NPR: White Bloc Voting is a Problem

I've been arguing for a while now that Donald Trump is effectively building a white voting bloc, but that this is a response to the success of Democrats in building a black voting bloc, a Latino voting bloc, and an Asian voting bloc.

In other words, Trump's success is predicated on finishing a project that was 90% complete when he got here:  racializing American politics.  It's a terrible idea, but one that has a high probability of success.  It's already the case in other American democracies such as Brazil's, where parties allegedly have principles but are really mostly about tribal identities.  The Democrats have succeeded in convincing large swathes of America that 'our kind of people' just don't vote for Republicans.  It was only to be expected that someone would eventually come along and make the same sort of appeal to whites -- especially as whites are actually the majority, and could dominate in such a racialized environment.

So into this comes NPR's Gene Demby, who writes that "whiteness" is shaping the election.

It's telling that Chait finds it easier to imagine that huge swaths of Republican primary voters are childlike and naive, rather than folks who quite rationally dig Trump's direct appeals to their interests — their racial interests. Among Trump's most notorious policy proposals is a moratorium on Muslims entering the country. He has called Mexican immigrants "rapists." Maybe we should concede that these declarations are not incidental to his appeal among his supporters, but central to them. Calling them "idiots" posits that they've been duped, when perhaps Trump is saying precisely what they want to hear.

What is missing is a criticism of racialized bloc voting in general. What Trump is doing is bad for America. At the same time, he's just completing the work that the Democrats began a long time ago. What we need is not a criticism of white people for giving in to a racialized appeal. What we need is a criticism of politicians who make racialized appeals. We need to break up all of these racial voting blocs, somehow, if we're going to get to a politics that is principled instead of tribal.

Now, I don't have any idea how you do that. Part of the reason this mode is so successful is that is a kind of software that works well with the hardware: human beings readily break out into identity groups. It's hard to break up those groups once people identify with them. And it's hard to get them to prefer rational principles to group interests.

But let's at least be clear about what the problem is. It's not "whiteness." It's racial politics per se.

Scenes from the Memorial Day Weekend

Blackfive always used to say that Memorial Day should include a good barbecue, because it's what the dead would have wanted for us.  A day of carefree pleasure with family and friends is just the kind of freedom they dedicated their lives to providing.  It's a somber holiday, but it's important to take some time to honor that aspect of the holiday.

Wife's bike near the firepit.

Charcoal getting ready for the Applewood smoke chips.

A celebratory ale.

Memorial Day

Perhaps This Won't Be Their Year After All

Libertarian Party chair strips naked at national convention.

Eye bleach warning.

Bikers for Trump

In keeping with his very strong support among the military and veteran communities, Donald Trump finds himself the only remaining Presidential candidate welcome at Rolling Thunder.

Mr. Trump was addressing a gathering at the 29th annual Rolling Thunder motorcycle run, a vast event over Memorial Day weekend that is dedicated to accounting for military members taken as prisoners of war or listed as missing in action. Bikers assembled at the Pentagon before riding en masse into the nation’s capital, with many dressed in leather vests covered in patches, their bikes rumbling throughout the afternoon....

Nancy Regg, a spokeswoman for Rolling Thunder, said the group had invited Mr. Trump to appear. The group did not extend an invitation to Hillary Clinton or Senator Bernie Sanders, she said.

Richard McFadden, 58, an annual Rolling Thunder attendee from North Carolina, said Mrs. Clinton would not have been welcome.

“Just like asking Jane Fonda to show up, it’d be a very, very bad thing,” said Mr. McFadden, who works in computer support and wore a button that read, “Hillary for Prison 2016.”

Mr. Trump’s supporters include a group called “Bikers for Trump,” which has more than 46,000 “likes” on Facebook. Speaking on Sunday, Mr. Trump told the crowd of seeing large numbers of bikers at his campaign events.

“I said, ‘What are they all doing here?’ and my people would say, ‘They’re here to protect you, Mr. Trump,’” he said. “It’s an amazing thing. And I want to tell you, some of these people are tough.”

But when he shakes their hands, “there is love, and it’s an incredible feeling, and that’s why I wanted to be with you today,” he said.

The article notes how odd it is that Trump is so welcome there given his remarks about Senator McCain's days as a POW. Even when reminded of the comments, people at the rally shrugged them off.

Possibly this is because Trump -- in spite of his many flaws -- shows evidence of a patriotism that looks like what Chesterton called a "primal loyalty." Chesterton wanted you to be a patriot of the world, in the sense of being loyal to and loving of the Creation made by God. There is a general point about what it is to really be loyal to something, though, whether God or Country or family. Chesterton asks if this should be a natural or a supernatural loyalty, which he suggests is equivalent to asking if it should be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty.

This same paradox may be at work with Trump, and the love he draws from people who are united by this kind of supernatural loyalty to America. To America, I say, rather than to the Federal Government of the United States: to the Constitution, but the Constitution as they understand the Constitution rather than as the Supreme Court interprets it. That's the kind of patriotism I feel deep in my heart, and it may be that Trump feels it in his own weird way also. That recognition allows these veterans to forgive him all his other flaws, all his very many flaws, because they see that he shares in this primal loyalty.

I won't follow him for very many reasons -- for reasons, to return to Chesterton's commentary. Maybe he's right that an unreasonable loyalty is stronger than a reasonable one. Certainly it seems to explain why Trump is running so strong with veterans in spite of things like his remarks about John McCain.

The Issue is Ossification

Lawrence Summers has a straightforward account of why people don't trust government. What he would like is a similarly straightforward account of how to fix it.

...what should have been a routine maintenance project on the Anderson Memorial Bridge over the Charles River next to my office in Cambridge. Though the bridge took only 11 months to build in 1912, it will take close to five years to repair today at a huge cost in dollars and mass delays.

Investigating the reasons behind the bridge blunders have helped to illuminate an aspect of American sclerosis — a gaggle of regulators and veto players, each with the power to block or to delay, and each with their own parochial concerns. All the actors — the historical commission, the contractor, the environmental agencies, the advocacy groups, the state transportation department — are reasonable in their own terms, but the final result is wildly unreasonable.

...

More than questions of personality or even those of high policy, the question of how to escape this trap should be a central issue in this election year.

The person who can help you answer this question is Joseph Schumpeter. His insights on economics are relevant to government, too.

Our institutions are so large and so intricate in their approval chains that [our enemies have] a huge advantage in terms of how fast a decision can be made and acted upon for streamlined organizations. Putin just issues orders, after all. ISIS isn't very big. USEUCOM or USCENTCOM has to socialize a plan among all their staff sections, who reach down to subordinate commands for input and then hash out a plan among themselves before they present it to their general. Most likely, he will need to push that plan up to the Pentagon if it represents a radical change to existing strategy. They have their own process before an answer comes back down, and the easiest answer is to push the suspense for the decision to the right while we ask a few more people. If the change requires a change from an interagency partner, their bureaucracies have to get involved too.

Even if the President were replaced with someone with new-blood ideas and the will to enact them, the bureaucracy would still have to go through at least a basic staffing process to ensure that it carried out the decisions in an orderly fashion. Because the bureaucrats are part of the existing order, there will be many who drag their feet or otherwise resist firm leadership (remember the CIA's campaign of leaks to the press about Bush's programs?).

That's just what Summers is describing. Each process is fine on its own: the problem is that there are dozens of them. These dozens of bureaucracies are each interest groups, which makes them hard to eliminate. There are whole buildings, and large buildings, full of people whose living depends on things not being streamlined.

Ultimately, in economics, what happens when a corporation becomes this ossified is that new, smaller, leaner competitors eat it alive. They may not be able to do everything that the big monopoly does, and they lack its economies of scale, but they still outperform the giants because they can make decisions and act upon them quickly and cheaply. The giants may not die -- IBM's $8 billion loss from the 1990s didn't kill it, and it's still a major world corporation though it has shed a lot of the functions it performed in the 1980s. Still, IBM and similar tech giants now don't even try to compete with startups -- they just find the ones they want and fund them.

There is no similar governmental process. You aren't allowed to compete with the EPA, nor take over parts of its functions if you do a better job for less. That isn't to say that the private sector doesn't try: Delta just invented a better way of doing airport security because its business is being harmed by TSA incompetence. However, all Delta can do is try to help streamline the steps before the TSA bottleneck. They can't replace the TSA. They can't even compete with it, or offer an alternative to it.

In economics, the ossified bureaucracy full of rent-seekers is self-correcting because of competition. In government, the problem is much harder. We have to find the political will to disband much of the government in spite of entrenched interests with their hands on the levers of power. If we can't do that, government will just get more and more incompetent the older and more ossified it becomes.

Ballad of Ricky Washington

I have a certain fondness for this new RangerUp shirt.

'Shut Up, Kristof'

Conservatives have been talking about the lack of ideological diversity on campus for years -- maybe decades, at this point -- but the riotous shutting down of right-leaning voices has grown loud enough to have reached the ears of a major writer from the New York Times. Nicholas Kristof wrote about it, and now has penned a second column about the response to his first column.

In a column a few weeks ago, I offered “a confession of liberal intolerance,” criticizing my fellow progressives for promoting all kinds of diversity on campuses — except ideological. I argued that universities risk becoming liberal echo chambers and hostile environments for conservatives, and especially for evangelical Christians.

As I see it, we are hypocritical: We welcome people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

It’s rare for a column to inspire widespread agreement, but that one led to a consensus: Almost every liberal agreed that I was dead wrong.

“You don’t diversify with idiots,” asserted the reader comment on The Times’s website that was most recommended by readers (1,099 of them). Another: Conservatives “are narrow-minded and are sure they have the right answers.”

Finally, this one recommended by readers: “I am grossly disappointed in you for this essay, Mr. Kristof. You have spent so much time in troubled places seemingly calling out misogyny and bigotry. And yet here you are, scolding and shaming progressives for not mindlessly accepting patriarchy, misogyny, complementarianism, and hateful, hateful bigotry against the LGBTQ community into the academy.”

The price paid by liberals for this is that they are indeed blind to many things. Maybe twenty years ago, I was involved in a debate about the right response to gun violence. Now gun violence was very much worse twenty years ago, about twice as bad as it is now -- which is to say that it has been halved since then, during a period when the legal right to carry arms has vastly expanded and the number of firearms in private hands has increased sharply.

Listening to liberals talk about gun violence today, however, I can see that they're totally blind to the correlation. Indeed, mostly they're blind to the tremendous success we've had in reducing gun violence. About two-thirds of gun deaths now are suicides, and a right to suicide is generally supported by liberals as long as it's "doctor assisted." Almost all of those facts are opaque to liberals, on campus or in politics, who are discussing the issue today. Hillary Clinton talks as if there were an epidemic of gun violence in immediate need of addressing, for example, and none of these academics seem to correct her assumptions.

So in this debate twenty years ago, I was arguing the position that a plausible way to cut down on gun deaths was to educate people about how to use guns safely and accurately. We could have courses in riflemanship in the public schools, teaching along the way the overlapping, mutually-reinforcing "four rules" of gun safety. At least in that way we could plausibly eliminate most of the accidental deaths, and enable people who wanted to be part of the solution to crime by carrying guns to do so in a better way.

"No, no," the moderator said. "We're not even going to consider that."

A liberal friend of mine jumped in, though, and pointed out that the argument I was raising was exactly similar to the liberal argument for sex education in schools. Yes, it's risky to teach kids about sex. Yes, it violates a number of commonly-held sexual taboos (more so in those days -- American society has abandoned most of its sexual taboos since then). But it's also risky not to teach kids about a danger they are very likely to encounter. Empowering them with knowledge about how to protect themselves while engaging in the dangerous practice would cut down on negative results. Further, an empowered citizenry such as our form of government imagines ought to be educated, not 'kept away' from dangerous knowledge.

It was an insightful moment, but the moderator still shut down the discussion. He did acknowledge the parallel, however uncomfortably, but still ruled that guns were a bridge too far for education. It's an idea that simply could not be considered, not even though the parallel argument was a major platform piece for liberals in those days.

New Texts by Yahya ibn Adi Discovered

Yahya ibn Adi was, in his day, among the foremost philosophers in Medieval Baghdad. He was particularly renowned in Aristotelian circles. He wrote in Arabic.

Nevertheless, he was a Christian. At this period, which was the intellectual height of Islamic civilization, having a leading thinker in the heart of the Islamic world who was not Muslim was in no way threatening to the rulers. Ibn Adi engaged in an extended philosophical defense of the Trinity, and engaged both prominent Muslim and Jewish thinkers on philosophical and theological topics. No one thought to cut off his head. Rather, he both studied under and was allowed to teach Muslims as well as Christians.

Medieval Baghdad wasn't perfect, but it was better than Modern Baghdad. Oh, it didn't have electricity or access to the many scientific advances we have today. Yet it was a better place to live, to think, and to be a part of the community.

Start Even

Never dabbled in 'high society,'
Don't reckon I would if I could.
I'm a little too good for the bad folks,
And way too bad for the good.

Sing it, Tex.

'Child Care' is Bad for Your Children

Well, according to this study, at least.

We first confirm earlier findings showing reduced contemporaneous non-cognitive development following the program introduction in Quebec, with little impact on cognitive test scores,” reads the abstract for the study.

“We then show these non-cognitive deficits persisted to school ages, and also that cohorts with increased child care access subsequently had worse health, lower life satisfaction, and higher crime rates later in life. The impacts on criminal activity are concentrated in boys.”

I can remember discussing this at the phase in my life when questions of child care were relevant. We thought, in those days, that it was good to send a child to child care for at least a few hours a week. The idea was that it would give them a chance to socialize, to get used to not being the most important person in the world and to taking turns with other children.

That's all quite intuitive, but maybe it's wrong. Intuitions often are. Maybe it's really good to your development to have that time of your life spent in safety and assurance. Maybe that's the ground for developing the kind of personality that can then learn to extend kindness to others -- not because you're made to do so, but because you're confident enough to do so freely.

Another View on the Hiroshima Speech

Richard Fernandez analyzes the speech in a different way from others, but one that I think is insightful.

In his view war is old. It was the Atomic Bomb which was new and therefore destabilizing. Those who brought this unregulated thing into the world thus assumed a huge responsibility. It's an interesting formulation, for at a stroke the great moral issues of World War 2 are reduced to a narrative in which everyone -- including militaristic Japan, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia -- were alike victims of age old human passions enabled by revolutionary weaponry. No one is guilty. We are all just victims. But facts have to be faced Obama argued that since a "moral revolution" cannot be effected the great religions which falsely promise a pathway to love while offering only a license to kill then man is irredeemable without government.

Every great religion promises a pathway to love and peace and righteousness, and yet no religion has been spared from believers who have claimed their faith as a license to kill. ... But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different.

Science allows us to communicate across the seas and fly above the clouds, to cure disease and understand the cosmos, but those same discoveries can be turned into ever more efficient killing machines.

The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.

So more government we will have up to any extent necessary to make safety mandatory. The moral drama of WW2 vanishes, leaving the Hiroshima speech as an unvarnished plea for an arms-control bureaucracy; the demand for a global safe space; a call for gun control on a planet-wide scale.

It's worth reading in full.

DB: Army Disastrously Tries To Copy "Fleet Week"

An Army attempt to copy the success of the Navy’s Fleet Week has resulted in seven casualties, $82 million in lost business revenue, and a near war with Canada, sources report. The senior service’s first attempt to demonstrate the finest land warfare traditions through patriotic demonstrations such as foot patrols, L-shaped ambushes and artillery barrages, created riots, widespread panic and a short-lived gang coalition.

That reminds me of the time that Irish-American veterans of the US Army invaded Canada.

Someday I May Ask You For A Favor

A small favor, such as good friends might ask of each other. Like maybe millions of dollars.

“A few weeks after Hillary Clinton was sworn in as secretary of state in early 2009, she was summoned to Geneva by her Swiss counterpart to discuss an urgent matter. The Internal Revenue Service was suing UBS AG to get the identities of Americans with secret accounts,” the newspaper reports. “If the case proceeded, Switzerland’s largest bank would face an impossible choice: Violate Swiss secrecy laws by handing over the names, or refuse and face criminal charges in U.S. federal court. Within months, Mrs. Clinton announced a tentative legal settlement—an unusual intervention by the top U.S. diplomat. UBS ultimately turned over information on 4,450 accounts, a fraction of the 52,000 sought by the IRS.” ...

Total donations by UBS to the Clinton Foundation grew from less than $60,000 through 2008 to a cumulative total of about $600,000 by the end of 2014, according to the foundation and the bank,” they report. “The bank also joined the Clinton Foundation to launch entrepreneurship and inner-city loan programs, through which it lent $32 million. And it paid former president Bill Clinton $1.5 million to participate in a series of question-and-answer sessions with UBS Wealth Management Chief Executive Bob McCann, making UBS his biggest single corporate source of speech income disclosed since he left the White House.”

NPR Talks Range 15

You know you want to hear it.

Friday Night AMV

World turned upside down.

Gamblers Fallacy

If you'd asked me last summer, I'd have said that it was at least even money that Trump was a stalking horse for Clinton. Clearly that gamble would not have paid out:

What, Mr. Green asked, would the party look like in five years? “Love the question,” Mr. Trump replied. “Five, 10 years from now—different party. You’re going to have a worker’s party. A party of people that haven’t had a real wage increase in 18 years.”

My impression on reading this was that Mr. Trump is seeing it as a party of regular people, as the Democratic Party was when I was a child and the Republican Party when I was a young woman.

This is the first thing I’ve seen that suggests Mr. Trump is ideologically conscious of what he’s doing. It’s not just ego and orange hair, he suggests, it’s politically intentional.

Voices in the Echo Chamber Are Particularly Loud...

...when you mute all of your opponents.

Obama Apologizes for Hiroshima

Apologizing for the bomb this close to Memorial Day is roughly equivalent to talking about the Queen again on Independence Day.

Bill Whittle reminds you that we'd have a whole lot more people to remember this Memorial Day if we hadn't used them. Maybe a million more. A lot more Japanese would have died in the event of a conquest of the mainland, too.

Also, that they were warned five days before the bombing. He has the text from the leaflets we dropped warning people to flee, and promising peace if they would remove the military government and pursue peaceful relationship with us.



It takes some gall for a President with as much blood on his hands as this one, through his acts of omission in Iraq and Syria and his acts of commission in Libya, to shame a President who saved as many lives as Truman.

UPDATE: See the comments for a link to the text of a speech, as well as a debate about whether or not this speech constitutes an apology. Our own MikeD rules that it was not, in his opinion.

"The Future of Men is Women"

Well, maybe, if you mean that for most men their future will be most flourishing and excellent if they find a good wife and have a family -- which might include daughters. In that case, yes, a man's future is going to be built around the women in his life. And that's good. It's good for him, and it's good for them, and it's the way things usually ought to be.

But that isn't what you mean at all, is it? Because then we'd have to say that there was something special about marriage -- "traditional" marriage, as opposed to "gay marriage" -- as an ideal for most. And while you mention men becoming better husbands and boyfriends for women, it's sort of by the way.

As a society we need to be more supportive of paternity leave, stay-at-home dads, and men entering traditionally “feminine” careers, such as nursing or teaching. Just as we encourage girls to be strong and confident, to enter STEM careers, and to be anything they want to be, we need to similarly encourage our sons to embrace female-dominated HEAL careers (health, education, administrative, literacy).

Oh, I see. The future of men is becoming women.

Somehow I suspect that this backlash you find so mystifying might be -- just might be -- driven by this very agenda you're promoting. It's as if there were something inside the young men rebelling against these role-models you're trying to set up for them. It's as if they had a nature, in other words, an internal principle of growth and motion that is driving them to be a particular thing and not anything else.

By the way, isn't literacy just a subset of education? You just stuck that in there to come up with a clever acronym, didn't you? Maybe you should have considered a more "masculine" career, like the military. You'd have fit in just fine at the Pentagon doing procurement.

The Stagirite at Rest

Archaeologists say that they are certain they have discovered the tomb of Aristotle.

The Slandering of Sanders Supporters Continues

Look, there's plenty to complain about that is valid.  A lot of these guys (and gals) are Marxists.  That's ample ground right there for conflict.  But the Democratic Party apparently doesn't criticize Marxism anymore, so instead we keep hearing that they are violent and sexist and, now, racist.

I am unpersuaded.  But let's review the evidence.

The Washington Post noted that at one point #MississippiBerning became a hashtag used by Sanders supporters on social media—a witty and clever turn of phrase unless of course you are a black American who hears the words “Mississippi burning” and immediately thinks of church bombings and lynchings....

Black writers and activists who have had the temerity to challenge Sanders’s record have been targeted by his supporters in ways that go against not just civility but even decency.

Follow that link and you will read an article by a writer who asserts that they have received unpleasant language in emails. "We could print the emails. But those of you who sent them know who you are and the horrendous things said."

The rest of the article is about the "MississippiBerning" hashtag. Put in context, it's clearly in very poor taste. But -- and I'm a generation older than most of these Bernie supporters -- I didn't know about the 1988 movie either. I'd only heard the phrase, and wouldn't have known the film had a racial context. I suppose one could say that, given the history, one should always assume that violence in Mississippi has some sort of racial component. But that assumption strikes me as just as much a prejudice as any other.

Let's face it: 1988 was before many of these Bernie supporters were even born. They're a bunch of kids. Marxist kids, but at their age that's the fault of their teachers.

The playbook has to play, I suppose. Opponents of whomever the leading Democrat is have to be motivated by racism, sexism, and hatred for the poor. Well, you can't stick Bernie with that last one, so you just have to double down on the first two.

By the way, as to the alleged violence and sexism that was raised as a charge in Nevada, a photograph of Sen Barbara Boxer 'fleeing in fear of the crowd.'  I'll put it below the fold so that no one is shocked by what they see.

World's Largest Extant Viking Ship Visits Rekjavik

Looks like a good time, although I imagine it's usually easy to find a good time in Iceland.

Always Remember that "Epi-" Is A Handwave

When someone tells you that a phenomenon is "epigenetic" -- or "epi-" anything else -- bear in mind just what "epi-" means.

The prefix epi, or ep if followed by a vowel or the letter "h", is derived from the Greek preposition ἐπί meaning: above, on, over, nearby, upon; outer; besides, in addition to; among; attached to; or toward.

Thus, when someone describes some phenomenon as being caused by "epi-*," it generally means "I am sure the cause is around * somewhere."

When someone tells you that something is "epigenetic," what they mean is, "I'm sure it's something to do with the genes, and while it isn't the genes themselves (or I'd say it was genetic, and be expected to prove I was right about that), I'm sure that the cause has got to be around the genetics somewhere."

 Very often this is a completely unproven assumption. It strikes people as plausible because (a) we don't fully understand how genes work, but (b) we do know that various factors seem to 'turn on' or 'turn off' their functionalities. The implication is meant to be that some factor -- we don't know what or how -- is acting on the genes somehow. But in fact, we often can't really say that the genes have anything to do with it.

With all that said, read this article.

Savchenko Released by Russia

Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko has been released by Russia in a prisoner exchange, though she had been sentenced to 22 years. We talked about her case last in March of this year.

Nice Bit from McSweeny's

A set of statements that are made by both the most and least privileged people in the world.

Speaking of voting, which they do in passing, Georgia had its non-Presidential primary yesterday. For reasons I have yet to see discussed anywhere, but that I imagine have something to do with a desire to keep turnout low, Georgia held its primary for everything except the Presidential election approximately three months after the Super Tuesday primary. Since many of the elections in Georgia are merely endorsements of the Republican candidate, in many ways yesterday was the most important election day of the year. Incumbents had a very good day, for whatever that's worth in measuring the mood of the extremely small part of the electorate that participated.

I myself even voted for two incumbents, although I otherwise voted only for insurgent candidates. In the Mighty 9th Congressional District, I voted to keep Doug Collins as our representative. Paul Broun's district was combined with the 9th, which meant that he was also running in this district this year. Broun is the 'evolution is a lie from the pit of hell' guy.



Georgia will not be returning him to Congress next year. Doug Collins, who was endorsed by Zell Miller in spite of being a Republican, will be our Congressman instead.

I also voted to retain our current sheriff, who pleases me consistently by not patrolling the Western end of the county where I live. I go months without seeing anyone trying to give me a speeding ticket or otherwise interfere with my day. That election resulted in a runoff, so I shall have to arrange to vote again in July.

DB: Obama Ends Vietnam Tour With Ceremonial Rooftop Helicopter Evacuation

According to Obama, the evacuation ends what had become his 48 hour-long “national nightmare,” although some Vietnamese officials have privately said Obama was politely asked to leave after he and Secretary of State John Kerry had proceeded to raze their hotel room in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan.

"Jenjis Khan," even.

The Weekly Standard on Vince Foster

I'm not sure I agree with their analysis that Trump's play here is inferior to what a "a more responsible opponent" could do. A more responsible opponent could raise the question the Standard wants to discuss, which is whether or not the Clintons behaved improperly in the wake of the death of a friend. There is a classic Clinton two-step dance around such a question: (1) That's a private matter, and (2) "Politics of personal destruction." By election day all anyone would remember is that the responsible opponent made a boorish attack. Trump, on the other hand, will have people remembering that they thought they heard Hillary had somebody killed, but if they think to check the record they'll find that Trump technically said that while it was fishy, it wasn't fair game and he wouldn't raise it as an issue.

All the same, the Standard does bring up an interesting fact I did not know:

As if that wasn't bad enough, in 1995 the New York Times reported an aide, Sylvia Matthews, was dispatched to go through Vince Foster's trash:

The committee also focused today on Mr. Foster's office trash. Members questioned Sylvia Mathews, a former White House aide, in laborious detail about what she had found in Mr. Foster's garbage on the night he died. Other than a few routine documents, the garbage contained nothing that shed light on Mr. Foster's thinking, said Ms. Mathews, who is now chief of staff at the Treasury Department.

Miss Matthews is now Mrs. Burwell. That's right: Sylvia Burwell, the current Secretary of Health and Human Services who is now busy sorting out Obamacare's refuse, is the same aide that went through Foster's trash the day he died. Loyalty to the Clintons has a generous rewards program, as the quasi nationalization of health care means that Burwell is now pulling the strings on a sixth of the national economy. And whatever lobbying gig is sure to follow will no doubt be extremely lucrative.

Makes that $75,000 in Justice Department investments seem like a wise use of one's money, if one was a ranking government bureaucrat.

And that's really the point: it's why Washington loves her and why Wall Street loves her. She makes the money flow, from the People to the people. From the taxpayer people, that is, to the loyal people. The ones who belong to the club.

The ones who do what they're told.

Putting Down a Marker

Here's an opportunity to apply a partial test to the idea -- very common on both Right and Left -- that corporations and big banks own the political system. A new poll by the Financial Times shows that these firms have a very clear favorite to win the Presidency: Hillary Clinton.

Now, if she gets elected, that doesn't prove that the banks and corporations own the political system.

If she loses, however, with these figures? We'll have to put aside the notion that banks and corporations are all that influential. 71% of these corporations prefer her on immigration, compared with zero percent preferring Donald Trump. 63% prefer her on trade, compared with zero percent on Trump. And 25% of them prefer her on taxes, the only category she (narrowly) loses to Trump.

She is clearly the candidate of the corporate establishment, as she is the candidate of the political establishment. If she loses, we'll have to accept that Americans are still in charge of our own destiny.

This Seems To Be A Worthy Experiment

An ordinary day in a suit of armor.

Oops!

What a coincidence that this kind of thing keeps happening whenever there's an investigation.

The CIA's inspector general is claiming it inadvertently destroyed its only copy of a classified, three-volume Senate report on torture, prompting a leading senator to ask for reassurance that it was in fact ‘an accident.’”

...[T]he CIA’s “accident” was only the latest in a long rash of “accidental” losses of incriminating information in this administration. The IRS — whose Tea Party-targeting scandal is now over 1,100 days old without anyone being charged or sent to jail — seems to have a habit of ”accidentally” destroying hard drives containing potentially incriminating evidence. It has done so in spite of court orders, in spite of Congressional inquiries and in spite of pretty much everyone’s belief that these “accidents” were actually the deliberate, illegal destruction of incriminating evidence to protect the guilty.

Then there’s Hillary’s email scandal, in which emails kept on a private unsecure server — presumably to avoid Freedom of Information Act disclosures — were deleted. Now emails from Hillary’s IT guy, who is believed to have set up the server, have gone poof.

Really, just an amazing series of coincidences. Here's a song from back when it was just the IRS drives:

DB: Sec. Mabus “Just Hates the Navy.”

“Women on submarines?” he asked. “Check. Politically correct renaming of the ranks, check. The USS Carl Levin? Carl is a buddy of mine and I forgot to get him a birthday present. Boom. Name on a ship. And it didn’t cost me a dime.”

The Secretary went on to describe how his favorite activity was throwing a dart at a large board filled with uniform ideas every three months, then forcing the service to add that item to the sea-bag.

“If that’s not bad enough, I actually made them wear water-colored uniforms... Now if someone falls overboard it will actually be harder to find them. And the boot-licking admirals were so eager to please me that they approved it...”

Mabus ended the conference by saying he’s considering making consumption of alcohol at any time a UCMJ offense, and adding “a purple top hat with 13 solid-gold buttons to the uniform list.”

A Good Piece on Anti-Racism

So, we all hate racism. At some point, the efforts to quash racism became racist. I mean this in the sense that they force you to focus on belonging to a race, confronting the fact that you are a member of that race, and then accounting for whatever privileges or violations attach to you because of your membership in that race. This is at best counterproductive because it preserves the idea that "race" is something important. In fact "race" is a fiction dreamed up in the early Renaissance to justify the re-introduction of slavery to Europe. We should be striving to eliminate the concept, not further ingraining it into students.

Here's a piece by David Marcus that takes on the idea that everyone should be made to accept their race and confess their privileges. It's a very solid article on why this approach is backwards, and is actually making racism worse.

It's similar to the way in which the Democratic Party's electoral strategy of focusing on advancing the interests of minorities paved the way for Trump's electoral strategy of consolidating the white vote as a bloc. Indeed, many of the things Marcus warns against are much further along than he himself seems to believe.

It's Because She Is Spectacularly Corrupt

"Why do people hate Hillary so much?" asks a writer at the Sacramento Bee. He answers: gotta be misogyny.

I wrote about sexism and Clinton back during the 2008 primary, when she was facing some pretty nasty coded attacks from the Obama campaign. At the time, I was trying to be very careful to criticize her policy positions without saying things that would be generally offensive to women.

Yet when I think about why Clinton herself is so particularly offensive, it is a fact about her that the author of this latest piece seems simply to ignore: her and her husband's spectacular corruption. They have vastly enriched themselves through a set of "speaking fees" given by corporations, banks, and governments who either had business before Secretary Clinton or expect to have business before President Clinton. When I say "vastly enriched," I mean that the amount of money is truly incredible.

Mandatory financial disclosures released this month show that, in just the two years from April 2013 to March 2015, the former first lady, senator and secretary of state collected $21,667,000 in “speaking fees,” not to mention the cool $5 mil she corralled as an advance for her 2014 flop book, “Hard Choices.”

Throw in the additional $26,630,000 her ex-president husband hoovered up in personal-appearance “honoraria"...

Bill Clinton's totals since leaving office, just for speaking fees, are over a hundred million dollars according to the first of the two sources I just cited. Much of that money, as much as three-quarters of a million dollars for a speech, came from foreign governments and corporations while his wife was Secretary of State.

She is a corrupting influence, too. Her presidential ambitions stand on the concept that the Department of Justice won't accept an FBI recommendation that it indict her for her numerous and manifest violations of the law. And, indeed, it seems likely that they won't -- top Justice Department officials have invested $75,000 in her career by donating to her political campaign this year. What do you suppose those officials expect to receive if President Clinton is elected? High public postings, obviously, from which they will more than recoup their donations. They'll have earned it, not so much for the cash donation as for the 'payment in kind' they will have provided if they succeed in blocking her indictment.

Is there some lurking sexism in the depths of my subconscious that allows me to look on the Clintons with horror while ignoring similar transgressions from others? I don't know -- is there anyone else in government who has personally profited to this degree off the sale of their use of the American office with which they were entrusted? How can we compare such peerless individuals as these two?

UPDATE: David Brooks says it's because she works too darn hard. Maybe she needs better creases on her pants, too.

Clarence Thomas Is The Only One Thinking Clearly

In a seven-to-one ruling, the US Supreme Court threw out a Georgia State Supreme Court ruling and granted a new trial to a black man convicted by a jury that prosecutors had carefully constructed as all-white. The sole dissenting voice was Clarence Thomas.

You can imagine the hateful rhetoric that is being poured on his head this afternoon. However, if you follow the link above you can read his dissent. The media reports I read before I found a link to the actual ruling suggested that Thomas sets a ridiculously high bar before he will accept that race has anything to do with a conviction. The argument actually goes something like this:

1) Our laws say that Federal courts should only overturn state courts where there is a clear Federal law issue.

2) The argument being forwarded by the majority is that the racial bias in jury selection is a Federal issue that gives the Supreme Court jurisdiction.

3) That is only true if there is some reason to think Georgia's courts didn't adequately address the issues of bias in their own consideration of this case.

4) Georgia's State Supreme Court ruled that this jury construction didn't plausibly affect the outcome of this case.

5) They're almost certainly right about that, because the murderer confessed to the murder, as well as to sexually violating his victim before killing her.

Thomas may be the only one thinking clearly about the issues of race in this case. Everyone else is blinded by the fear that America's original sin, racism, may have been a factor in the prosecution's conduct. Thomas is calmly pointing out that there's little doubt that nearly any jury would have convicted him and sentenced him to death.

More to the point, he's right that -- given the facts of the case -- death is the correct penalty for this murderer. The Court is merely delaying the application of justice. They are doing so, as he says, without adequately grappling with the question of whether or not they have any legitimate authority to interfere.

Ten Bikers Suing Waco in Federal Court

I'd expect a lot more of them to file suit if these cases work out, but these do sound like plausible test cases.

The suit, filed by Dallas attorney Don Tittle, alleges unlawful arrest and due process violations and alleges the plaintiffs were arrested with no evidence that they committed any crimes or had any ties to warring biker groups the Bandidos or the Cossacks.

Matcek and Smith are identified in the lawsuit as members of the Line Riders Motorcycle Club, which the suit says has no affiliation with either the Bandidos or Cossacks. Matcek, according to the lawsuit, was running late and was not even at Twin Peaks at the eruption of the firefight, which left nine bikers dead and more than 20 wounded.

Once he arrived, Waco police allowed Matcek, Terwilliger and Smith to take one of their wounded friends to the hospital, the suit says....

The violence resulted in the arrests of 192 bikers — including 15 who later were named in sealed indictments because they were injured and not arrested May 17, 2015 — and the indictments of 154, all on identical first-degree felony engaging in organized criminal activity charges.

Matcek is apparently also a member of BACA, which is a noble organization.



I have a feeling Waco is going to end up paying through the nose for its handling of this matter.

A Third Possibility

Vox considers two options for why Donald Trump is now ahead in the polls:

1) It's just a blip because he's locked up his contest and she's still fighting Bernie.

2) It heralds a "nail-bitingly close" election.

Here's a third possibility you haven't considered: maybe she'll perform exactly the way she's performed against every other opponent, and lose ground in the polls more the longer the contest goes on. Clinton was way ahead of Sanders... but has lost ground steadily against him. She was way ahead of Obama in 2008... but lost ground steadily against him. Now that people are thinking in terms of Trump and Clinton, she's fading against him like she fades against everyone.

He's just now starting to turn his guns on her. By November, this may not be close at all.

How is this a paradox?

I saw this today in an article talking about difficult paradoxes.  But I cannot see how this is difficult to grasp.

This statement is, by definition, false.  Either he has told a truth at some point in the past, or he is telling the truth now.  That does not make this statement a lie, merely false (and provably so).  Lies may be true (if I say I have a million dollars when I believe I do not, but upon checking my bank account find that I have won the lottery at some point prior to making the statement unbeknownst to me, then the lie I believed I was telling was in fact a true statement; it does not change the fact that I was lying at the time I spoke it), and truthful statements may be false (again, if I say I have a million dollars, but find out later that at the time I spoke that my wife had spent it all prior to my making the statement, then it is a false statement, but one I did not lie about).  I suppose the problem comes from language not being a logical construct where lies must always be false and truthful statements must always be true.

Um, Pope Francis...

Wasn't I just saying something about feel-good Hippie nonsense in the Catholic Church?

– The fear of accepting migrants is partly based on a fear of Islam. In your view, is the fear that this religion sparks in Europe justified?

Pope Francis: Today, I don’t think that there is a fear of Islam as such but of ISIS and its war of conquest, which is partly drawn from Islam. It is true that the idea of conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam. However, it is also possible to interpret the objective in Matthew’s Gospel, where Jesus sends his disciples to all nations, in terms of the same idea of conquest.

In the face of Islamic terrorism, it would therefore be better to question ourselves about the way in an overly Western model of democracy has been exported to countries such as Iraq, where a strong government previously existed. Or in Libya, where a tribal structure exists. We cannot advance without taking these cultures into account. As a Libyan said recently, “We used to have one Gaddafi, now we have fifty.”

Saddam's was "a strong government"? I suppose, if the mark of a strong government is widespread torture, murder, ethnic cleansing, and the terror of the mukhabarat. East Germany was a strong government by these standards.

Perhaps we should be grateful to hear a Western leader say "It is true that conquest is inherent in the soul of Islam." Also, I understand that the Pope is making nice with Islam because he's trying to forestall the murder of Christians in the Middle East. Still, if it's strange to be unable to distinguish between "a strong government" and a murderous tyranny, it's far stranger to hear the leader of the Catholic Church elide jihad and Jesus. This is "the same idea of conquest"? The very same idea? Are we sure it's even a very similar idea?

Christianity and Islam both have a universal mission. That seems to me to be the end of the similarity of their ideas about conquest.

"The Miscarriage of Justice Department"

A Federal judge grows irritated. Sadly, this is not an isolated issue, but the standard practice of the Obama-era Justice Department. Indeed, it's of a piece with the conduct of many other Obama-era departments.

Valheim Hof

A new temple to Odin has been opened in Denmark, for the first time in nearly a thousand years.

I was talking to a friend of mine who is a Greek neopagan about a festival she attended recently. They apparently elected to "reimagine" the blood sacrifice, instead buying snacks from a local grocery. I found that vastly amusing, as the whole point of the particular ritual they were trying to revive was the blood magic. Apparently the danger of the basic tenets of the faith being overwhelmed by feel-good Hippie sentimentalism is not limited to the Catholic Church.

To the credit of these Odhinnic pagans, they did not omit the blood.

R.I.P. Logic Tobola II (FAIA)

I got to walk around in our new church building this week, the concrete having been poured and made it easier to approach without making the workers too nervous.  Every space, every transition between spaces, made me happy.  I felt I was in the hands of a talented designer.  What I didn't realize is that the architect, Logic Tobola, had just died, or was just dying, of cancer.  I can't find his obit up on the net yet, but here is a link to an article about a mobile church he designed for the Episcopal Church in Texas, and here are updated snapshots of our new church.  We'll be moving in sometime in July; for the first time I feel it will be an improvement over the charming existing building.

I'm sorry Mr. Tobola won't get to see the finished church, but he did get to tour the construction site a month or so, already in a wheelchair.  He loved his work and his church.

A Distinct Honor

There's a piece in Vox today about the firing of a Bernie Sanders supporter for using harsh language. That's to one side. What I want to draw your attention to is how the author describes the affair.

On one level, this Bruenighazi is exactly what it seems to be, a matter of considerable importance to one family's finances but essentially a tempest in a teapot — a series of personal spats boiling over out of control.

Bruenighazi.

Every President since Nixon has had their scandals reported as 'something-gate,' because the Watergate scandal set the standard for Presidential scandals. Clinton has had her share of those these 25 years: Travelgate, Filegate, Emaigate, etc. No more. Now all the scandals attached to her can be called "something-ghazi."

What that means is that Hillary Clinton would be the first President since Nixon to inspire her own scandal-naming convention.

Before even taking office.

That's a real accomplishment.

Life Ain't Fair

"The most outlaw thing that a man today can do is give a woman a ring ..."

Cherohala Wedding

My youngest cousin from the generation after mine married this weekend, which occasioned a ride up to the Tennessee River. I brought a tailored suit, a gambler's vest, and black cowboy boots. Turns out I could have swapped out the suit for Wrangler jeans.  The groom's wedding party wore boots and jeans, and the ladies all wore boots and dresses.

I should have asked.  On the upside the wife said I was the best looking man at the wedding.  Of course, she might be prejudiced.

The wedding venue, overlooking the mighty Tennessee.

Yeah, he was married in a barn.

The Cherohala Skyway on the ride home.

"A Branch of May."

The Absence of the Gulag is Not Negligible

Another good post from Wretchard.

Cass mentioned the other day that she thinks I'm sympathetic to Sanders. I guess, in a way: I'm not a socialist, and very much not one. On the other hand, he strikes me as basically honest. Being honestly wrong is not as good as being honestly right, especially if you are honestly wrong after a lifetime long enough to have learned better. But the honesty really does matter. My real candidate in this election, Jim Webb, was manifestly warm to him in the Democratic debate. "I don't think the revolution's going to come," Webb said, but he said it to a man he clearly regarded kindly after their interactions in the Senate.

When Wretchard says that the magic of Bernie Sanders is that he might really have illusions, there's something to that. When he talks about the Servile State, and the alliance of the establishments of both parties with this sort of crony capitalism, we know just what he means.

There are not only no perfect choices left, there are no good choices. There is a least worst. No matter what happens in November, at this point, we need to gird ourselves to be in the opposition for another long four years.

UPDATE:  EU Court Outlaws Criticism of EU.

THE European Court of Justice ruled yesterday that the European Union can lawfully suppress political criticism of its institutions and of leading figures, sweeping aside English Common Law and 50 years of European precedents on civil liberties.

The law is an ass, and this is a beautiful illustration of why political violence can be eminently justified. For "English Common Law was swept aside," read, "Sweeping Aside the Constitution." It's a violation on a similar scale. If that vacant SCOTUS seat goes left, 'the law' will mostly be a similar exercise in power. That's how close to the edge we are: one seat, already vacant.

Venn Diagrams

Oh, my goodness.

Friday Night AMV

Girls. Guns. Oh wait. Magical girls with magical guns.

Gotta work on that aiming though.

Life in the Bubble

Don't Congressfolk get out and talk to their constituents sometimes? Ever?

“It was a scary situation,” said Boxer, a Clinton supporter. “It was frightening. I was on the stage. People were six feet away from me. If I didn’t have a lot of security, I don’t know what would have happened.”

How is it that, representing a state as large as yours in a country as diverse as this, you're so unused to being six feet away from people who disagree with you? Why do you feel you need 'a lot of security' to be close to the people you undertake to represent? Could it be that you aren't really representing them?

Sanders Calls for FOX News Debate before California

“This is the worst-case scenario and the one people feared the most,” said one Clinton ally and former Clinton aide.

“Unfortunately, he’s choosing the path of burning down the house,” the ally said. “He continues with character attacks against Hillary. He continues with calling the Democratic Party corrupt and he not only risks damaging Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party but he's currently doing it."

Clinton allies say Sanders is only piling on by insisting that Clinton join him for a debate ahead of California's primary on June 7. The debate would be aired on Fox News, a network Clinton supporters see as fanning the flames between Sanders supporters and the former secretary of State.

I'd love to see FOX News moderators get ahold of both of these candidates. But I can imagine the questions for Clinton:

1) "We've all seen the news reports of the intensity of the FBI investigation into your mishandling of classified information. Some statements claim that they can't prove intent, but there is no need to prove intent under the law. How much longer do you think you can stay out of jail?"

2) "It's great you mention that, because the happier wing of stories about this are coming out of Justice Department leaks. Now it's a matter of record that high ranking Justice Department officials have donated $75,000 to your campaign this cycle, which represents a substantial investment in you. Isn't this proof of the corruption in the leadership of the Democratic Party that Senator Sanders is alleging, and will you call for an independent prosecutor to resolve all questions about your conduct once and for all?"

Yellowstone Grizzlies

Last year I had a chance to see a grizzly bear in Yellowstone. What amazing (and of course quite deadly) animals they are. There are now approximately 700 of them in the park, and that is causing the Fish and Wildlife Service to consider de-listing them as endangered.

Maintaining the health and natural beauty of America's National Parks is one of those few issues I think we should consider amending the Constitution to give the Federal Government power to do. In general I would like to see the 10th Amendment strictly enforced, but America's National Parks are genuine treasures. That includes the wildlife, especially the megafauna. On a 50 mile hike last year in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, on the other side of the country, I had a chance to see all the major species up close and in person: elk, black bear, wild boar, and deer. In Yellowstone, I saw many black bear, the grizzly, and bison. In the Tetons, I saw many more bison, pronghorn, more elk -- a small but significant sense of what this magnificent continent was like when we first encountered it.

So, small government guy that I am, here's one exception where I would consider "new" Federal power -- I mean licensing the power they've already seized for themselves, of course. Our National Parks is one area where the Federal government does a good job that is good for all of us.

Not Quite The Intended Effect

I'm on a bunch of political mailing lists. MoveOn just sent out an email titled, "This man is obstructing the President."

Naturally, I thought immediately of sending whoever it was a nice letter. It turns out the man is Sen. Chuck Grassley, who is problem #1 for getting Obama's SCOTUS nominee approved.

That wasn't a hugely urgent Democratic objective before yesterday's poll showing Trump in the lead in the general, I notice. Indeed, I haven't heard about this issue in a while.

Anyway, if you'd like to send Chuck a nice letter, you can reach him through his webpage.

UPDATE: Make that two polls with Trump out front.

Left v. Left

Slightly left Brookings Institute fellow Robert Kagan: Trump is how fascism comes to America.

Quite left outlet Vox: Nope, you're wrong.

Trump is a much better candidate for a democratic demagogue a la classical Greek thought (which Kagan knows enough about to mention). That's dangerous enough without needing to invoke a more-famously bad model that doesn't really fit.

Not a Bad Idea

Create a "collapse" supply list -- based on things that ran out in Venezuela.

Another Historical Article

From the same source as Tex's, a meditation on the Austrio-Hungarian empire as a multi-ethnic state as it relates to Germany's attempts to absorb mass migration.

DB: "Army Forces Reporters into SHARP Training..."

"...for Constantly Mentioning New Secretary's Sexual Orientation."

But how can you signal your virtue if you don't constantly signal?

From the article: "Meanwhile soldiers have expressed their support, or general indifference, towards Secretary Fanning."

That reminds me of a scene from Philip Caputo's A Rumor of War in which, as a Marine 2nd Lieutenant in Vietnam, he was challenged by a sentry.

Sanders Is Not 'Sabotaging Clinton,' He's Trying to Win

He well might win, if the superdelegates elect to abandon her and swing to him -- which they very well might, given his much stronger showing against Trump, her own terrible performance as a candidate, and her rapidly falling poll numbers.

Now, the superdelegates are chiefly loyal party organizers of just the sort who pulled the Nevada spectacle. Nevertheless, it's still two months to the DNC in Philly. If Clinton falls into a tie (or even below) Trump, and Sanders continues to show strong support, she'll be in a bad position to retain their loyalty.

So, no. This isn't sabotage. It's fair play for the prize.

Meanwhile, if it doesn't work, Trump has already moved to seize Sanders' line that the system is rigged. Every bit of rigging Clinton has to do to claw her way past the DNC is proof that Sanders was -- and, therefore, Trump is -- right about the state of American politics.

If I'm right that Sanders and Trump are aligned in the core logic of their campaigns, Trump could easily land a large part of the Sanders vote. Everybody is talking as if this were the usual left-v-right election. I think it is an 'America-First' v. Globalism election. The real driver is economics, but both Trump and Sanders play out the logic also in their foreign policy. Thus, the Trump campaign may seem like a more natural home for Sanders supporters than the Clinton campaign. Especially for the Sanders voters who are genuinely working class, the elitist, internationalist Clinton may seem like a symbol of everything they resent.

So if you don't want that, vote Sanders. Him getting past the DNC as the candidate is right now the #1 best shot for keeping Trump out of the White House -- just as it is the #1 best shot for keeping Clinton out of the White House.

Don't Bury the Lede

Headline: "Donald Trump Releases List of Supreme Court Picks."

How many paragraphs do you think the NYT needs to fulminate before it tells us even one of the names on that list?

Would you believe five paragraphs?

Here's the list, to spare you reading all about how nobody trusts Trump and the list is meaningless (which you get again in the paragraphs following the list):

According to a list released by the campaign, Mr. Trump’s potential nominees include several federal judges: Steven M. Colloton of Iowa; Raymond W. Gruender of Missouri; Thomas M. Hardiman of Pennsylvania; William H. Pryor Jr. of Alabama, Diane Sykes of Wisconsin; and Raymond M. Kethledge of Michigan; and several state Supreme Court justices: Allison H. Eid of Colorado; Joan Larsen of Michigan; Thomas Lee of Utah; David Stras of Minnesota; and Don Willett of Texas.

It's possibly the most consequential issue of the election. What do you think?

Happy 100th Birthday, Sykes-Picot

On the talking point blaming all the ills of the Middle East on a smoke-filled room that produced Iraq's borders.

Two Small Questions

So there's this article about an Oregon Baptist Church with a sign described as "anti-Muslim."

Pastor Michael Harrington placed the words on the reader board outside Belmont Drive Missionary Baptist Church. On one side it reads, “Wake up Christians, Allah is not our God, Muhammad not greater than Jesus.” On the other side, it says, “Only the Bible is God’s word, ‘holy book,’ Koran is just another book.” ...

But locals, including the mayor, don’t want to see the signs.

“I was really annoyed and sad,” Hood River mayor, Paul Blackburn, told KATU. “I am annoyed that in this political season there’s a solid case of ugly going on. I think it norms up this kind of behavior like ‘oh it’s okay to be a bigot now.'”

I have just two questions.

1) What is the difference between bigotry and orthodoxy? This is the official position of the Baptist church. There's nothing in the sign that isn't completely accurate as a statement of church doctrine.

2) What's the difference between Baptist orthodoxy and Islamic orthodoxy as regards what constitutes bigotry? Muslims officially believe the inverse of this doctrine: that there is no God but Allah, that Muhammad is greater than Jesus (who is merely another prophet, and a lesser one, according to Islamic orthodoxy), and that only the Koran is the direct word of God.

It seems the complaint here is either one of aesthetics or one of etiquette. Maybe it's just rude, or ugly, to point this out. But the only way believing in Baptist orthodoxy is "anti-Muslim" is if being a Baptist is anti-Muslim. If that's the case, than any expression of religious sentiment is a form of bigotry, for 'being a Muslim' is anti-Christian by an exactly similar argument.

Is the only way to be fair to everyone to be an atheist? Or is the argument just that it's fine to believe what you want provided you don't say it out loud?

'Crybullies' and the Democratic Party

So, last weekend in Nevada Hillary Clinton supporters used a 'voice vote' to ram through a set of rules and a delegate count out of order with what the majority really wanted, and then refused to pause to actually count the votes. Instead, they declared the results final, gaveled down the session, fled the building, and then called in hotel security and then state police to drive the Sanders supporters away from the scene.

That's bullying. Shout them down, refuse to listen, call in big guys with sticks and guns to shut them up and force them to accept it.

Now comes the crying.

A lot of Democrats don’t want to admit it, but Donald Trump isn’t the only presidential candidate playing with fire and recklessly courting an angry mob.

For the latest round of curse-word hurling, chair throwing, social-media stalking and conspiracy-theory swapping, look no further than the supporters of Bernie Sanders.

Over the weekend, dozens of Sanders devotees lost their minds after the Nevada Democratic Party, meeting for its convention in Las Vegas, awarded a majority of delegates to front-runner Hillary Clinton.

Convinced that the establishment had rigged the rules and that Sanders delegates had been excluded for unfair reasons, they booed and traded barbs with people on stage, including Clinton surrogate and keynote speaker U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer.

The convention ended abruptly, descending into chaos that was captured for the world to relive on Facebook and YouTube.

Death threats and vandalism followed, prompting Nevada Democratic Party offices to close on Monday and its chairwoman, Roberta Lange, to release some downright disgusting voicemails and text messages she had received from Sanders supporters. She also reported threats against her grandchildren.

Even if Ms. Lange is reporting honestly, which would be out of line with the history of these 'crybully' movements, who's to say that these threats were from "Sanders supporters" and not Clinton proxies? Clinton's people have a long history here. Her oppo people and astroturf people started the Birther movement, for example. Why not start a "Bernie Sanders is a thug" movement?

Yet while the charge is audacious enough to come from Clinton and her "unexpected!" allies in the media, it's not plausible. Bernie Sanders hasn't even been rude to Hillary Clinton. His supporters are outraged because they ought to be.

Ancient Irish Horn Survives in India

It's Not Easy Being Green

Speaking to reporters, the practitioner of ancient South American religious rituals involving the hallucinogenic ayahuasca plant explained that, while he was ordinarily happy to share his culture’s spiritual wisdom with others, the constant stream of wealthy Silicon Valley executives seeking transcendental enlightenment had become an increasingly loathsome and disheartening part of his occupation.

“These days, I can’t even look at my calendar without cringing—it’s pretty much all tech execs,” said Salazar, adding that he had thought the developed world’s interest in the ayahuasca tea ceremony was generally a positive until it became his full-time job to provide celestial guidance to Bay Area venture capitalists and app founders who had learned about the practice through a Viceland special.

I have to admit that I first heard about it through the Onion.

Doggerland

A seven thousand year old forest, preserved in peat, with human footprints.

Island Steel Guitar

Starting with the British isles:



But of course the guitar really originates in Hawaii:

There's Almost No Reason for Sanders Supporters to Back Clinton

Salon is worried about the exit polls.

CBS News reported 44 percent said they’d vote for Trump, 23 percent for Hillary Clinton, and 32 percent for neither. These findings—especially Sanders’ supporters shifting to Trump—seem like a stretch, but maybe they’re not.

Trump and Sanders' candidacies are much more alike than different. Both are insurgents, as Salon understands. But Trump and Sanders are also both isolationists on foreign policy. Foreign policy usually doesn't matter much in Presidential elections, but this time the foreign policy views are just outgrowths of the candidates' economic views. Both candidates believe that foreign free trade deals have been too costly to American workers compared with the benefits they spread abroad. Now economic views are usually hugely important in Presidential elections. That their foreign policy lines up with their economic worldviews means that there is a core logic to both of these campaigns that is closely aligned.

Sanders is a socialist, and Trump is not -- Trump thinks he's going to negotiate a better deal for American capitalists and workers. But neither of them is even a little bit like Clinton. She called the TPP deal "the gold standard," and although she's now trying to walk that back it's clear she's only doing so for electoral reasons. Her real economic policy is to pursue the ends set at Davos. Her foreign policy, likewise, is one of international engagement in pursuit of ends set in Turtle Bay, or at Davos, or by wealthy Persian Gulf sheikhs with money to donate to the Clinton Global Foundation.

Sanders voters are not blind. They can see that, in the essence of political views, Trump is far more like them than Clinton is. Those like Salon who see her as the candidate of compromise are missing the boat. When it comes to this essential core of the campaigns, Trump is the candidate of compromise between Sanders and Clinton. This basic failure to grasp the ground of the campaign suggests that Clinton's people -- and Obama's -- badly misunderstand what is going on before their eyes.

UPDATE: Centrist Democrats sense the coming earthquake, begin talking about being ready to work with President Trump.

UPDATE: Bernie fans put together this video of the fix being in at the Nevada convention.

11 Principles For After Blue States Secede

Here's a fellow who is thinking in the right direction, assuming there is any possibility that the blue states will actually secede. Their real interest is in winning a Clinton Presidency, securing a durable Supreme Court majority, and imposing their will on the rest of us forever.

Still, it could happen. If it does, it sounds to me like he's got the right principles for a new America.

And, of course, secession could go the other way too.

The governor of Texas sent a harsh letter to US President Barack Obama on Monday, announcing that his state would not only maintain its sanctions on Iran, but strengthen them...

Governor Greg Abbott explained that the letter was in response to a written appeal made by Obama on April 8, requesting that Texas “review” its economic sanctions against the Islamic Republic – as was promised to Tehran in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the nuclear deal between Iran and world powers reached in July.

“I strongly oppose the Iran deal because it undermines the national security of the United States and its strategic allies abroad – especially our most important Middle East ally, Israel,” Abbott wrote to Obama. “Entering into an agreement with a country that consistently calls for ‘death to America,’ and repeatedly articulates antisemitic policies is short-sighted and ignores geopolitical realities.”

That sounds like another Federal lawsuit against another US State is in the offing. Ordinarily I'd say that Texas was in the wrong -- not about the advisability of the Iran Deal, about which Abbott is quite right, but about Texas' power to conduct an independent foreign policy. However, if we're entering the first phases of dissolving the Union, the testing of those boundaries is going to occur. North Carolina is testing them from a place where the Federal government is clearly overreaching its duties. Texas is testing them from a place in which the Federal government is failing its duties. So too were Arizona and the other states involved in the immigration lawsuit, demanding the Federal government enforce its laws and stop preventing them from enforcing the laws as well.

"It's a Meat-Based Vegetable Substitute for Cucumber"

Violence in American Politics

Nevada:

Adryenn Ashley posted several live videos (below) from inside the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, where arcane secondary rounds of the delegate selection process of Nevada's Democratic caucus erupted into chaos Saturday night. Bernie Sanders supporters demanded 64 rejected pro-Sanders delegates listed in a "minority report" prepared by their campaign be allowed to participate in selecting delegates for the national convention.

State party chair and DNC executive committee member Roberta Lange refused to reconsider their decision not to allow this, adjourned, and fled the building amid a chorus of boos; leaving hotel security and local police officers to handle the angry Sanders supporters.

Atlanta:

A casual conversation with other two hotel guests reportedly turned tense when the subject of the Democratic presidential primary was broached. [Hollywood actor Wendell Pierce], an ardent supporter of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, allegedly assaulted a woman and her boyfriend at the midtown Loews Hotel around 3:30 a.m. The alleged incident took place in The Lobby, an open bar sandwiched between the guest check-in desk and a restaurant, and a go-to venue for private receptions and after-work cocktails for Atlanta’s business and entertainment class.

The couple, said to be supporters of Bernie Sanders, said Pierce became enraged when the unknown woman declared her support for the Vermont senator. Pierce, who most recently co-starred in the HBO drama Confirmation in the role of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, allegedly pushed a male victim and then “went after his girlfriend… grabbing her hair and smacking her in the head,” according to TMZ.

Quite a weekend.

Ignorance is Not a Virtue, but It Can Be A Defense

President Obama has decided that he is going to take a very active hand in campaigning for his preferred successor.

"In politics and in life, ignorance is not a virtue. It's not cool to not know what you're talking about. That's not keeping it real, or telling it like it is. That's not challenging political correctness. That's just not knowing what you're talking about. And yet, we've become confused about this."

"When our leaders express a disdain for facts, when they’re not held accountable for repeating falsehoods and just making stuff up, while actual experts are dismissed as elitists, then we’ve got a problem."

However...



UPDATE: "[W]atch this 20 second clip from Charlie Rose this week. In it you’ll see two former Obama administration staffers, Jon Lovett and Jon Favreau, laughing hysterically about the “if you like your insurance you can keep it” Obamacare lie they helped perpetrate. This comes on the heels of last week’s New York Times Magazine brutal profile of ‘Obama’s brain’ Ben Rhodes, who masterminded the journalist-spinning tactics that sold the Iran deal, among others."

The High Feast of Pentecost

WHEN Arthur held his Round Table most plenour, it fortuned that he commanded that the high feast of Pentecost should be holden at a city and a castle, the which in those days was called Kynke Kenadonne, upon the sands that marched nigh Wales. So ever the king had a custom that at the feast of Pentecost in especial, afore other feasts in the year, he would not go that day to meat until he had heard or seen of a great marvel. And for that custom all manner of strange adventures came before Arthur as at that feast before all other feasts. And so Sir Gawaine, a little tofore noon of the day of Pentecost, espied at a window three men upon horseback, and a dwarf on foot, and so the three men alighted, and the dwarf kept their horses, and one of the three men was higher than the other twain by a foot and an half. Then Sir Gawaine went unto the king and said, Sir, go to your meat, for here at the hand come strange adventures.

Donald Trump Really Must Not Be President

We have to come up with a way around this, because of course Hillary Clinton also really must not be President -- she is deeply corrupt, and unrestrained by either law or custom. Neither of these figures is even a little bit fit for the office.

Still, these remarks (h/t: Hot Air) remind me of why I turned against Trump back in September. While I am very much not a feminist, I am a gentleman and I cannot abide men who do not respect women. I think it ought to be disqualifying for an office as powerful and important as the Presidency. Of course, I think the Presidency should become much less powerful and important, in which case it would not matter so much. But for now it is, and it does.

May God open a road for us, I pray this Pentecost, and may we be again a nation worthy of such providence.

An Analysis

It opens with a metaphysical claim about politics:

Perhaps the most evident sign of civilizational devolution is the inability or unwillingness to acknowledge reality, to come to terms with things as they are, and to oppose the suppression of objectivity and its substitution by fantasy, illusion and wish-fulfillment. The resonating dictum of the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides from his fragmentary poem On Nature—variously translated as what is, is, and what is not, is not!—sounds like an empty tautology. But it has relevance for our present historical moment, with respect to the cultural and lexical inversions of contemporary thought and discourse. Apart from its metaphysical implications, which we won’t go into here, the Parmenidean maxim expresses the criterion for survival, the need to separate truth (aletheia) from opinion (doxa) and to recognize things as they are if an individual, a culture, a people is to transact successfully with the existing world. But when thought and action come to be governed by the anarchic principle that what is, is not and what is not, is, a process of social, political and epistemological disintegration invariably sets in. This is the condition in which the West finds itself today.

Best read alongside this.