[T}he Bandidos demand that all video evidence and autopsy reports be released immediately to clear up the damaging misinformation that is running wild.This last bit counters RUMINT, which has suggested heretofore that the Cossacks fired some rounds, and the police fired the rest. The Bandidos seem to be confessing to firing at least some rounds, albeit in self-defense.
The following is true and correct:
1) The Bandidos were at the Twin Peaks restaurant to attend an organized political meeting and nothing else. A regional meeting for the Texas Confederation of Clubs and Independents (a bona fide political organization centered on Constitutional rights) was scheduled, and a prominent member of the Bandidos was the key-note speaker at the meeting. This Bandido key-note speaker was to report on the National Coalition of Motorcyclist event that occurred weeks earlier. Because COCI members from across the state were expected to attend this special meeting, it was purposefully scheduled in Waco, TX, a central city between Austin and Dallas.
2) The Bandidos have no knowledge of any other meeting. The Bandidos are aware that members of other motorcycle clubs are claiming that there were plans to meet with the Bandidos in Waco, TX on May 17, 2015. This claim is not true.
3) All weapons in possession of members the Bandidos were legally owned and carried.
4) Members of the Bandidos were not aggressors, did not start the altercation, did not strike first, were not the first to pull weapons, and were not the first to use weapons. The majority of the Bandidos took cover, and all involvement in the altercation by members of the Bandidos was in self-defense. Texas law allows people to defend themselves with the same amount of force that is exerted against them, and a few members of the Bandidos acted in accordance with these laws. In fact, members of the Bandidos involved in the incident did not even have time or opportunity to get off of their motorcycles before police came in.
The Bandidos' Attorney Speaks
According to RUMINT, there were very few Bandidos at the shootout in Waco. They were the victims, strictly speaking, just because they were so few and were therefore set upon. Their attorney has put out a statement.
"Reality Seems Determined to Put the Onion out of Business"
So says Sarah Hoyt, also due a hat tip for the last post. She's right. It's been a very bad year for reality.
Don Qwhotie?
Never could get into the book myself. It's about mocking the best thing in the world, although I'm told that if you stick with it it gets better: the fools brought on board in the early part become increasingly attached to the thing worth upholding at any cost, though the Don who held it so high finally loses heart. Stories about losing heart in such men break mine, for they are so easy to believe. It is the worst danger of the world, that you might cease to believe in the things worth dying for.
Riding It Out
Randy Howard was the name of a country singer who sang about the glories of the "American Redneck."
Following a failure to appear before a court on charges of DUI, driving on a revoked license, and various other things, the court's bail bondsman sent a bounty hunter to track him down and bring him back. He opened fire on the bounty hunter, and that man killed him.
It's a very fitting end, all things considered.
Following a failure to appear before a court on charges of DUI, driving on a revoked license, and various other things, the court's bail bondsman sent a bounty hunter to track him down and bring him back. He opened fire on the bounty hunter, and that man killed him.
It's a very fitting end, all things considered.
James Horner, RIP
Remembered here mostly for his soundtrack for Braveheart, that least historically-faithful but nevertheless well-intentioned movie about Sir William Wallace: one of Scotland's greatest heroes, and the world's.
The soundtrack had strong moments.
The gentleman died piloting a single-engine aircraft, which is an honorable passtime just because of the danger and glory of flying on one's own.
The soundtrack had strong moments.
The gentleman died piloting a single-engine aircraft, which is an honorable passtime just because of the danger and glory of flying on one's own.
Agents Provocateur
What if the former Secretary of State is working behind the scenes to destabilize Asia in order to provoke a crisis between the United States and China? So argues one China hand:
Now, of course, the DoD has a new boss—Secretary of Defense Ash Carter; and PACCOM has a new commander—Admiral Harry Harris, and the general consensus is that the muscular defense sector has wrestled China policy away from the milquetoastian White House. Interestingly, Admiral Harris was previously the Pentagon’s liaison to to the State Department under Hillary Clinton as well as John Kerry, which reinforces my impression that Hillary Clinton and her foreign policy advisors have pre-loaded China policy with her supporters, and I expect things to get ugly quickly so that the nasty and awkward business of starting the confrontation can be done under Obama before Clinton enters office.
As I put it elsewhere: Hillary wants to inherit her China crisis from Obama, not foment it herself.
Another One Down
A key Army commander in the U.S. war against the Islamic State has been reprimanded by the Pentagon for steering a defense contract to a firm run by two of his former classmates at West Point, becoming the latest high-ranking officer to land in trouble for personal misconduct. Maj. Gen. Dana J.H. Pittard, who as the Army’s deputy commander for operations in the Middle East oversaw the training of Iraqi forces, was formally reprimanded in February.... An Army review board is considering whether to strip him of his rank as a two-star general before he is allowed to retire this year.One wonders how you maintain a standard of discipline when, say, the previous Secretary of State was running the shop as a vehicle for just this kind of 'steering.' The Army holds itself and its own to a higher, better standard. Yet officially, the State Department is in the lead: to head the State Department is to be in the position of greater honor.
I suppose we will learn how this works a fortiori if we elect that same Secretary of State to the Presidency.
How to choose a lawyer
From "Emotional Vampires" by Albert Bernstein, good advice about how to hire a lawyer, in this case, a divorce lawyer:
Good lawyers should:
* Return calls promptly. I'm surprised at how many lawyers don't. I'm talking about calls during office hours. Never accept an attorney who doesn't get back to you for days, unless someone from the office contacts you to explain why. Even then, be skeptical. How long does a phone call take?
* Be more decisive than you are. Good lawyers should be polite, but not necessarily nice. The last thing you want is a lawyer who is too conflict-avoidant to deal effectively with the [a-hole] that your ex will hire. You want your lawyer to be stronger and more decisive than you are, not less.
* Be proactive. You do not want a lawyer who counsels you to wait to see what someone else does. The battle goes to whoever gets there first with the most. This is particularly true is matters of custody and visitation. Always ask an attorney what the overall plan is. If there is no overall plan, you don't have an attorney.
"Interstate Commerce" doesn't mean "You're a Sharecropper"
Though Court-watchers were disappointed not to see a ruling on the two hottest pending cases this morning, they were pleased to receive one on a "takings clause" case that has gotten less attention. Small-government types scored a win with Horne v. Dept. of Agriculture, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the seizure of part of a farmer's raisin crop (nearly half in at least one year) constituted a "taking" that required due process as well as just compensation. In Orwellian fashion, the DOA had argued that they weren't really seizing the crop, because they permitted the farmer to retain a contingent interest in the proceeds of its later sale, at a time and price of the DOA's choosing. The Court sorted out that pretzel by observing that, once the crop is seized, any later payments come under the heading of "just compensation"--but the seizure itself still requires due process.
In further Orwellian fashion, the DOA had argued that the privilege of participating in interstate commerce is a benefit that the federal government may withhold unless the citizen waives constitutional rights. Of the nine Justices, only Sotomayor went for this one.
The ruling is interesting for the further reason that it clears up a controversy over whether "takings" jurisprudence is limited to real property; the Court held that it applies to personal property as well.
The raisin-confiscation program dated from the Depression and, like so many DOA plans, was intended to support prices. Justice Scalia noted, "Central planning was thought to work very well in 1937, and Russia tried it for a long time."
In further Orwellian fashion, the DOA had argued that the privilege of participating in interstate commerce is a benefit that the federal government may withhold unless the citizen waives constitutional rights. Of the nine Justices, only Sotomayor went for this one.
The ruling is interesting for the further reason that it clears up a controversy over whether "takings" jurisprudence is limited to real property; the Court held that it applies to personal property as well.
The raisin-confiscation program dated from the Depression and, like so many DOA plans, was intended to support prices. Justice Scalia noted, "Central planning was thought to work very well in 1937, and Russia tried it for a long time."
No Obamacare or same-sex marriage rulings today
Per Scotus blog a few minutes ago:
For those of you who have just logged in, there was no ruling today (and will not be any ruling today) on same-sex marriage or ACA subsidies. The Court has finished for the day.So you can ignore all the teasers on the TV and the net. UPDATE: But more decisions will be announced on Thursday, June 25, and perhaps again on the 29th.
Solstice
Someday, I want to go to one of this guy's parties.
Thousands of people have congregated at Stonehenge to mark the summer solstice....He reminds me of a late friend of mine, greatly missed since he passed on a few years ago.
Arthur Uther Pendragon, who claims to be a reincarnation of King Arthur, was there to knight new followers to his druidic order – the Loyal Arthurian Warband – which he described as the political wing of the religion.
"We're the ones who get into trees to stop roadbuilding and take on people like English Heritage over access to the stones. We're sworn to fight for truth, for honour and for justice," he told The Guardian.
Is it terrorism?
That's not going to be an easy question to answer until we figure out what we mean by terrorism. The term used to refer to violence perpetrated against non-combatants by groups not obviously associated with an identifiable army, for the purpose of persuading the populace that it will be too dangerous to give their political support to a particular regime. Lately the definition has mushed into something more like "deplorable and scary public violence by relatively crazy people who may have had a somewhat coherent political or social axe to grind."
Kareem Abdul Jabbar stuck to a fairly workable definition in his Times oped today:
Allahpundit analyzes the New York Times's take, which is that the dictionary definition of terrorism is "the use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, especially such use as a political weapon or policy." The "especially" leaves enough wiggle room to make this definition so all-inclusive as to be useless. When there is clear evidence of scary force as a political weapon or policy, I'm comfortable calling it terrorism; without that qualifier, we'd have to include a very large chunk of all violence, from domestic abuse to gang warfare to drug cartels to the Mafia. Those are all bad things, but why insist that they're all exactly the same bad thing? But then Allahpundit goes too far, I think, in differentiating the Charlie Hebdo murders from Dylan Roof's rampage on the ground that "When that jihadi animal killed four French Jews at a kosher deli in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo, no one thought that was a 'hate crime' because they were targeted first and foremost for their religion. It was terrorism." When you target people for their religion, I'm inclined to call it a hate crime, unless there's something else going on that makes it looks like organized political action. In the Charlie Hebdo case, the red flag wasn't the anti-semitism, it was the organization of the gang and its explicit ties to a political group. Not that it's necessarily any great linguistic advance to distinguish terrorism from hate crimes. The term "hate crimes" is nowhere near as useful as it's cracked up to be.
Kareem Abdul Jabbar stuck to a fairly workable definition in his Times oped today:
There’s a lot of debate about whether or not this was a terrorist act. Terrorism is a political tool that has a specific goal. Terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan want to drive Americans out of their countries. Terrorists in other countries do it for the same reason: to gain political power. After an hour at the prayer meeting, Dylann Roof stood up and proclaimed that he was there “to shoot black people.” His rambling manifesto during the shootings was: “You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” In his mind he was a terrorist, but in reality this was nothing more than hate crime using terrorist tactics to enact his racist fantasy. Roof had no hope of driving African Americans out of the country, starting a race war or engendering any political or social change at all. We shouldn’t use it as an excuse to discuss terrorism because that diverts us from the actual problem.Unfortunately he then returned to the useless "terrorism is whenever people do bad stuff" definition in urging us not to "allow this incident to be used as a political football by those who hope to leverage it to their gain, which is a more subtle form of terrorism: media terrorism." Granted that human beings often use incidents as political football for their own gain, calling such use terrorism is only silly. Jabbar was on a more promising track when he implied that the hallmark of terrorism was the hope of using violent tactics against ordinary (typically unarmed) citizens to engender a political or social change. Roof didn't look like a guy who hoped that the public murder of a number of black people would cause a mass exodus of black people from the United States, or even that fellow travelers would rise up and murder all the black people he couldn't get to personally. He was just a nut who thought the evils of the United States could be pinned on a particular ethnic group, who were therefore proper targets of his personal extermination program. Jabbar had another good point, I thought, in disparaging any attempt to view Roof's rampage as targeting Christians. If Roof had been completely silent, I might buy that as a plausible alternative, but his own words make it pretty clear that his problem with the prayer meeting wasn't the prayer but the race of the praying people.
Allahpundit analyzes the New York Times's take, which is that the dictionary definition of terrorism is "the use of force or threats to demoralize, intimidate and subjugate, especially such use as a political weapon or policy." The "especially" leaves enough wiggle room to make this definition so all-inclusive as to be useless. When there is clear evidence of scary force as a political weapon or policy, I'm comfortable calling it terrorism; without that qualifier, we'd have to include a very large chunk of all violence, from domestic abuse to gang warfare to drug cartels to the Mafia. Those are all bad things, but why insist that they're all exactly the same bad thing? But then Allahpundit goes too far, I think, in differentiating the Charlie Hebdo murders from Dylan Roof's rampage on the ground that "When that jihadi animal killed four French Jews at a kosher deli in Paris after the Charlie Hebdo, no one thought that was a 'hate crime' because they were targeted first and foremost for their religion. It was terrorism." When you target people for their religion, I'm inclined to call it a hate crime, unless there's something else going on that makes it looks like organized political action. In the Charlie Hebdo case, the red flag wasn't the anti-semitism, it was the organization of the gang and its explicit ties to a political group. Not that it's necessarily any great linguistic advance to distinguish terrorism from hate crimes. The term "hate crimes" is nowhere near as useful as it's cracked up to be.
Strong Differences
Tex is having a historically low ebb in her trust of pollsters, so perhaps this is an artifact of bad methodology. Still...
All of these things are immoral according to traditional Christian theology. What I find interesting is that (with one exception within the margin of error) majorities of men agree that these traditionally-immoral behaviors are moral only where far larger majorities of women say they are moral. When minorities of men want to say that these traditionally-immoral behaviors are moral, women are less likely than men to agree.
I wonder if this means that the traditional authority on this issue has been sustained in spite of the changing attitudes. What our ancestors used to refer to as 'the civilizing influence of the fairer sex' seems to be intact, perhaps: but it turns out it can be a de-civilizing influence too, where women decide to abandon traditional moral standards for whatever reason.
All of these things are immoral according to traditional Christian theology. What I find interesting is that (with one exception within the margin of error) majorities of men agree that these traditionally-immoral behaviors are moral only where far larger majorities of women say they are moral. When minorities of men want to say that these traditionally-immoral behaviors are moral, women are less likely than men to agree.
I wonder if this means that the traditional authority on this issue has been sustained in spite of the changing attitudes. What our ancestors used to refer to as 'the civilizing influence of the fairer sex' seems to be intact, perhaps: but it turns out it can be a de-civilizing influence too, where women decide to abandon traditional moral standards for whatever reason.
The new Lysenkoism
Via Maggie's Farm, Matt Ridley:
The IPCC actually admits the possibility of lukewarming within its consensus, because it gives a range of possible future temperatures: it thinks the world will be between about 1.5 and four degrees warmer on average by the end of the century. That’s a huge range, from marginally beneficial to terrifyingly harmful, so it is hardly a consensus of danger, and if you look at the “probability density functions” of climate sensitivity, they always cluster towards the lower end.
What is more, in the small print describing the assumptions of the “representative concentration pathways”, it admits that the top of the range will only be reached if sensitivity to carbon dioxide is high (which is doubtful); if world population growth re-accelerates (which is unlikely); if carbon dioxide absorption by the oceans slows down (which is improbable); and if the world economy goes in a very odd direction, giving up gas but increasing coal use tenfold (which is implausible).
But the commentators ignore all these caveats and babble on about warming of “up to” four degrees (or even more), then castigate as a “denier” anybody who says, as I do, the lower end of the scale looks much more likely given the actual data. This is a deliberate tactic. Following what the psychologist Philip Tetlock called the “psychology of taboo”, there has been a systematic and thorough campaign to rule out the middle ground as heretical: not just wrong, but mistaken, immoral and beyond the pale. That’s what the word denier with its deliberate connotations of Holocaust denial is intended to do. For reasons I do not fully understand, journalists have been shamefully happy to go along with this fundamentally religious project.
Forgetting The Whole Thing
From 1965, a film about that wise advice. You should all watch it, especially if you have not seen it before. It so nicely ties together so many of our recent discussions.
English is a Difficult Language
It's really hard, I know.
Don't feel bad. A similar error is behind a very common misreading of the Second Amendment.
The rules are simple. Every time a Republican who is a Catholic is asked for an opinion on the encyclical, place him into one of two categories: the Catholic Republicans or the Republican Catholics.You've got it exactly backwards. The "term doing the modifying" is the adjective, not the noun. So in "Republican Catholic," you're talking about a Catholic who happens to be Republican. They're the ones who will put their Catholicism first, and their Republicanism will only modify that essential Catholicism. Vice versa for your other category.
The difference between the categories depends on which term is doing the modifying. A Catholic Republican is a Republican whose Catholicism comes first, whose faith and devotion to the teaching authority of the Magisterium of the church takes precedence when a conflict or tension arises between it and loyalty to the party's ideology, policy platform, and electoral prospects. A Republican Catholic, on the other hand, is a Republican who puts his devotion to the party ahead of his faith...
Don't feel bad. A similar error is behind a very common misreading of the Second Amendment.
Mirror neurons
From SlateStarCodex, a thoughtful article about trying to look at things from both sides, sometimes irritating but worth reading if only for the following:
Microagressions. Nanoagressions. Picoagressions. The Planck Hostility.And perhaps for this conclusion: "If we can get to a point where we don’t feel like requests are part of a giant conspiracy to discredit and silence us, people are sometimes willing to listen." But if you take my advice you'll stay away from the comments.
Orders of Magnitude
Of course, 99 percent of southern whites will never go into a church, sit down with people and then massacre them. But that 99 percent is responsible for the one who does. We white southerners — those of us who left, the others who stayed, and even those millions who have migrated to the Sun Belt — are all Dylann Roof. We are all responsible. We cannot shirk it.The white population of South Carolina in the last census was 3,253,700 (total population * 68.88 (percent white) / 100). If 99% of them never go into a church and massacre everyone, that means that 32,537 of them do -- for which massive wave of violence the culture is certainly responsible.
No? Well, perhaps it's 3,253 massacres.
No? 325?
32?
Three?
I'm prepared to turn the other cheek at the anti-Southern rhetoric today, because I understand people are angry and afraid. But come on. Just because you hate your homeland, and therefore part of yourself, don't try to put that on me or mine. We aren't the source of your problem. We're the kind of men who stand ready to kill or die to stop such things. You may hate us, but we aren't your enemy.
Confidence in Institutions
Gallup's annual "Confidence in Institutions" poll is out.
No Federal institution polls above a third of Americans being confident in it. Congress remains near its record low at 8%.
From a broad perspective, Americans' confidence in all institutions over the last two years has been the lowest since Gallup began systematic updates of a larger set of institutions in 1993. The average confidence rating of the 14 institutions asked about annually since 1993 -- excluding small business, asked annually since 2007 -- is 32% this year. This is one percentage point above the all-institution average of 31% last year. Americans were generally more confident in all institutions in the late 1990s and early 2000s as the country enjoyed a strong economy and a rally in support for U.S. institutions after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.The biggest collapse in public confidence is with the police as an institution. The obvious reason why that might be true is heavy media coverage of controversial police shootings and militarized police responses to protests in Ferguson and elsewhere. But the media has been relentlessly positive about Pope Francis, and the Catholic Church remains at its historic low point in spite of the glowing attention. (Besides, confidence in the media is pretty low too!)
No Federal institution polls above a third of Americans being confident in it. Congress remains near its record low at 8%.
United States Marine Corps Raiders
The Marines will rename several special operations units as Marine Raiders at a ceremony Friday, resurrecting a moniker made famous by World War II units that carried out risky amphibious and guerrilla operations....It's good to have a historical legacy against which to measure yourself.
During World War II, the Raiders were organized in response to President Franklin Roosevelt's desire to have a commando-style force that could conduct amphibious raids and operate behind enemy lines. Raider commanders studied unconventional warfare tactics, including Chinese guerrillas, and were given their pick of men and equipment, according to Marine historians.
Raider units were credited with beating larger Japanese forces on difficult terrain in the Pacific and they participated in key battles including Guadalcanal and Bougainville. They were disbanded toward the end of the war and the Raider name hasn't been used in an official capacity since, said Capt. Barry Morris, a U.S. Marines spokesman.
"What the name 'Raider' does, it harkens back to the legacy that the Marine Corps has latched onto and has drawn a lot from, both in an esoteric and practical sense," Connable said. "It is a remarkable legacy."
A Heroine of Charleston
Cassandra points us to a story about a central figure in the capture of the Charleston killer: a florist and minister named Debbie Dills.
Winning Irregular Wars
A long read, but iconoclastic for something published by Leavenworth. Normally when I see a publication from there with a length over six hundred pages, I expect it will be produced-by-committee garbage that managed to 'staff out' every useful thing contributed. This work is not like that. It has a clear, strong voice.
Christian Brotherhood
While these acts are probably not related, the Charleston shooting occurred alongside another shooting at a historically black church in Memphis. Meanwhile, a third church in Ferguson, MO, with ties to the explosive police shooting last year was burned to the ground. The KKK is suspected.
It would be good to take a moment, if the opportunity presents itself, to express a sense of brotherhood to our fellow Christians. The talk in the media focuses so much on what divides us, but this far more important thing connects us. American politics, the questions of race, these are passing matters. The eternal truth is brotherhood. It is important to make that clear in an hour in which many must be feeling fear.
It would be good to take a moment, if the opportunity presents itself, to express a sense of brotherhood to our fellow Christians. The talk in the media focuses so much on what divides us, but this far more important thing connects us. American politics, the questions of race, these are passing matters. The eternal truth is brotherhood. It is important to make that clear in an hour in which many must be feeling fear.
Too Late For Uncle Mike
Not that the rule would cover him anyway. He was a Marine, and encountered the stuff more by having it dropped on him in reconnaissance than otherwise.
Ending years of wait, the government agreed Thursday to provide millions of dollars in disability benefits to as many as 2,100 Air Force reservists and active-duty forces exposed to Agent Orange residue on airplanes used in the Vietnam War.After he went blind, he lost heart. I remember him fondly.
The Spirit of the Age
Mollie Hemingway:
[I]f Lew is right that our currency is supposed to express our values and capture the spirit of our age, a man as good as Hamilton has absolutely no business being on the currency. George Washington definitely doesn’t. Heck, we should replace them all.She has some suggestions, but they're mostly for effect. Her basic point is made there -- and perhaps she's right. With quantitative easing, the money isn't worth anything anymore. We are just trading on the fact that international markets haven't worked out a solid alternative yet. The people aren't virtuous, as a republic needed them to be. Why shouldn't the paper reflect the people, or for that matter, why shouldn't the symbols on the face of the currency better reflect its true value?
Security!
Like thousands and thousands of Americans, I've filled out an SF-86, the Questionnaire for National Security Positions. In order to let the government determine if it can trust me, I trusted them with vast quantities of private personal information. This included not only responses to 127 pages of questions, but personal interviews with security officers, not only for me and my wife but for many people I've known everywhere I'd lived to the date of the adjudication of the clearance. The file, in other words, is as complete a set of information about me as you could hope to procure, given that it was created with my complete cooperation and with a very thorough background investigation.
How nice to know that the government took such good care with my trust.
How nice to know that the government took such good care with my trust.
The Fix
A surprise vote on that TPP fast track bill was called last night, just after news of the Charleston shooting began to flood TV news and social media networks. Fast track was approved by the House while no one was watching.
The Charleston Matter
It is a great sorrow to learn that decent people, brother and sister Christians engaged in Bible study, were murdered by a strange and paranoid figure while at their peaceful and religious work. At times like these, I prefer to look for those who behaved well in the face of danger. During the Sikh temple murders it was Satwant Singh Kaleka, a 65-year-old hero who charged the gunman with the only weapon the law permitted him: a butter knife that reduced his kirpan to a symbol rather than a practical tool for fighting evil. During the Aurora shooting, it was the gallant men who lay down their lives to protect their wives and girlfriends. Such men must be welcomed to heaven by heralding angels.
Today there are no such good stories, except for the work of the policemen who tracked down and captured the murderer. It is being remarked, unfairly, that the fact that they took him alive is proof that cops are racists. Rather, it is their duty when it is reasonably possible. They should be praised for doing their duty against a young man of proven danger.
Today there are no such good stories, except for the work of the policemen who tracked down and captured the murderer. It is being remarked, unfairly, that the fact that they took him alive is proof that cops are racists. Rather, it is their duty when it is reasonably possible. They should be praised for doing their duty against a young man of proven danger.
SCOTUS, Texas, and the Confederate Flag
This ruling makes sense to me. The Confederate Flag is, inter alia, a symbol of rebellion against Federal power. Even as a heritage symbol, which is how the Sons of Confederate Veterans want to use it, displaying it aligns one with the historical cause of rejecting the Federal government outright where it overstepped the community's understanding of its constitutional bounds. The Federal courts' extraordinary power over every aspect of American life follows directly from the defeat of that cause and the consequent Reconstruction's 14th Amendment.
So when the SoCV went forward with a lawsuit claiming the right to force the government to accept the symbol, of course the courts are bound to reject that. The liberal wing of the court was united here, joined by Justice Thomas. The article mentions that he is 'the court's only African-American' in a way that suggests this was a causal factor, but Thomas is surely correct as an originalist. The purpose of the Reconstruction amendments was to suppress just this particular political expression. For, as von Clausewitz reminds us, war is only politics by other means.
So when the SoCV went forward with a lawsuit claiming the right to force the government to accept the symbol, of course the courts are bound to reject that. The liberal wing of the court was united here, joined by Justice Thomas. The article mentions that he is 'the court's only African-American' in a way that suggests this was a causal factor, but Thomas is surely correct as an originalist. The purpose of the Reconstruction amendments was to suppress just this particular political expression. For, as von Clausewitz reminds us, war is only politics by other means.
Where Are The Ice Giants?
A forester in Denmark uncovers the weapons of giants among his pine trees.
The axe heads measure 12 inches (30 centimeters) in length and each one weighs two pounds. Dating revealed they were made sometime during the 16th century BC, making them one of the oldest weapons of their kind discovered in Denmark. They are twice as heavy as axe heads usually are, suggesting that the men who wielded them must have been giant in stature.A good reminder, as we approach 2016, of what we ought to look for in a leader.
Why teach Shakespeare?
Micro-Aggression
I prefer aggression per se, myself, but apparently this is a big deal:
Well, why shouldn't it be? It's private money, after all. I'm sure we're all OK with the idea of private actors -- corporations and their hiring managers, for example -- acting on their preference for supporting the advancement of the right sex. Or if we are not, why not? It's their money, after all, whether paid out as scholarships or salaries.
My favorite is “gender plays no part in who we hire,” a policy feminists have spent decades demanding from American businesses only to dismiss it now as aggressively sexist, a self-delusion promoted by the corporate world to disguise their bias against women.By coincidence I received in my email while off on vacation an advertisement for this scholarship. "This scholarship is available only to women," the tenured (and female) faculty member wrote to the email list without any apparent sense of discomfort.
Well, why shouldn't it be? It's private money, after all. I'm sure we're all OK with the idea of private actors -- corporations and their hiring managers, for example -- acting on their preference for supporting the advancement of the right sex. Or if we are not, why not? It's their money, after all, whether paid out as scholarships or salaries.
God and Gold
A meditation on St. Augustine's wrestling with a problem most modern Christian and Jewish thinkers prefer to avoid. Can you trade earthly gold for heavenly? What does it take to do so?
The Judgment of Grim
So this week I saw a grizzly in Yellowstone. People said he was around, so I searched out the track -- grizzly bears often leave a clear track where they walk back and forth between their favorite feeding areas -- and followed it. He was sleeping on top of his kill, an American Bison, by a small pond. I'm pretty sure this was a reasonable thing to do, in spite of the fact that everyone I've discussed it with thinks it was crazy. The land lay in such a way that there were only a few places he could be that were out of sight, and I approached with what I think was sufficient caution to make sure I didn't get close enough to those places to provoke an encounter. I wouldn't want to hurt a bear, and if it went the other way and he killed me the Rangers would shoot him. Thus, while I really wanted to see him, I approached it in a way that would ensure his safety.
I also crossed a glacier at 10,400 feet and free climbed some rock chimneys without rope or safety gear. This, I learned later, is strongly not recommended by the park rangers. Once again, though, I think I knew what I was doing, and it was awesome.
Thought about Sly when we crossed into Montana. That was really beautiful, but the Grand Tetons are my new favorite place in the world. More, it surprises me to say, even than Georgia.
Crowd-sourcing jobs
Amazon is considering adopting the Uber model, by signing up local workers to deliver packages they volunteer for via smartphone.
Named storms
Something's coming on shore now that's been dignified with the name "Bill." If you look at this Wind Map, it suggests a dramatic event over our heads (we're just about directly south of the left-hand edge of the "H" in "Houston"), but actually so far it's a bust even as far as rain goes. The west side of a tropical pattern is usually the dry side, but maybe it will dump something more on us later as it pulls northwest through Texas. It seems that North Texas and Oklahoma are in for another drenching, and it will be quite wet all the way up the Gulf Coast to the east of us.
Much as we would love to see another hard rain fill the pond all the rest of the way up, we can't complain about this year's extraordinary rainfall total to date, which is as much as we might expect in an entire ordinary year, around 30 inches. Our rainwater cistern has been topped off for months; lakes and aquifers are being replenished all over the state. But it's a good time to take rising rivers very seriously.
Update: OK, not that much yesterday, but we've had 5.5 inches of rain today with power outages. Now that's more like it!
Much as we would love to see another hard rain fill the pond all the rest of the way up, we can't complain about this year's extraordinary rainfall total to date, which is as much as we might expect in an entire ordinary year, around 30 inches. Our rainwater cistern has been topped off for months; lakes and aquifers are being replenished all over the state. But it's a good time to take rising rivers very seriously.
Update: OK, not that much yesterday, but we've had 5.5 inches of rain today with power outages. Now that's more like it!
Popcorn
This stuff doesn't need any comment.
Well, maybe it does. Here's a good one:
To say that a particularly psychology is abnormal or disordered does not imply it should be an object of hatred or hostility. I believe we need more tolerance for the abnormal and for those outside the mainstream—call it freak lib—and I would note that part of the reason the left has to insist so stridently that Jenner is normal, and demand that everyone agree, is because they are the ones who have no real concept of freedom for those outside the social consensus.
Hope in Detroit
I was wondering the other day how NRA approval sorted out by race. Today HotAir reports that "54 percent of blacks now see gun ownership as a good thing, something more likely to protect than harm. That’s up from 29 percent just two years ago."
Books & Overstatement
I realize I have just said that I will be gone for a week, but I see a comment from Tex that deserves a moment's attention. I had said that the influence of Gutenberg is somewhat overstated. Tex replied:
Now Malory's work is right there at the beginning, but as we see the printing press didn't change the world over night -- or in the first hundred years, or hundred and fifty. It was the kickoff of the industrial revolution that made the printed book the main game. Even long after Gutenberg's death around 1465 (if I recall correctly) printed books were not the majority of books being produced.
For the most part right through the Renaissance books were made as they were made throughout the Middle Ages. And this was a substantial business!
A gentleman named Peter Yu, though a lawyer rather than historian by training, composed a fairly careful brief history of books in response to a comment by Justice Breyer that is called "Of Monks, Medieval Scribes, and Middlemen." Michigan St. Law Review 1 (2006)
I don't think that Tex is at all wrong about the way the general history is presented, however. It's just that here as so often with the Middle Ages, the Modern age has gotten the truth completely backwards.
Grim, before I accept the proposition that "the difficulty of acquiring books before the printing press is overstated" I would need to see some sources. Every history of the period I have ever consulted has emphasized the seismic impact of the sudden availability of a vastly greater body of printed material, along with an explosion of literacy and an accompanying market for books. What do you think is overstated about that picture?I think it's overstated in both directions. For one thing, the idea that Gutenberg produced a 'sudden availability' of 'a vastly greater body' of material is not borne out. Here's a chart of "the number of separately printed items in Britain and by English abroad," from James Raven's The Business of Books, p. 8.
Now Malory's work is right there at the beginning, but as we see the printing press didn't change the world over night -- or in the first hundred years, or hundred and fifty. It was the kickoff of the industrial revolution that made the printed book the main game. Even long after Gutenberg's death around 1465 (if I recall correctly) printed books were not the majority of books being produced.
For the most part right through the Renaissance books were made as they were made throughout the Middle Ages. And this was a substantial business!
Moreover, the universities were the earliest centres of the book trade as we understand it, and the provisions for the multiplication, sale, and rent of standard works helped these at least to travel by their own momentum. In these respects the university life of the later Middle Ages reached a comparatively close approximation to early modern conditions; the chief difference, to use Shaw's phrase, lay in the iconography.That's from Charles Homer Haskins, "The Spread of Ideas in the Middle Ages," Speculum 1 no. 1 (January 1926). He goes on to point out that there are records of 'vast stores of books' returning from the Fourth Crusade as a favored item of plunder; in fact, the Crusaders had learned early in Spain that there was almost nothing of greater value than the books of Greek learning, and Arabic commentaries or expansions on the same, that they were able to take from the Saracen lands.
A gentleman named Peter Yu, though a lawyer rather than historian by training, composed a fairly careful brief history of books in response to a comment by Justice Breyer that is called "Of Monks, Medieval Scribes, and Middlemen." Michigan St. Law Review 1 (2006)
By the twelfth century, towns emerged, and communities grew in size and wealth. As a result of the spread of literacy, the demand for books increased dramatically, and a large number of new texts appeared. "Monastic libraries soon found it more and more difficult to keep their collections up to date, and they began employing secular scribes and illuminators to collaborate in book production." Meanwhile, schools became independent from cathedrals, to which they were originally attached, and guilds of lecturers and students gathered to form universities. With the changing lifestyle and the emergence of new educational institutions, it became more and more common for people to want to own books themselves, whether students seeking textbooks or noble women desiring to own beautifully illuminated Psalters. By 1200 there is quite good evidence of secular workshops writing and decorating manuscripts for sale to the laity. By 1250 there were certainly bookshops in the big university and commercial towns, arranging the writing out of new manuscripts and trading in second-hand copies. By 1300 it must have been exceptional for a monastery to make its own manuscripts: usually, monks bought their books from shops like anyone else, although this is not quite true of the Carthusians or of some religious communities in the Netherlands....He goes on to note that the 'challenge' to traditional manuscripts by printed works was generational, as the traditionally produced works did not drop off in popularity, and printed works were actually more expensive than hand-made works in the first generation. The technology to produce them was new and not an industrial technology; there were very few people who knew how to make or use it, and it still required a very substantial amount of labor. The works were certainly popular, which demand increased their price given the limited supply, but they did not replace the Medieval method for generations -- only supplemented it.
Ordinances, therefore, were developed "to regulate the work of the copyists, to lay down the minimum requirements of formal presentation and substantial correctness, and to prescribe the selling price of duly certified copies." A notable example of these regulations was the ordinance of Bologna University of 1259, which provided what commentators have considered to be the earliest regulations of sales, loans, and production of books used by the university. Similar regulations were also enacted by the University of Paris in 1275 and by Alphonso X of Castile in Spain sometime between 1252 and 1285. Although England had similar regulations concerning the stationers, "the English book trade . . . developed not around the universities, as on the Continent, but in London, where the stationers formed a guild as early as 1403." This guild was known famously as the Stationers' Company...
As the book trade grew in volume, the number of scribes increased dramatically, and a scribal industry began to emerge as a profession.... [t]he book trade continued to flourish in major European cities, and the number of scribes and illuminators increased substantially as a result. "By the late thirteenth century in Paris (a century later in England), ateliers of scribes and illuminators were known by the name of their master artists," and "the names of scribes, illuminators, parchment-makers and binders . . . [can be found] in tax records, though few names can be linked with surviving books."
I don't think that Tex is at all wrong about the way the general history is presented, however. It's just that here as so often with the Middle Ages, the Modern age has gotten the truth completely backwards.
Literature and pure motives
An author I quite admire and enjoy, Ursula Le Guin, shares the widespread conviction that the book industry has been corrupted by financial motives. Publishers--those lousy Philistines--don't care about the inherent value of a book, only about their ability to sell it at a profit. Well, I suppose there may be publishers out there who only care about the inherent value of a book, but after they spend all their savings putting the books out, they go out of business, leaving only their filthy-lucre competitors behind.
It's only been in the last few centuries, though, that anyone even tried to make money off of publishing. Back when each book was a painstaking labor of handmade love, if the author wasn't pretty determined to write it for its inherent value, well, it just didn't get written. Not many people ever got to read these supremely disinterested works, but that kept the unwashed masses from driving down the tone. Then some bright guy figured out a way to automate the printing process, and suddenly books weren't just something that a few scholars shared with each other as fast as some poor scribe could copy them by hand. The growing literate public started agitating for more and faster copies, and next thing you know people are saying, "Well, OK, I'll devote my professional life to churning out copies for you, but only if you're willing to pay for them. All this paper and ink isn't free, you know." Publishers got used to making a living and found that they might have to pay the authors who turned out stuff people were willing to buy.
It's still possible to write for the sheer inherent value of writing, if you don't want a zillion people to read it, and if you don't quit your day job. But it seems a little odd to demand the right to make a living at writing, while complaining that other people don't value it for its own sake.
It's only been in the last few centuries, though, that anyone even tried to make money off of publishing. Back when each book was a painstaking labor of handmade love, if the author wasn't pretty determined to write it for its inherent value, well, it just didn't get written. Not many people ever got to read these supremely disinterested works, but that kept the unwashed masses from driving down the tone. Then some bright guy figured out a way to automate the printing process, and suddenly books weren't just something that a few scholars shared with each other as fast as some poor scribe could copy them by hand. The growing literate public started agitating for more and faster copies, and next thing you know people are saying, "Well, OK, I'll devote my professional life to churning out copies for you, but only if you're willing to pay for them. All this paper and ink isn't free, you know." Publishers got used to making a living and found that they might have to pay the authors who turned out stuff people were willing to buy.
It's still possible to write for the sheer inherent value of writing, if you don't want a zillion people to read it, and if you don't quit your day job. But it seems a little odd to demand the right to make a living at writing, while complaining that other people don't value it for its own sake.
Today in Clueless Youth-hood...
...a young progressive decides Jerry Seinfeld needs a lecture on the recent history of comedy. 'Let me tell you about this guy called George Carlin...'
The upshot of the lecture is that it's great if comedy is offensive, as long as it offends only the right people.
The upshot of the lecture is that it's great if comedy is offensive, as long as it offends only the right people.
Safety first
Always wanted to work in the porn industry? You probably hesitated, knowing that the industry didn't require suitable protective eyewear. Now California has your back.
Then Again, Sometimes It's Hard to Judge What's Madness...
Human intuition has some limits. If this piece points to something true about the world, those limits are much greater than we think they are.
We had a luxury yacht once
At least, we had an offshore fishing boat. It wasn't a luxury boat like Marco Rubio's though; it was used, and I think it was a foot or two shorter than his opulent 24. We couldn't have dinner parties on it like he can, or shelter our guests in private cabins. We didn't even have a helicopter landing pad like his.
Another thing that shows he can't identify with ordinary voters like me is his luxury mansion. I've never lived in a home with 2,700 square feet, except for one period when I shared it with eight other commune-types, like a good member of the proletariat. I never had an in-ground pool. At the ancestral Texan99 manor, if we wanted to splash we had to fill up the little plastic pool. Where does Rubio get off?
Best to stick with the Clinton/Kerry ticket.
Another thing that shows he can't identify with ordinary voters like me is his luxury mansion. I've never lived in a home with 2,700 square feet, except for one period when I shared it with eight other commune-types, like a good member of the proletariat. I never had an in-ground pool. At the ancestral Texan99 manor, if we wanted to splash we had to fill up the little plastic pool. Where does Rubio get off?
Best to stick with the Clinton/Kerry ticket.
'Madman Comes Up With BS Theory' Would Have Been Less Compelling
Headline: "Is Ancient History Completely Made Up By 'The Man'?"
Short answer: No.
Slightly longer answer: Nevertheless, some of the problems he raises are interesting, even though his conclusions are barking mad.
Short answer: No.
Slightly longer answer: Nevertheless, some of the problems he raises are interesting, even though his conclusions are barking mad.
Further Evidence of the Intelligence of Chimpanzees
We've long known about their construction and use of primitive tools. Who knew, though, that they put them to such a divine and civilized purpose?
High Stakes Poker
In the old days in Dodge City, they didn't play much harder than this:
The law declares that if the supreme court strikes down the administrative law, the entire state judiciary will lose its funding. Brownback and the legislature are essentially bullying the judiciary: Uphold our law or cease to exist.Well, court-packing worked for Roosevelt. Even though he didn't get his packed court, he spooked the Justices into giving way on his preferred 'reforms,' such as letting the Executive's bureaucracy write the laws by having Congress delegate them the authority.
"I chose life."
"I chose life. I defaulted on my student loans."
Oh, if you want a dose of precious snowflake, try this guy's paean to his own highmindedness.
Oh, if you want a dose of precious snowflake, try this guy's paean to his own highmindedness.
Left-Leaning Academics: "Were We Wrong?"
What happens when postmodern cultural and literary criticisms fall into the wrong hands?
It would be a terrible mistake for the right to adopt the 'winning strategy' of refusing to recognize truth based on objective facts, however. Play stupid games, as they say, and you'll win stupid prizes.
Anyone who has been paying attention to the fault lines of academic debate for the past 20 years already knows that the "science wars" were fought by natural scientists (and their defenders in the philosophy of science) on the one side and literary critics and cultural-studies folks on the other. The latter argued that even in the natural realm, truth is relative, and there is no such thing as objectivity. The skirmishes blew up in the well-known "Sokal affair" in 1996, in which a prominent physicist created a scientifically absurd postmodernist paper and was able to get it published in a leading cultural-studies journal. The ridicule that followed may have seemed to settle the matter once and for all.The reason it burns is that there is a whole lot invested in the idea that we can't simply reason from observations of the facts of nature to objective conclusions that should guide our actions.
But then a funny thing happened: While many natural scientists declared the battle won and headed back to their labs, some left-wing postmodernist criticisms of truth began to be picked up by right-wing ideologues who were looking for respectable cover for their denial of climate change, evolution, and other scientifically accepted conclusions. Alan Sokal said he had hoped to shake up academic progressives, but suddenly one found hard-right conservatives sounding like Continental intellectuals. And that caused discombobulation on the left.
"Was I wrong to participate in the invention of this field known as science studies?," Bruno Latour, one of the founders of the field that contextualizes science, famously asked. "Is it enough to say that we did not really mean what we said? Why does it burn my tongue to say that global warming is a fact whether you like it or not? Why can’t I simply say that the argument is closed for good?"
It would be a terrible mistake for the right to adopt the 'winning strategy' of refusing to recognize truth based on objective facts, however. Play stupid games, as they say, and you'll win stupid prizes.
Shooting for E-Zero
This Google link will take you to a non-firewalled WSJ article about the supreme post-modern condition now reached by our ethanol fuel policy: from now on, we're going to subsidize corn production for ethanol, not because we can better achieve our environmental goals that way, but because subsidies are a goal in their own right. My husband's view: we'd probably do less damage if we just started sending the checks with no strings attached.
Reading Lists
Went by the local used bookstore tonight, and picked up a few things to read this summer.
Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers. This was my introduction to economic theory many years ago, but I haven't re-read it since I was a teenager.
Wippel and Wotler, O.F.M. Medieval Philosophy. I don't expect surprises in this volume, but it'll be interesting to read another perspective of the topic in summary.
Lupack, Alan and Barbara, eds. Arthurian Literature by Women. I bought this one because it was mostly Medieval and 19th century, but there is a substantial section of 20th century contributions.
Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers. This was my introduction to economic theory many years ago, but I haven't re-read it since I was a teenager.
Wippel and Wotler, O.F.M. Medieval Philosophy. I don't expect surprises in this volume, but it'll be interesting to read another perspective of the topic in summary.
Lupack, Alan and Barbara, eds. Arthurian Literature by Women. I bought this one because it was mostly Medieval and 19th century, but there is a substantial section of 20th century contributions.
Waco RUMINT
This guy is an attorney in Las Vegas who has been contacted, he claims, by many of the bikers arrested in the Waco shootout. Easyriders magazine found him credible enough to pass the clip, given what they're hearing from their own connections.
The way he tells the story, most of the bikers inside were there for a meeting of a community of non-outlaw clubs considering bills before the state assembly that deal with motorcycle issues. The Scimitars and Cossacks showed up uninvited to this meeting. A handful of Bandidos showed up later, and the Cossacks/Scimitars decided to press their substantial numerical advantage to force the Bandidos to a loss of face. This escalated, so that one Bandido was shot, and one-two more shots were fired without issue.
Then the police, who had their SWAT team on site, opened fire into the crowd with rifles. He estimates they killed all 9 dead, and injured 26 of the 27. Then they arrested everyone, and got a justice of the peace rather than a proper judge to slap that $1 million dollar bond on everyone.
Now of course this is in no way official, and is just the word of people arrested at the time. The police have all the forensics and video, mostly unreleased to the public so far. Perhaps a FOIA request from a Texas media outlet will generate more information. Perhaps the police will choose to release more. Presumably there are some official procedures of inquiry in process as well.
We'll just have to see how the facts shake out in time.
The way he tells the story, most of the bikers inside were there for a meeting of a community of non-outlaw clubs considering bills before the state assembly that deal with motorcycle issues. The Scimitars and Cossacks showed up uninvited to this meeting. A handful of Bandidos showed up later, and the Cossacks/Scimitars decided to press their substantial numerical advantage to force the Bandidos to a loss of face. This escalated, so that one Bandido was shot, and one-two more shots were fired without issue.
Then the police, who had their SWAT team on site, opened fire into the crowd with rifles. He estimates they killed all 9 dead, and injured 26 of the 27. Then they arrested everyone, and got a justice of the peace rather than a proper judge to slap that $1 million dollar bond on everyone.
Now of course this is in no way official, and is just the word of people arrested at the time. The police have all the forensics and video, mostly unreleased to the public so far. Perhaps a FOIA request from a Texas media outlet will generate more information. Perhaps the police will choose to release more. Presumably there are some official procedures of inquiry in process as well.
We'll just have to see how the facts shake out in time.
Five Medieval Tales
Via Medievalists, a set of charming (or not) stories from the Middle Ages.
The first story may strike a contemporary reader as grotesque, not merely for the cannibalism but for the prospect of having your actual heart cut out and sent to someone you love. Yet this practice was regarded not as grotesque but rather intensely romantic, in the old sense of the word, in the High Middle Ages. Robert the Bruce had his heart removed after his death and sent on Crusade, as his heart had always longed to go, but his duty to Scotland kept him from it. His greatest friend carried the heart, and died crusading against the Moors in Spain.
Story number four may or may not be practical, but it is a common story. The Icelandic Heimskringla has Harald Hardrada, the Thunderbolt of the North, carrying out a similar plan to destroy a city in Sicily while campaigning in the mercenary service of the lords of Byzantium. In that case they supposedly gathered up flying birds and set them ablaze, causing them to fly home in a panic to their nests within the walls of the city.
As for the third tale, just last night I finished the chapter of Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders that deals with the Portuguese kings. This sort of deep love attachment and flamboyance sounds very much in character for the family. That, by the way, is proving to be an entertaining history. I recommend it.
The first story may strike a contemporary reader as grotesque, not merely for the cannibalism but for the prospect of having your actual heart cut out and sent to someone you love. Yet this practice was regarded not as grotesque but rather intensely romantic, in the old sense of the word, in the High Middle Ages. Robert the Bruce had his heart removed after his death and sent on Crusade, as his heart had always longed to go, but his duty to Scotland kept him from it. His greatest friend carried the heart, and died crusading against the Moors in Spain.
Story number four may or may not be practical, but it is a common story. The Icelandic Heimskringla has Harald Hardrada, the Thunderbolt of the North, carrying out a similar plan to destroy a city in Sicily while campaigning in the mercenary service of the lords of Byzantium. In that case they supposedly gathered up flying birds and set them ablaze, causing them to fly home in a panic to their nests within the walls of the city.
As for the third tale, just last night I finished the chapter of Barnaby Rogerson's The Last Crusaders that deals with the Portuguese kings. This sort of deep love attachment and flamboyance sounds very much in character for the family. That, by the way, is proving to be an entertaining history. I recommend it.
Another from D29
The May jobs report was strong... from a certain point of view.
Economist Tyler Cowen suggests that maybe it just isn't going to get better. I think we can all think of ways that would make it better -- a vast deregulation, starting with repealing Obamacare, would be my first suggestion -- so I don't accept the idea that we would be powerless were we able to form a unified political will as a polity and act upon it. Still, I do agree that there are some problems that won't just smooth out and get better, because they were allowed to fester for so long.
Speaking of which, how's that national debt problem?
...in May's far stronger than expected report, the two for the first time were almost identical: the Establishment Survey reported an increase of 280K jobs, while according to the Household survey 272K jobs were added. ...the biggest surprise came from Table 7, where the BLS reveals the number of "foreign born workers" used in the Household survey. In May, this number increased [by a] monthly jump of 279K...So, the number of new jobs and the number of new immigrant workers is just about identical? Normally you'd only expect to see that if we had reached structural unemployment levels, so that the only way you could grow the workforce was by bringing new people in from outside the country. Instead, we have a U-6 unemployment rate of 10.8%.
Economist Tyler Cowen suggests that maybe it just isn't going to get better. I think we can all think of ways that would make it better -- a vast deregulation, starting with repealing Obamacare, would be my first suggestion -- so I don't accept the idea that we would be powerless were we able to form a unified political will as a polity and act upon it. Still, I do agree that there are some problems that won't just smooth out and get better, because they were allowed to fester for so long.
Speaking of which, how's that national debt problem?
The Case of the 11 AM Beer
The Drudge Report picked up a Daily Telegraph story asking, "Why is Barack Obama drinking beer at 11 AM?"
I was prepared to defend the President on this one. It's a local custom for Sunday mornings.
Until the last line of the article, I was convinced of this position. But:
I was prepared to defend the President on this one. It's a local custom for Sunday mornings.
Eleven in the morning might be considered a little early for a beer in some parts of the world, but in Bavaria breakfast is not complete without a weissbier, as the local wheat beer is called. It’s not quite as hard-drinking as it sounds: Bavarians don’t down a quick pint before heading to the office every morning. It originates in Frühschoppen - a local tradition of meeting for a drink late in the morning on Sundays and holidays.Besides, if he just flew in from D.C., it's not 11 AM in any meaningful sense for him anyway. So I was going to say that he should be given full pardon for this alleged offense.
According to Bavarian custom, the sausages cannot be eaten after 12 noon, because no preservatives are used and they are made fresh every day. Therefore those who wish to wash their sausages down with a beer must get supping before that time. The local saying is that the sausages must not be allowed to hear the church bells chime noon.
Until the last line of the article, I was convinced of this position. But:
A local farmer told reporters Mr Obama had in fact drunk non-alcoholic beer at the breakfast.Non-alcoholic beer in Germany? There's simply no excuse for that.
The Case of the Casbah and the Offensive American Dancer
A group in Morocco is suing American dancer Jennifer Lopez for "tarnishing women's honor and respect" with her racy performance in country. I have little doubt that the charges are fully justified by the local community standards, but the group is probably out of luck. Morocco has no extradition treaty with the United States, so the potential jail time will certainly never be served.
Last week I related The Tale of Scott Rothstein and His Golden Toilets, and mentioned among other things that Rothstein had "fled to Morocco" along with 16 million of his closest friends when it looked like the proverbial jig was up for him and his Ponzi scheme....That works both ways. They get our Ponzi scheme artists, but they don't get our... er, "artists."
Not coincidentally, Morocco is one of the countries that has no extradition treaty with the United States, something that Rothstein knew because -- and this is possibly my favorite detail of the whole story, short of the golden toilets -- he made somebody in his firm research that issue for him. The project was supposedly on behalf of a "client," but he was in fact having someone research the question of where he should flee to avoid prosecution.
I was sort of hoping he called in an associate and just made that person do it, but it turns out he sent an email, apparently to everyone in the firm, saying he had a rush project for an important client. "We have a client that was a United States citizen until about 6 months ago," Rothstein wrote in the email, probably able to resist making air quotes around "client" only because he was busy typing the word. "He became a citizen of Israel and renounced his United States citizenship. He is likely to be charged with a multitude of crimes in the United States including fraud, money laundering and embezzlement." (I'm trying to imagine what people at the firm were thinking upon reading this.) Rothstein wanted them to research whether the client could be extradited from Israel, or could be prosecuted for the crimes in Israel. "This client is related to a very powerful client of ours," Rothstein continued, "and so time is of the essence. Lets [sic] rock and roll....there is a very large fee attached to this case. Thanks Love ya Scott," he concluded.
Who Talked?
Almost everything about SEAL Team 6, a classified Special Operations unit, is shrouded in secrecy — the Pentagon does not even publicly acknowledge that name — though some of its exploits have emerged in largely admiring accounts in recent years. But an examination of Team 6’s evolution, drawn from dozens of interviews with current and former team members, other military officials and reviews of government documents, reveals a far more complex, provocative tale.Loose lips, boys.
Catholic Social Teaching, For Catholics
H/t D29:
The Church has long taught that defrauding a worker of his wages is one of the four sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance (CCC 1867). In his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII echoed the words of St. James:OK, so that's a lot of backstory. We know the Church believes this. So what?
Doubtless, before deciding whether wages are fair, many things have to be considered; but wealthy owners and all masters of labor should be mindful of this – that to exercise pressure upon the indigent and the destitute for the sake of gain, and to gather one’s profit out of the need of another, is condemned by all laws, human and divine. To defraud any one of wages that are his due is a great crime which cries to the avenging anger of Heaven. “Behold, the hire of the laborers… which by fraud has been kept back by you, crieth; and the cry of them hath entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth.” Lastly, the rich must religiously refrain from cutting down the workmen’s earnings, whether by force, by fraud, or by usurious dealing; and with all the greater reason because the laboring man is, as a rule, weak and unprotected, and because his slender means should in proportion to their scantiness be accounted sacred. Were these precepts carefully obeyed and followed out, would they not be sufficient of themselves to keep under all strife and all its causes?
Again, Pope Pius XI took up the cause in Quadragesimo Anno. He made an important distinction, however, when it came to those businesses which themselves were deprived of enough revenue to pay their workers justly:
[I]f the business in question is not making enough money to pay the workers an equitable wage because it is being crushed by unjust burdens or forced to sell its product at less than a just price, those who are thus the cause of the injury are guilty of grave wrong, for they deprive workers of their just wage and force them under the pinch of necessity to accept a wage less than fair.
First, there is the problem of working for the Church herself. There is no surer path to financial insolvency than for a hard worker to direct their energies towards some form of full-time Catholic apostolate, or to slave away for long hours as a Director of Religious Education, or to teach at a Catholic school.... This becomes a particular problem if they embody the Catholic ethos of “oppenness to life” and have a large family.Emphasis added. This is a good point. Some religious orders require a vow of poverty, but a large part of the work is done by people who do not labor under such vows. How much stronger the moral argument would be if it were joined to practical example.
I suspect few individuals have ever had aspirations of becoming wealthy while working for the Church, but by the Church’s own teaching, the worker in a Catholic apostolate or school should expect to “be paid a wage sufficient to support him and his family.” (QA 71) It is inexcusably hypocritical that the same clergy who wield the Church’s social teaching as a weapon against the titans of industry — often claiming that this is a non-negotiable moral imperative — often fail so completely when it comes to applying this standard to those under their own employ.
Libertarian-Hating Day
I think we understand here that I am not personally anything like a Libertarian. However, we also know that at least two of my co-bloggers are. Half of that sample is female, which apparently makes it hugely unrepresentative. Today there's a mini-festival of hate aimed at the ideology around that fact.
Jeet Heer:
Althouse aside -- she's arguing ad hominem against men she really didn't like -- these arguments are rooted in a frame whose purpose is to prevent concrete criticism of the current governing approach. That's no surprise: these are all supporters of the party in power, of the governing President, and of the philosophy he embraces. The sneering at a philosophy because it draws its examples from an imperfect past is really an attempt to disable a whole line of criticism of the present.
Jeet Heer:
This type of yearning for the America of the Robber Barons has little to offer most women (who might not want to return to a world where they couldn’t vote and had severely restricted social lives) or for that matter most non-whites (who might recall Jim Crow segregation). As Brian Doherty notes, “American blacks or women … might find libertarian complaints about government growth silly. Most of them certainly feel freer in many important ways than they would have in the nineteenth century.”Ann Althouse:
To put it very plainly and simply, to me, the libertarians lacked humanity and they were using their pride in their commitment to abstract ideas to resist examining the reasons why they liked the ideas they were wedded to. I think people like that would be very dangerous if they had political power. Intellectually, as people to converse with, I found them cold and rigid, not interested in talking about anything on the level that I am seeking, and creepily eager to insult me for being on the wrong level.Kevin Drum:
Jeet Heer investigates a burning question today: why are most libertarians men? He offers several plausible explanations, but I think he misses the real one, perhaps because it's pretty unflattering to libertarians.It's not a great argument, I will suggest. The argument can be pointed equally at any political philosophy that draws inspiration from any past era. But the past is the only place from which we can draw concrete examples to criticize the present approach. We can imagine the future, but we have no way to know if our imaginations of what the future might be like are just moonshine. The past really happened. The cases aren't exactly like our present cases, but they offer concrete analogies that can help us see where we are going wrong, or where we might do better.
So here's the quick answer: hard core libertarianism is a fantasy. It's a fantasy where the strongest and most self-reliant folks end up at the top of the heap, and a fair number of men share the fantasy that they are these folks. They believe they've been held back by rules and regulations designed to help the weak, and in a libertarian culture their talents would be obvious and they'd naturally rise to positions of power and influence.... Few women share this fantasy. I don't know why, and I don't really want to play amateur sociologist and guess. Perhaps it's something as simple as the plain observation that in the more libertarian past, women were subjugated to men almost completely.
Althouse aside -- she's arguing ad hominem against men she really didn't like -- these arguments are rooted in a frame whose purpose is to prevent concrete criticism of the current governing approach. That's no surprise: these are all supporters of the party in power, of the governing President, and of the philosophy he embraces. The sneering at a philosophy because it draws its examples from an imperfect past is really an attempt to disable a whole line of criticism of the present.
On vacation for the next week
Driving to Meridian to spend time with the in-laws and other family. Y'all be good to each other.
Just Out Of Curiousity...
...how do you do that?
Most Americans like to drive. So states everywhere have passed "Motor-Voter" laws, requiring the DMV or MVA or whatever they have in their state to ask you if you want to register to vote while you're obtaining a license. Clearly, this doesn't get everyone because we're still talking about it.
Public libraries serve lots of the folks we are hoping to reach, at least we hope they do. It'd be great if they were taking advantage of free opportunities to educate themselves. So when you apply for a library card in many states, they automatically ask you if you'd like to register to vote. But there's no guarantee you go to the library, and if you do, you only need a card to check out books -- not to use the free computers.
We've chased this concept a long way already, and as far as I know we don't have a good idea of how to do what she's talking about. Maybe someone will ask her how she intends to accomplish what Selective Service, Motor-Voter and the Public Library plans haven't managed to do. Assuming, that is, that anyone is allowed to ask her a question.
Hillary Clinton proposed Thursday that Americans be automatically registered to vote when they turn 18, unless they opt out, one of a series of voting-law changes she said would expand access to the ballot box.So, if you're a man -- and not a male-leaning female-born whatever -- you have to register for the Selective Service at 18. They'd love to automate this process, since the concept is zero-noncompliance. But you actually have to go down to the Post Office and send them a card, or at least I did at 18. I assume there are other options now, but they all require you to do something. Because they assume you won't do it for free, there are significant legal penalties for failing to do it.
Most Americans like to drive. So states everywhere have passed "Motor-Voter" laws, requiring the DMV or MVA or whatever they have in their state to ask you if you want to register to vote while you're obtaining a license. Clearly, this doesn't get everyone because we're still talking about it.
Public libraries serve lots of the folks we are hoping to reach, at least we hope they do. It'd be great if they were taking advantage of free opportunities to educate themselves. So when you apply for a library card in many states, they automatically ask you if you'd like to register to vote. But there's no guarantee you go to the library, and if you do, you only need a card to check out books -- not to use the free computers.
We've chased this concept a long way already, and as far as I know we don't have a good idea of how to do what she's talking about. Maybe someone will ask her how she intends to accomplish what Selective Service, Motor-Voter and the Public Library plans haven't managed to do. Assuming, that is, that anyone is allowed to ask her a question.
Jobs and justice for the non-binary
Roger Kimball reports that Bryn Mawr has taken steps to address the increasingly vexing question of which of its applicants are female. Some, of course, were "assigned female at birth," so that's smooth sailing. The university will open its arms as well to "transwomen and . . . intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application." In fact, you can get in if you're a member of that shadowy group known as "intersex individuals who do not identify as male." The gates are resolutely shut, however, against "those assigned female at birth who have taken medical or legal steps to identify as male."
What new opportunities for padding the administration the new policy offers! You may have a dozen deans of diversity, but how many administrators looking into the “legal or medical steps taken to affirm gender” do most campuses have? It is an opportunity for growth at a time when many colleges are facing cutbacks.The one thing we can be sure of is that Bryn Mawr will continue to celebrate its vital role as a women-only institution.
Science and Humility
Rick Santorum, who is a Knight of the Order of St. John of Malta, expressed an opinion to the Pope to the effect that the Church should leave science to scientists.
It turns out the Pope probably agrees with that sentiment: he has a Master's degree in chemistry, and was a working chemist in his youth.
“The church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists,” he told the pope. “I think when we get involved with controversial political and scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible. And I’ve said this to the bishops many times when they get involved in agriculture policy or things like that, that are really outside the scope of what the church’s main message is.”Despite what the linked article says, this isn't a stupid point. It's also not limited to global-warming/climate-change arguments. It's a generalized approach to the relationship between the Church and science that isn't foolish. If God is the author of the world, then finding out about the world is a way to know something about God by knowing something about his works. It would be irreligious to bias that process, as if trying to tell God how he had to have set things up.
It turns out the Pope probably agrees with that sentiment: he has a Master's degree in chemistry, and was a working chemist in his youth.
Being a scientist means that you have to embrace the fact that you don’t know everything. That you need to be constantly searching for the truth. It’s hard to stay humble as Pope in the extravagant confines of the Vatican. But from all accounts, the new Pope has humility in spades. He lived in an apartment rather than the Archbishop’s palace. He traveled by bus rather than chauffeured limousine. Humility makes one open to change – and change is something that the Church desperately needs now.That seems to be the considered opinion of every generation. They forget, or perhaps simply reject, that part of the function of the Church is to restrain passion in favor of proven virtue. If your change is right, it will eventually win the day. But it will have to test itself and prove its rightness against a bulwark of wisdom that has done the same, in its time. Many passionately-believed ideas arise, flourish an hour, and then perish. Many such are flourishing right now. Some of them may prove out, but many such ideas will fade in popularity once their consequences become better known.
Chimp Cookery
Researchers built an oven for some chimpanzees, and the chimps worked out how to cook with it for themselves.
Well, no, but that's what they're claiming they found. What they actually found was that chimps can learn to play games involving trading things they like less for things they like more.
Well, no, but that's what they're claiming they found. What they actually found was that chimps can learn to play games involving trading things they like less for things they like more.
The device was actually just a bowl with a false bottom that held cooked food. The researchers didn't use fire because it could have injured the chimps, and because some chimps might have already seen how humans used it to cook food.So what we haven't learned is how early man came to control fire, or how he learned to cook -- let alone how he learned to build an oven! Fire's too dangerous for the chimps, and no oven construction is being observed.
Boston Mosque Update
So the FBI's victim, that guard at the local mosque who didn't "regularly" pray there, turns out to be the brother of one of the imams. Jimbo is on the case, along with some video of gun-and-sword preaching from another imam there.
Even for HRC, this is bad PR
Her Inevitableness will take no questions. The speech will be her interview.
The campaign disavows the expression, but it's too apt not to stick.
The campaign disavows the expression, but it's too apt not to stick.
Local experiments
My husband argues that, no matter how beastly things look in the federal elections, there's an encouraging red wave at the state level. I'm skeptical whether that's enough, but he's clearly right about the breakout of some kinds of conservative principles in state houses, many of the sort that probably won't even be overturned by federal courts or Congress. In Nevada, for instance, the governor has just signed several bills calculated to give Harry Reid hives. A new school choice program will put 90% of the average cost of public schooling into parents' hands for any educational purpose they choose, including tutoring or private school tuition (the percentage goes to 100% for certain disadvantaged students). A few other states have programs that venture a bit in this direction, but are strictly limited to students with disabilities or students in schools formally identified as "failing." Nevada's experiment in school choice is wide open. My own governor is about to sign an open-carry and campus-carry law.
At the same time, blue cities are revolting against red legislatures, thus setting up an entertaining argument over whether too much local control leads to patchwork regulatory systems, with some conservatives taking the pro-uniformity position.
At the same time, blue cities are revolting against red legislatures, thus setting up an entertaining argument over whether too much local control leads to patchwork regulatory systems, with some conservatives taking the pro-uniformity position.
Don't Be That Guy
So I can understand carrying a rifle to a protest outside a mosque linked to an attack by men with rifles on a gathering you support. That sends a message that anyone thinking they can intimidate the American people into surrendering our basic rights through violence is going to meet some significant resistance.
What I don't understand is carrying a rifle loaded with a 100-round drum magazine to the airport just to make a point. What point? Well, it's not really clear, but he did feel harassed by all the police attention.
What I don't understand is carrying a rifle loaded with a 100-round drum magazine to the airport just to make a point. What point? Well, it's not really clear, but he did feel harassed by all the police attention.
Is the Koran Grammatically Correct?
I have no way of evaluating this argument, since I do not know any Classical Arabic, but it seems like it would be pretty explosive if it's true. Supposedly the Koran is the direct recitation of words transmitted to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel. Perhaps Gabriel speaks in a regional patois?
Blackmail
John McAfee, the same one who invented the McAfee anti-virus software, points out that there is a huge national security problem associated with the Adult Friend-Finder site (and, of course, similar sites).
Of the 535 members of Congress, only 16 congressmen and two senators were members of this adult website. Most were interested in BDSM. Only three were interested in gay hookups. Of the Fortune 500 corporations, fewer than 1,420 executives (directors, vice-presidents and above) were members. Another 230,000 or so rank-and-file employees of Fortune 500 companies were also members – following in the footsteps of their admired superiors no doubt.So what's the problem for national security, you ask? He is glad to tell you.
Their interests ranged widely. Of the 2,400,000 odd employees of the US Federal Government, we find a measly 120,000 or so who were members.... This tragically fascinating information comes from a well-publicised hack of Adult FriendFinder...
I need to make something perfectly clear. The hacks that reach public awareness are extremely rare. For a hack to reach public awareness, someone has to make a serious mistake, or they are demanding money or some other asset or, in the case of ROR(RG), they have an axe to grind. This is something you need to carefully consider if you are in the world of information security.
Nearly all of these officials are married with children. Imagine what would happen if Russia, or China, got hold of this information. They would certainly not demand money to keep quiet. No –each of these people would be visited by a warm-hearted, well-dressed, kind and empathetic person whose conversation would go like this:Russian operations of this sort were extremely common in the Cold War. I would think way it would go down is slightly different. Important 'Friendfinders' would get visited, on the site, by someone who somehow perfectly matched what they were secretly dreaming about. The conversation would come later, after there were recordings and videos, and would be much less gently phrased.
"We are so sorry that you got caught up in this nonsense, and we realise that it in no way taints your character or value as a productive citizen. Frankly, I myself have done far worse. We, in Russia, take a more practical view to such issues. They are not important.
"We have done what we can to keep your name out of this sad affair and can guarantee it will never come to light. That would help no one and we wish to hurt no one. So you have a friend in me and a friend in the country of Russia.
"I believe I could even help you gain power and prestige in your own country. I am privy to much that is happening behind the scenes in Russia and would be willing to advise you on affairs that impact both or our countries. You may call me at any time. In fact, the vote coming up in July is one such issue that I can give you good advice on. Please call me."
The Scandi miracle
The Sweden Report, a blog maintained by a Swedish-born American who returned to Sweden, is ending. Its author is giving up and moving back to the U.S. One of his readers has decided to stay:
Thanks for your writings. Being born and still living here, well educated, having young children, and seeing the same things I’m still staying. However we have moved out to the countryside. Quite far away. It’s a pain commuting but not worse than living in Stockholm and we love the nature and the people here. Community. People helping each other. Talking to each other. Caring for one another. No loans anymore. Sure, it’s not an idyll, we have our share of misery around here, but when the sh*t is going to hit the fan (because boy, it will) we believe that we’re better off here. Sure, we might have bet on the wrong horse but people out here already have to depend on each other. We already know the establishment hates us.
It’s not going to be easy. Who knows what kind of looting gangs can come raiding… But. We’ve got tools. We’ve got skilled people who can manage themselves. We’ve got food. We’ve got community. We’ve got morals. Plus. We’re armed.
Those who are dependent on the system have a hard time ahead of them… If we’re going to go out, let’s go out with our banners held high. I say… let the collapse begin! We cannot avoid it anyway.
Prices and power
From Kevin D. Williamson:
Prices in markets are not arbitrary — they are reflections of how real people actually value certain goods and services in the real world. Arbitrarily changing the dollar numbers attached to those preferences does not change the underlying reality any more than trimming Cleveland off a map of the United States actually makes Cleveland disappear… Free markets are a reflection of what people actually value at a particular time relative to the other things that they might also value. Real people simply want things that are different from what the planners want them to want, a predicament that can be solved only through violence and the threat of violence…
Markets adapt to political changes, and the hierarchy of values that distinguishes between an hour’s worth of warehouse management, an hour’s worth of composing poetry, an hour’s worth of brain surgery, and an hour’s worth of singing pop songs is not going to change because a politician says so, or because a group of politicians says so, or because 50 percent + 1 of the voters say so, or for any other reason. To think otherwise is the equivalent of flat-earth cosmology. In the long term, people’s needs and desires are what they are; in the short term, you can cause a great deal of chaos in the economy and you can give employers additional reasons to automate rote work. But you cannot make a fry-guy’s labour as valuable as a patent lawyer’s by simply passing a law.It's that tricky word "valuable." Does it mean what people actually value, or what their betters believe they should value? Free markets mean letting people decide for themselves. Planned markets mean trying to decide for them. I could never have predicted that the messy business of letting a lot of largely ignorant and irrational members of the public decide for themselves would actually promote more prosperity, but oddly enough that's exactly what happens. I'd love to understand why, but the fact remains indisputably itself, whether I can explain it adequately or not.
Are they doing it on purpose?
The perennial question in highly politicized disputes, in this case Climatism. From Watts Up With That:
Good cartoon, too.
All these issues were inevitable when a political agenda coopted climate science. Two words, “skeptic” and consensus”, illustrate the difference between politics and science in climate research. All scientists are and must be skeptics, but they are troublemakers for the general public. Science is not about consensus, but it is very important in politics. As a result of these and other differences, the climate debate occurs in two different universes.
A major challenge for those fighting the manipulations of the IPCC and politicians using climate change for political platforms is that the public cannot believe that scientists would be anything less than completely open and truthful. They cannot believe that scientists would even remain silent even when science is misused. The politicians exploit this trust in science and scientists, which places science in jeopardy. It also allowed the scientific malfeasance of climate science to be carried out in the open.
Good cartoon, too.
Not good for the Jews
From Maggie's Farm, an American Jew's attempt to understand why the tide is turning against Jews in America:
The unimaginable evil of the Holocaust seemed to kill anti-Semitism, even the polite country-club variety that shows up in the work of F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. After the war, Hemingway disavowed Jewish jokes, which, he seemed to realize, were connected, in some way, to what happened. It created a bubble, a zone of safety not only for Jews but for other minorities. It’s no coincidence that the civil right movements came in the wake of WWII. Anti-Semitism still existed of course, but, in America, it became socially unacceptable. It retreated to the bedrooms and parlors, where it was expressed in the way of certain mystery religions, in secret, behind closed doors, so quietly you might think it had vanished.
This is my childhood, the world where I grew up. The horror of the Holocaust purchased us a 70-year vacation from history, though we didn’t know it. We believed the world had changed, as had human nature. Jews remained distinct in the new dispensation, but in a good way—a near-at-hand exotic, a symbol of exile, which we were told was the natural state of modern man. For perhaps the only time in history, you might actually want to be a Jew. Because of the close families and good husbands and yada yada. Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth, Mel Brooks. To those of us who came of age in these years, the future seemed like it would be more of the same, the present carried on forever.
We were wrong.
Against Sex Changes
A dissident view by the former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Dr. Paul R. McHugh. He is today University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University.
Privilege
Boy, it's all the rage lately, isn't it? Schools have got to figure out a way to root out white privilege, like using "white talk": "‘white talk’ is ‘verbal,’ ‘intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented,’ while ‘color commentary’ is ‘emotional’ and ‘personal.’" Hey, that reminds me of man-talk. Let's root that out, too. I've noticed that people who are ‘verbal,’ ‘intellectual’ and ‘task-oriented’ tend to be more successful, which also seems unfair. What about people who are inarticulate, muddle-headed, and prone to distraction from whatever they're being paid for? Don't they deserve a living wage, too? Who are we to judge?
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