get a warrant at all.
Stoic Happiness
A reasonable introduction to Stoic philosophy on happiness. Readers of the Hall can probably compare and contrast this view with the earlier Aristotelian view from which it drew much.
Retrograde Veterans
The US hands off Kandahar Airfield as part of what command is currently calling "retrogade operations." A Marine NCO of significant experience speaks.
President Joe Biden announced April 14 that all US forces would be withdrawn from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, 2021, with more recent reports suggesting a US exit by July 2021. However, Richard Fowler, a Marine infantry sergeant, is skeptical.“I believe nothing of what they [the DOD] tell me. We’re pulling out of Afghanistan like we pulled out of Cuba, like we pulled out of Germany, like we pulled out of Japan, like we pulled out of Korea, like we pulled out of Somalia, and on and on and on,” Fowler, who fought in Helmand province in 2008, told Coffee or Die.
Probably most Americans don't realize that we're still in Somalia.
Eternal astonishment of the oblivious mind
We've returned to the realm of bad news that lands on us "unexpectedly," as many of us remember so well from the Obama years. It reminds me of the old comic song "It's the Same the Whole World Over," about the poor girl ("pure unstymied was her name") who keeps meeting another man and "again she lost her name."
It's only a mincing step from perpetual amazement to the practice of simply ignoring news that flouts the narrative.
In related news, the AP is shocked, shocked to learn that it was unexpectedly sharing a Gaza building with Hamas. But to be fair, where would it have found the resources to check into such a thing?