Requiescat in Pace Val Kilmer

Without a doubt his most famous and enduring role was as Georgia-born gunslinger "Doc" Holliday in Tombstone


However, I particularly loved the performances in Willow. He and his beautiful female opposite in this movie went on to marry in real life and had two children. 


I don't know what to say about a man who played many parts, but about whom I know nothing of himself. Fortunately, E. M. Burlingame -- a fellow Small Wars Journal alumnus --  wrote a poem about it that is worthy.

I Had No Idea 'Star Wars' Was Based on a Norse Saga

 


Remarkable!

Owens Gap


No smoke plume today from the huge Table Rock fire. The storm must have helped. 

Clear skies.

Blindness

A commenter at Althouse responds to a post about art museums:
"Museums, monuments, and public institutions should be spaces where these stories are held with care, not suppressed for political convenience."

A lot easier to do, when so many of the monuments you don't like have already been torn down.

Yes, exactly. So much of this stuff that is arguably wrong from first principles is being done because those principles were already violated by the other side. Somehow they can't see that they did it first, emphatically and regularly. 

That doesn't make it right. There's a sense in which it is fair, because 'turnabout is fair play.' Getting them to at least recognize that they started the ball rolling might help, but how do you do that?

Democracy

I and some friends were asked to test the quality of Egypt's 2018 election. The election was scrupulously fair, down to the maintenance of unbroken, numerically-keyed locks on the ballot boxes. Both the army and the police watched over each polling station as they didn't trust each other. 

They could afford a fair election because they'd removed all the opposition candidates from the ballot beforehand. The only choice except Sisi was his friend who, as a campaign promise, said he'd withdraw if elected and endorse Sisi instead.

We're getting that way in Europe. We almost were that way here, last time around. It's getting dark out there. 

No Third Terms

At least half of what the current administration is doing is highly praiseworthy: the DOGE inquiries into unconstitutional/evil spending, waste, fraud, and so forth; the desire to craft peace out of the bloodbath in Ukraine; the move to shrink the Federal government substantially. 

Some other things are not: the police state tactics, masked Federal agents arresting people off the street, foreign prisons that violate the 8th Amendment, censorship of disfavored words. These are not in line with America's best traditions and deserve outright condemnation. Insofar as we have any power -- one of the dearest fantasies of Americans is that we have some sort of power over the Federal government apart from the occasional elections -- they deserve our opposition.

A third class of things is both at once: bringing in aggrieved non-experts to run agencies is a necessary breath of fresh air, but will inevitably lead to amateur errors because amateurs are employed. They're not bad people, but we have to expect mistakes. That's ok, but there will be errors. 

Two things so far are clearly wrong, at least to me. The desire to take over Gaza from Israel reminds me of nothing more than JFK's decision to take over Vietnam from the French; that's not our fight and we shouldn't want any part of the decades of war it would entail. There should be no third terms, not for anyone. Washington's standard should hold.

That's how it looks to me, at least, so far.

This Is a Song about


Um ...


Can I get an amen?


I heard the optics were great!


This is possibly how I'll go, unless they collapse on me in an earthquake.

A Magic Sword

USMC veteran Jackson Dodd has purchased the sword that was, reportedly, at one time responsible for 80% of Marine enlistments

You probably know the one. 


The sword is eight and a half pounds, which is insanity. Even the two-handed swords in Albion's museum line don't cross three and a half. One of them is two and a half, which is in line with my experience training in historical European martial arts. All that decorative heraldry built into the hilt, I imagine. 

Bluegrass and the Byrds


 …and Dylan. I assume Earl Scruggs is known to everyone here, but if not meet him now.