Contempt

Steyn:

It is hard not to have total contempt for a political culture that thinks the picture [of Michelle Obama holding a hashtag sign] is a useful contribution to rescuing 276 schoolgirls kidnapped by jihadist savages in Nigeria. Yet some pajama boy at the White House evidently felt....

Just as the last floppo hashtag, #WeStandWithUkraine, didn't actually involve standing with Ukraine, so #BringBackOurGirls doesn't require bringing back our girls. There are only a half-dozen special forces around the planet capable of doing that without getting most or all of the hostages killed: the British, the French, the Americans, Israelis, Germans, Aussies, maybe a couple of others. So, unless something of that nature is being lined up, those schoolgirls are headed into slavery, and the wretched pleading passivity of Mrs Obama's hashtag is just a form of moral preening.

Contempt may well be warranted, but not for the failure to deploy special operators into this.

Speaking as someone who has worked on the intelligence end of hostage rescue, our guys get the hostage killed from time to time too. The one thing you need most to minimize that danger -- as well as the frankly more-important danger that our operators themselves will get killed, as they are very hard-to-replace strategic assets -- is in-depth intelligence. Failing that, eyes-on reconnaissance. If you've got it, there's a chance you can make a raid like this work.

Do we have the right kind of intelligence assets in Boko Haram country? I don't know for certain, but my guess is that we do not. So that leaves reconnaissance, which takes time. If it's been ongoing up until now, it's been in spite of the direct refusal of the host country to permit it.

You can't drop a SEAL team if you don't know where to drop them, and we most likely don't have any idea. That's not contemptible. It's a fact of the art of war.

The right reason to feel contempt is at the posture, which makes our nation look weak and helpless. We probably can't rescue these girls in a Hollywood-style raid, but we could wipe this group off the face of the earth in a few hours if we were willing to kill a lot of innocent people too. We could wipe them out in weeks, with less danger to innocents, if we were willing to deploy the 1st Cavalry Division for that purpose with a very loose set of ROE.

If we don't do those things, it's because we are choosing not to do them. It won't do for the White House to beg, plead, or scold, or make sad faces in front of a camera.

Take responsibility for your choice.

"Make Believe"

I wouldn't be so sure, bub. Even if you're feeling good about the wager, doesn't it strike you as interesting that your side is lining up with Satan himself?

I mean, just maybe think about it.

Corvidae

Crows seem to be intelligent animals, capable -- according to laboratory tests, as well as significant empirical observation -- of abstract reasoning. Our last common ancestor was before the evolution of dinosaurs, and our brain structures are totally different. What can that tell us about the way intelligence comes to be?

Simpler solutions

The leftish think tank Urban Institute is doing some surprising thinking about market distortions from Obamacare, and has stumbled on the notion that the employer mandate isn't likely to do a lot of good:

“Eliminating the employer mandate would eliminate labor market distortions in the law, lessen opposition to the law from employers, and have little effect on coverage,” say Linda Blumberg, John Holahan and Matthew Buettgens of the institute.

You know what else would eliminate market distortions in the law, lessen opposition to the law from American citizens, and have little effect on coverage?   Repealing Obamacare.

Friday Night AMV

I swear I work with this guy.

Cultural Appropriation

We would like to encourage our fellow students at Harvard to join the movement this year: Choose respect over insensitive humor when assembling your costumes. Even more importantly, take this opportunity to educate yourself. Engage in dialogue about why certain costumes can be perceived as offensive and how humor and caricature have historically been used to perpetuate racial and cultural stereotypes. In other words, we would like our campus to discuss how Halloween costumes can serve as mechanisms for cultural appropriation.

According to the blog Unsettling America, cultural appropriation can be defined as “the adoption or theft of icons, rituals, aesthetic standards, and behavior from one culture or subculture by another [generally] when the subject culture is a minority culture. This ‘appropriation’ often occurs without any real understanding of why the original culture took part in these activities or the meanings behind these activities.”

The Harvard Crimson, 29 October 2013.

A reenactment of a Black Mass celebrating Satan is scheduled to take place at Harvard University on Monday evening.

CBS News, 8 May 2014.

Lileks, Great Writer of Our Time

Anyway: This concludes our examination of a vegan’s review of Ruth’s Chris Steak House.

Even better:

Monogamy doesn’t work for Diaz, or the author of the piece, so Ditching must begin. It’s not enough to say, “I just can’t imagine sticking with one person the rest of my life. I foresee a series of satisfying relationships of varying duration and intensity, after which I retire to Nice and become known in the neighborhood as the iconoclastic woman who turned to pottery at the age of 74.” No, you have to decide that everyone should rethink the idea of faithfulness.

Quite right, of course. A human institution of great antiquity doesn't suit one particularly irritable and difficult-to-live-with liberal, so naturally it must go!

Thinking of Getting a Tattoo?

I'm a member of the 'No ink, just scars' club myself, but tattoos are popular these days. Here's a slow-motion video of what it looks like.

Slowmotion Tattoo from GueT Deep on Vimeo.

New Business is a Bad Thing

Amid reports that fewer businesses have been created than destroyed every year since 2008, CNN provides a helpful explanation.

In Silicon Valley, people start companies to change the world. In the rest of the country, it's out of necessity. That's why new business creation fell in 2013, according the Kauffman Foundation's annual Index of Entrepreneurial Activity. With unemployment at its lowest level since 2010, out-of-work people who might have started their own companies have simply found jobs instead.

Things are so good, nobody's starting new businesses.

Let me suggest another possible explanation. New business creation is on a 30-year downslope, but there is one period of upswing on the graph at the first link. The period aligns with Reagan's deregulatory push, such that the cost of starting a new business dropped and the legal hazards shrank. The downturn begins anew about the time Reagan left office, a time when the first Bush administration was run by old money Republicans and the Democratic Congress was running roughshod over them anyway (due to things like the Iran-Contra hearings).

Now compare that reading with this chart that contrasts the Reagan and Obama recoveries (if, indeed, 'recovery' is really the proper term for this mess except in the most narrowly technical way).

The main function of regulation is to keep Big Business happy by suppressing their competitors. A side benefit is that it makes more Americans subject to their rules as employees, rather than free owners of their own means of production. It's the opposite of the Yeoman economy that Jefferson thought was the best guarantee of genuine liberty.

Oh, and by the way CNN, there aren't really all that many jobs available. So if the real push isn't onto company rolls, but onto government transfer payments, that's an even bigger threat to secure liberty for a free people.

Torture

The UN is insane, but the Vatican was ready for them.

One U.N. questioner said the “restrictions amount to psychological torture” of women, according to McGuire. “That’s crazy,” she added.

"Abortion is among the most egregious forms of torture than can be perpetuated against a child, and attacking the church's moral and religious beliefs violates the religious liberty of the church, a human right which the United Nations affirms. Yet, the U.N. Committee Against Torture seems to be setting the stage that if you are pro-life you are pro-torture,” she added.

Life is suffering. Well, some of them are Buddhists.

Contempt

As Ace observed, many of us already held Lois Lerner in contempt without a formal vote.  This afternoon's House vote was not entirely along party lines, but close:

Six Democrats broke with their party to support the contempt vote:  Ron Barber of Arizona, John Barrow of Georgia, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Mike McIntyre of North Carolina, Nick Rahall of West Virginia, and Patrick Murphy of Florida.  All are facing Republican challengers in tough districts for Democrats in November.

Needed: Voodoo Philanthropists

This ad for a band to play a wedding ("No pay") is not at all safe for work, nor does it feature appropriate or respectful language. I'm posting it anyway because I think it will amuse Tex.

Partial excerpt:

Terrible band needed for sham of a wedding. No pay...

[M]y Shylock of a half-brother and his parsimonious fiance have passed off to me the job of finding a band for their wedding. Since they think music is spontaneously generated via voodoo magic by assemblies of self-promoting philanthropists... [if] you and your unemployable band of pothead hobbyists....

You get what you pay for, I hear.

Control

I find myself strangely in synch with a train of thought attributed to Hillary Clinton in a National Journal article:

She decried new laws proliferating across the country that allow people to carry weapons in churches, bars, and other public places, saying that they will only lead to more deadly violence that could otherwise be avoided. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many people with guns," she continued, "in settings where … [they] decide they have a perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or the cell-phone talker."

I'd rephrase it:

She decried new laws proliferating across the country that allow people to outsource their increasingly petty and intrusive personal preferences to an armed police force, saying that the new raft of Nanny State laws will only lead to more deadly violence that could otherwise be avoided. "At the rate we're going, we're going to have so many intrusive laws enforced in our names by police with guns," she continued, "in settings where … [they] decide they have a perfect right to defend themselves against the gum chewer or the cell-phone talker or the Big-Gulp drinker or the wood fireplace user or the guy with unapproved health insurance."

Swordplay

Those of you following the comments to a post late last week were directed to the "Battle of the Nations" Medieval Combat World Championship. In the Longsword, Poland's Marcin Waszkielis achieved the men's gold medal. America's own Suzanne Elleraas collected the gold in what I understand is the inaugural competition for females.

Death to Public Broadcasting

The best radio station in Atlanta just got gutted in a backroom deal.

The format has changed over the years but has been primarily rock focused. It started with progressive rock, then went punk and new wave in the early 1980s when it received its Album 88 moniker, said Gail Harris, who worked there from 1976 to 1993 and holds regular alumni reunions... “I am unhappy with the lack of transparency,” Harris said, noting that there was no community debate prior to the surprise announcement.

...

Ana Zimitravich, the outgoing WRAS general manager and senior at GSU, said she found out along with the rest of the student staff today. “It’s a total, complete shock,” she said. “I had no idea this change was coming.”

So the strongest student-run radio station in the United States will now spend most of the day playing the same canned Public Broadcasting garbage that caters to aging liberals nationwide.

Coincidentally, this is the song the student DJ was playing on Album 88 as I was writing up this post:



UPDATE: "Please direct all comments/complaints regarding the GPB usurpation of WRAS to the following..."

Honor and Benghazi

Michael Walsh says that Benghazi is a matter of our national honor, but that our leadership can't recognize it because they have no honor.

Honorable people do not let American diplomats twist slowly in the wind while they attend “debate prep” and rest up for a shakedown meeting with the One Percent. Honorable people do not suddenly go AWOL while American soil is under attack. Honorable people do not fail to mobilize the formidable resources of the American military, even if it might not be possible for them to get there in time. Honorable people, under questioning by Congress, do not lose their temper and start shouting. Honorable people do not look the bereaved in the eye and lie about who and what killed their loved ones.

Further: honorable people do not go before the public on the Sunday talk shows and knowingly transmit a bald-faced lie. Honorable people do not continue to lie about what took place. Honorable people do not say “We are Americans; we hold our head high,” and then hang their heads in shame as they cut and run at the first sign of trouble. Honorable people do not continue to reward the dishonorable with ever-higher posts. Honorable people resign.

I bold the one section because it's the one thing he says with which I disagree. Honorable people might tell bald-faced lies about a military problem, and continue to do so for as long as necessary. It is easy to imagine Churchill lying at length if it were necessary to deceive the Nazis in a way that would ensure the final victory in the war.

Honor is sacrifice, and we accept Churchill's imaginary lie as an example of honor because we know it pains him. He does it for his people, not for his own personal advantage.

Mr. Walsh is right that this band is entirely without honor. The unifying thread in all the complaints he raises against them is that, in every case, they put their own personal advantage over the good of the people and the nation.

It is often said that our country's Constitution was devised on the assumption that good people would not always be in charge, and indeed might only be so rarely -- that bad people are more common, and more likely to assume the levers of power. Perhaps it is so. Nevertheless, there is a price for it.

Vanishing Girls

CNN reports, via InstaPundit, that Boko Haram intends to sell captured Nigerian girls. I had read a report four days ago that they were already selling them.

The CNN report quotes a video in which the leader of the Islamist militia states that 'Allah' tells him to sell the girls, but doesn't bother to explain why he thinks that is the case. In fact, he's probably right about this as a point of Islamic law: the captured girls are almost all Christians.

Boko Haram has been abducting Christian girls and women for some time as part of its battle to establish an Islamic state in Northern Nigeria. The group appears to be putting into practice Quranic verses that grant Muslims the right to take, as spoils of war, female slaves, over whom they have sexual rights.

There were a few Muslim girls captured in the last raid. What will happen to them could be better or worse, depending on how Boko Haram views Muslims who study at Christian schools. My guess is that their fate will be worse. If they are viewed as apostates, they will probably be killed (after a forced 'marriage,' since you aren't supposed to execute virgins).

As I was just saying to Eric, there's a sense in which we're always in the 6th Century -- or, in this case, the 7th. These people are following the law, an ancient law that dates to the very origin of their faith. We can't even begin to understand the problem as long as, like CNN, we don't appreciate that truth about them. What they are doing is not improper by the lights of their system. It is their system. They don't see themselves as villains, but as the enforcer's of God's law upon an unrighteous people: upon infidels whose children, at least, shall be purified by being brought within the fold.

Tractor Beams Use Sound?

Learn something new every day.

Summertime

Local high was 91 today.

Eat What You Want & Die Like A Man

The world's oldest living man gives advice on what it takes for a man to make it to 111 (there are 66 living older women):

• Not having children.

• Not drinking alcohol.

• Quitting smoking.

• Playing multiple sports. “I was a gymnast,” he said. “Good runner, a good springer. Good javelin, and I was a good swimmer.”

• A diet "inspired by Eastern mystics who disdain food," the Times said. (According to Imich's caregivers, he eats matzo balls, gefilte fish, chicken noodle soup, Ritz crackers, scrambled eggs, chocolate and ice cream.)

Sports are good, but as for the rest of it, what then could be the point of living so long?

(Post title from this cookbook.)