Running toward the gunfire

Mitt Romney tells a story about a Navy SEAL he met by accident a couple of year ago when he got mixed up about the address of a neighborhood party:

Then there is [Glen] Doherty, the former Navy SEAL Romney met at a party he wasn't supposed to attend. 

Both were from Massachusetts.  Both enjoyed skiing.  And Doherty, who was 42 at the time of his death [in Benghazi last month], talked about his work in the Middle East for a private security company after he finished his tour of duty as a Navy SEAL. 

"You can imagine how I felt when I found out that he was one of the two former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi on Sept. 11," Romney said in Iowa, pausing to stay composed.  "It touched me obviously as I recognized this young man that I thought was so impressive had lost his life in his service of his fellow men and women." 

Romney said he learned that Doherty was in another building across town when he and his colleagues found out the consulate was under attack. 

"They went there. They didn't hunker down where they were in safety.  They rushed there to go help," Romney said.  "This is the American way.  We go where there's trouble.  We go where we're needed.  And right now we are needed. Right now the American people need us."

Provocative video causes political disaster

From People's Cube:  sometimes public order is more important than letting a television broadcast get people all riled up.

Update: link fixed.

Unclear on the market concept

Don't Californians ever get tired of being blindsided by market effects that everyone else can see coming a mile away?  I spent almost a decade of my life working on bankruptcies caused by the meltdown of the ridiculous California attempt to build a pretend-market for electricity in the late 1990s. Hey, I wonder what will happen if we refuse to produce any electricity locally, become dependent on neighboring states, squeeze down our interstate supply lines, and then screw with the market so that no one can get clear short-term price signals, while preventing our three major electrical utilities from hedging with long-term contracts?  Who would have dreamed that the whole thing would blow up in our faces?

Almost 15 years later, California's rulers (and voters) still fondly imagine that they can have stable, comprehensible gas-pump prices while constantly jacking around with special-snowflake gas recipes that prevent any reasonable emergency backup supplies from kicking in when there's even a minor emergency at those few refineries that are allowed to stay in business.  Now we have people complaining that, yes, of course there was a market perturbation, but it couldn't possibly have caused that kind of spike!  It must be evil traders manipulating the market.  Collusion!  Gouging!  Greed!

The market's being manipulated, all right, but it ain't traders doing it.  The law of supply and demand works even when it's politically inconvenient.  Now watch them "fix" the problem by freezing prices.  That way you can get cheap gas -- there just won't be any of it.  Thanks, wise, beneficent rulers!

Trust

Chuck Todd is upset that Americans don't trust their government any more.

It's not a good thing for society when its citizens become hardened in cynicism and susceptible to every conspiracy theory that comes down the pike.  But Mr. Todd misidentifies the root of the problem.  The problem isn't that citizens should put their rose-colored glasses back on and rally around the powers that be.  The problem is him:

When Chuck Todd laments the corrosion of “trust in government,” what he is really lamenting is that the American people have caught on to the way the game is played and the public now realizes just how complicit the media is.

Wanna fix that, Mr. Todd?  You're a member of the media.  Try doing your job honestly for a change, see if that helps.   Not only might you get a more honest government out of it, but people might quit laughing at your profession.

When ya lose Big Bird . . . .

Coming on the heels of a betrayal by Bill Maher, this has got to sting.

Why Our Enemies in Afghanistan are Evil Men

Cowards, too. They are so afraid of the words of a girl that they have to kill her, lest others speak.

Yet this valley is a stronghold for them. We controlled it once, and have already withdrawn from it because the population prefers them to the central government enough to let them -- even to help them -- command. That speaks to the poverty of our allies, such as they are, as well as the depth of the ethnic division.

We may hope that these particular men might yet have the opportunity to meet with an appropriate answer. In the end, though, this is the world we are leaving behind.

Nobel

Because Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously, they sometimes miss an extraordinary achievement that won't bear fruit until later, particularly if the discoverer dies young.  Rosalind Franklin, for instance, might have shared the 1962 prize that went to Watson and Crick for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA, but she died of cancer at age 37 in 1958.

Albert Einstein received his Nobel Prize not for the theory of relativity (special 1905, general 1911) or the mass-energy equivalence (1905) but for his 1905 work on the photo-electric effect.  I was not aware of the ugly political machinations behind this delayed and arguably misdirected award.  By the time the Nobel committee worked out its resentment of Einstein's Jewish heritage and pacifist tendencies, not to mention the controversy over whether the 1919 Eddington experiment had truly confirmed his work, Einstein had suffered the fate of Achilles:  the honor had been robbed of its value by the arbitrary partisanship of its awarders.

He that fights fares no better than he that does not; coward and hero are held in equal honour, and death deals like measure to him who works and him who is idle.

Einstein didn't return from his trip to the Far East to attend the 1922 ceremony in Stockholm.  In 1933, he renounced his German citizenship and moved to the U.S., where in 1939 he was instrumental in persuading President Roosevelt to make this country the world's first nuclear power.

Nobel Prizes are being awarded this week, so far without controversy.  The medicine award went to two stem cell researchers, one British and one Japanese, whose work involved not embryonic stem cells but the reprogramming of adult cells into induced pluripotent stem cells.  The physics award went to two men, one from Colorado and the other from Paris, whose work with observing quantum particles may lead to advances in supercomputers.

Romney on foreign policy

From WaPo:

I believe that if America does not lead, others will—others who do not share our interests and our values—and the world will grow darker, for our friends and for us.

A few more specific proposals, not that any foreign policy speech is ever very specific:

Restore cuts to military spending; specifically, build 15 ships per year, including three submarines.

"I will implement effective missile defenses to protect against threats.  And on this, there will be no flexibility with Vladimir Putin.  And I will call on our NATO allies to keep the greatest military alliance in history strong by honoring their commitment to each devote 2 percent of their GDP to security spending. Today, only 3 of the 28 NATO nations meet this benchmark."

Organize all assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with responsibility and accountability to prioritize efforts and produce results, by stipulating conditions to aid.

Reverse the President's four-year failure to sign any new free trade agreements.

Support the many Syrians who would oppose Iran.

More support for Israel.

Other than that, though, what's wrong with Venezuela?

From the WaPo:

According to a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists, even media not directly controlled by the government have been reluctant to report critically on Mr. Chavez.  Many voters, too, are intimidated by high-tech polling machines that read their fingerprints; polls show that they suspect their votes will not be secret.  Those not motivated by fright might be lured by greed:  The government has amassed a list of 3 million people it has promised new homes. There are about 12 million likely voters. 

That Mr. Chavez is in danger of losing in spite of all this is testimony to the havoc he has wreaked in what was once Latin America’s richest country.  At more than 20 percent, inflation is the highest in the region and is accompanied by chronic shortages of food, basic consumer goods and power.  The country’s infrastructure is crumbling:  Within the last two months an explosion at a state oil refinery killed 50 people, and a major highway bridge collapsed.  Perhaps worst of all for average citizens, violent crime has become epidemic under Mr. Chavez.  The murder rate, which has more than tripled, is one of the five highest in the world.  Drug traffickers have made Venezuela a hub for shipments to the United States and Europe with the help of senior government officials, including the current defense minister.

Chavez won his re-election campaign.  Here's a giddy socialist take on the news:

The accomplishments of the Chavez regime over the past 13 years are undeniable.  When he entered office, Chavez took command of an economy that had been ravaged by IMF structural adjustment plans that had devastated most of the welfare subsidies and social guarantees that had been built up by the progressive nationalist regimes of the 1970s.  . . .  [S]ince Chavez was elected President in 1999, unemployment has been cut in half – declining from 14% to 7%.  Increased access to medical care, particularly through community clinics staffed by Cuban physicians, has led to a decline in infant mortality from 20 deaths per 1,000 live births to 13 deaths per 1,000.   Per capita GDP has increased from $4,000 in 1999 to $10,000 today.  And extreme poverty has declined from 23% of the population when Chavez entered office in 1999 to 8.5% today. . . . The election of right wing opposition candidate Henrique Capriles would have meant an immediate end to this process of social transformation. . . .

I guess we'll see.  Chavez is facing another contest that I doubt he'll win.  Whatever path Venezuela takes will have to be without him, one way or another.

A Pithy Commentary on the History of...shall we call it Canaan?

may be found here. Abstracting it to every other part of the human-occupied earth is left as an exercise for the reader. h/t Gene Expression.

Things That Never Cease to Amaze

American society is very strange about its food:

Speaking of eggs, balut is a soft-boiled duck egg, where the embryo is almost fully formed--feathers, bones, and all. The egg is cracked open, the soupy liquid drunk, and the fetus dug out to eat. It's popular in the Philippines, Laos, and other Southeast Asian countries.

What's being done: Thanks to domestic foodie demand, this "snack" is available in the U.S. too. Dekalb Market in Brooklyn hosted its first ever balut-eating contest this summer--and the winner downed 18 embryos in 5 minutes.

What to eat instead: Regular eggs (organic, cage-free, preferably my-farmer-sold-them-to-me eggs, that is) will give you a protein fix without the feathered fetus.

Why should this be a problem? Don't we know from our political debate that there is absolutely no distinction between an egg at day one of fertilization, and an egg about to hatch?

Besides, you'd eat the adult duck, and you'd eat the egg in an earlier state. Why so queasy about eating the almost-hatched fetus? What makes it the one phase that's worthy of protection -- or that makes it the one phase that it is revolting to kill and eat?

Fun with balls

As a way to move balls around to no evident purpose, this struck me as a lot more entertaining than football.

Hey, Shut Up!

This was at Sam Houston State University. I'll bet old Sam would have some choice words to say about that.

We Lost, You Must Have Cheated

One hears this line from little boys who don't like to lose, but it's a little surprising to hear it in the context of a Presidential debate. Still, GWB was also accused of "cheating," so I suppose it's always the default assumption when a conservative whips up on a liberal in a battle of ideas. (After all, we're supposed to be disarmed.)

What strikes me about the charge, though, is that it is flatly incompatible with the other excuse for the Obama loss: that Mitt Romney lied, lied, lied with every thing he said. You don't need to smuggle in a day planner full of facts if you're just going to make stuff up. The only purpose a "cheat sheet" would serve is making sure that you accurately remembered the facts you wanted to cite, so you wouldn't give your opponent an easy out by misquoting something you had mis-remembered.

So which was it? Did he cheat, or did he lie?

America from the Road

Ed Driscoll wants to write something punishing about the 'death of middlebrow culture,' comparing the fall from Lawrence of Arabia to Easy Rider. It's true that the two films don't really compare. Lawrence is a masterpiece, something we often watched in Iraq and when preparing for Iraq -- although Lawrence was leading an insurgency, not a counterinsurgency. Still, in the high days of the Surge, we were almost doing the same thing: leading a counterinsurgency that was really an insurgency, turning the Sunni tribes against al Qaeda and its fellow travelers, because it was their pleasure.





Easy Rider is another kind of story. It has nothing to do with glory. It does have something to do with America, though. John Wayne spoke of America, and why he loved her. His reasons were simple. They had to do with what America was.



It happens that the full version of Easy Rider happens to be available online right now. You'll find a lot of harmony between what John Wayne said, and what you see in the movie. It is about Monument Valley, and the sun shining through the trees along a desert highway, about New Orleans at Mardi Gras and the good life, as it is lived in a little place, where a man draws his living from the ground.



There's something more to be said for this movie than has been said for it. It is true that it is not Lawrence of Arabia, but it never intended to be. It explores the poison of drugs, which is a topic new to the era. But there is still something about the appreciation of the place, of America as it is a place to be ridden through and enjoyed and seen. It's the place that is worth loving, worth defending, worth sacrifice.

Maybe, even after that, the hippies in the movie wouldn't have fought for it. In that way they are wrong just where Lawrence and Wayne were right.

An Outstanding Metaphor

“You may want to move on to another topic,” Obama implored Lehrer, a bit like a motorcycle thief begging a cop to take him into custody rather than let him stay with the surly biker gang that caught him.

No, no. Leave him here. We'd like a few more words.

Strandhögg

You've read the written report, but here's the video of Lars Walker capturing himself a young bride in plain combat:

Funny, That's Not How I Remember It...

Apparently a teacher up in Philly demanded a Romney/Ryan shirt be removed from the body of a girl attending her class, on the grounds that it was like wearing a KKK shirt.

We actually had the Klan show up on the county courthouse square from time to time when I was a boy, so I can see how you'd hate to be reminded of them. Still, as I recall it, the county was a Democratic monolith in those days. Don't remember them being Mormons or Catholics, either.

UPDATE: On the other hand, there's this:

@ZekeJMiller
Romney motorcade just passed a hill flying a large confederate flag in rural SW VA

Clearly, that's demonstrative. I mean, any decent human being would have stopped, turned the motorcade around, and driven however far out of the way was necessary to avoid passing a hill with a Confederate flag on it. (H/t: Instapundit.)

"My name is Khamenei, and I'm building a nuclear weapon. . . ."

He's signing on to a 9-step program to treat his addiction.   The problem?   Steps one through eight consist of the West's reversing the economic sanctions that have led to a currency crisis and riots in Teheran.   Step nine is "a 'suspension' of the medium-enriched uranium production at the deep underground site called Fordow."

We should jump on that deal.

Presidential empathy

From the National Review, an excerpt from Mitt Romney's book "No Apology":

During my campaign for governor, I decided to spend a day every few weeks doing the jobs of other people in Massachusetts.  Among other jobs, I cooked sausages at Fenway Park, worked on an asphalt paving crew, stacked bales of hay on a farm, volunteered in an emergency room, served food at a nursing home, and worked as a child-care assistant.  I’m often asked which was the hardest job – it’s child care, by a mile. 

One day I gathered trash as a garbage collector.  I stood on that little platform at the back of the truck, holding on as the driver navigated his way through the narrow streets of Boston.  As we pulled up to traffic lights, I noticed that the shoppers and businesspeople who were standing only a few feet from me didn’t even see me.  It was as if I was invisible.  Perhaps it was because a lot of us don’t think garbage men are worthy of notice; I disagree – anyone who works that hard deserves our respect.  – I wasn’t a particularly good garbage collector:  at one point, after filling the trough at the back of the truck, I pulled the wrong hydraulic lever.  Instead of pushing the load into the truck, I dumped it onto the street.  Maybe the suits didn’t notice me, but the guys at the construction site sure did:  “Nice job, Mitt,” they called.  “Why don’t you find an easier job?”  And then they good-naturedly came down and helped me pick up my mess.

"Dreams of My Father" it's not.  Was Romney just slumming for effect, after living a silver-spoon existence?   There's no doubt his wealthy father helped him get a start in life.  On the other hand, by the time his father died, Romney already had become quite successful himself, so he donated his inheritance to BYU.

Quit giving them ideas

Admiring a Paris bike-sharing program that positively encourages people to ride around without a trace of helmet protection, on the theory that more lives will be endangered by sedentary obesity than by head trauma, New York Times correspondent Elisabeth Rosenthal quotes/muses:

[I]f we wear helmets for cycling, maybe we should wear helmets when we climb ladders or get into a bath, because there are lots more injuries during those activities.”  The European Cyclists’ Federation says that bicyclists in its domain have the same risk of serious injury as pedestrians per mile traveled.

Or we could adopt the California approach:

In the United States, cities are struggling to overcome the significant practical problems of melding helmet use with bike-sharing programs — such as providing sanitized helmet dispensers at bike docking stations, says Susan Shaheen, director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center at the University of California, Berkeley.

Right next to the condom dispensers. Helmets are health care too, you know!   We ought to think about mandating them for pedestrians, ladder-climbers, and bathers.  But that bomb-throwing anarchist Rosenthal, she probably ate non-pasteurized cheese while she was in Paris.

H/t Maggie's Farm.

I know what he means

From a 2002 speech by Barack Obama at a Martin Luther King Day memorial service:

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but rich people are all for nonviolence.  Why wouldn’t they be?  They’ve got what they want.

Yep, whenever I decide whether to indulge in violence, my first order of business is to think through whether I have everything I want yet.  If not, all bets are off.

Another viewpoint

Just to keep things fair, Bryan Preston's alternative explanation for the President's abysmal debate performance:  "Obama wasn't just tired or off his game.  He was incoherent because his ideas stink."  Obama issued his usual complaint that he inherited a big deficit, including "two wars that were paid for on a credit card."  Then he suggested "that we take some of the money that we’re saving as we wind down two wars to rebuild America and that we reduce our deficit."  Hey, wait a minute, Preston objects:

If the two wars are paid for on a “credit card” as the president says, how then are we going to reduce the deficit by taking that money and just spending it on something else?  Wouldn’t it make more sense just to not spend that money at all?  Since, you know, we don’t have it in the first place?

A commenter chips in:

The way to fix my household budget deficit is to take the money I have already spent on the security system and somehow get it back from the ether and plunge it directly into the toilet.  This doesn’t help keep my family safe and destroys the plumbing.  And, if two wars were costing so much money . . . why enter a third in Libya, then fail to protect the people you sent there to clean up the mess.

Was that a good jobs report or a bad one?

It may have been naive to expected an un-jimmied jobs report this close to the election, but even by the loose standards we've learned to apply, this one is a doozy.  Somehow, we added fewer jobs than are needed to keep pace with a growing population, but the unemployment rate took a dive to 7.8%, the first time in 43 months it's been below 8%.  OK, you can get there by driving a phenomenal number of people out of the workforce, I guess, but the numbers still don't add up.  We added 114,000 non-farm jobs but lost 456,000 unemployed people, while the household survey showed that the number of people with jobs rose by 873,000 (seasonally adjusted) -- the highest one-month increase in 29 years.  It seems that the latter number includes 582,000 part-time jobs accepted by workers who were seeking part-time work but taking what they could get.  Total "multiple jobs holders" rose by 183,000.

Zero Hedge is having some trouble with the numbers.  Here's an interesting coincidence, for instance:  the household survey figure is 873,000 jobs, of which 582,000 are part-time, which is precisely 2/3.  Sound a bit like a plugged number?

I'm totally confused, but I take it that the unemployment number uses the household-survey jobs (873,000) instead of what Zero Hedge calls the "establishment" jobs number, which was the 114,000 figure.  Also, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has unexpectedly revised upward the disappointing jobs figures for the last three months.

Well, I just hope the jobs picture is turning around, and these aren't simply numbers that will be quietly revised downwards later, per the usual practice.

A tale of two ads

It was the RNC perspective, it was the DNC perspective.  Erika Johnsen at Hot Air shows the first two ads to run clips from this week's presidential debate.  The RNC ad splices shots of Romney explaining what he thinks has to change and why, while the President, on split-screen, grimaces.  The DNC ad cuts rapidly among Romney, a pundit, and Jim Lehrer, as Romney tries to keep the floor, Lehrer interjects "Just a moment," and the pundit says, "He just kept going.  He just kept going.  He just kept going."  The President doesn't even appear in this little drama.

Explanations for the President's lackluster performance include altitude sickness, or distraction by his secret national security duties, or spiritual exhaustion from the strain of being forced to conduct wars.  These theories are difficult to take seriously.  A more telling consensus is that the President dislikes personal confrontation, and was at an unfair advantage because Romney lied.  (See here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for a sampling from the nearly 9 million search engine hits on that theme.  You would be hard-pressed to find a comments thread on the subject that omits this favorite theory.)  What did he lie about?  That's not so clear, but a central argument is that Romney misrepresented his own platform.

The latter two explanations -- a distaste for personal confrontation and an inability to confront "lies" -- are more related than they might seem at first.  Nothing in the President's background or career has equipped him to grapple with his opponents' different worldviews.  He and his set dismiss them without really trying to understand them.  Unlike Reagan, for instance, he did not start out on one end of the political spectrum and change to another over time.  He spent his life and career among like-minded political activists in academia, in community work, and in public office.  It's even possible he gets no more accurate information about Romney's platform than the average voter gets from a hostile media.  He seemed genuinely stunned by Romney's assertion that he did not propose to cut taxes by $5 trillion.  Strange!  Every time I heard Romney on that subject, he stressed that, although he wanted to lower rates, no taxpayer should get excited about the prospect of a lower bill, because the idea was to get rid of a lot of deductions in order to make the changes revenue-neutral.  That is, he proposes a flatter and simpler tax structure rather than lower taxes overall.  But unless the President is a phenomenal actor, he was surprised when Romney corrected him about his platform.  In preparation with his sparring partner, John Kerry, the President may have spent all his time preparing to respond to a caricature.

Is it really possible that the President assumed Romney would get up on the debate stage and advocate the parody of his own platform that is all anyone had been allowed to see on network TV or in the New York Times?  Maybe so.  Maybe the President really is that unused to arguing with anyone outside his bubble.  He doesn't get a charge out of meeting people on their own intellectual ground and trying to bring them around to his point of view; he's more at ease with a captive, silent audience.  As Cassandra so memorably put it, he's like a prize fighter who's used to fixed fights:  shocked and helpless the first time his handlers put him in the ring with someone ready, willing, and able to land a punch.

Interesting analogy

"The rich are hoarding all the toys," laments the New York Times:

Imagine a kindergarten with 100 students, lavishly supplied with books, crayons and toys. 

Yet you gasp: one avaricious little boy is jealously guarding a mountain of toys for himself.  A handful of other children are quietly playing with a few toys each, while 90 of the children are looking on forlornly — empty-handed.

Shouldn't the grownups step in and force the mean little boy to share?  Wait a minute -- if the American people are a bunch of babies, who's the grownup in this analogy?

We're from the government . . . .

John Stossel recounts the experiences of his intern looking for a job by way of government-funded jobs programs, which turn out to be centers for signing up for unemployment benefits.  Unjob programs, except for the public employees drawing checks for running the programs.

Has anyone here ever gotten a job through a government jobs program?  Or known anyone who did?

The Gas War

I know people are pretty happy with the debate last night, but this picture from Drudge is pretty powerful too:

It's hard to remember prices that low. What's not hard to remember is the President's commitment to higher energy costs for Americans. He has always been clear that he wants to restrain our consumption by pursuing higher prices for the American consumer.



He didn't get 'cap and trade,' and we aren't quite to Europe's gas price levels, but he has a partial success to chalk up here. Energy prices are much higher than they used to be: as the sign shows, gas prices have doubled.

SCOAMFOTUS blows the debate

The really deadly point of the debate:  from professional commentators to man-in-the-street focus-group members, everyone noticed that the President fell apart the first time he was hit with difficult questions he actually had to answer.  The press has never let him be exposed like this before.

"I Like Firing People"

Maybe it's the meeting I sat through yesterday with State Park employees, who were working on an Emergency Response Study addressing a small upcoming community event, at which perhaps a few dozen people will eat home-made cookies under a locally famous tree, while listening to a handful of politicians make remarks about a BP-oil-spill-guilt-financed acquisition of whooping crane habitat for the local state park.  (The study will detail their plans for a "First Amendment Corral" to be set aside for potential protesters.)  ("State Park Unfair to Non-Whooping Crane Species.")  Or maybe it's persistent recent reports of a Fish & Wildlife officer who's suddenly made it his life's work to harass locals who drive completely unregulated golf carts on our tiny, untrafficked, low-speed streets in this unincorporated rural coastal community.  Maybe it's the upcoming presidential debates.  For whatever reason, I got a kick out of this Wizbang post:  "If You Work for the Government, You Deserve to Be Fired."  He's not a true firebreather, of course; he makes an exception for teachers and first responders.

3 questions

The Pirate's Cove quotes three questions that should be deployed in a climatesomething debate:

What would it take to convince you that you are wrong? 

What happens if you are wrong? 

What makes you hate the future so much?

Actually, those are questions recommended by a Warmist to discomfit an evil denier, but they seem like pretty good questions in reverse as well.

An American Tragedy

The total number of American dead in all our nation's armed conflicts going back to the Revolutionary War is estimated at 1.3 million.... Yet those numbers are dwarfed by another scourge. It’s one we don’t talk about very much in presidential politics, an oversight I’d like to do my part to change.... In the ensuing 113 years [since the first automobile fatality], vehicular traffic on the highways and byways of this country has taken a toll in human suffering that can be accurately described as a holocaust. The total number of dead from that September day in 1899 to this October day in 2012 is approximately 3,573,384.

Horrifying. Yet those numbers are dwarfed by another scourge. Of the 62,947,714 alive in that 1890 census, it is widely believed that all of them are dead. Nor are they alone. Tens of millions more Americans have also lost their lives.

I write today to say that the author of the piece does not do enough in calling for the Presidential debate to include a question about how they will deal with automobile accidents. No, any would-be President must be asked to provide his solution for death!

Striking Coincidences in Foreign Policy

Quite possibly the decision to abandon Benghazi was done for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with derailing the FBI investigation into what happened there. That effect just happens to be an unfortunate coincidence of what was surely done for other, pressing and legitimate, reasons.

Likewise, the sudden deployment of a member of the National Security Staff to Iraq is explicable in terms of the difficulties that nation is experiencing just now. It is merely a coincidence that this particular NSS member happened to be one who corresponded closely on Operation Fast and Furious with an ATF agent who just testified to Congress about that program. The fact that this member of the White House will not be available to answer Congressional questions about the role of the administration in that operation is just a coincidence.

It would be improper to suggest that such significant matters of foreign policy were being subordinated to political considerations. No one would believe the suggestion anyway: it's impossible to imagine the administration acting that way.

More on the Late Maurice Keen

The Guardian has penned an informative obituary regarding the gentleman historian, for those of you who wanted to read more about his life and work.

Airbrush

Wow.

Sometimes Tex and I talk about the dangers of the market. Things sometimes prove to be for sale that ought not to be. Not at any price.

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?