So went an old Monty Python gag.
The New York Times may have just as well used that instead of the their title for this piece: "In Donald Trump's Worldview, America Comes First, and Everybody Else Pays"
That headline is just going to do the opposite of what the Times intends.
Good Friday
Good Friday is a day about which I feel unqualified to write. I hope you may choose today to take counsel with a better authority. I only mention it to wish you well in a difficult hour.
For those with Jewish friends, today is also Shushan Purim, a holiday I had not known of until this morning. Purim I knew of, martial holiday that it is, but it turns out that there is a special variation of the date of Purim that really appeals to me:
For those with Jewish friends, today is also Shushan Purim, a holiday I had not known of until this morning. Purim I knew of, martial holiday that it is, but it turns out that there is a special variation of the date of Purim that really appeals to me:
Purim is celebrated on the Adar 14 because the Jews in unwalled cities fought their enemies on Adar 13 and rested the following day. However, in Shushan, the capital city of the Persian Empire, the Jews were involved in defeating their enemies on Adar 13–14 and rested on the 15th (Esther 9:20–22). In commemoration of this, it was decided that while the victory would be celebrated universally on Adar 14, for Jews living in Shushan, the holiday would be held on Adar 15. Later, in deference to Jerusalem, the Sages determined that Purim would be celebrated on Adar 15 in all cities which had been enclosed by a wall at the time of Joshua's conquest of the Land of Israel.
Allahpundit Has It Backwards
It's Trump who has to challenge Cruz to a duel. Otherwise, the charge of cowardice stands.
This is why dueling is useful, of course. Lots of men have big mouths. Not all of them have big... hands.
This is why dueling is useful, of course. Lots of men have big mouths. Not all of them have big... hands.
Namaste, Heathens
Kennesaw, Georgia is a trip.
UPDATE: I win my bet. From the program founder's bio:
The good news is that you can stop worrying about her rubbing any Hinduism off on your kids. The bad news, I trust, is obvious.
A group of parents at a Cobb County elementary are upset over the school’s use of yoga and other mindfulness practices for students because they believe it endorses a non-Christian belief system.I would wager heavily that the school's teachers don't understand the real Hindu customs or theology well enough to teach it if they had wanted to teach it. If they did, they'd understand that the suggestion that yoga has something to do with Hinduism isn't just some silly 'misconception.'
School leaders at Bullard Elementary held a meeting recently with parents to address the “many misconceptions” over the issue...
As a result, the school is making changes. When yoga moves are used in classrooms, students will not say the word “namaste” nor put their hands by their hearts, according to the email. The term and gesture are often used as a greeting derived from Hindu custom.
When coloring during classroom teaching breaks, students will not be allowed to color mandalas, spiritual symbols in Hinduism and Buddhism.
UPDATE: I win my bet. From the program founder's bio:
I consider Dr. Seuss one of my master teachers...She really doesn't know what she's teaching. I looked up those yoga credentials, by the way. The Yoga Alliance, which seems to be the source for them, points out that they are not certifications -- they're just acknowledgements that she's in their registry, and they've tracked that she's taught 500 hours, or has registered as a teacher of children, or whatever.
The good news is that you can stop worrying about her rubbing any Hinduism off on your kids. The bad news, I trust, is obvious.
You Could Be A Rock Star In America, Too
Headline: "US Attorney Becomes Rock Star In Turkey For Arresting Erdogan’s Partner."
UPDATE: McClatchy says that, like the FiveThirtyEight people who have to go on 'quests' to understand Trump voters, the People just don't understand the elite.
Exulting in Zarrab’s arrest, Turkish social media users had a field day mocking him and hailing the attorney.I assure you that I stand ready to be as celebratory for the US attorney who brings Hillary Clinton to justice. Can we prove at home what we have proven abroad, that the law can apply even to the powerful? Or is that only for those who aren't powerful here?
Preet Bharara, US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had only 8,010 followers before the Justice Department announced on Monday the arrest of Zarrab, a Turkish-Iranian businessman accused of evading US sanctions on Iran. The number of attorney’s followers on Twitter was skyrocketed to whopping 230,000 and it is rapidly increasing. His latest two tweets were shared nearly 60,000 times and liked by 85,000 people....
Bharara was lionized in Turkey largely because corruption suspects are deemed so “untouchable” that any prosecutor or police who go after them may lose their jobs or jailed and any journalist covering them may face prosecution or get fired.
UPDATE: McClatchy says that, like the FiveThirtyEight people who have to go on 'quests' to understand Trump voters, the People just don't understand the elite.
The people who spend two bucks for chili at the Courtesy Diner at Laclede Station Road can’t fathom why anyone would pay Hillary Clinton $225,000 to make a speech.That's not true. Everybody knows why she was paid $225,000 for the speech. They're just too polite to say it out loud.
Major Voter Suppression in Arizona
You won't be informed of this by reading the article, so let me ask you if you realize who benefited from this particular fraud? The article actually says that this is "all about electing Republicans," but the Republican establishment isn't the one pulling out all the stops to elect a particular candidate.
Also:
"[I]ndependent voters who switched their registration to the Democratic Party were allegedly told they hadn’t registered at all, forcing them to sit out the closed primary."
How would disenfranchising Democratic primary voters have anything to do with electing Republicans?
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Also:
"[I]ndependent voters who switched their registration to the Democratic Party were allegedly told they hadn’t registered at all, forcing them to sit out the closed primary."
How would disenfranchising Democratic primary voters have anything to do with electing Republicans?
There are none so blind as those who will not see.
About that Che Photo...
The Weekly Standard wants you to know what Cubans saw when they looked at that photo:
[T]he building that Guevara's face adorns is home to the Cuban Ministry of the Interior. Unlike our own Ministry of the Interior, Cuba's is not charged with innocuous tasks like protecting endangered waterfowl. Rather, it operates the National Revolutionary Police, which, in addition to keeping law and order on the streets, harasses and arrests dissidents, and suppresses "counter-revolutionary" activities. In other words, it's Cuba's version of the Stasi.So it's a photo of the President of the United States, standing at attention, in front of the headquarters of the Communist Revolutionary Police. That should send a message to the Cuban people, for sure.
Hey, Ash Carter: What About A 'Less Hierarchical Work Environment' in the Army?
The answer is revealing.
A flatter, less hierarchical work environment is great for the Special Forces. They've made it work beautifully. It doesn't necessarily translate to the rest of the military. I wonder if our Secretary of Defense can say why, beyond the difficulty of obtaining artillery colonels through the want ads?
Carter told the cadet it was "a good question," as "we've got to stay competitive."Yeah, you're doing a heck of a job there.
"And it gets to attracting and recruiting people. And it means we're going to have to keep thinking and keep changing about how we manage people. Let me give you a few examples of things that we're doing now... [to] draw in some of what you're calling exactly right, flatter, more mobile institutions...."
"Just recently, I changed our -- our policies in a number of ways on family programs -- things like maternity and paternity leave."
A flatter, less hierarchical work environment is great for the Special Forces. They've made it work beautifully. It doesn't necessarily translate to the rest of the military. I wonder if our Secretary of Defense can say why, beyond the difficulty of obtaining artillery colonels through the want ads?
"Vexing Decision" for Governor Deal
The religious liberty bill passed the Legislature easily, but has been sitting on the governor's desk for a while.
The question that Governor Deal has to answer is this: is protecting the religious liberty of actual citizens the relevant duty of the state of Georgia, or is it protecting the feelings of cartoon mice and superheroes? Disney and Marvel say they aren't willing to film in Georgia if they can't force citizens to comply with their corporate policies.
It's an easy question from where I sit: if we are being asked to trade liberty for money, they can take their money and run. No state of the Union, and no Federal government, should ever trade an American liberty even for safety in the teeth of foreign threats. How much less should we trade sacred liberty for the wages of the next Avenger film?
This is one of two bills favored by Georgia's conservatives that easily passed the Legislature but have been hung up on the governor. The other one is the 'campus carry' bill, which liberal professors and administrators on our campuses -- a majority here, as elsewhere -- have treated with apoplexy. Governor Deal asked the Legislature to 'make some changes' to the bill.
The Legislature declined.
The question that Governor Deal has to answer is this: is protecting the religious liberty of actual citizens the relevant duty of the state of Georgia, or is it protecting the feelings of cartoon mice and superheroes? Disney and Marvel say they aren't willing to film in Georgia if they can't force citizens to comply with their corporate policies.
It's an easy question from where I sit: if we are being asked to trade liberty for money, they can take their money and run. No state of the Union, and no Federal government, should ever trade an American liberty even for safety in the teeth of foreign threats. How much less should we trade sacred liberty for the wages of the next Avenger film?
This is one of two bills favored by Georgia's conservatives that easily passed the Legislature but have been hung up on the governor. The other one is the 'campus carry' bill, which liberal professors and administrators on our campuses -- a majority here, as elsewhere -- have treated with apoplexy. Governor Deal asked the Legislature to 'make some changes' to the bill.
The Legislature declined.
Duffel Blog: Crusade, Anyone?
Poll: Support for another Crusade at highest level since 14th centuryIt's a joke, and yet...
North Dakota Professor Quails at ROTC Candidates
“My first thought is for my students’ and my safety: I grab my phone, crawl under my desk and call 911,” she wrote.Heaven forfend. You can't imagine how sorry I am to learn that you are having to learn to live with the people who defend the country you live in.
The threat, however, was two ROTC students carrying guns on their way to a routine training exercise, Campus Reform reported.
“I can barely talk — first, with fear, and then with rage when the dispatcher reports back that yes, in fact, I’ve probably just seen ROTC cadets, though they’re going to send an officer to check because no one has cleared it with them,” Ms. Czerwiec wrote.
She said a university officer called her back a few minutes later to inform her that ROTC would be doing the exercises for the next couple of weeks.
“So I reply that I guess I’ll be calling 911 for the next couple weeks—and I will. Every time,” Ms. Czerwiec wrote. “It’s not my job to decide whether people carrying guns at school are an actual threat. It’s my job to teach and to get home to my family.
“It’s already highly inappropriate to conduct unnecessary military maneuvers in the middle of the quad. But with school shootings on the increase and tensions at UND running high, it’s especially irresponsible.”
Best Use Yet
A charity shop is given so many copies of Fifty Shades of Grey that it finds an inventive use for them.
How Can You Defeat ISIS if You Won't Stand Up for Western Values?
The refusal to big-up Western values has been institutionalised in the idea of Islamophobia, which is not just about protecting Muslims from assault or discrimination — a noble thing to do — but is about policing any expression of belief in the superiority of Western or enlightened values. In the words of the Runnymede Trust, which shaped the definition of Islamophobia, any suggestion that the Islamic way of life is ‘inferior to the West’ is an expression of prejudice, and everyone should be taught that the Islamic outlook is ‘as equally worthy of respect [as Western values]’. Laws and codes against Islamophobia represent the institutionalisation of relativism, the suppression of loud and proud defences of the virtues of Western life and thought.Prejudice is pre-judging a thing. The problem is that we've gotten to the point that any judgment at all, regardless of the evidence, is forbidden as if it were a judgment in advance of the facts.
Wikileaks and Clinton
Now that the Clinton emails are public (those she didn't delete before turning them over to the government, of course), Wikileaks has produced them in a searchable format. Now you can read Sid Blumenthal's emails, or prowl around to see who was giving her money in return for favorable treatment from State.
The Exchange Theory of Value (Again)
From time to time we have discussions that feature the exchange theory of value. It's amusing to me that the clearest example I can recall is Mike holding forth on Dungeons & Dragons mechanics.
To dispute that it was, you would have to have some other standard than exchange to measure what a thing is "really worth." Many economic theories simply lack the furniture to argue about whether or not the pearl is "really worth" 100 gold pieces, or the album is "really worth" millions of dollars. Other theories that do are largely discredited: Marxists can talk about "surplus value" being extracted from laborers, but Marxist economics has never managed to work anywhere.
I was thinking about this today because of an article in the NYT that purports to show that as women take over in male-dominated fields wages drop.
If this is true, under the exchange theory of value the work of women is "really worth" less just because people are willing to pay less for it. It is, presumably, the same work. The work was "really worth" more if a man did it in a male-dominated field, and now is "really worth" less because women have entered the field. Is that right?
Well, one thing that would make it plausible is that womens' entry increases the supply of labor for that particular job; now everyone's labor is worth less in that field just because of the law of supply and demand. That may be the real explanation, but I want to set it aside for the purpose of this discussion. I'm interested in a theoretical question.
What interests me is -- as usual -- whether there is a moral question that should override the economic question. It often bothers me that so much seems to be for sale. I like to think that at least some things ought not to be traded in the market. Even in the market, too, I think some relationships are adequately unfair that they should be banned even if both parties to the trade are willing.
Here is a moral principle of fairness (which Aristotle said is an important component of justice, and which Rawls said was the whole of justice). It seems to be out of order with the economic principle, maybe, if the explanation is not merely an increased labor supply.
Does it show that the exchange theory of value is incomplete or inadequate? In Mike's D&D example, I thought the pearl would prove to have an objective value if it could be used for the spell. Does fairness perform something of the same role as magic, but in the real world? Or should we continue to discard other concepts than exchange value, and say that fairness does not apply?
[W]hile you may argue that it makes no logical sense for an evil Paladin to be the martial equal of a good one, I'd posit that you're arguing logic in a game where wizards can cast an identify spell using a pearl worth "at least 100 gold pieces". And nothing anywhere explains how to calculate who determines the worth of that pearl. Are the pearls used to identify magic items in the desert smaller and more flawed than the ones in the fishing village that has pearl cultivation beds? That's a screwed up metaphysical system where market forces determine the efficacy of magic.So what is a pearl worth? The usual answer is that it is worth what someone will give for it. This may lead to results that seem absurd in real life, too. Sometimes people who have a lot of money push the value of apparently trivial objects well above what ordinary people could afford. Is the single copy of Wu Tang Clan's Once Upon a Time in Shaolin really worth millions of dollars?
To dispute that it was, you would have to have some other standard than exchange to measure what a thing is "really worth." Many economic theories simply lack the furniture to argue about whether or not the pearl is "really worth" 100 gold pieces, or the album is "really worth" millions of dollars. Other theories that do are largely discredited: Marxists can talk about "surplus value" being extracted from laborers, but Marxist economics has never managed to work anywhere.
I was thinking about this today because of an article in the NYT that purports to show that as women take over in male-dominated fields wages drop.
If this is true, under the exchange theory of value the work of women is "really worth" less just because people are willing to pay less for it. It is, presumably, the same work. The work was "really worth" more if a man did it in a male-dominated field, and now is "really worth" less because women have entered the field. Is that right?
Well, one thing that would make it plausible is that womens' entry increases the supply of labor for that particular job; now everyone's labor is worth less in that field just because of the law of supply and demand. That may be the real explanation, but I want to set it aside for the purpose of this discussion. I'm interested in a theoretical question.
What interests me is -- as usual -- whether there is a moral question that should override the economic question. It often bothers me that so much seems to be for sale. I like to think that at least some things ought not to be traded in the market. Even in the market, too, I think some relationships are adequately unfair that they should be banned even if both parties to the trade are willing.
Here is a moral principle of fairness (which Aristotle said is an important component of justice, and which Rawls said was the whole of justice). It seems to be out of order with the economic principle, maybe, if the explanation is not merely an increased labor supply.
Does it show that the exchange theory of value is incomplete or inadequate? In Mike's D&D example, I thought the pearl would prove to have an objective value if it could be used for the spell. Does fairness perform something of the same role as magic, but in the real world? Or should we continue to discard other concepts than exchange value, and say that fairness does not apply?
I Suddenly Sense the Appeal
Still not a fan, but this makes more sense than anything I've seen yet.
UPDATE: FiveThirtyEight goes on a "quest" to try to understand Trump voters.
Here's what I think they get right, which I will follow on with what I think they are missing.
I queued up in the general admission line and entered the massive space just as the national anthem was starting. The assembled crowd of about 5,000 was reverently quiet — a massive flag billowed, police officers and firefighters stood at attention, and the sickly gray sky seemed more like swirling marble than the dull harbinger of rain it had been only moments ago. Something stirred deep beneath my layers of reportorial cynicism; I got chills.The emotional experience Trump is capable of creating is why it will be difficult to replace him, even with Cruz who is a more rational choice given their expressed concerns. Cruz is the right choice for these voters, but they don't have the emotional experience with him. It is Trump that makes them feel large, proud, and part of something.
This part of the appeal of Trump rallies is not talked about much.... Along with the fighting, though, something inspirational seems to be happening among the assembled — a sense of collective identity being discovered. In this millionaire cosmopolitan who has married two immigrants, the threatened silent American majority has found its champion.
What I think FiveThirtyEight and others are missing is that this is not something affecting the Republican party only. The author writes that "working-class whites’ racial anger had reconstituted their sense of identity; and their desire for the center to no longer hold meant drastic upheaval in the Grand Old Party and America." If this is about "working class whites" discovering a newly invigorated racial identity, though, that is going to cut a part of the heart out of the Democratic Party, too.
The numbers suggest that, if everything else holds equal, Trump will need 70% of the white male vote to win.
I think he might get it. It would only mean that white men vote more like black men -- that is, as a bloc. The rise of such a bloc ought to have been expected given the Democratic Party's explicit strategy of overcoming Republican advantages with white voters by emphasizing the interests of minority voters while pursuing the mass immigration of new such voters.
Until now, among white voters it has been possible for Democrats to divide and conquer blue collar from white collar, labor from management. That is, until this election, race has mattered most to black voters, but class has mattered most to white voters. It is still somewhat possible to divide out white women from white men by appealing to them qua women. That is, for some white voters, sex matters more than race. The Democrats are hoping to leverage that with Hillary Clinton as their nominee.
Thus, Trump has to pull 70% with white men because we haven't yet reached the point at which our politics are explicitly about whites versus everyone else. We are getting there fast, though. What the Democrats are blind about is that it is their party's electoral strategy that is driving this. The reason the 'white working class' is discovering a racial identity rather than a class identity is that "white" is the box they've been put into by powerful forces affecting their lives.
They aren't creating this identity for themselves. They're discovering the power of accepting membership in it. They're just figuring out what black America has long known: that taking the externally-imposed identity seriously, owning it, and wielding it through bloc voting is terribly powerful.
Neither race- nor class-based democratic systems turn out well. We've had a good run because the system didn't go all one way or all the other: the majority was divided by class while the minorities were divided by race. If we tip over into a system in which race is the main driver of political belonging, we're not going to have a pleasant future. But I don't know how you stop it from one side: and the Republicans aren't the main drivers of race-as-identity in American life. I don't see how they can pull a lever to stop this, not when the levers are mostly owned by the other side.
That Russian Uranium Deal
UPDATE: Apparently it's an older article that just appeared in my "news" feed. Apologies to the Times, who got this one right.
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