A Good Article from Vox

'How do we help veterans re-integrate into American society?' asks Vox. The answer they get: 'Why should they wish to?'

Basically, soldiers in combat experience something that's a pretty close reproduction of our evolutionary past. We evolved to live in groups of 30, 40, 50 people functioning very closely. Sleeping together, eating together, doing everything together. Our survival depended on the group.

That's our evolutionary past. It's also life in combat. It's even life in a platoon at a rear base. Most of the military does not fire their weapons at the enemy, do not get shot, but they do function in these close, tight-knit groups, and those emotional bonds become incredibly important. That's what we're wired for....

Then they come back and they see a country which is racially divided, it's economically divided, it's politically divided. There powerful wealthy people frankly getting away with enormous financial crimes without consequences. It's a country at war with itself, and I think on some level, unconsciously or consciously, it must be quite complicated for soldiers who risked their lives for this country, were wounded maybe, lost friends, to come back and see that the thing they were fighting for is fighting with itself. I think that must be incredibly demoralizing...

[D]o they really want to be re-integrated? The point of my book is that it's a fragmented, alienated society with very high suicide rates. Do we want to help them transition back to something that's psychologically toxic? Is that really doing them a service? The fact that they are psychologically rebelling against the transition home says something very healthy about them, because they're transitioning to something that if you look at rates of mental illness is obviously not doing anyone much good.

From a philosophical perspective, I want to add to this picture. Aristotle says that the goal of ethics is eudaimonia, a state of happy flourishing that you find when all of your vital powers are aligned in rational activity. More, he says, to fully experience this state you need a community that is set up to support it. The military deployed comes much closer to attaining Aristotle's ideal than anything else I've seen in the world. Everyone is working together towards some strategic good. They all have different jobs, but those jobs must align. Thus, there is constant rational communication and consideration of how to align different fires on a target, or different staff sections on a mission. This 'small, close knit' community is also a community that works together toward some goods that they pursue together through rational activity.

War being war, as Clausewitz says, 'everything is simple, and the simplest things are hard.' Thus, one needs all of one's vital powers in alignment to accomplish these goals. It is a very engaging sort of life.

It may well be that the broader society lacks a number of things that these smaller, close-knit and rationally ordered communities offer. Are these goods we can replicate? Certainly: any number of organizations could be set up to pursue goods in this way, although they will not all be as fully engaging of all of one's vital powers absent the extremes of war.

Are they goods that we do replicate? No, not really, not for the most part. Indeed, in the current economy, large numbers of Americans are simply left idle. They can pursue their own goods, of course, but without a community or the resources one provides toward enabling that pursuit. They can set up their own communities, but then these are perceived as a danger by the broader society.

What's the Prognosis?

So, if this is ordinary best-case-scenario pneumonia -- as they would like us to believe -- what's the prognosis?

Older, sicker people usually have more severe cases. And their cases of pneumonia are more likely to cause complications, such as bacteria in the bloodstream (bacteremia) or throughout the body (septicemia).... Viral pneumonia usually is less severe than bacterial pneumonia.... In healthy people, pneumonia can be a mild illness that is hardly noticed and clears up in 2 to 3 weeks. In older adults and in people with other health problems, recovery may take 6 to 8 weeks or longer.... About one-third of people with community-based pneumonia are age 65 or older. Older adults are treated in the hospital more often and stay longer for the condition than younger people. Pneumonia is more serious in this group, because they often have and may develop other medical problems.

1) She's 68 and not in the very best of health even before this episode.

2) Assuming we are being told the truth, she has the more-severe bacterial version because she's on antibiotics.

So, figure multiple weeks off the campaign trail? Best case, and if they're on the level?

UPDATE:

Tim Kaine is not helping her cause.

Tim Kaine tells reporters after today's Dayton speech that Hillary Clinton was "responsive" right away when he talked to her Sunday.

"Responsive"? That's something you say about someone on their deathbed.

Sailor at War Gives Birth to Baby Girl

She's on a carrier, apparently, which is pretty far removed from the front lines. Still and all.

“As the baby was born at sea aboard an operational unit, the main focus for the U.S. Navy, the ship and its crew is the safety and well-being of the baby and the mother," Urban said in an email.

The main focus of the US Navy and a ship deployed at war is the safety of the baby and mother. A serving Naval officer wrote that.

"Nervously Whispering About Her Stepping Aside"

Are they nervous, or are they excited?

No Way, Doc

There isn't actually an international law that would permit you to have tried Bin Laden.

"I think assassinations ... they're against international law to start with and to that effect, I think I would not have assassinated Osama bin laden but would have captured him and brought him to trial," Stein said while campaigning in Iowa over the weekend.

So, the way this works is that the whole SEAL Team raid was illegal -- that's why the SEALs were inducted into the CIA for the length of time they performed the raid. Breaking the laws of other nations is the CIA's job. So the whole raid to get him was a violation of both Pakistan's laws and this 'international law' that you seem to believe exists.

Now, you could have asked Pakistan to arrest him -- but since the Paks were the ones hiding him, that would have meant that he would have mysteriously vanished. "Oops, we raided that house you told us about but he wasn't there!" Something like that.

If you wanted to be scrupulous about obeying 'international law,' then, you'd never have gotten to Bin Laden at all.

Had you, though, who would have tried him? Pakistan? A US Federal court? He was a foreign national on foreign soil throughout the planning cycle of the 9/11 attacks. Where would US courts get the authority, under 'international law,' to try him even if you could drag him before a court?

The Hague, then, I suppose.



Lex talionis is the only real international law.

Two More Celtic Swords

Not nearly so old, circa 100 BC. The date puts them about the time of the birth of Julius Caesar, who brought an end to the legendary era in Britain for a while with his reconnaissance in force.

It would be wrong to say that this begins the historical era in Britain, however. The historical era ended again a few hundred years later, and the legendary era returned for a space. There dwells Arthur.

Censorship, British and American

The Brits can be as snide as they want about the "prissy American censorship" practiced by Facebook, which certainly is deplorable (although the deplorables are the ones on whom it is practiced, in current parlance). But their government practices real, live censorship -- with criminal penalties, and on an increasing range of subjects.

"We've all agreed for a long time that it's not okay for someone to shout homophobic or Islamophobic abuse at someone. So why is it okay to shout misogynistic abuse at a woman or behave towards her in a way that makes her feel threatened and impacts upon her ability to lead a normal life?"

Perhaps because I can't control your feelings, and thus I'd be subject to criminal penalties for something I can't control? As the article goes on to admit, many of the things she wants to criminalize as 'hate crimes' are already illegal -- such as sexual assault. There's no need for a law to criminalize what is already criminal, and it is wrong to criminalize an outcome that the 'criminal' cannot control.

Stirling Bridge

Yesterday was also the anniversary of the Battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297. If you are mostly familiar with the history via Braveheart, you may not be aware that there was a bridge. Or why, exactly, it was important to fight the battle. Actually, there's a lot you won't know.

So It Turns Out There Was Something There After All

Now she has two problems: First, the appearance of extreme physical weakness, which is not a quality voters look for in a President. That's the small problem.

The big problem is that she's just spent a year teaching Americans that they can't trust what she says about things like this. "She got overheated" is the new "there was never any classified information in my email, and I turned over everything work-related." We know, from recent experience, that she and her people only tell as much of the truth as they are absolutely forced to, and give up more truth only when there is no choice whatsoever.

The 'overheated' story was so implausible, in sub-80 degree weather without humidity, that we've already seen the first modification: 'she has pneumonia.' OK. Even if that's true, pneumonia is not terribly likely in the summer without some additional illness suppressing the immune system. What illness is that? She's been coughing for a long time.

The only thing we can be sure of is that she's not going to level with us about whatever it is. That's true for this, as it was true in the classified information scandal, and as it will be true with regard to everything ever if she's elected President. It's who she is.

The Democratic Party, were it wise, would take this opportunity to force her to stand down for anyone else. They could only improve their electoral prospects by doing so, and would in the meantime do the nation a significant favor.

UPDATE: Two questions I've seen asked and not answered: if she has contagious pneumonia, how could her campaign justify sending the little girl out to hug her in the "all is well!" photo-op? If she has contagious pneumonia, why would they take her to Chelsea's home, where there are babies who could be at risk from such a move?

There are a range of possible answers to those questions, but none of them make her look good.

4,000 Year Old Sword Discovered in Scotland

With hilt of gold, a beautiful weapon from the age of Conan -- or in any case, in the time of legends before the beginning of the mists of history.

Enid & Geraint

By custom and tradition of the Hall, today there are no posts except this poem.

Enid & Geraint

Once strong, from solid
Camelot he came
Glory with him, Geraint,
Whose sword tamed the wild.
Fabled the fortune he won,
Fame, and a wife.
The beasts he battled
With horn and lance;
Stood farms where fens lay.
When bandits returned
To old beast-holds
Geraint gave them the same.

And then long peace,
Purchased by the manful blade.
Light delights filled it,
Tournaments softened, tempered
By ladies; in peace lingers
the dream of safety.

They dreamed together. Darkness
Gathered on the old wood,
Wild things troubled the edges,
Then crept closer.
The whispers of weakness
Are echoed with evil.

At last even Enid
Whose eyes are as dusk
Looked on her Lord
And weighed him wanting.
Her gaze gored him:
He dressed in red-rust mail.

And put her on palfrey
To ride before or beside
And they went to the wilds,
Which were no longer
So far. Ill-used,
His sword hung beside.

By the long wood, where
Once he laid pastures,
The knight halted, horsed,
Gazing on the grim trees.
He opened his helm
Beholding a bandit realm.

Enid cried at the charge
Of a criminal clad in mail!
The Lord turned his horse,
Set his untended shield:
There lacked time, there
Lacked thought for more.

Villanous lance licked the
Ancient shield. It split,
Broke, that badge of the knight!
The spearhead searched
Old, rust-red mail.
Geraint awoke.

Master and black mount
Rediscovered their rich love,
And armor, though old
Though red with thick rust,
Broke the felon blade.
The spear to-brast, shattered.

And now Enid sees
In Geraint's cold eyes
What shivers her to the spine.
And now his hand
Draws the ill-used sword:
Ill-used, but well-forged.

And the shock from the spear-break
Rang from bandit-towers
Rattled the wood, and the world!
Men dwelt there in wonder.
Who had heard that tone?
They did not remember that sound.

His best spear broken
On old, rusted mail,
The felon sought his forest.
Enid's dusk eyes sense
The strength of old steel:
Geraint grips his reins.

And he winds his old horn,
And he spurs his proud horse,
And the wood to his wrath trembles.
And every bird
From the wild forest flies,
But the Ravens.

Greetings, Fellow Irredeemables

Ironically, in a year in which revolt against the establishment has been the theme for voter enthusiasm, Hillary Clinton has managed to assign her worst enemies a pair of names that would both befit a punk rock band.

In fact, I had to check to be sure that neither "The Deplorables" nor "The Irredeemables" was taken.

Bagpipe Swing

Here's something you don't see every day:

Dang -- We Just Missed the World Nomad Games

According to a Guardian writer:

The Rio Olympics might have had Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and the Copacabana beach, but for fans of stick wrestling and horseback battles over a dead goat the shores of Lake Issyk Kul is the place to be this week, as Kyrgyzstan hosts the second World Nomad Games from 3 to 8 September.

The games, designed to celebrate the nomadic heritage of the Central Asian nations, kicked off with a lavish opening ceremony on Saturday night

Forty countries are participating, some of which have long nomadic histories. Others are mainly there for the fun of the games. Sports include eagle hunting, bone throwing and mas-wrestling, a mesmerising game involving two competitors attempting to wrest control of a small stick.

...

Creed Garnick of Wyoming, the US captain, was the only one of the eight-man team to have even played [kok-boru] before, having spent two years living in Central Asia.

“It’s going to be quite a challenge but we’re going to enjoy it,” he said the evening before the game, as his team-mates looked on with expressions of mild alarm.

Jill Stein to Address Her Arrest Warrant

I've met Dr. Stein several times now, and I don't find this at all surprising. It's important to realize that the American hard Left has created a whole array of "crimes" for which one can be arrested symbolically, in a way that is viewed not as criminal in their context but as proof of personal commitment and virtue. One of the protest groups I met up in Philly had coordinated the process with the police, even, with both the police and the protest leadership having designated, armband-wearing 'liaison officers' to smooth the process of getting people arrested without actually disrupting the DNC in any important way. In return for playing along with your own arrest, you could be pretty sure of facing only administrative charges and a fine that would probably be dropped due to "incomplete" paperwork.

It's a sham, in other words.

Or at least it usually is, in Democrat-controlled cities. It sounds like the sheriff in North Dakota may not be aware that this is just a game people play to signal virtue. The Green Party says that the North Dakota police plan to file charges against her "for participating in civil disobedience against the Dakota Access Pipeline Tuesday morning." What she is actually charged with is "misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief." That could land her in jail for more than a couple of hours in the afternoon: up to 30 days for a Class B misdemeanor, or up to a year if she was convicted of a Class A misdemeanor.

From a little more research, it looks as if the claims that this pipeline will endanger the water supply are not persuading many people to worry too much about it. However, the Feds are concerned about claims that the pipeline company is razing sacred burial sites and other cultural landmarks. It sounds as if at least some of these sacred sites have been rather hastily identified, to be sure, but on the other hand I'm also persuaded by the counterargument I heard this morning: how ready would we be to see a pipeline cut through Arlington? Arlington isn't even a fully sacred site, given its dedication to a secular state not devoted to any particular faith. It's only sacred in a sense, insofar as 'sacred' and 'sacrifice' are so closely linked. Arlington is sacred in the sense that it is where we honor those who have given their lives for our common good, as expressed in the defense of our nation.

UPDATE: "A judge on Friday denied the Standing Rock Sioux tribe's attempt to halt the construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline near its North Dakota reservation, but three federal agencies asked the pipeline company to 'voluntarily pause' work on a segment that tribal officials say holds sacred sites and artifacts."

In-Born Genius

It turns out that practice isn't what makes perfect, at least for those who are most likely to have significant accomplishments. But it isn't being born to the right parents, either -- at least, not 'right' in the sense of 'rich.'

Many of the innovators who are advancing science, technology and culture are those whose unique cognitive abilities were identified and supported in their early years through enrichment programmes such as Johns Hopkins University's Center for Talented Youth — which Stanley began in the 1980s as an adjunct to SMPY. At the start, both the study and the centre were open to young adolescents who scored in the top 1% on university entrance exams....

“Whether we like it or not, these people really do control our society,” says Jonathan Wai, a psychologist at the Duke University Talent Identification Program in Durham, North Carolina, which collaborates with the Hopkins centre. Wai combined data from 11 prospective and retrospective longitudinal studies2, including SMPY, to demonstrate the correlation between early cognitive ability and adult achievement. “The kids who test in the top 1% tend to become our eminent scientists and academics, our Fortune 500 CEOs and federal judges, senators and billionaires,” he says.

Such results contradict long-established ideas suggesting that expert performance is built mainly through practice — that anyone can get to the top with enough focused effort of the right kind. SMPY, by contrast, suggests that early cognitive ability has more effect on achievement than either deliberate practice or environmental factors such as socio-economic status.

I happen to know several friends who have taught at the Center for Talented Youth (CTY), a number of years running. If anything, their commentary reinforces the idea that practice isn't what makes these kids succeed: they have all openly expressed skepticism that CTY does any good at all for these kids. The fact of being smart enough to be admitted is the real thing guaranteeing lifetime success, not what goes on in these enrichment programs.

The other thing they tell me is that CTY is very heavily Asian. I wonder how much of that is because of the alleged disparity in favor of Asians in IQ, and how much is because of the discrimination against Asians in university admissions. If you know your kid is going to suffer in the college admissions process, you're probably more inclined to pay CTY's rates to get them what amounts to a favorable recommendation. The smart kid from any other background is more likely to be able to coast on their test scores.

Silence, Peasants!

For the second time in a week, the Washington Post explains to its comrades in journalism that a damaging story about Hillary Clinton must just stop. This time, it's the full editorial board.

Chris Cillizza has a follow up to his earlier piece about how questions about her health should be off limits, one written after it was pointed out that he had made McCain's health an issue in 2008.

People need to stop talking and writing and thinking about these stories. It's imperiling the coronation of our rightful leader.

Alarm and Disappointment in the Surveillance-for-Thee-But-Not-for-Me-State

James Bamford in Foreign Policy wrote a rather lengthy article that details our current "surveillance state": "Every Move You Make: Over eight years, President Barack Obama has created the most intrusive surveillance apparatus in the world. To what end?"

Here's just one anecdote in the story:

For the Obama administration, the next frontier in spying was being able to eavesdrop on every single person in a country by obtaining “full-take audio” of all cell-phone conversations. For this new program, code-named SOMALGET, it needed a testing ground. The Bahamas — small, contained, peaceful, 50 miles from the Florida coast — fit the bill.

In 2009, not long after Obama had taken office, the NSA gained access to Bahamian communications networks by subterfuge. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration got legal permission to plant monitoring equipment in the nation’s telecom systems by convincing the islands’ government that the operation would help catch drug dealers. Really, though, it opened a backdoor for the NSA so that it could tap, record, and store cellular data. “[O]ur covert mission is the provision of SIGINT [signals intelligence],” a document leaked by Snowden stated. The host country was “not aware.”

Within two years, SOMALGET would achieve its goal of 100 percent surveillance in the Bahamas — all without legal warrants. This included spying on the cell phones of some 6 million U.S. citizens who visit or reside in the country each year; notable celebrities with homes there are Bill Gates, John Travolta, and Tiger Woods.

I always liked Colin Powell through the Bush administration years, so the Daily Mail's report that he really did advise Hillary about how to avoid State Department servers and open records laws is disappointing.

Update: I just noticed that Grim had already posted on the FP article.

"Normal"

It's not much of an endorsement to say that someone is normal, and even less of one to say that they are a normal politician, unless that someone is Hillary Clinton. Then it is apparently the most important thing to convey of all. Witness:


New York Magazine, Headline: "Hillary Clinton Is a Flawed But Normal Politician. Why Can't America See That?"

The Atlantic, opening sentence of another article: "Except for her gender, Hillary Clinton is a highly conventional presidential candidate."

You know, I've sat through a lot of presidential campaigns at this point. Let me point out a few more headlines, just from today only, that undercut this thesis.

The Daily Mail: "‘Read the reports’: Hillary Clinton refuses to explain what she told the FBI about how a concussion impaired her memory"

PR Newswire: "Hillary's Health Concerns Serious, Say Most Doctors Polled by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS)"

The Hill: "Clinton campaign warns media to tread carefully"

Hot Air: "When lies collide: New Hillary email spin directly contradicted by own previous claim"

National Review, one of two: "What Did Clinton’s Lawyers Say to Her Tech Guy a Few Days Before He Destroyed Her E-Mails?"

National Review, two of two: "Obstruction of Justice Haunts Hillary’s Future"

This is normal and conventional? A secretive candidate who can get away with threatening the media not to report on her potentially serious health issues, while dodging criminal prosecution on clear national security violations and obstruction of justice charges?

Maybe it's not the American people whose eyes are a bit foggy here, ladies and gentlemen of the press.

It's As If Trump Wanted to Make Joel's Head Explode

Although, as usual, what he said wasn't as stupid as what he is reported to have said.

The issue came up when an audience member asked Trump: "As president, what specifically would you do to support all victims of sexual assault in the military?"

Trump had agreed it's "a massive problem," and something should be done.

"The numbers are staggering, hard to believe it even -- but we're gonna have to run it very tight. I, at the same time, want to keep the court system within the military. I don't think it should be outside of the military," Trump said.

There is an existing military court system, with judges, prosecutors and courts martial, but lawmakers have sought to change the current system to better address sexual assault.

I think every headline version of this I've seen has claimed that Trump said he wanted to 'set up' a court system in the military. What he really said was that he wanted to keep the court system for these charges within the military. Given that some in Congress are talking about what can be done to further stem sexual assault in the military, this sounds less like the blathering of a moron who doesn't know anything and more like a kind of left limit to the sorts of reforms he'd entertain.

I'm not sure that the press didn't really hear him say he wanted to 'set up' a court system in the military, rather than that he wanted to 'keep' these cases there. They seem to want to have heard it very badly.

A Poor Strategy for a Sailor

Showing disrespect to the flag during Colors is not going to go over well with her chain of command. It's protected free speech when a football player does it. It's a violation of regulations for her.

I'm Beginning to Think There Might Be Something Here

I thought the 'she's so sick' rumors were largely just ordinary getting-older stuff until her team started pushing back so hard against reporters asking about it.

Now I wonder what's got her team so worried. She could just go get a physical and publish the results if this were a serious but unfounded concern.

FP: Hey, What's Obama Want With This Giant Surveillance State?

Foreign Policy points out that the United States of America is now the largest surveillance state the world has ever known and asks -- why?

I want one of these

I need to get right to work organizing one on nearby St. Charles Bay.

So What About this Business in North Dakota?

If I lived closer to North Dakota, I think I'd probably go out to these protests.

I'm not a big fan of the NPR spin, where this is somehow part of some overarching American nastiness toward minority groups (especially Native Americans). Oh, they're using dogs, just like in Selma! Whatever.

But I would still go, just because I get not liking having people steamroller your home in the name of 'progress,' oil-related or not. I don't have a problem with oil. I just have a problem with the use of wealth and force to override a community's will about the place where it lives and eats.

Apparently Jill Stein got arrested out there for tagging a bulldozer with spraypaint. My sense of what ought to be done with unwanted bulldozers is somewhat more severe.

XKCD on Geese

Clanadonia & Albannach

Some good Scottish music to go with Beer Lover's Day.





Notice that there is one set of Great Highland Bagpipes among all those big drums, and you can hear it perfectly plainly.

Abolish the Family!

It's a source of inequality, argues.... er, a philosopher.

So many disputes in our liberal democratic society hinge on the tension between inequality and fairness: between groups, between sexes, between individuals, and increasingly between families.

I don’t think parents reading their children bedtime stories should constantly have in their minds the way that they are unfairly disadvantaging other people’s children, but I think they should have that thought occasionally.

The power of the family to tilt equality hasn’t gone unnoticed, and academics and public commentators have been blowing the whistle for some time. Now, philosophers Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse have felt compelled to conduct a cool reassessment.

Swift in particular has been conflicted for some time over the curious situation that arises when a parent wants to do the best for her child but in the process makes the playing field for others even more lopsided.

‘I got interested in this question because I was interested in equality of opportunity,’ he says.

‘I had done some work on social mobility and the evidence is overwhelmingly that the reason why children born to different families have very different chances in life is because of what happens in those families.’

Once he got thinking, Swift could see that the issue stretches well beyond the fact that some families can afford private schooling, nannies, tutors, and houses in good suburbs. Functional family interactions—from going to the cricket to reading bedtime stories—form a largely unseen but palpable fault line between families. The consequence is a gap in social mobility and equality that can last for generations.

So, what to do?

According to Swift, from a purely instrumental position the answer is straightforward.

‘One way philosophers might think about solving the social justice problem would be by simply abolishing the family. If the family is this source of unfairness in society then it looks plausible to think that if we abolished the family there would be a more level playing field.’

They give a history lesson about this argument, which you can read if you want to do. Here's my version of it:

Plato argued in favor of abolishing the family in the Republic, though it's not clear how much that was just a thought experiment. Aristotle rejected the idea outright in the Politics II.2, on the grounds that abolishing the family means abolishing the state. The argument he gives is an early form of the principle of division of labor: the family is more diverse and also more self-sustaining than an individual, and a city more than a family. By eliminating the family in order to give the state greater unity (of which 'less inequality' is a kind), you would end up decreasing the ability to sustain the state.

And indeed that is true. The state is capable of surviving even major disruptions in large part because people can rely upon their families for so much. If the family fails, the state has to pick up a lot more weight -- and, in taking on a vast multiplicity of tasks for which it is unsuited, it becomes far more fragile.

Swift doesn't concede the value of the family to the stability of the state, arguing instead only from Aristotle's formulation of the tragedy of the commons. Rather, he decides that "it is in the interest of the child to be parented, and be parented well." He ends up concluding from this that there may be a higher value than equality (heaven forfend!), and that we shouldn't force parents not to read to their children even though being read to as a child confers advantages later in life.

There's an additional point, which is that a state that tried to abolish the family would become unstable for another reason: parents would unite in destroying it. That doesn't seem to occur to him, but he's an Australian. The value of revolution to the moral health of society is more classically an American point.

Jimbo on Hillary Clinton

Uncle J, guest hosting on the Secure Freedom Radio Show, tees off a full-length monologue against Hillary Clinton. Corruption? Quid pro quo? Lawlessness? It's all there.

Today is Beer Lover's Day?

I didn't realize Scotland had a national holiday for that. Or just one, for that matter.

Lazy Americans

If you were to call any subset of Americans "lazy," you'd be described as engaging in stereotyping or even hate speech.

Republicans for Centralized Government

Trump's friend Peter Thiel suggests that the Republicans have been enabled to move toward a new era in which they push for government that works.

Probably Americans would like government that worked better than the rampant incompetence and wastefulness we see today. However, I still think that central government itself is the problem because it imposes one-size-fits-all solutions on a nation that doesn't agree about what the proper mission of government is.

I don't want a government that will efficiently do the very things I think it ought not to do. Thank you, but no.

Lying to the FBI is Also a Federal Crime

No wonder they want us to swear not to use hacked documents against them.

"Hillary Clinton says that she can’t remember what a 'C' in brackets stands for. Everyone in positions of government and in WikiLeaks knows it stands for classified, confidential. And in fact, we have already released thousands of cables by Hillary Clinton…with a 'C' in brackets right there," said Assange while producing one of the documents. "Thousands of examples, where she herself has used a 'C' in brackets, and signed it off, and more than 22,000 times that she has received cables from others with this 'C' in brackets. So, it’s absolutely incredible for Clinton to lie. She is lying about not knowing what that is, but it’s a bit disturbing that James Comey goes along with that game.”

If that's true, then what she said was an obvious lie. I mean, it was extremely implausible before. At the point that you can show that she used the notation herself, though, then there's no possibility she didn't know what it meant. Her claims to the contrary are false statements, which is a Federal crime in this case.

King Sockpuppet Has A Point

Glen Greenwald writes:

Krugman’s column, chiding the media for its unfairly negative coverage of his beloved candidate, was, predictably, a big hit among Democrats — not just because of their agreement with its content but because of what they regarded as the remarkable courage required to publicly defend someone as marginalized and besieged as the former first lady, two-term New York senator, secretary of state, and current establishment-backed multimillionaire presidential front-runner.... Thankfully, it appears that Krugman — at least thus far — has suffered no governmental recriminations or legal threats, nor any career penalties, for his intrepid, highly risky defense of Hillary Clinton.

Try setting up a 501(c)3 with "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in the name, though, and see what happens.

Or, you know, try giving money to an existing one.

(I suppose it's been long enough that we might consider letting Greenwald walk from the sockpuppet thing, but it's still what I think of every time I see his name.)

What Wrong Looks Like

Nick Palmisciano finds his picture used by the Army as a bad example:

I think they've got you fair and square on this one, Nick.



(Not entirely safe for work.)

Enemy of the State

The odyssey of a cake baker.

Appreciating the Effort

A "liberal sociologist," also known as a "sociologist," spent 5 years in what the article describes as "Trump's America." She was actually trying to find the Tea Party's America, but this was back before the Obama IRS did its best to prevent any actual grassroots Tea Party groups from forming. As a consequence, the Tea Party groups that formed were just fronts for establishment Republicans like Karl Rove, and the popular movement became even more hostile to Washington.

Thus, Trump, the only figure in either party's race who was clearly not a part of anyone's establishment. Whatever bad things can be said about him, that much at least is true.

Here are some of her conclusions. On overall motivation:

They feel their cultural beliefs are denigrated by the culture at large. They feel that they’re seen as rednecks, that they live in a region that’s being discredited. Many of them are deeply devout, but they see the culture at large becoming more secular. And then they see economically that this trapdoor that used to only affect black people and people one class below them is now opening and gobbling up them and their children too. So altogether it makes them feel like a forgotten tribe. “Strangers in their own land” is a phrase that kept recurring to me as I spent time there.

And the main point is that they feel the government, the federal government, has been an instrument of their marginalization. If you give it an arm, it’ll take a leg....

On what she calls "deep story":

Think of people waiting in a long line that stretches up a hill. And at the top of that is the American dream. And the people waiting in line felt like they’d worked extremely hard, sacrificed a lot, tried their best, and were waiting for something they deserved. And this line is increasingly not moving, or moving more slowly [i.e., as the economy stalls].

Then they see people cutting ahead of them in line. Immigrants, blacks, women, refugees, public-sector workers. And even an oil-drenched brown pelican getting priority. In their view, people are cutting ahead unfairly. And then in this narrative, there is Barack Obama, to the side, the line supervisor who seems to be waving these people (and the pelican) ahead. So the government seemed to be on the side of the people who were cutting in line and pushing the people in line back.

On hard work and social class:

Another thing, a lot of the people I talked to were doing really well now — but they had grown up in poverty, or their parents had, they’d struggled hard, and they’d worked hard. They were also white men, and they felt that there was no cultural sympathy for them, in fact there was a tendency to blame the categories of whiteness and maleness. I came to realize that there is a whole sector of society in which the privilege of whiteness and maleness didn’t really trickle down. And I think we have grown highly insensitive to that fact.

I think she puts too much emphasis on race, but she says that someone like me would think that. In any case, it's nice that she actually wanted to know what people like us think about things.

UPDATE: The Washington Post has a less generous take on her book.

Firm Founded by Clinton Chair Reps Corrupt Serbian Oligarch’s Business Interests

Here is the second big Free Beacon story:

A lobbying firm founded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and run by one of her top fundraisers represents the business interests of a Serbian oligarch accused by U.S. and Serbian authorities of widespread corruption, public records show.

Since 2013, the Podesta Group has represented two companies run by Miroslav Miskovic, a Serbian billionaire recently convicted of tax evasion charges stemming from a multi-million-dollar embezzlement scheme....

A diplomatic cable sent to the State Department by the U.S. ambassador to Serbia in 2007 recommended that Miskovic be denied entry to the United States due to his involvement in corrupt business practices.... “We now have solid [evidence] that Miskovic was the beneficiary of egregious political corruption, which has had a serious adverse effect on U.S. national interests, … namely the stability of democratic institutions and U.S. foreign assistance goals,” according to the cable, which was posted online by the group WikiLeaks.

It recommended employing a presidential proclamation designed to combat corruption to preemptively deny Miskovic a U.S. visa “so that he does not derive the further benefit of access to the U.S. from his pillaging of Serbia.”

Read the rest.

How Much Did Beijing Give the Clinton Foundation?

The Washington Free Beacon is on a roll. Story #1: Clinton turned in a Chinese defector to aid Beijing. The case was known, but apparently her story about it was -- as usual -- false.

Earlier, Clinton said during remarks to Chatham House, a British think tank, that Wang “did not fit any of the categories for the United States giving him asylum.” She said he “had a record of corruption, of thuggishness, brutality” and was “an enforcer for Bo Xilai.”

But a State Department document from 2010 contradicts her assertion. The document, labeled “secret,” outlines in detail how officials at U.S. diplomatic outposts should handle foreign nationals who seek to defect. The foreign nationals are called “walk-ins” and can provide valuable intelligence.

“Walk-ins (1) may be sources of invaluable intelligence; (2) pose numerous security challenges; and (3) may need protection,”states the cable, made public by Wikileaks. “Improper handling of walk-ins can put them and post personnel at risk and result in the loss of important intelligence.”

The document lists all categories of potential defectors expected as walk-ins, including “members of the national police and the military,” as well as “political party officials.”

Wang held several senior positions in Chongqing, including deputy Communist Party chief; deputy chief, party chief, and head of Chongqing police, and vice mayor.

Instead of asylum, Clinton could have helped Wang by authorizing “temporary refuge” at the consulate, but that option also was rejected.

He Did Say He Was Going to Pivot to Asia

Having lost America's position in the northern Middle East to Russia and Iran, the Obama administration appears to be losing the Philippines to China.

Obama's framing of Duterte's drug war as a human rights problem, which it doubtless is, missed a key dimension. The drug war is the symptom of a national security problem: the narco invasion of the Philippines. The killings are a result and not the cause in themselves of the problem. And now that the diplomatic breach has opened the door to Chinese subversion on an unprecedented scale with incalculable consequences to regional security it is likely to get worse.

The Era of Hope and Change has been one prolonged act of suicide. If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn, restart the Cold War with Russia, cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China would you have believed it? If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?

He has been very consistent.

I Doubt the Quality of This Advice

When the New York Times is willing to publish an op-ed partially entitled, "Save the Republican Party," you can guess what the second part of the headline is.

Editorial Understatement Award

The IBT conveys a judgment:

"ISIS has a poor record when it comes to women's rights, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report."

Nessie

It's unclear whether the Loch Ness Monster still exists, but once upon a time it did. Scotland is finally devoting some resources to researching its native sea monster, some fifty years after its discovery.

The Perfect Story for the Hall

Combining several recent themes, goose hunters in Iceland recovered a 9th century Viking sword.

We can all take the rest of the day off.

Diversity is Good, Right?

War History: "The American WWII Ace Who Shot Down 7 German, 1 Italian, 1 Japanese, And 1 American Plane!"

What I love about the story is that, instead of courtmartialing him and stripping him of flight status, they just put an American flag kill mark on his plane next to all the others.

Vox on 'the Clinton rules' that cause the media to treat Hillary Clinton so unfairly:

[T]he more power a person wants in our republic, the more voters should know about her or him. But it's also an essential frame for thinking about the long-toxic relationship between the Clintons and the media, why the coverage of Hillary Clinton differs from coverage of other candidates for the presidency, and whether that difference encourages distortions that will ultimately affect the presidential race.

RCP, on the media having a rare interaction with Clinton:

Clinton, under pressure for not holding a press conference for nearly 280 days, was peppered with questions like, "How was your Labor Day weekend?" Another question: "Are you ready?"

"Do you have a Labor Day message?" one reporter asked.

"I do, you'll hear it," Clinton answered. "I definitely, I definitely do. If you want more happy Labor Days, you know who to vote for."

"Thanks, I'll come back later," Clinton said as she exited the cabin that holds the press.

Later, you know, like maybe in mid-November.

The Alt-Right at Chicago Boyz

They have a post wrestling with the term, and what they think the evidence behind the movement looks like.

There is a predictably long comments section, featuring some names you'll recognize.

G20 in Hangzhou

I spent a lot of time in Hangzhou around the turn of the century. This report from the Guardian sounds perfectly plausible to me. China of course has no real property rights, and if they want to show up and bulldoze your building to expand a road (or otherwise for 'the common good'), well, you're just out of luck. You can live in the rubble until you find something better, maybe. So, yes, I'm completely prepared to believe that the Communist Party forced a third of the city's residents to leave for the week.

The article's pictures don't show the pretty parts of Hangzhou, though, just the post-Commie industrial architecture. Hangzhou was a capital during the Southern Song dyansty, and is full of temples and statuary around the beautiful West Lake (Xi Hu). We used to climb Precious Stone Hill and overlook the lake frequently, or take hikes in the tea country near the Dragon Well.

Unfortunately, the massive air pollution from the coal plants that power the city have done a great deal to harm the city's beauty (as well as the health of anyone living there). Still, you can get the sense that it was once very lovely, and almost is still.

Google has many better images of the place. If anything, this collection errs in the other direction. I noticed when I lived there that I had carefully cropped out all the huge piles of trash and rubble from my pictures, all the ugly stuff of Communism, to try to capture just the beautiful things. I went around and took a bunch of photos of that awful stuff as well, so that I wouldn't forget what the city was really like. It is beautiful, almost, in places. But that beauty exists beside incredible ugliness and damage. Parts of Hangzhou looked worse than Baghdad, as even a war in a merely socialist state cannot do damage like peace in a fully Communist one. Such a government destroys merely by its ordinary existence, both directly and indirectly. Unfree to hold any part of it as their own, the people finally give up caring about it.

Trump Supporters

Salena Zito spent some time in Pennsylvania to learn about Trump supporters first hand.

It's a good piece. Here are some excerpts:

In interview after interview in all corners of the state, I've found that Trump's support across the ideological spectrum remains strong. Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who have not voted in presidential elections for years — they have not wavered in their support.

Two components of these voters' answers and profiles remain consistent: They are middle-class, and they do not live in a big city....

While Trump supporters here are overwhelmingly white, their support has little to do with race (yes, you'll always find one or two who make race the issue) but has a lot to do with a perceived loss of power.

Not power in the way that Washington or Wall Street board rooms view power, but power in the sense that these people see a diminishing respect for them and their ways of life, their work ethic, their tendency to not be mobile ...

These are voters who are intellectually offended watching the Affordable Care Act crumble because they warned six years ago that it was an unworkable government overreach. They are the same people who wonder why President Obama has not taken a break from a week of golfing to address the devastating floods in Louisiana. (As one woman told me, “It appears as if he only makes statements during tragedies if there is political gain attached.”)

Voice such a remark, and you risk being labeled a racist in many parts of America. ...

It is no surprise that white identity politics is, if not rising, as least more visible today. The Progressives, especially the culture warriors, have been using identity politics as a political arsenal for decades. At some point, it was probably inevitable that some whites would surrender to the Progressive agenda and embrace identity politics themselves.

That said, I think the vast majority of Trump supporters are not thinking about "white identity" themselves, but are concerned about the racism that's been used against them for the last couple of generations, and which seems to be getting worse. That's a legitimate concern, and no one needs to adopt white identity politics to address that.

Zito's claims make sense to me: Trump support is in large part about being on the losing-but-right side in the culture wars, and it's about the unjust economic consequences of that for the future. She notes that Trump supporters themselves are more likely to be employed and solidly middle class; it is their children and grandchildren they fear for.

The Power of Innocence

The 2012 movie Snow White and the Huntsman unexpectedly asserted many ancient themes, and first among them was the power of innocence. Within the film, innocence brings with it faith, hope, and charity. Two other Christian themes include the power of evil coming from subversion of good and the redemption of the fallen. Although there is almost no visual Christian presence in the movie, no crosses or other symbols, Snow White does recite the Lord's Prayer early on, which I think shows the writer and / or director were aware of some or all of these themes.

Medieval themes include birds as messengers, the power of blood, the dark and dangerous forest, the importance of a virtuous ruler for the natural phenomenon of a kingdom, and chaste love. That last is also a Christian theme, but here it seemed more medieval in expression to me.

And, of course, the story of Snow White is about the nature of Beauty.

The images of Snow White-as-war-leader in the movie are reminiscent of Joan of Arc. With a quick search, this was the best I could find of Snow White:

Here are two images of Joan of Arc from the website Catholic Saint Medals.

 

 

Another aspect of the movie is that, while she does wear armor and fight, she is not shown as a great warrior. Rather, she is portrayed as a natural leader: Broken, hopeless warriors who have turned to drunkenness, outlawry, or despair, are redeemed by her innocence and her sense of the mission of redeeming their land and people. With her, they are given new hope and faith. She leads, and with the tremendous power of hope and faithfulness she brings, they fight and die to restore their land and themselves.

A New Rallying Point for the Nation: End Geese

Rich Cromwell over at the Federalist claims that "Geese are the worst animals on the planet and we should end them." Here's a taste of the rest:

Winged Sky Trash

Geese, [compared with venomous snakes who serve a purpose], are actually horrible and deserving of hatred and scorn. They’re big, nasty beasts. They serve no purpose, they’re disgusting, and they definitely do not prefer to leave you alone. You don’t even have to pick them up or accidentally step on them to experience their wrath. Yet some people inexplicably like them.

Can a new War on Geese unite Americans?

Cool

Here's a new nanomaterial that blocks visible light, so you don't have to walk around looking naked, but lets infrared radiation pass through, so you stay cooler.  It even wicks moisture.  Next challenge, making it feel nice so someone might actually wear it.  I wish I had some right now: as soon as it gets light I'm about to head out into the breathable soup to take the black dog on a jog.

The end of summer is just coming into sight.  Although it's not what you would call comfortable to run in this, it's no longer asking for heatstroke.  We've even begun planting salad greens for the fall crop.  Fall is right around the corner, marking the beginning of our six-month glorious season.

Nearly 90 lbs. lost, in the neighborhood of 35 to go.  I was really, really fat.  ("Not circus fat, but she gettin' there.")  Now I'm just a bit fat, very close to the high end of medically normal.  It truly is a new life.  Last year at this time I could not have dreamed of jogging.

Okay, the sun is just about riz.  I'm off.

Saturday Night Music

Since we're doing it, try this.



Pair with a bitter -- I like Foster's Oil Can ESB.

UPDATE:

This one's from 1981, the tail end of the big wave of Outlaw Country. It's an instrumental piece, but it hits the right notes. Pair it with an American whiskey.



UPDATE:

How about the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club? You can stand to that good American whiskey for this one too. Good luck in the morning, though.



UPDATE:



This one's for getting sober again, after all the things you did wrong. Somehow you have to get over being lonesome, onery, and mean. I don't know how it works, but some of these old hands might guide you better than I can. I stay pretty ornery, and pretty mean. I have moments when I don't feel very lonely. You pick good people to bring in close, if you want that.

And if you're going to do Waylon Jennings, do this one too:



Cause after all, that was the point at which he started trying to think about 'leaving well enough alone.'

KONGOS for Saturday Night

This is not my usual thing, but I like it. See what you think.

Anybody Ever Lose A Piece of "Sensitive Equipment" In the Military?

Or, for that matter, been involved in any way with a unit that lost a piece of sensitive equipment?

Headline: "FBI: Hillary Clinton Lost Cell Phones with Classified Emails."

How'd that work out for you?

UPDATE: Did you ever try to ship a SIPR computer, say, in the actual mail? What do you think would have happened if you had? What if it got lost?

UPDATE: Wretchard:

What's really astonishing about the Hillary email saga is that we're not talking about the correspondence of the foreign minister of a two bit no account country like Upper Slobovia. We're talking about the Secretary of State of the USA.

Do you have 18 mobile devices? Do you smash them with hammers? Do you mail them somewhere and lose everything? Is it your practice to migrate your emails via Gmail?

She apparently did. How do these people think?

What Clinton told the FBI on Classification

Clinton thought the "C" 'that denoted classified information' had something to do with alphabetical order. (It actually denotes "confidential," not "classified," and specifies a specific level of classification.) How could you make such a mistake? Well, for one thing, the entire document was improperly marked, as were all of the documents in her email containing classified information. All such documents should, in addition to the paragraph markings that are abbreviated, be clearly marked with non-abbreviated classification marks in the header and footer. No document bearing such markings nor even eligible for such markings should ever have been transmitted on an unclassified system.

That is not a defense excusing her mistake (if it was a mistake, and not just a lie to cover her negligence). It is a separate set of offenses. State operated with astonishing laxity in handling these communications. She is responsible for that, as the head of the department in question.

The rest of her defenses, well:

“Clinton stated deliberation over a future drone strike did not give her cause for concern regarding classification,” the notes said.

"Clinton stated she believed no policy or practice existed related to communicating around holidays, and it was often necessary to communicate in code or do the best you can considering the email system you were using."

“Clinton could not give an example of how classification of a document was determined."

“Clinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system."

One wonders how much Tylenol the FBI agents had to consume during the course of this meeting. Just reading the notes is making my head hurt terribly.

UPDATE: Unexpectedly.

Joe Bob Briggs: We Could Use Some Of Those Burkinis, Please

This is the kind of essay that has fallen out of favor in the last generation, as it's too long for the culture now. These days the rampant takers-of-offense will be so mad after his first few paragraphs, for the once-insouciant but now forbidden 'Married with Children'-style jokes, that they won't get to the serious point at the end. Indeed, the operative theory today seems to be that anyone who would make an offensive joke (let alone a series of them) couldn't have a serious point worth considering.

The serious point is that there's an American heritage of religious life that differs from the French approach, but that he thinks is worth preserving; and that he is willing to take seriously the idea that Muslim women are deserving of a kind of honor for devotion to a holy life.

Jonah Goldberg on the "Core Alt-Right"

Reading Ed Morrissey this evening, I thought this was interesting:

So what does the “core alt-right” represent? “The one thing they all agree on,” Jonah says, “is what they call racial realism, or racialism, which is just a social science sounding term for racism. … the one thing they all agree on is that we need to organize this society on the assumption that white people are genetically superior, or that white culture is inherently superior, and that we should have either state-imposed or culturally-imposed segregation between the races, no race mixing with the lower brown people.”

If you don’t agree with that philosophy — if you’re animated more by border security, national security, and a tougher trade policy — then you’re not really alt-right, Jonah argues. ...

This comes up in a discussion between Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt that Morrissey refers to. The audio is at the link and fairly interesting, if you want to hear the whole thing.

Here's what Goldberg argues we should do:

HH: ... Now does the term alt right get used exclusively in that fashion?

JG: No, which is one of the things that we should be doing, is we should be helping sharpen the distinction, not blur the distinction. I agree with you. There are a lot of people who don’t know what the alt right is. I live in these swamps. I’ve been having these fights for 20 years. I didn’t hear the term alt right until Donald Trump came up. But I know a lot of the people behind the alt right, because I’ve been getting it, they’ve been attacking me and then saying nasty anti-Semitic stuff to me since I started working at National Review. I mean, people are like, the guys at VDARE and these other places, they’ve all coalesced around this idea of the alt right, and it is not a coalitional idea where they want to be part of the conservative movement. It’s that they want to replace the conservative movement.

HH: And they have to be driven out of the Republican Party.

JG: Yes.

HH: I’m speaking as a partisan now. As William F. Buckley led the effort to drive the Birchers out of the party, so must genuine conservatives drive out what you and I agree is the core alt right.

JG: Right.

They both understand the difficulty of doing this, but agree it's what should be done. Beyond the problem of nomenclature, I don't know if it's possible today to do what Buckley did.

What do you think about all this? The nomenclature, what should be done, etc.? I'd be interested to know.

Even For CNN, This is Something

Rarely does CNN engage in censorship to the extent of applying a “blur” to images unless there’s some nudity or a close up of an actual dead body. But this week their sister network, Headline News, finally found an image too objectionable to air. It was a gentleman (identified as a hero) from New Jersey who had saved a toddler from a sweltering hot vehicle. So what required the blur?

He was wearing a Trump 2016 shirt.

Emphasis added. Presumably the image itself wasn't offensive: if he'd been a criminal wearing a Trump t-shirt, I expect it would have passed muster. A hero who saved a toddler from a horrible death, though? We can't have him associated with support of Trump in the public's mind.

The Best Party

I was just adding to my list of reasons to love Iceland, when I remembered actor, comedian, and mayor, Jon Gnarr.

The All-Knowing Wikipedia informs us that:

In late 2009, Gnarr formed the Best Party with a number of other people who had no background in politics, including Einar [Örn Benediktsson]. The Best Party, which is a satirical political party that parodies Icelandic politics and aims to make the life of the citizens more fun, managed a plurality in the 2010 municipal elections in Reykjavík, with the party gaining six out of 15 seats on the Reykjavík City Council (34.7 percent of the vote). Einar, who was second on the party's list behind Jón, won one of the seats on the city council.

Jón ended up defeating the centre-right Independence Party-led municipal government of Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir, which came as "a shock" to Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. Jón's victory is widely seen as a backlash against establishment politicians in the wake of Iceland's 2008-2011 financial crisis.

Gnarr won the mayoral race in that election, and I've always wondered whether he actually did add any blathering loons to the Reykjavik zoo. Here's one of the Best Party's political ads, with probably one of the best campaign speeches ever at the end.

Compare & Contrast

Brazil's impeachment scandal involves corruption at high levels, and an attempt to use political clout to protect a favored political ally from prosecution. It looks as if the money involved was bigger than what we're seeing so far with regard to the Clinton Foundation: the Clintons have only managed to raise about half as much money as the Petrobras scandal involves.

Also, Brazil's political structure is sound enough that impeachment is a real possibility.

Advantage Brazil?

Russian MMA

H/t: We Are The Mighty.



It's a pretty good likeness.

Ah, said Turquine, Launcelot, thou art unto me most welcome that ever was knight, for we shall never depart till the one of us be dead. Then they hurtled together as two wild bulls rushing and lashing with their shields and swords, that sometime they fell both over their noses. Thus they fought still two hours and more, and never would have rest, and Sir Turquine gave Sir Launcelot many wounds that all the ground thereas they fought was all bespeckled with blood.

THEN at the last Sir Turquine waxed faint, and gave somewhat aback, and bare his shield low for weariness. That espied Sir Launcelot, and leapt upon him fiercely and gat him by the beaver of his helmet, and plucked him down on his knees, and anon he raced off his helm, and smote his neck in sunder.

Iceland Bows

Iceland has been forced to bow to pressure from elves and uncover a supposedly enchanted elfin rock after highway workers accidentally buried it - infuriating the mythical creatures, reports said on Tuesday. The angry elves were suspected of causing a series of mishaps after the rock was covered over when workers cleared away the debris from a landslide, the Morgunbladid daily reported.

“Hey hey, ho ho, innovation-stifling regulatory regimes have got go!” [sic]

A snarky punk reviews Charles Murray's By the People: Rebuilding Liberty without Permission, and it's not a bad review. If you ignore the snarky punkishness.

Murray spends the first third of his book explaining what’s so wretched about our democracy today. ...

You can all fill in the blanks. Murray's points here would only remind you how doomed we are. Let's get to the good stuff: Answers!

A Republican president and GOP congressional majorities would not set things right. The system is too ingrained, and besides, Murray admits, Republicans are no better than Democrats at constraining government or upholding individual liberties. (This is not an anti-Obama book; Murray sees the current president as symptom, not cause.) Tired of waiting for America to do the right thing, he wants it to do the wrong thing in service of a righteous cause.

How, you ask?

The regulatory state has two related weaknesses, he explains: It relies on voluntary compliance, and its enforcement capabilities are far inferior to its expansive mandate. So he proposes a private legal defense fund — the “Madison Fund,” honoring the father of the Constitution — that businesses and citizens can rely on for representation against federal regulators. By engaging in expensive and time-consuming litigation on behalf of clients that refuse to comply with pointless rules, the fund drains the government’s enforcement resources and eventually undercuts its ambitions. The state can compel submission from an individual or company with the threat of ruinous legal proceedings, Murray writes, “but Goliath cannot afford to make good on that threat against hundreds of Davids.”

Sounds like a good idea. Where's their Kickstarter page?

The review makes it sound interesting. I may read this one, in 2020 or so, after the other million books I've promised to read.

Update: Sic & link to article added. Can't believe I missed that.

Templars

Here's an interesting GoFundMe page.

We want to build a monastery with facilities for training templars in the Word of God and in the meaning of bring a true templar, that they may become Lambs in the church and Lions in the field, and also to train them in other skills of self-preservation as the earlier Templars were trained also to learn to battle in spirit. Once the land is ours we will begin looking into the cost of building. In the first phase we may use just tents for the housing of monks and staff. We ask not just for financial support but your prayers as well.

Help spread the word!

There aren't a lot more details, so I don't even know for sure what denomination they are from -- or if they're very concerned about the question.

Is Perjury Still A Crime?

Is anything, if your name is Clinton?

'Today's disclosure that 30 additional emails about Benghazi were discovered on Hillary Clinton's private server raises additional questions about the more than 30,000 emails she deleted,' Trump campaign Senior Communications Advisor Jason Miller said in a statement.

'Hillary Clinton swore before a federal court and told the American people she handed over all of her work-related emails.'

Special War

You may have noticed an uptick in Russian propaganda efforts targeting the United States and its political process. John R. Schindler reports:

There’s general consensus that the Kremlin’s weaponized propaganda represents a significant component of Russia’s arsenal in the shadow conflict of ideas, information, espionage, and secret warriors that I’ve called Special War.... This is merely an online version of the well-honed Cold War practice of what Kremlin spies term Active Measures, meaning the dissemination of lies and semi-lies at the West for political effect.

There’s really nothing new about this except how the Internet gives such propaganda unprecedented reach, quickly. This is merely an online version of the well-honed Cold War practice of what Kremlin spies term Active Measures, meaning the dissemination of lies and semi-lies at the West for political effect. More properly it’s called disinformation – dezinformatsiya or deza for short among Kremlin insiders — a murky amalgam of fact and sordid fiction.

This has been ongoing throughout the Global War on Terror, or whatever we're now calling it (or, more likely, refusing to call it anything). The former Soviets are trying to do something interesting, and from a position of demographic weakness: they're trying to reassert Russian regional power, while knocking America out of the northern Middle East. They're also trying to portray themselves not as Godless Communists this time, but as the real defenders of Christian civilization against the Islamic tide -- while, at the same time, setting America up as the real enemy of Islam, in the hope that the heat from the various radical Islamic groups will point at us instead of at them.

Their alliance with Iran and burgeoning activity in Syria is kinetic, but a major part of the effort really is this sort of "Special War." The United States has some capacities here: the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (now called the Open Source Center at the CIA), the Broadcasting Board of Governors at the State Department, public diplomacy worldwide, and military information operations and psychological operations. The military especially employs contractors in a supporting role here, so that they can draw on industry expertise -- global strategic information operations are run by the Strategic Command.

Schindler lists some other assets, although a number of those resources are Cold War relics that were disbanded ages ago. Still, we've got assets we could use. The problem is, we're really not in the game. It's for the usual reason. Schindler notes a recently abandoned State Department initiative and asks:

Who killed the Counter-Disinformation Team and why? What did the team produce during the time it existed? What has become of this product? How many people were on it? Does the State Department not consider countering Kremlin disinformation to be in its remit? Does the White House agree? What about the National Security Council? Is anybody in the U.S. government authorized to debunk Putin’s lies – if so, who? If not, why not?

Good questions.

Religious Liberty is a Gift from God

...not an indulgence by the state.

The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals refused to exempt the nuns because it considered their understanding of their own religious beliefs “unconvincing.”

That's just the kind of thing that is going to bring this situation to a head.

UPDATE: It's not just nuns.

Coming to the fore over issues of personal identity, most saliently in relation to the gay-rights movement, same-sex marriage, and transgender rights, it has resulted in a legal battle in which the radioactive charge of “discrimination,” borrowed from the civil-rights movement of the 1960s, is wielded as a weapon to isolate, impugn, and penalize dissenting views held by Americans of faith and informing the conduct of their religious lives.

Jews are hardly the only group at risk from developments in this area of progressive agitation; up till now, its main targets have been believing Christians. Perhaps for that same reason, Jews have also not been in the front ranks of those raising an alarm. Nevertheless, the threat to them, and to the practice of Judaism, especially by Orthodox Jews, is very real. Unlike in the past, the threat comes not from private initiatives; it comes from government.

1,200 Year Old Viking Sword Discovered

This story is a month or so old, but I don't remember seeing the picture before.

While hiking an old mountain trail in Haukeli (on the border of Telemark County, Norway), Goran Olsen was surprised to discover a 1250 year old Viking sword among some rocks near the road when he sat down to rest. The sword was in excellent condition, especially considering its immense age.

I Haven't Got One Unbroken Rib on My Right Side

Since we're doing Corb Lund songs.

That's How We Do It In Dixie

Monday Night

Life is short. Raise some, while you may.

That is Straight Whiskey

Mat Best hits some notes.



It's funny to me because he's a generation behind us, and doesn't know it -- Kim du Toit was on a lot of this nearly twenty years ago, and BLACKFIVE was all about this stuff in its heyday.

Good to see the kids picking it up.

Give Me Money

Shamelessness is the new norm in Clinton's America.

The price of entry at several of the stops, such as Monday’s dinner at the Beverly Hills home of entertainment mogul Haim Saban, is $50,000 per person. On the Vineyard on Saturday, Clinton netted roughly $2 million at a single cocktail party, then darted off to a small dinner event at a billionaire’s home that generated another $1 million.

By midweek, the Clinton war chest had grown by many millions more, as Clinton hopscotched on a three-day California swing from Johnson’s house to the Saban affair and then to the home of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, where Jennifer Aniston, Jamie Foxx and Tobey Maguire also showed up. Then it was off to the Bay Area for multiple events, including one hosted by Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook.

Just remember, if you're a foreigner who wants to buy influence, the deadline is Inauguration day. After that, there will be a timeout while we figure a work-around for you to continue to give money.

Because She Doesn't Have To

When it comes to the Clintons, it’s not only about what happens, but how they react. The fact that Clinton has not given a press conference in 264 days is far more damaging than the seeming corruption itself.

If she didn’t do anything wrong, why won’t she defend herself?

Qudosi

I happen to know Shireen Qudosi, the Muslim activist apparently permanently banned from Facebook this weekend.

The spat originated after Qudosi stood up for Clarion Project’s National Security Analyst Ryan Mauro, who provided training in San Diego to various police departments last week on what to be aware of when fighting radical Islam.

Mauro was subjected to a silencing campaign by the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which attempted to shut down the training sessions by inundating the police with complaints. CAIR was founded by Muslim Brotherhood members and was designated by the FBI as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism financing trial in American history.

CAIR was designated as a terrorist organization in 2014 by the United Arab Emirates.

Qudosi is an American woman who believes that her native Islam can be reformed to respect international norms about women's rights and personal liberty. I think she's got a hard row to hoe, but I also think that if Islam is to survive it's going to have to make the kind of transition she wants for it. Banning her voice isn't going to help Islam, not in the long run nor even probably in the short run.

Fair Warning: Frenetic, Stream of Semi-Consciousness Posting Ahead

The fall semester has counter-attacked. Summer vacation has been forced to fall back and relinquish the field. While I regroup to counter-counter-attack yet again, my posting will probably be frenetic and possibly even more stream-of-consciousness than usual. Maybe even stream-of-near-unconsciousness.

At some point I'll probably post something downright dumb and I won't realize it until you tell me. Be assured: It will have sounded pretty good on not-enough sleep and maybe a relaxing adult beverage.

Meanwhile, here's another round of Corb Lund. Let me recommend a double Tullamore Dew Single Malt 10-year, neat, for accompaniment.

Hypothetically, How Does the Revolution Happen?

I was over at neo-neocon recently and the topic of a new American revolution or civil war came up. It's kind of difficult to imagine how it would begin, and since Krag and some others seem to think it's likely, I thought I'd ask for hypothetical answers.

Here are my thoughts on insurgency / civil war / revolution in the near future.

I don’t see a new civil war happening unless some states decide to secede. This isn't unthinkable (Texit, anyone?) but I think the states would at least try a constitutional convention first, and then if that failed, secede. That would be quite some way down the road.

There could possibly be an attempt at revolution, maybe in the form of a coup, but I doubt it. At least, not as a first step.

I think it’s more likely an insurgency would be the way it developed. A small insurgency would probably be quickly crushed, but a widespread insurgency could develop into either a civil war, if it could somehow gain territory and regular forces, or a revolution, if it were widespread and popular enough.

An insurgency could be where it stopped, as well. We could be looking at a situation maybe similar to Northern Ireland. Possibly the insurgency could create no-go zones for the authorities, but not get any further. I think this would eventually fail, although it could take a generation or so.

It's difficult for me to assess what would happen with our current security forces. I've read a number of commenters on various sites who claimed that the military and police would be on the revolutionaries side, but that's not necessarily true. I think Conservatives are divided between those willing to go outlaw and those whose honor is bound up in law and order, even if it ends in results they find objectionable. It's hard to say.

I also think that answers the claim that Conservatives have the police, military, and gun owners, so the Left can't win. I think the fighting would be done by Conservatives on both sides, outlaws vs. law-and-order types.

I think it ends in disaster for several reasons. First, I don’t think enough Americans understand or care enough about liberty to join the revolutionaries. If they cared enough to fight for liberty, they would have cared enough to vote for it before now. Many young Americans are increasingly hostile to liberty, and many of the old are risk-averse. So I don’t think it would ever be successful enough to draw in those sitting on the fence.

Another reason is, without outside help, insurgencies never win, not as long as the government is willing to keep fighting. It is only when the government decides it isn’t worth fighting anymore and gives up that insurgencies can win.

Instead, I think any insurgency or attempt at revolution would end up being just another crisis the Left would not let go to waste, and they would become more powerful from it. And we would all lose more liberty.

There are other disasters that could occur as well. The drug cartels would almost certainly get into it, and what if Russia or China decided to play by providing arms, money, advisors, etc.? What if La Raza took the opportunity and made their “reconquista” a violent insurgency as well? Bad news all around.

Anyway, what do you think? How does it start? How does it play out?

"Scientific Canon"?

Now that is an enlightening way of putting it.