Katrina blues

Did any of you notice that a bunch of Katrina-flooded New Orleans plaintiffs won a huge judgment against the Corps of Engineers in federal court in 2009?  I never heard a peep about it.  Anyway, it went up on appeal to the 5th Circuit, where a 3-judge panel initially affirmed the judgment last March.  This month, however, the same 3-judge panel reversed itself, ruling that the "discretionary function exemption" insulated the federal government from all liability, even assuming the Corps's error rose to the level of abuse of discretion.  Apparently the decision turns on whether the Corps's handling of the levee system turned primarily on public policy discretion or objective engineering judgment; if the former, the Federal Tort Claims Act prevents any liability.  It's unclear why the panel decided to reverse itself, an unusual move, but it may have been persuaded by arguments made by the government in seeking a re-hearing from the full 5th Circuit.  Is it possible the effect of the "discretionary function exemption" simply wasn't stressed in earlier arguments?   If so, then whoever wrote the most recent set of pleadings for the Corps deserves a lot of credit for turning around his client's fortunes.

There is also a 1928 Flood Control Act that shields the Corps from the consequences of the failure of flood protection projects, even if caused by negligent and wrongful acts of federal employees. The lower court had found that the Flood Control Act exemption applied only to a limited part of the Katrina flooding, while other flood damages resulted from the operation and maintenance of the "MR-GO" or Mississippi River Gulf Outlet levee system, which concerns navigation rather than flood control. Under the new 5th Circuit ruling, the Corps is insulated from liability regardless of whether its projects concerned flood control or navigation.

I can't say I disagree with the decision, or that I have any real understanding of the various liability exemptions involved.  I will say that the following is a less-than-enthusiastic endorsement of the Corps's judgment:

The corps's actual reasons for the delay (in armoring the banks and levee) are varied and sometimes unknown, but there can be little dispute that the decisions here were susceptible to policy consideration.

I hate it when this happens

Cassandra posted a piece this week on one of my favorite topics, which is the grave danger of letting people vote for bigger government on other people's nickel.  It's always seemed obvious to me that you'll get not only too much government that way, but runaway deficit spending.

So I was a bit taken aback to read her original source, which tries to establish a causal relationship between the percentage of non-taxpayers and the growth of government spending.  Statistically, it seems the case is not easy to make.

It doesn't change my feeling of impending doom.  I can't see how this can be a good direction to push in.  If nothing else, it just chaps me to have to pay for intrusive government for the benefit of people who claim to support it, but not enough to pay for it themselves.

Eric Hobsbawn Passes

The last of the great Marxists has gone to wherever Marxists go when they die.

As the article points out, he also was a great historian. His bias was front and center on the page, so that you could easily filter for it; but his depth of knowledge, and his dogged adherence to the Marxist theory, always made him interesting to read. It is striking to reflect that a man of his obvious intelligence and historical awareness could remain a committed Communist after everything. He was born in the year of the Russian revolution, and grew up during a time when Communism was in its fullest flower as a movement that serious people took seriously: no longer the radical fringe that it had been in Marx's day, nor the small but committed revolutionary internationalists of Lenin's, but a powerful nation engaged in the experiment of trying to move a giant and sprawling nation several centuries' forward in a few short five-year plans.

Even granting the hour of his youth and young manhood, though, it's striking that he remained committed. Past Stalin; past Mao; past the collapse of the USSR, and the revelations of the Stasi. Even if you were to wave all of those off as somehow accidental rather than essential to the Communist process -- and it is not at all clear that you possibly can, for remaking Man and Society whether they like it or not lies right at the core of that process -- it is hard to believe that an intellect could adhere to the clear demonstration of economic inferiority. Marxism was an economic theory first, and Marx was just wrong. The facts bear this out, but if (like a good academic) you aren't satisfied with the facts, the theory bears it out as well.

Feeding the Snake

So we're trying to get Ratbane up to size, in the hope that he can go down and be a good basement dragon. For that reason we've been feeding him baby mice from the pet store. These (I have recently learned) come in several sizes, from "pinkies" who don't yet have hair, to older mice named "fuzzies" and then "jumpers."

The wife got tired of riding all the way to the pet store, so instead of buying just one mouse to feed him live, she bought several and froze them to death. (I would feel bad about freezing baby mice to death, if it weren't for the merciless war I have raged on their kind for the last two years.) Today it came time to feed the snake one of the pre-killed mice, which is more of a problem than it sounds like it ought to be.

Naturally the wife had somewhere to be today, so on her way out the door she asked me to microwave a dead frozen mouse and see if I could get the snake to eat it. "He might not," she said, "because he's never encountered a dead mouse before. But give it a try."

Well, so I did. I warmed up the dead mouse, and dropped him into the tank by the snake. The snake ignored him entirely, and when I came back later the snake was still paying the mouse no mind at all.

"OK," I thought, "clearly I need to get the snake's attention."

So I went and got one of those bamboo skewers you use for making kabobs, and I skewered the mouse through its side. Then, I used the skewer to bring the mouse over to the snake, and slapped him across the face with it.

He didn't seem to like that, so I smacked him with the mouse several more times until he curled up into a little ball. Then I dropped the mouse on him, and went away.

After a while, I got to thinking to myself, "That probably wasn't very mouse-like behavior. Perhaps it would have been more effective if...."

Apparently I'm not very good at simulating a prey animal.

However, when I went to check, the snake was eating the mouse, so I guess it all worked out.

We Get Your Point, Dr. Mead:

Reports that this chimerical Al-Qaeda group sent operatives to work with Boko Haram and enabled it to operate at a higher level of effectiveness should be ignored by all serious people.

The President of Yemen, meanwhile, is thanking the United States for its support for his efforts in his country’s ongoing anti-crime effort against randomly motivated groups of violent criminals in developments that have nothing in common with superficially similar movements anywhere in the world. In what was obviously a slip of the tongue he linked the criminals with “Al-Qaeda” and implied that some sort of international network was engaged in the violence in his country but such crazy talk by a man under a great deal of stress is best ignored. Only rampant paranoia with perhaps a touch of Islamophobia could link events in Yemen to anything warlike or global.

In another completely unrelated and random development, the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia....

Carnies for Romney

I went to the county fair last night. Good crop of beef on display, well-rounded and well-handled. Down toward the midway there was a dunking booth. Now you know how this usually works. Usually if this is a carnie ride, you have a clown who badmouths the crowd as they walk by, so people hate him enough to dunk him. When the local folks are running it, sometimes they get lovely women to agree to suffer sitting on the stool.

Well, this was carnie-run, but there were no clowns to be seen. Instead, you had two guys dressed up in white shirts and black ties, one wearing an Obama mask and the other wearing a Romney mask. I think you got to pick who you threw at, but Romney's shirt looked pretty dry. Every time I went by, the Obama clown was on the stool. Missed shots would be answered with a cry of, "Four more years!"

That's pretty clever. I'm guessing they made good money off that.

Lakota Nation Secedes

For the last hundred years or so, we've engaged in a political fiction in which we treated the Native American Nations as sovereign, and they pretended they believed we really meant it. The Lakota Nation has chosen to call that bluff.

It happens that Aaron Two Elk, whom I mentioned recently, was Oglala Lakota. I'm sure he would be proud today. What we must watch is how the US government responds. In the past it hasn't taken movements of this type seriously; it may (and indeed will likely) simply ignore the declaration. What the Lakota Nation does in response, and what we do in response to that, will be interesting to watch.

Speaking of the Forthcoming Games....

...how about some bagpipes?



Rathkeltair will be there, and so will Marc Gunn, formerly of the Brobdingnagian Bards.



I guess Saturdays are when we do the bawdy songs around here. I usually think better of it by Sunday, but this one might survive.

Hostfest

Our friend Lars Walker is apparently kicking ass and taking names: at least, so I judge from these modest words, taken with his usual aversion to self-promotion.

Another good day for the Vikings yesterday, especially in terms of fighting. I found, to my amazement, that I won most of my fights against much younger, faster opponents. I can only conclude (and Ragnar concurs) that all these years of slogging it out, one on one, with a very good sword fighter have borne fruit in a little actual skill.

I don't expect it to last. The young fighters will learn quickly, and they'll learn my weaknesses faster than anything else. I think I can see it happening even now.

Also this:

We have two young couples in our group this year, one of them newlyweds, and a family with teenage boys. This livens up everything.... The high point of yesterday's fights was when I "killed" the new bridegroom, raised my sword, and shouted, "SHE'S MINE!"

I gather that Hostfest is the Norse-American version of the Stone Mountain Scottish Highland Games, which by the way is coming up later this month. I hope to be there.

Any video, Lars?

It's your fault I'm stabbing you

From Theodore Dalrymple, exasperation with a French imam who purports to believe in freedom of expression but blames a French magazine for the violence of protestors:

Freedom of expression requires not so much the exercise of self-control in what is said as its exercise in reaction to what is said.  I can hardly look at a book these days without taking offense at something that it contains, but if I smash a window in annoyance, the blame is only mine—even if the author knows perfectly well that what he wrote will offend many such as I.

Or, as the Queen Latifah character said in "Living Out Loud":  "My husband used to cheat on me, made me feel like I was the crazy one.   One day he told me it was my fault he was cheating on me. I picked up a knife and told him it was his fault I was stabbing him.  I did jail time, but it was worth it."

No WARNing

The WARN Act is supposed to protect workers from unexpected layoffs, by requiring 60 days' notice of planned facilities closings.  A couple of months back, someone in the Obama administration noticed that the timing of the impending sequestration is such that the WARN Act would require notices to go out just before the election to many, many voters who happen to work for defense contractors -- can't have that!  So the Department of Labor issued advisories that under the, er. special circumstances, the WARN Act didn't apply, because, election.

The defense contractors thought about it for a while and decided that it might not be safe to rely on the Labor directive, since workers would have a right to sue under the plain terms of the Act.  So the OMB has stepped up:  now they're promising to indemnify the employers against not only the legal fees they will incur but also the amount of any judgment rendered against them.  Using taxpayer money.  Is the purpose to delay bad news until after the election?  No, the OMB explains that issuance of an unwelcome WARN notice would

waste States' resources in undertaking employment assistance activities where none are needed and creaty unnecessary anxiety and uncertainty for workers.

Including PTSD, no doubt.  It remains to be seen whether the employers will fall for it.  There are public policy restrictions on indemnifying people against the consequences of deliberate violations of law, and it's a big gamble, anyway, on the perserverence of these hacks in their  present positions of authority to dispense goodies from the public funds for their personal benefit.

I'm most interested to see if the White House will figure out a way to impose penalties on employers who decide to play it safe and send the notices anyway.  Penalties, that is, in addition the withhold of their bribe.

Mentioned in Despatches

As most of you will know, the armed forces of the United Kingdom have continued an old tradition called "mentioned in despatches," here "MiD" for short. From a time when dispatches (to use the American spelling) to headquarters were relatively rare and limited to matters of significance, a soldier's gallantry being included was a high honor. It remains one in the UK today.

You can read more about the latest ones from BLACKFIVE, but as Matt notes this one is special.

MiD: Sergeant Mark Moffitt, who stayed in the line of fire for half an hour to foil an enemy ambush after promising his wife he wouldn’t do anything brave in Afghanistan.

Oops!

The Onion Claims Another Scalp

This time, it's the Fars news agency. The original Onion piece is here.

The best part is at the bottom, where they link to a page capture of the news story with the tagline, "For more on this story: Please visit our Iranian subsidiary organization, Fars."

Foreign Policy

Mark Salter points out that he has been a consistent critic of Mr. Romney's, which should (he appears to hope) raise his credibility as a critic of President Obama's. The offense is significant:

This week the president of the United States and purported leader of the free world breezed into New York City for a quick game of softball catch with the ladies of “The View,” and a drop-by at the United Nations General Assembly to give a speech. Then he was off to Ohio to resume his most pressing engagement, his re-election campaign, having refused to be detained by pesky world leaders whose requests to meet with him were rebuffed en mass....

[Of course m]eetings between the president and various heads of state would not instantly ameliorate any of these problems. And Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who’s been designated as a sort of acting chief executive this week, will, I’m sure, manage the responsibility competently.

It's true. If you voted for Clinton, be happy: right now, she's the President of the United States.

This isn't the first time this has come up. The problem is especially large with Israel, for some reason. The Obama administration has committed a series of public, diplomatic snubs of Israeli leadership, which I can only assume are purposely designed to show "the Muslim world," widely presumed to hate America in part because of Israel, that Israel and the United States aren't all that close after all.

The President refused to meet with the Israeli Prime Minister (previous link), but found time for a television appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. (It turns out that the President's afternoon on the day when Prime Minister Netanyahu wanted to meet with him is entirely free.) The US delegation at the UN remained seated throughout another Iranian speech condemning Israel, in contrast to long practice of leaving during these speeches (as the Israeli delegation did). Then, our top UN diplomat didn't bother to attend the Israeli Prime Minister's speech.

At this point, we've moved beyond explanations that merely point to the Presidential re-election campaign's internals suggesting a tighter race than he wants to admit. This is a clear policy decision by the United States to at least publicly downplay the existence of a US/Israeli alliance.

Now, having gone back to look at the President's remarks to the UN, I see no actual recognition of an alliance (or even "friendship" or something similar) between Israel and the United States. The President does speak against the actual elimination of Israel, and he says that hatred of Israel, the West, or the United States should not govern anyone's policy. He speaks against Iran acquiring nuclear weapons, and seems to leave open the door that the US might take some sort of steps beyond negotiation to resolve the matter. Those steps, and what might provoke them, are unsaid.

Still, the main thing that strikes me is this: when President Obama took office, we had four allies in the Middle East. The most important was Egypt, formally a "Major Non-NATO Ally" with whom we engaged in major military exercises. Now, the President says he doesn't consider Egypt an ally, and the President of Egypt says he doesn't think we're allies either. Not enemies, to be sure, but not allies.

The second was Saudi Arabia. One has head nothing much on that front lately, but they cannot be happy about the steady progress of Iran toward a nuclear weapon.

The third was Iraq, with whom we had negotiated a long-term agreement for engagement and support by what was intended to be a major diplomatic effort, based out of the largest US embassy in the world. There were negotiations in process to provide for their protection, as well as a long-term presence of US military trainers to engage and advise the Iraqi Army. Instead the President allowed the negotiations to die, so that our forces had to withdraw entirely, our diplomats were so unprotected that they had to disavow almost all of their intended mission, and Iraqi political leaders were left alone to feel the pull of Iran and the Sunni powers.

The fourth was Israel. At this point the status of that alliance must be said to be unclear. If US military planners are focused on keeping us clear of Israeli actions and their consequences, though, it's dubious whether there is anything like a true alliance at all.

Libya was a good move by the Administration, one that I expect to bear fruit in the medium term. I don't criticize all of what he has done. But our policy in the Middle East -- I do not even include the disaster in Afghanistan -- has been a characterized by a shocking loss of strength and support.

An Unexpected Concession

One thing we rarely see is the admission by a political partisan that he is wrong, his opponent is right, and his opponent's arguments are really much stronger than originally believed. Witness now one Mark Thompson, supporter of Elizabeth Warren:

Professor Jacobson has uncovered this morning a case in which Elizabeth Warren entered an appearance in a federal appellate court as a representative of a Massachusetts client in a case that appears to have clearly implicated Massachusetts law. Although this is still a federal appellate court, because we’re dealing with a Massachusetts client and issues of Massachusetts law, this looks really, really bad for Professor Warren. With this bombshell, I would no longer view the case against her as weak.

He went on to send a personal email commending Professor Jacobson's research and conceding the point.

That's well done, really by both men.

They found them in someone's trunk

Usually we have to wait until after an election for this kind of convenient discovery.

Ugly?

I don't know.  Maybe I'm in a perverse mood today.  I rather like many of these shoes.

Hallelujah Trail

"Women will remake the world."



Well, maybe. Hey, did you ever see this old movie?



UPDATE: She won.

Is this torture?

Protestors in Texas are handcuffing themselves to construction equipment in order to block the XL Keystone Pipeline.  The pipeline's developers asked police to get harsh with them.  The protestors eventually agreed to remove themselves after they found a combination of pepper spray and tasers unendurably painful.

Is this torture?  I don't call it torture unless they're in custody.  Personally I'd have preferred to get some hydraulic snippers to chop the handcuffs loose, but I don't think people have a right to expect an official paralysis in the face of a forcible sit-in.  I'm trying to imagine if I'd feel differently if, say, the sit-in had been in aid of keeping Elian Gonzalez in the country.

Frank J. on Elections

This is a good piece. My favorite part:

Why would minorities have a hard time getting photo IDs?

Because… um… minority stuff that you just wouldn’t understand, cracker.

Considering all the things one needs a photo ID for, such as writing a check, boarding an airplane, and even purchasing cold medicine, if people care about minorities, shouldn’t they focus on getting them photo IDs rather than blocking the requirement for having a photo ID to vote?

No, because… um…

This is pointless. This type of voter fraud never even happens anyway. It’s science fiction. I mean, someone going to the polls and pretending to be someone else is like some sort of space alien that changes shape — that’s just crazy.

Is free speech overrated?

Prof. Posner is stirring things up this week by suggesting that we Americans take our freedom of speech way too seriously.  It's a parochial attachment, he argues, and insensitive to the feelings of the rest of the world.  "Americans need to learn," he says, "that the rest of the world — and not just Muslims — see no sense in the First Amendment."

And how's that working out for them?  But to return to Posner's supporting argument, it seems to be this:  the First Amendment must not be that important, because until the 1960s it didn't stop the government from cracking down on seditious speech by Communists, etc.  Also, freedom of speech is not a legitimate concern for conservatives, because in the past they've argued that some kinds of obscenity undermine the public order; conservatives took interest only when political correctness got out of control in the 1980s.  When liberals figured out that freedom of speech is just another way of letting people "disparage" the ideas of others, conservatives countered that the "marketplace of ideas" would sort out the good ideas from the bad.  But we all know that some ideas are irretrievably bad, so there's no point in permitting their expression, especially since we also all know from sad experience that they won't go away even when exposed to sunlight.  What's more, America during the Cold War failed to uphold the Constitutional principle of state's rights under pressure from enemies who exploited our civil rights abuses for their own purposes of propaganda, so why should we now uphold the Constitutional principle of free speech in the face of worldwide animosity?   After all,

It is useful if discomfiting to consider that many people around the world may see America’s official indifference to Muslim (or any religious) sensibilities as similar to its indifference to racial discrimination before the civil rights era.

In the technical terms employed by those of us, like myself, who benefited from formal Constitutional training, this is balderdash.  Posner seems unable to think through some critical distinctions.  One is the difference between private curbs on behavior, on the one hand, and official government mandates, on the other.  There are many things I'm quite free to say legally that I have no intention of saying, for my own private reasons, including kindness, respect, or discretion.  The point is that someone has to decide when those reasons are good enough, and I insist that that person be myself, not my local speech-control bureaucrat.

There also is a critical difference between words and action.  Even supposing I felt a need to explain my Constitutional consistency to skeptical residents of other countries, I'd have little difficulty explaining why I might feel more qualms about pre-civil-rights-era racial discrimination than about my country's official indifference to anyone's religious sensibilities.  One involved violence and active injustice that deprived people of employment, education, and sometimes life and limb.  The other involves words and thoughts that hurt someone's feelings.

I'll add one more distinction that is fuzzier than it should be in Posnerland:   the difference between what we decide for ourselves and what the Muslim world abroad may think about it.  If Muslim leaders are willing and able to filter out our messages at their borders, that's up to them.  We don't need to become their agents in that censorship project.

We've had some form of freedom of speech so long in this country that coddled professors can forget the lessons of what it was like before the American War of Independence.  There was a reason our forefathers didn't trust the government to decide who should be locked up for expressing unacceptable ideas.  For one thing, they didn't much like the idea of life under a government that looked and acted very much like an Islamocracy.  Leaders naturally dislike being criticized.  Leaders also have to have some power, or they can't lead.  That's a dangerous combination, just the kind of thing the Constitution is there to keep a lid on.

Intra-Lutheran strife

The incomparable Iowahawk had these people's number six years ago:

Over the past five years, the volatile Midwest has produced violent rage like the knockwurst output at Milwaukee's venerable Usinger's -- sudden, repeated, and in long unbroken strings.  One of the principal catalysts was the rise in Uff Da insurgency, led by the enigmatic Pastor Duane Gunderson, who seek a unified Lutheran caliphate stretching from the Great Plains to Lake Huron, and the banning of non-Big 10/Pac 10 apostates from the Rose Bowl.  Gunderson remains in hiding, but his influence was seen last year in the widely publicized Lutefisk desecration riots that rocked the Heartland amid the pancake breakfast holidays. 

Still, outside of the Dells and a handful of violent outposts near its western Mississippi River border, Wisconsin remained a relatively calm exception to the Midwestern maelstrom surrounding it -- a fact that experts attribute to subtle differences in culture and religion. 

"Unlike the ultra-extreme, radical Lutheran sectarians of Iowa and Minnesota, most ethnic Wisconsinites belong to the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod," said Joseph Killian, a Midwestern Studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta.  "And if you add in three Super Bowl titles, easier access to beer, and walleye fishing, and you're going to have a much calmer and more stable culture." 

All that would change in November with the publication of four cartoons in a Texas office newsletter -- cartoons that today have brought this once happily beer-goggled society to the precipice of all-out culture war.

H/t Instapundit.

Ride the Thunder

Here's my retirement plan, friends and neighbors.

By the way, when he says that he never thinks about the next moment when pushing off, he says this: "The past doesn't exist. The future doesn't exist. There's only now."

That happens to be an exact paraphrase of St. Augustine. One of you and I were speaking of this recently, via email. Augustine is right, as we can attest. The now is what does exist: what was "now" even an instant ago is gone, and does not exist in the same way as now. Yet that creates a problem for us: if the past no longer exists, and the future does not yet exist, what to make of how we live our lives? We depend on time, on extension of time, not just on a present instant.

I am about to repeat a psalm that I know. Before I begin, my attention is extended to the whole; but when I have begun, as much of it as becomes past by my saying it is extended in my memory; and the life of this action of mine is divided between my memory, on account of what I have repeated, and my expectation, on account of what I am about to repeat; yet my consideration is present with me, through which that which was future may be carried over so that it may become past. Which the more it is done and repeated, by so much (expectation being shortened) the memory is enlarged, until the whole expectation be exhausted, when that whole action being ended shall have passed into memory. And what takes place in the entire psalm, takes place also in each individual part of it, and in each individual syllable: this holds in the longer action, of which that psalm is perchance a portion; the same holds in the whole life of man, of which all the actions of man are parts; the same holds in the whole age of the sons of men, of which all the lives of men are parts.

(Confessions of St. Augustine, Book 11 chapter 28)

St. Augustine's conclusion is surprising, even shocking: he asserts that time is a creation of the soul. So why is it the same, more or less, for every soul?

That's the kind of question that deserves an answer. It happens that there is a good one; but rather than giving it to you, I'll ask you to give it to me. I want you to think it through.

The Tomahawk Chop

Before he died in 1999, a man named Aaron Two Elk led a campaign in Atlanta against the Tomahawk Chop, that sort-of chant that originated with sports fans of Florida State. It came to the Atlanta Braves with Deion Sanders, a Florida State alumn, and became infamous in 1991 when the Braves went to (and very nearly won) the World Series after being the worst team in baseball the year before.

Aaron Two Elk was one of the American Indian Movement who participated in the Wounded Knee 1973 uprising. It is an interesting story if you haven't heard it; many of them were Vietnam veterans who had served their country, but found when they returned to the reservation that they were no longer prepared to endure the corruption and abusive police tactics that were endemic at the time. Here is a photo of Mr. Two Elk during the uprising.

I met him while he was leading his anti-Chop protests. He was a very nice person, and very brave: often he would be out there protesting alone while hundreds of baseball fans poured out abuse on him as they passed his protest. Atlanta was not the safest city in America back then, and the city was caught up in the fever of supporting their team. There was no little danger of becoming the object of more than verbal attentions from a mob doubly drunk on stadium beer and the thrill of victory.

He went out there alone anyway, because he was proud of his heritage. While the "Tomahawk Chop" was not on the same scale as the abuses afflicting the reservations, he objected to it as a way in which the broader American society mocked Native American heritage for its own purposes. Whether you agreed with him or not -- even famously-sensitive Jane Fonda could not see the Chop as anything other than harmless fun -- you had to respect his conviction and his courage.

This is all in the news today because Scott Brown supporters were apparently doing the Tomahawk Chop at an Elizabeth Warren rally.



The Blue Mass Group says that Scott Brown has to explain his supporters' tone.

Yet it occurs to me that this might be one place where even Mr. Two Elk might have thought the "Chop" was appropriate. She and it belong together. They are precisely parallel. If you object to one, you have exactly the same reasons to object to the other.

BMG also cites this video, which they attribute to Republican activists. Maybe instead of dismissing it for that reason, they should have listened to what the people in it have to say.

The President's Speech to the United Nations

It was a rather long address, but one that has some well-crafted moments. The fears that it would be an apology by the President of the United States for the free speech of an American citizen were either unfounded, or were addressed in revision once Drudge leaked the rumor.

Most speeches at the UN are pretty empty affairs, and this one lacks teeth just where teeth are most needed -- on the issues of Syria and Iran. Still, it's not weak, just non-specific about exactly when and what shall be done. As Israel has so often asked of late, what are our red lines? "Let me be clear" is not enough if it isn't followed by actual clarity.

Still, overall it wasn't nearly as bad as we were told it would be, and a few parts of the speech are very solid. Let us give credit where credit is due, on the occasion that the man was representing all of us to the world.

UPDATE:

John Bolton is not happy with the speech.

Bolton's remarks aside, most of the reaction has been on one line: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” Well, slander is a known lie about someone's character. Of course you ought not to speak known lies.

If you can defend the distinction between "debate" and "slander," there's no problem. The question is whether America will have the strength to defend that distinction.

Nuts & bolts of democracy

Some of you may have heard that we have an election coming up.  It's possible you've noticed one or two news clips about voter fraud as well.

OK, I know we're kind of political junkies here.  That's why I'm linking this plea from a woman in Illinois who's fighting an uphill battle against voter fraud in one of the most straightforward and uncontroversial ways possible:  by recruiting Republican election judges for 500 precincts in a deep-blue state.

If you're not in the habit of working the polls on election day, you may not realize that there are supposed to be election judges from both parties present at every polling place.  In areas where one party is particularly demoralized, it can be hard to find a judge from the minority party.  We have a constant problem in my precinct, for instance, finding a Democratic judge to serve.  Luckily for the Democrats in my precinct, I wouldn't dream of countenancing any shady behavior at my polls and would deputize armed fellow citizens to nip it in the bud.  Sadly, that is not the case for all precincts in America.  Even where there is no entrenched, deliberate corruption, we live in an imperfect world:  some people need the constant presence of those with opposing political viewpoints in order to avoid drifting into slipshod practices on election day.

All of this is to encourage each of you to consider volunteering as a poll worker on November 6.  If your precinct is traditionally well-staffed, the precinct judge positions may go only to workers with a proven history of volunteering and training as lower-level poll workers.  Don't be surprised, though, if the election judge position goes begging where you live, especially if you're in the minority.  In that case, please look into becoming a precinct judge.  Just check with your party's county chairman.  The position usually pays a little bit, and the training is not difficult.

Speaking of voter fraud/voter suppression, Pennsylvania has been struggling with the issue this season. I read yesterday that someone in that state noticed belatedly that the proposed new voter i.d. law permits nursing homes and universities to issue voter i.d.'s to any resident of their counties, regardless of whether the voter resides at the nursing home or attends the university.  There have been reports that the primary intended issuer, the DMV, was slow or unreasonably nitpicky about minor variations in name.  I'm all for privatizing government functions, of course, in order to ensure better service, so although some Pennsylvania Republicans are squeamish about what they consider an unwise loophole, I don't really share their concerns -- at least not as long as we don't witness over-enthusiastic issuance of voter i.d.'s to people from the citizenship-challenged or differently animated communities.

Good Questions

You probably heard that one of Sec. Clinton's aides got snippy over some questions. We like Sec. Clinton around here, but the questions are pretty solid.

Why didn’t the State Department search the consulate and find AMB Steven’s diary first? What other potential valuable intelligence was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds? Was any classified or top secret material also left? Do you still feel that there was adequate security at the compound, considering it was not only overrun but sensitive personal effects and possibly other intelligence remained out for anyone passing through to pick up? Your statement on CNN sounded pretty defensive–do you think it’s the media’s responsibility to help secure State Department assets overseas after they’ve been attacked?

I'd kind of like to know the answers to those questions, actually. Probably most of us who have handled classified information would like to hear a firm answer here. Is there one?

The (All-Too-Plausible) Story of Tom Sawyer

Once upon a time, one of those firemen who used to make up the rowdy fire-companies of the territory of California went on a bender with a man named Samuel Clemens. Your source for this fairy tale is Smithsonian Magazine.

It's a hard tale, so prepare yourself. Not that Tom Sawyer was easy, mind. The best stories only get harder.

Let Them Eat...

...well, not cake. Let them eat spinach or broccoli or something.

One government official tried to put the blame on the students.

"One thing I think we need to keep in mind as kids say they're still hungry is that many children aren't used to eating fruits and vegetables at home, much less at school. So it's a change in what they are eating. If they are still hungry, it's that they are not eating all the food that's being offered," USDA Deputy Undersecretary Janey Thornton was quoted as saying.

Hey, fruits and vegetables are good for you. Less good for you? Being taught that an American citizen eats what his government tells him, whether that leaves him hungry or not.

Not that the plan doesn't have other advantages.

Despite the fact that the new regulations have increased the cost of a lunch 20 to 25 cents per plate, it’s not pleasing students.

Ingrates. If the government service costs more than it used to, it must be worth more. That's just simple economics.

"Noise"

In a way, that's a very accurate characterization of these remarks.

"Iran has been around for the last seven, 10 thousand years. They (the Israelis) have been occupying those territories for the last 60 to 70 years, with the support and force of the Westerners. They have no roots there in history."

I mean, one couldn't possibly take remarks like that seriously, could one? Oh, by the way, the Holocaust didn't happen, either. Some of you are apparently really bad at history.

It's a shame. There are parts of Iran where the Peripatetic school remains in flower. They are by far not the main influence, and that too is a shame; but they are a living thing there. That's a treasure, one we ought to befriend and conserve; at least, if any among us still know how to recognize how important that school was and is, and again may be, for the West.

Money, Money, Money

More on a question we discussed not too long ago: is money spent on politics just wasted?

My sense is yes.

[S]igns are few that super PACs have had the major impact that both supporters and critics predicted. The flood of spending doesn't appear to have significantly influenced voter opinion in key states in the presidential contest or in top congressional races.

This follows the form of the surveys that search for hidden racism by asking you if you think your neighbors might be subject to racism. The theory is that if you think your neighbors might be, well, maybe you are and you're just afraid to admit it. Your answer to the question about your neighbor establishes something about you; it doesn't actually establish anything about your neighbor.

Here, we have a strong sense from the political class that their neighbors are terribly subject to paid propaganda. I think this establishes something about that class -- that they are hungry to buy influence, and fear their opponents outbidding them.

In terms of 'their neighbors,' though, nothing has been established. My sense is that most Americans ignore the stuff as an irritating distraction. We know what we're going to do, and why, and the last person who's going to change my mind is a paid spokesman.

Wisconsin seems to suggest that the vast flood of money and activism moved the needle not at all. I think that's going to prove to be generally true. Your average American has been subject to the manipulations of the most clever geniuses of advertising since he or she was born. They know what they are looking at, and they are hard to move.

"What if Bush . . . .?

The traditional game of "What If Bush Were in the White House?" is even more entertaining in an election year, per Walter Russell Meade:

If the president were a conservative Republican rather than a liberal Democrat, I have little doubt that much of the legacy press would be focused more on what is wrong with America.  There would be more negative reporting about the economy, more criticism of policy failures and many more withering comparisons between promise and performance.  The contrast between a rising stock market and poor jobs performance that the press now doesn’t think of blaming on President Obama would be reported as demonstrating a systemic bias in favor of the rich and the powerful if George W. Bush were in the White House.  The catastrophic decline in African-American net worth during the last four years would, if we had a Republican president, be presented in the press as illustrating the racial indifference or even the racism of the administration.  As it is, it is just an unfortunate reality, not worth much publicity and telling us nothing about the intentions or competence of the people in charge. 

The current state of the Middle East would be reported as illustrating the complete collapse of American foreign policy—if Bush were in the White House.  The criticism of drone strikes and Guantanamo that is now mostly confined to the far left would be mainstream conventional wisdom, and the current unrest in the Middle East would be depicted as a response to American militarism.  The in and out surge in Afghanistan would be mercilessly exposed as a strategic flop, reflecting the naive incompetence of an inexperienced president out of his depth.  The SEALS rather than the White House would be getting the credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, and there would be more questions about whether killing him and then bragging endlessly and tastelessly about it was a contributing factor to the current unrest.  Political cartoons of Cheney spiking the football would be everywhere.  It’s also likely we would have heard much more about how killing Osama was strategically unimportant as he had become an increasingly symbolic figure and there would have been a lot of detailed and focused analysis of how the foolish concentration on bin Laden led the clueless Bush administration to neglect the rise of new and potentially much more dangerous Islamist groups in places like Mali.  The Libyan war would be widely denounced as an unconstitutional act of neocon militarism, with much more attention paid to the civilian casualties during the war, the chaos that followed, and the destabilizing effects on the neighborhood.  The White House fumbling around the Benghazi murders would be treated like a major scandal and dominate the news for at least a couple of weeks. 

If Bush were in the White House, the Middle East would be a horrible disaster, and it would all be America’s fault.

A Bit Dramatic, What?

Kings of War (the blog of the War Studies Department at Kings College, London) has a post on freedom of speech as viewed through the lens of an infantry officer. It's a very good piece in terms of its citations, and the officer's own experience, but in the end I find I disagree entirely.

I grew up (such that I have done) as a subaltern in an infantry regiment’s Officers’ Mess, where one of the golden rules was to avoid speaking of three particular topics when guests were present: women, politics, and religion. The reason? Because raising these issues—particularly when surrounded by people with whom we were not acquainted—was known to lead to arguments, which, in turn, were known to lead to fist fights. Since the objective of having a Mess was to create an atmosphere of conviviality—a second home, as it were—our forebears decided (after much trial and error, I am sure) that exercising restraint was a wise path to follow. Of course, this rule was not followed perfectly; when it wasn’t, there were times when the reasoning behind the wisdom of the ages was made plain. (The most popular subaltern we had was a fella who knew how to patch holes in plaster walls.)

A useful skill I've made use of myself. So, how does this lesson from within a self-selecting sub-set of British society translate to the problem at large?

Perhaps the most strident manifestation of this belief can be seen in the oration of Patrick Henry, the American legislator, who famously declared, “Give me Liberty, or give me Death!” Rousing stuff, to be sure…but is it a bit, shall we say, dramatic for our own day and age?

Is it?

Rights and freedoms are not ‘God given’ to us on stone tablets; they are human constructions, instruments designed to bring about a particular state of being. We need to figure out what just what kind of state of being we can live with and use our instruments to bring it about. We need to determine the tools, rather than the other way around. We cannot, in trying to free ourselves from the shackles of apprehended oppression, create suicide vests out of our liberties. In order to do so, we must accept that nothing is sacred. We in the West don’t seem to have a problem with viewing the spiritual as profane. We have to start looking at the material and idealogical in the same way.

The question of whether something is sacred is exactly what is in dispute. You may feel free to 'accept' that nothing is, but that is no compromise: your opponent is on the other side of the question.

The same for the idea that rights and freedoms are not "God given." This happens to be a rare point of agreement for American and Islamist political thought. The Declaration of Independence invokes the Creator, who endows men with inalienable rights: and these rights are, then, sacred. The Islamist believes that God crafted a law for men that is perfect and ought to be unchanging, and that this law -- sha'riah -- is the best guarantee of human liberty. After all, no human government can change it, meaning that the freedoms and liberties you have under that form of law are permanent and untouchable.

What is being advised here is a kind of gentleman's agreement that might be pleasant enough, if we were all prepared to be gentlemen about it. Yet even then, I think it would be unwise to abandon the idea of the sacred. For one thing, it's there whether you want it or not. The sacred is -- whatever else you think it is -- that for which you are prepared to sacrifice. Something fills that space, or you would not be a warrior.

A Prayer for Death

Confer the last request of Sir Galahad, who knew the Holy Grail:

Then he held up his hands toward heaven and said: Lord, I thank
thee, for now I see that that hath been my desire many a
day. Now, blessed Lord, would I not longer live, if it
might please thee, Lord.... And therewith [Galahad] kneeled
down to-fore the table and made his prayers, and then suddenly his
soul departed to Jesu Christ, and a great multitude of
angels bare his soul up to heaven, that the two fellows
might well behold it. Also the two fellows saw come from
heaven an hand, but they saw not the body. And then it
came right to the Vessel, and took it and the spear, and so
bare it up to heaven. Sithen was there never man so hardy
to say that he had seen the Sangreal.

It appears that both prayers were answered. Were they right?

The Trial Garden at the University of Georgia

One of the less well-known features of the University grounds is the Horticulture Department's trial garden. It is well worth a visit, if you're ever down in Athens. The State Botanical Garden is more famous, but the trial garden -- though vastly smaller -- contains an astonishing display of experimental flora.  Here are some.

Arches of flowering vines, protected by swarming honey bees.

A deep purple ornamental capsaicin.

An Asian tree more usually seen as bonsai.

More ornamental peppers.

Ranks of experiments, toward the central gazebo.

A mighty native wisteria.

Red cascade.

Apparently a homestead for boring bees -- perhaps a way of distracting them from the house?

Those boxes from "Siemens"?

. . . They weren't really from Siemens.  And we're not sure whom you sent your payments to, either, but we're not showing a credit in your name on our books.  No, we don't have an Agent K on our payroll.

Or maybe Siemens is playing a very deep game with Iran.

Unexpectedly

Sometimes it's good to be reminded that we didn't just recently wake up and find ourselves with a media that's stubbornly deaf and blind to what conservatives do, say, and think.  Try watching this news clip from election night 1980, as pundits struggle to understand how Reagan could have won.  My favorite part:  the sad recognition that idiotic voters must have blamed President Carter for a hostage crisis that he couldn't possibly have helped, followed by the snide dismissal of Henry Kissinger's prediction that Reagan's mere election would solve the hostage crisis by inauguration day.  And when did the hostages come home?  January 20, 1981.

Job creation

Tigerhawk has posted a thoughtful list of policies to spur job growth, with a focus on measures that are simple to implement and steer clear of the most contentious issues dividing the electorate.  One proposal is a "pay-go regulation budget" scheme that would mandate the elimination of an old job-killing piece of red tape for every new one created.  A related policy:  "employment impact statements" as a precondition to any new regulation.

The Equinox

Happy Autumn, boys and girls. Now follows my favorite time of year: the time of fire.

Dangerous Radicals

Living on the edge, dangerous and radical:  that's the traditional family.  I think Dr. Althouse really means that it sounds radical to her. Nor is she the first. Here is what Chesterton had to say about the commitment:

Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing....  For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing. 

What is being proposed is a genuine adventure -- a great and terrible risk, undertaken for no other reason than the romance of it. It is a very high and fine way to live, but perhaps it is only for the brave.

USMC Airpower

The recent attack on Bastion in Afghanistan has delivered the United States its worst airpower defeat since, depending on how you count, either Vietnam or WWII.

"The last time VMA-211 was combat ineffective was in December 1941, when the squadron was wiped out during the 13-day defense of Wake Island against the Japanese."

He spells out some more of the details of the attack:

Eight irreplaceable aircraft (the AV-8B has been out of production since 1999) have been destroyed or put out of action – approximately 7 percent of the total flying USMC Harrier fleet. Worse yet, the aircraft involved were the AV-B+ variant equipped with the APG-65 radar and AAQ-28 Litening II targeting pods – the most capable in the force. Given the current funding situation, it’s likely that the two damaged AV-8Bs will become spare parts “hangar queens” and never fly again. A Harrier squadron commander is dead, along with another Marine. Another nine personnel have been wounded, and the nearby Marines at Camp Freedom are now without effective fixed-wing air support. The USMC’s response to this disaster will be a telling report card on its leadership and organizational agility.

That squadron commander was Lieutenant Colonel Otis Raible, reportedly a hell of a Marine. I've heard a lot of good things about him in backchannels since the attack.

Book of the Duchess

Steyn:

One, called Closer, showed Prince William’s lovely bride, the Duchess of Cambridge, without her bikini top on. The other, the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, showed some bloke who died in the seventh century without his bikini top on. In response, a kosher grocery store was firebombed, injuring four people. Which group was responsible? Yes, frenzied Anglicans defending the honor of the wife of the future supreme governor of the Church of England rampaged through Jewish grocery stores yelling, “Behead the enemies of the House of Windsor!

That's how you get things done.

Hank Aaron

No offense to Governor Walker, but I'd rather have a beer with Hank Aaron, too. Of course, he was kind of important in Georgia when I was a boy.

Good Point

"But how is the claim that America "respects all faiths" supposed to appease people who burn churches?"

James Taranto gets one right.

Four Years Late

The Washington Examiner has put together a piece that explains some parts of President Obama's history that have gotten relatively little play in the press. There were some honorable exceptions back in 2008, but few major media outlets were interested in the story.

The Examiner piece is a good read, but if you're pressed for time, Cassandra has produced an excerpt and commentary on key bits.

Yeah, But Not The Right Campaign...

[NATO] has all but ended combined operations with Afghan army and police forces at the tactical level, requiring general officer approval for exceptions....

Three years after doubling down on an unachievable mission, trust between NATO and Afghan forces is at an all-time low. Already this year, there have been thirty-six of these insider attacks, killing fifty-one NATO troops, most of them Americans.

Even before the latest policy announcement, Joint Chiefs chairman Martin Dempsey acknowledged the severity of the problem, declaring, "You can't whitewash it. We can't convince ourselves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Something has to change" and admitting that "It is a very serious threat to the campaign."

What that means is that the commander of a Brigade Combat Team -- who is an O-6, a Bird Colonel -- cannot approve a combined operation for any unit under his command.

Let me put that another way. It's not just that the platoon leader can't approve it. He's a lieutenant. But his boss, the company commander, is a captain who probably has a tour as a platoon leader behind him. He can't approve it either.

But his boss, the battalion commander, is a Lieutenant Colonel. He was probably a company commander two tours ago, but then he pulled at least one tour as a staff officer either at the battalion or the brigade level. If he's the commander now, he was probably the operations officer for a battalion. As the ops officer, he supervised and was personally responsible for the writing of all the written orders that moved troops around the battlefield. That's a serious job. Whoever holds that job -- the battalion ops officer, Major Whoever -- he still can't write an order approving such a mission.

But a guy who was Major Whoever last tour is now is the battalion commander. He was good enough at that job to get picked up for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel with appointment to a command spot. At this level things are getting pretty competitive. He's somebody who was good as a company commander, outstanding as a major, and has now out-competed a bunch of his fellow LTCs -- the ones who lost out are now pulling operations officer gigs at the brigade, or similarly employed elsewhere. This guy was good enough to get command. He can't approve the mission either.

And his boss can't approve the mission. He's a full-bird colonel, who perhaps was a battalion commander on his last tour. Not only that, he was one of the best battalion commanders: one of a few battalion commanders who got picked for further advancement in line combat command. Now he's back, commanding a brigade in the same country where his unit has probably deployed multiple times in a ten year war. He outranks all but a few hundred guys in the entire army. Most of those guys are not in Afghanistan, making him perhaps the highest ranking officer in a hundred miles. He still can't approve any platoon or company in his area of operations taking a walk outside the wire with an Afghan unit.

He has to go to Division for permission. That's the first level at which you'll find an actual General Officer. Probably he has to talk to the Deputy Commanding General, Maneuver, (DCG-M) for whichever division has command of his area. Maybe he has to bring it up with the actual Division Commander, a two-star general.

That guy is going to approve whatever his brigade commander asks him to approve. But only so many missions can get pushed up through this many levels of abstraction. That's significant friction, as Clausewitz would say.

You can't fight a war this way, but apparently the administration has no intention of fighting one. They just don't want to finish losing it until after the election. Our soldiers and Marines, airmen and a few bold sailors are buying them that time. We ought to know for just what they are being asked to barter their blood.

Barbecue

I can't help but notice that all these places are in big cities. I was always taught that the best barbecue was sought on the road.

Try this one, for example, if you're ever up in northwest Georgia. If you're traveling north from Atlanta, swing off I-75 on I-575, then take GA 372 until you see the sign for the little town of Ballground. There's a little back road off 372 that will take you to Two Brother's Barbecue, home of great ribs and tangy sauce, and good ice cream too.

Any good ones that you folks have found on the back roads?

UPDATE: Another one you might try is Backwoods Barbecue, up Long Branch road near Dahlonega. If you're coming from Atlanta, take Georgia 400 to the end and keep going straight when the superhighway ceases, and the two-lane blacktop begins. It's only open on the weekend, though.

Oh, I Get It! It's a Full-Employment Act!

IRS estimates approved by OMB say that we'll need 80 million man-hours a year to comply with Obamacare regulations -- as they stand. Naturally, new ones are coming out all the time.

All this time we've been criticizing the President for not having a plan to deal with unemployment. It turns out he's been shrugging off that issue to go to fundraisers because he's already taken care of it. This is going to create 2 million new jobs by itself: two-million full-time bureaucrats doing nothing but processing paperwork related to Obamacare.

Wait, you ask; how will the economy absorb the need to pay an additional two million full-time salaries, which add absolutely nothing to the actual productivity of said economy? Well, you know, shut up.

UPDATE: Actually, even more jobs are in the offing. Now that I think about it, those two million jobs are just what is necessary for compliance. But we'll also need even more new regulators whose job it is to ensure that the compliance we are paying for actually took place. So we'll need oversight, investigative officers, managerial positions... a whole new wing at every major regulatory agency.

No doubt the economy will be able to support all these new bureaucrats without any difficulty whatsoever. After all, it would be nice if it could.

UPDATE 2: Edward J. in the comments points out that I divided by hours/week instead of hours/year. Actually, it's only 40,000 new bureaucrats -- that won't make any serious damage to the unemployment rate. On the plus side, while it still doesn't add anything to the productivity of the nation's economy, it's a far smaller drag on it. So there's that, at least.

Good Advice

Every candidate — hell, everybody — simply must assume henceforth that their every word and email, thanks to technology and the Bush administration’s overwrought defensive reaction to 9/11, is being monitored, taped and weaponized, if need be.

As far as "everybody" goes, maybe; but if the NSA is really recording everything you say, they're being remarkably circumspect about it. Elements within the CIA seemed to love to play politics with leaks to the press during the Bush administration, and occasionally even in this administration (for the agency's own benefit, rather than against the President). The NSA may have access to tons of our secrets, but if so they seem to be responsible stewards. That in a way is refreshing, an oasis of encouraging professionalism just where it is most needed.

Still, whether you wanted to fight on this hill or not, here you are and there's a fight. Fortuna audaces iuvat!

Dentistry magic

My neighbor has been making treks to a teaching hospital in San Antonio, where he is receiving stellar care at excellent rates.  He's having a whole series of dental implants -- the sort of treatment that would have been unthinkable a few decades ago, when the automatic course would have been to extract his teeth and replace them with dentures.

My wealthiest relative made a fortune in the 1960s with a newfangled process for casting and producing dentures very quickly.  Apparently the traditional process had required a much longer and more uncomfortable procedure for the patient as well as an extended delay in manufacture.

Some months back, I believe I may have mentioned an article about an experimental treatment being developed in Japan that offered hope for treating infected roots that up to now would have required a root canal.  Today's news brings word of a new Japanese "tooth patch" made of a very thin, flexible layer of the primary ingredient in natural tooth enamel.  The material is draped onto a tooth and fixed in place with lasers.  Early versions are transparent and invisible, but work is underway to make white, opaque versions for cosmetic purposes:  capping without grinding.  The tooth patches should help dentists eliminate tooth sensitivity resulting from worn-enamel and exposed dentin.

Pain-free chewing into old age is a very recent development in human history and one of the crowning glories of civilization.

Rethinking the First

It turns out that there is a freedom-of-religion angle to the publication of topless photos of the Duchess of Cambridge.

Chi editor Alfonso Signorini told Sky News that he did nothing illegal, according to The Guardian.

"I published them with a conviction that they are pictures of a modern contemporary duchess," he told Sky News, which said that off-camera Signorini had described her as "resembling a Greek goddess".

I suppose if one took this as a way of honoring a fertility goddess...

...but no. She is not a goddess, even if she might resemble one. She is a lady, and a good and true lady to her husband by all accounts. The temptation is understandable, but that is just why we have the prayer that contains the line, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."

It's an odd thing to say that something like blasphemy against a woman can lead me to places that actual blasphemy against God cannot, but I find it is the case. Perhaps I stand convinced that "The Lord is a man of war," and therefore that he needs no defense. The Duchess is far richer and more powerful than I am or hope to be, but she is not all powerful; and a man ought to defend the right, as well as he can.

Perhaps we have been wrong about this after all. There may be limits to speech that we ought to respect, and enforce. Having made that admission, perhaps we ought to rethink the whole matter, and be sure how far we are certain of our ground.

How Big is the Current Fiscal Problem?

Five senior fellows at Stanford University's Hoover Institute answer the question: the problem is on the verge of becoming impossible.

The problems are close to being unmanageable now. If we stay on the current path, they will wind up being completely unmanageable, culminating in an unwelcome explosion and crisis.

The fixes are blindingly obvious. Economic theory, empirical studies and historical experience teach that the solutions are the lowest possible tax rates on the broadest base, sufficient to fund the necessary functions of government on balance over the business cycle; sound monetary policy; trade liberalization; spending control and entitlement reform; and regulatory, litigation and education reform. The need is clear. Why wait for disaster? The future is now.

By the way, did you know that we are currently giving several billion dollars a year to America's major banks? Not lending, giving.

Maurice Keen

I learned today that the great Maurice Keen passed on this last week, his death overshadowed by the other news of 11 September.

His most famous work, Chivalry, remains the best general history to serve as an introduction to the topic. Nearly thirty years' work by historians and scholars of medieval literature has added a great deal to our understanding of the topic, but I am not aware of anyone who has brought the advances together into a form so solid, enlightening and useful. Whoever does is likely to stand heavily in his debt, as even now there is much in his work that cannot be improved upon.

Here is an appropriate poem from a recently-reposted lecture on the meaning and use of Viking poetry.

You must climb up on to the keel,
cold is the sea-spray’s feel;
let not your courage bend:
here your life must end.
Old man, keep your upper lip firm
though your head be bowed by the storm.
You have had girls’ love in the past;
death comes to all at last.

So, alas, it does.

Requiescat in pace.

Nerds

From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

Thinking ahead

Sage advice from Big Hollywood:

Now that the White House and State Department have made clear that they believe movies compel terrorists to terrorize, it's time for them to get ahead of this problem. And one thing the White House can do immediately is to pressure Sony to stop the release of director Kathryn Bigelow's "Zero Dark Thirty," which celebrates the killing of Osama bin Laden. 

I'm only saying this because, you know, the White House and the media told me movies inflame and cause terrorism. 

Think about it:  if the poorly produced and laughably bad trailer for "The Innocence of Muslims" results in chaos, murder, and the burning of foreign outposts all throughout the Middle East, how much rioting and mayhem is a big-budgeted, slickly produced, Oscar-bait blockbuster celebrating the death of the leader of al-Qaeda going to cause?

Maybe, just to be safe, we'd better not re-elect this guy.

H/t Ed Driscoll.

Another guy unclear on the concept

From Belmont Club:

It is beginning to dawn on [President Obama] that revolutions are not a dinner party; that maybe sweeping statements read from a teleprompter can never substitute for a substantial plan. He still thinks that al-Qaeda wants the same sort of freedom America wants. Maybe he misunderstands one or the other. Very possibly he misunderstands both.

Unclear on the concept

I'm not sure these guys have really thought through their business plan.  The Atlantic reports that falling Hooters revenues are inspiring management to consider how to take advantage of the growing power of the female pocketbook.  The theory is that even the male customers might enjoy an atmosphere a bit less like a stag party, and that their wives and dates would require a certain subtle alteration in the vibe just to set foot in the door.  What could we do?  I know!  Add more salads to the menu.  Another idea in the works (I'm not making this part up, either):  add some premium sports channels to the TVs, because research shows that 42% of the NFL audience is women.

And pink napkins.  Chicks dig pink.  (OK, that part I did make up.)

H/t HotAir.

More TEOTWAWKI

I enjoy a daily feed from this site, which often has practical ideas for off-the-grid home improvement and is fairly apolitical.

When the ideas veer from practical into silly, they're at least interesting.

The micro-solar guys I wrote about last month easily made their target on Kickstarter, by the way.  They were aiming for $50K in 30 days and hit $75K.

An Economic Plan for the Second Term

There are versions of this song with far more ribald verses, for those of you interested in such things.

Don't look for work at the Sudanese embassy, though. We're out of that business, now.

Against Blasphemy

Dr. Mead has a good point.

The Islamic value — and it a worthy one on its own terms and would certainly have been understandable to our western predecessors who punished blasphemy very severely — of prohibiting insults to the Prophet of Islam clashes directly with the modern western value of free expression. To the western eye (and it’s a perspective I share), a murderous riot in the name of a religion is a worse sin and deeper, uglier form of blasphemy than any film could ever hope to be. To kill someone created in the image of God because you don’t like the way God or one of his servants has been depicted in an artistic performance strikes westerners as an obscene perversion of religion — something that only a hate-filled fanatic or an ignorant fool could do.

In general I have little enough tolerance for that sort of person who wants to offend for the pure joy of showing how smart they think they are. It's hard not to sympathize with the Muslim over the atheist who decided it would be clever to portray "Zombie Muhammad," for example. These guys are jerks, and I have no desire to end up on their side.

This Coptic Christian fellow seems better placed, because he has a genuine grievance: the Copts have suffered badly (as, sadly, have Iraqi Christians in the wake of our invasion there). The Coptic position isn't just looking for trouble for the pure joy of hunting up trouble: they have been badly handled over the last few years, and especially since the fall of the Egypt we long knew. Yet all the same, he set out to make people angry, to blaspheme as hard as he could.

We're in a bad position: supporters of democracy, but holding some 'basic truths' about the necessary conditions for democracy that few in the region believe exist. The Establishment clause is ours, not theirs; although, as it appears, we may be on the verge of making an exception to it parallel to the one they want. Islam alone may be commanding a special place as worthy of state protection, even here.

'Why Barack Obama Should Resign'

Professor Glenn Reynolds is not joking around anymore. As a tenured law professor, his accusation that the President has betrayed his oath and is unfit for office bears considerable weight.

By sending — literally — brownshirted enforcers to engage in — literally — a midnight knock at the door of a man for the non-crime of embarrassing the President of the United States and his administration, President Obama violated that oath. You can try to pretty this up (It’s just about possible probation violations! Sure.), or make excuses or draw distinctions, but that’s what’s happened. It is a betrayal of his duties as President, and a disgrace.

Nor is he alone. Professor Althouse:

Gaze on that picture and see our government in a sad, shameful display, staged — presumably — to cajole the enemies of free speech into blaming a private individual instead of our country — our country, the caretaker of the freedom that allowed him to speak.

If the President were behind such an effort -- to send a photograph around the world that makes it look like we arrested the blasphemer -- then he really should resign. That is indeed a betrayal of his most basic duty.

I'm not sure there's any evidence that the President was involved. This may have been the work of local bosses who felt they were doing him a favor. They do not take oaths to uphold the Constitution, and so may avoid the blame that would befall him.

That said, what ought the President to do? On the one hand, there may be some reasonable suspicion that this fellow violated the terms of his probation. On that same hand, this is in no way a wonderful guy who symbolizes everything good about America. To judge by what we've seen of this film, and his prior conviction for fraud, he's kind of a jerk with whom we have no special reason to wish to be associated.

On the other, however, we are where we are. His movie has become the touchstone for the issue of whether America will give up a core freedom, and begin to restrict our liberty to speak in favor of avoiding blasphemy toward Islam.

Actually, it goes further than that. Since we certainly won't raise a general anti-blasphemy standard -- blasphemy against the Christian religion, for example, will continue to be a staple of the culture -- we are looking at something like a violation of the Establishment clause. Islam would be raised to the position of the only religion the United States will not allow to be blasphemed by her citizens. Islam would then be, in a real sense, the official religion of the United States: the one that we were obliged to respect.

That's a tough spot for the President. He needs to come down hard on the side of this filmmaker, in spite of the bad qualities of the man and in spite of the pain of riots around the globe. He has to do this even though the filmmaker isn't really personally deserving, and the 'work of art' being defended is barely worthy of the name at all.

Not that he will; but you can see why doing the right thing, here, would be very unappealing.

In Which We Learn that President Putin Really Is Brave

We've all seen the galleries of Putin photography. The man is a master of the art -- or else he employs one.

But until today, we didn't realize how much actual courage he had.

A lot of Russians had been skeptical about President Putin's highly publicized displays of environmental daring. They thought the tiger looked a little glassy-eyed, and suggested he might have been trucked in from a zoo.

"But I thought up these tigers myself," Mr. Putin said. "Twenty other countries where tigers live also started taking care of them. ... The leopards were also my idea. Yes, I know they were caught before but the most important thing is to draw public attention to the problem."

The president also confirmed that a stunt last year, in which he appeared to dive to the bottom of the Black Sea and discover ancient Greek artifacts, had been staged.

"Well of course they were planted!" he said. "Why did I dive? Not to show my gills off, but to make sure people learn history. Of course it was a set up."

Now that's courage. "Lightning threat? Nonsense. We just couldn't fill the space."