Didn't Think That Through

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is one of those people whose chief claim to fame is being a "first," in his case being London's first Muslim mayor. Now, it can by accident happen that any given person is the "first" of a type to occupy some position -- first prominent member of the Rotary club, first semi-professional golfer, whatever. The issue with these people who focus on being the "first" whatever is that they're offering their accidental identity as if it were proof of some positive accomplishment -- as if it were a reason to vote for them, some virtue in respect of which they ought to be preferred for the office.

In any case, he decided to give a speech on the evils of nationalism.

The world is becoming an increasingly turbulent and divided place. We’ve seen Brexit, President Trump elected in the United States and the rise of right-wing populist and narrow nationalist parties around the world.... The last thing we need now is to pit different parts of our country or sections of our society against each other — or to further fuel division or seek separation.

There are two problems with this. The first is that he decided to give this speech in Scotland, a nation whose elective offices have been recently dominated by an organization called The Scottish National Party.

Oops.

The second problem is that Khan himself is a living symbol of an even more divisive, even more narrow mode of 'pitting different parts of our country or sections of our society against one another.' If this is the right standard for judgment, identity politics fares even worse than nationalism, which at least is willing to take any kind of Scot as long as they're Scottish. Drawing the division at the level of the nation at least avoids drawing divisions below that level.

Nor is it clear that it is the right standard in any case, as even supra-nationalist divisions can end up being destructively divisive. Communists were not usually guilty of nationalism -- Ho Chi Minh and a few others excepted -- because they wanted to dispose of all nations in favor of a global government. They still ended up dividing members of nations against one another. Indeed, if strife is the proper measure, it was the singers of the Internationale who had more blood on their hands than anyone.

Doing no harm

Not having a heart attack? You probably shouldn't have a stent. Beta-blockers are iffy, too; it may be that they will have no effect on your likelihood of heart disease or death, though you'll probably die with better-looking blood pressure numbers. That proposed knee operation might bear a little scrutiny, too. The article doesn't discuss statins, so don't even get me started on those. A good way to look at proposed treatments is to compare the "number needed to treat" with the "number needed to harm."

Walter Russel Mead: No Way Trump is in Russia's Pocket

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he'd be doing:

* Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
* Blocking oil and gas pipelines
* Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
* Cutting U.S. military spending
* Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia's ally Iran

That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice. Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump...

For now, as Dr. Mead goes on to note, this is all talk from Trump. He has a prediction about how to judge the actions that follow the talk too.

Wasters

We use wooden wasters for a lot of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). Via Insty, here's a video about how dangerous these little things really can be.



Still, you gotta practice with something.

Chaos Keeps Chaos At Bay

In praise of Jim Mattis.

A Pretty Clever Protest

CPAC attendees were tricked into waiving little Russian tricolor flags with "TRUMP" inscribed in gold upon them.

The protest group that pulled that off deserves a moment of credit. I might not have noticed the symbolism myself, given that the Russian tricolor is red, white, and blue. In my mind's eye, the Russian flag still looks like this:



Any other flag is barely going to impact my consciousness as a symbol of Russia.

Bent Out Of Shape

People are all bent up about the 90-day by-country bar on entry in Trump's immigration Executive Order. The only thing it was meant to accomplish was to give the various agencies involved time to come up with a better method of vetting those who wanted to enter the United States from seven terror-prone regions -- I say "regions" and not "countries" as parts of some of them are effectively ungoverned. The bar was never meant to be in place for more than 90 days, it was just meant to buy time for study.

When the AP trumpets this leaked report, they see a pungent criticism of the Trump administration's order.

A draft document obtained by The Associated Press concludes that citizenship is an "unlikely indicator" of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria's civil war started in 2011.... The three-page report challenges Trump's core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban.

I don't know that it's right to say that the document "challenges Trump's core claims," since his core claim was that he wanted his agencies to study the issue during the 90 days and come up with a better system. That sounds like what they're trying to do.

It's interesting that one of the early conclusions is that the list of seven "countries" -- which, we all know, was generated by the Obama administration -- was itself faulty in excluding many of the worst offenders. Note that Saudi Arabia didn't make this list either, which is interesting given that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.

So: if the list of nations wasn't solid, and citizenship is a poor indicator anyway, what's better? That's the thing that we really need an answer to, and it's work like this that is going to help us get there. Rather than proving that Trump is a fool (quod erat demonstrandum for the media these days), this seems to prove that his people are taking the task seriously and trying to sort out a good answer to that question.

Childhood in Scotland

Not for most Scottish children, more's the pity, but for four blessed ones.

Behold the Bolt-Action Glock

Yes, it's real. Why? California.

Symphony in Consciousness

We're also putting in a massive budget request for our beloved military. And we will be substantially upgrading all of our military, all of our military, offensive, defensive, everything. Bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and hopefully we'll never have to use it, but nobody's going to mess with us, folks. Nobody. It will be one of the greatest military buildups in American history. No one will dare question, as they have been, because we're very depleted, very, very depleted sequester. Nobody will question our military might again....

I say Democrats, please, approve our Cabinet and get smart on health care, too, if you know me. But we're taking meetings every day with top leaders in business, in science and industry. Yesterday I had 29 of the biggest business leaders in the world in my office. Caterpillar Tractor, Campbell Soup, we had everybody. We had everybody. I like Campbell Soup.

His style is inimitable, but there really is a kind of style to it.

What did you think of the speech?

The Worldview of the Hillary Clinton Supporter

There's a rich irony in finding such a succinct explanation of their view of the right use of power expressed in terms of actual witchcraft. These are instructions for casting a spell against Donald Trump and his supporters.

To clarify, the original document states that this is a binding spell, which seeks to restrain someone from doing harm instead of harming the targeted individual themselves. Binding does not generate the potential negative blowback to the caster’s karma.

So, the idea is that no bad karma comes from using your power to strip away the freedom to do things you think are harmful.

That's almost the whole ideology in a nutshell, isn't it?

The Washington Post as Heavy Metal Album

A gallery.

"Take a Cue from Psychopaths"

That's the title of a whole section of this Vox piece on how to deal with Trump voters.

It's a more fair-minded piece than the title, or the advice, would suggest.

The Fourth Circuit is Wrong

So, let's say you're a liberal judge -- or, in this case, a whole bunch of liberal judges ruling en banc -- and you really don't like the Heller decision. However, the author of that decision recently died, so you figure you can tee up the Supreme Court to reverse it in a new precedent. Thus, you decide to issue a ruling completely ignoring the Heller decision, and creating a wholly new standard for what kind of weapons deserve 2nd Amendment protection.

The problem is that the new standards doesn't just ignore Heller. It also directly violates the logic of the prior most-important 2nd Amendment Supreme Court Ruling, United States vs. Miller.

The Miller ruling appears to say that the only weapons the 2nd Amendment protects are those that are suitable for militia service, as for example by being of "ordinary military equipment." What the new 4th Circuit case says is that no weapons are protected if they are "most useful in military service." In other words, the two categories are mutually exclusive: the Supreme Court's standard is exactly the opposite of the 4th Circuit's.

And that's if you throw out the Heller decision entirely, as if it never existed.

However, it does exist.

DB: Russia Names Snowden Ambassador to United States

"I look forward to investigating the charges of a Russian cyber-hack of the U.S.," a grinning Snowden told reporters....

Though American by birth, Snowden has lived in Russia since 2013 after having what he called "creative differences" with his former employers. He was awarded Russian citizenship last year by Russian president Vladimir Putin for what Putin called, "outstanding and irreplaceable services provided to the Motherland."

An Arthurian Kickstarter Project

From the Kickstarter page:

Le Morte d'Arthur & The Arthurian Concordance

With great pleasure we offer this project to fund the beginning of an “Arthurian Library”. Three amazing books are a part of this single project.

There’s a new edition of the classic text that’s the most important source of the legend as we know it today. We also offer the first volume of an illustrated graphic novelization of Le Morte d’Arthur. Finally, we offer The Arthurian Concordance, an encyclopedia overflowing with lore.

...

The new text edition of Le Morte d’Arthur is edited by renowned Arthurian scholar John Matthews. The author of dozens of Arthurian books, John brings a lifetime of knowledge and insight to this edition of the classic by Sir Thomas Malory.

The deluxe hardcover book features reinforced binding and an interesting 8x8 inch format to feature the stunning cover art by Natee Puttapipat. The book will be an awesome 750+ pages and full-color throughout.

The interior design features an outside margin for notes to annotate the classic Malory text. This text is provided by John Matthews as well as Arthurian scholar and storyteller Greg Stafford, the renowned game designer of King Arthur Pendragon, a bestselling and award-winning tabletop roleplaying game considered among the most influential.

Photos at the link. I like those wide margins.

3 EPA principles I can live with

Despite being an avid environmentalist, I've come to despise the EPA in recent years.  Scott Pruitt's introductory speech included three points I admire:

“Regulations ought to make things regular,” Pruitt said. He added, “Regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate. Those that we regulate ought to know what’s expected of them so that they can plan and allocate resources to comply.”

Pruitt then turned to the rule of law saying, “As we do rule making…it needs to be tethered to the statute. The only authority that any agency has in the executive branch is the authority given to it by Congress.” He went on to say that sticking closely to the law would help avoid uncertainly and litigation.

Finally, Pruitt said, “Federalism matters.” “I seek to ensure that we engender the trust of those at the state level,” he continued. “That those at the state level see us as partners, in this very important mission we have as an agency, and not adversaries,” he said.

Divisions

Majorities of Democrats consider Trump "the enemy," but an exactly equal majority of Republicans consider Democrats "the enemy."

That focus is to mis-state the problem, argues The American Interest:

The basic division in American politics today is not over the merits of President Trump. Many of those who voted for him believed that he lacked the moral grounding and gravitas that great Presidents must ultimately draw on. The division is between those who think that, before Trump, things were going just fine and the American elite was doing an excellent job and those who blame the rise of Trump on the failures and blindness of the so-called “meritocratic elite” who, they would argue, have been running the country into the ground.

In foreign policy, the United States has had two failed presidencies in a row.... Domestically, our leadership elite has watched passively as infrastructure decays, state and local pension systems accumulate unsustainable debt loads, the national debt inexorably climbs, and the social capital of the nation erodes.

There was no sign from the Clinton campaign that anybody understood that the nation’s path was unsustainable.

The cursus honorum has ceased to provide us with reliable leadership. We've had a nearly endless stream of people leading the government whose resume reads something like this: 'Ivy League, Ivy League grad school, Ivy League law school, minor post in government or Wall Street, bigger post in government or Wall Street.'

The way they have been trained to think isn't working.

Is the Left Helping Trump?

The NYT asks.

Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right. In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one. Disagreeing meant being publicly shamed.

I can't say that this is true of the people on the left I know, except for a couple of feminists who are super angry about Trump. I understand that the Access Hollywood tape, and the attacks on Ms. Kelly, and many other things about Trump are deeply offensive to them. What they won't grapple with is that people on the right had at last only the choice of accepting Trump, or accepting a Supreme Court that would void their view of the Constitution on every issue.

That's a huge weight to set on the scale against the things you didn't like about Donald Trump. But, of course, they don't accept that any of the views that a Clinton Supreme Court would have ruled against you on are valid moral opinions either. Second amendment? Pah! Religious freedom? Code words for racism and hate!

Trump "Forcefully" Rejects Antisemitism, Racism

This shouldn't be news, given that his grandkids and his beloved daughter are Jewish, as is the son in law whom he obviously respects and trusts. Still, it clearly is news, so there it is.

FBI Raids Atlanta City Hall

It's part of a bribery scandal that's ongoing. I'm not exactly clear on why it's a Federal offense, although it may be that the state government can't be trusted to prosecute the Atlanta city government.

Super Nice People Will Betray You

I'm at severe risk of confirmation bias here, as this is something I have always believed to be true.

More Craziness

Should high school wrestlers be allowed to use steroids and still compete? Obviously not... unless!

Beggs has been transitioning from female to male since 2015 and as a result has been on steroids during that period, however, University Interscholastic League rules state he must compete as the gender listed on his birth certificate, despite the fact that Beggs wants to compete against males.

I suppose we could just put an end to the division and let everyone wrestle each other by weight class, without regard to sex or "gender." That still doesn't solve the problem of whether or not steroids should be permitted in competition, though.

Jorvik Viking Festival

Lars Walker might prefer this one to the more fun, less accurate festival featured most recently. The Jorvik Festival is in York, England, which was named "Jorvik" by the Vikings. There's a long-standing archaeological dig there at the original city, run by the University of York. Back before 9/11, I had intended to go there and study in order to participate in the dig; the war changed my plans for what to do with my life, as is true for many others.

It looks like quite a bit of fun, actually, even though it's not "fun" oriented in the same way. I don't suppose any of us are near York to drop in, but if I'm wrong about that, be sure to get by.

You Got Us There

Former Swedish PM: More murders in Florida, where Trump spoke, than in Sweden.

It's a fair cop. There's no way we can defend the behavior of Florida. It's been completely out of control for a long time. They even have their own Fark tag.

No, Because....

H/t: Bob on the FOB, who confirms this is legitimately H/K's official feed.

McMaster NSA

McMaster is a serving officer, and thus was not in the same position to say "No" as certain other candidates proved to be. However, he's also a fantastic choice, and it will be a real benefit to the Republic to have him in the position.

We Were Kidding About that "Snowflake" Stuff

Apparently Milo Y. is getting run out on a rail. I assume you know the details from other sites.

The thing about that guy is, he's got some real guts. That's what lets him stand up, as he did after the Pulse shooting, and talk about radical Islam in a way that would make him personally a target for violent jihad.

A guy like that has merited the right to an opinion, even if it's one I regard as entirely wrong. For a long time, he's been put forward by the Right for the very quality of spouting offensive opinions to Leftists. Guess he found one that makes the Right want a safe space.

I think we could survive a debate on the question, personally. For one thing, there's plenty to draw on in the Greek tradition -- start with the Symposium. It's not necessary to run and hide from the idea.

For another thing, it's an opinion that turns on an issue that the Right really ought to challenge, which is the currently-accepted orthodoxy that sexuality is set permanently by biology.

That aside, I'd let him speak just because he's proven he's got guts. I can hear and entertain an opinion I don't agree with, if the person bringing it forward is someone who's worth taking seriously. Not everyone is. Someone who's manifestly willing to die for what he believes, however, presumptively is until proven otherwise.

"Sensitivity Readers"

My guess is that the literary value of these works wasn't so high as to carry any risk of anything being damaged. Still, the value of literature lies less in affirming things that are easy and comfortable to believe, and more in forcing confrontations with the difficult and unpleasant. MacBeth doesn't get its value out of its expressions of patriotism, after all.

MACBETH
The service and the loyalty I owe,
In doing it, pays itself. Your highness' part
Is to receive our duties; and our duties
Are to your throne and state children and servants,
Which do but what they should, by doing every thing
Safe toward your love and honour.

DUNCAN
Welcome hither:
I have begun to plant thee, and will labour
To make thee full of growing.

Stop there, and you have a kind of Confucian model of easy flourishing by knowing one's place and submitting to the lawful order. The real value comes in confronting the legitimacy of ambition and objections to this model of being ruled, and yet also confronting the perils and stains that come with acting on those things.

The real value in 'sensitivity readers' might be in marking out the parts of the book that are worth further exploration and emphasis.

Presidents' Day

The day originally celebrates George Washington, but now also other presidents. By way of discussion, it might be interesting to hear who you think were the best of the minor presidents (and why). The major ones, ranked by effect for good or ill on the nation, should include:

George Washington
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Jackson
Ronald Reagan
Teddy Roosevelt
FDR
LBJ
Woodrow Wilson

JFK might also be included if only because of his psychic effect on his generation and the one that followed. Nixon might be included for opening China and getting himself forced to resign, which also provoked a psychic effect that was harmful. Carter definitely produced a psychic effect, but I believe he was too pitiful as president to make anybody's list of "best minor presidents."

Drinking Dark Whisky, Telling White Lies

The Fascism Hysteria among the Technocrats

Brendan O'Neill has a thoughtful piece up about the ubiquitous abuse and misuse of the words "fascism" and "fascist." I think he hits several nails on the head here:

The wise thing to do would be to accept that the term fascist is beyond repair. It’s a dead word. It now means bastard. It’s an emotional insult, expressing a sense of powerlessness on the part of the person making it, whose belief that he faces a fascist threat grows in direct proportion to his own inability to make sense of political developments. The insult of ‘fascist’ speaks far more to the insulter’s own sensation of impotence than it does to the insulted’s actual power, or ideology, or ambition. And yet, let’s have one more try. Let’s make a likely forlorn stab at saying what fascism is. Not to be pedantic, but to differentiate between historic periods; to clarify what happened back then as a way of illustrating that it simply isn’t happening today. For fascism does not exist now.

I admire his devotion to meaningful language, something sorely lacking in this age diseased with post-modernist sound and fury, and I am similarly fatalistic about the endeavor. Back to O'Neill:

... Orwell was worried that the word would lose its ‘last vestige of meaning’ if people insisted on applying it to everyone they disagreed with — and that has happened. The word is now used with an ahistoricism and thoughtlessness that are genuinely alarming. And among the upper echelons of society, not merely by scruffy protesters or online blowhards. The Archbishop of Canterbury says Trump is part of the ‘fascist tradition’. Prince Charles has warned darkly of a return of the atmosphere of the 1930s, and we all know what that means. ‘Yes, Donald Trump is a fascist’, says New Republic, a magazine that once considered itself a voice of reason among the paranoid style of American political life. But everyone’s paranoid now. Everyone now sees fascists.

...

It is no accident that the technocratic elites have reached for the fascism spectre to describe recent events, or at least to express their terror at these events. Because it was fundamentally the experience of fascism that convinced much of the political class in Europe that it should insulate the political process from the excesses of popular and public opinion. These elites drew precisely the wrong lesson from the experience of the 1930s and 40s: not that concentrating power and militarising the state and dismantling law and liberty were wicked and dangerous things to do, but rather that ordinary people’s passions, their apparently authoritarian impulses, were ill-suited to political life and would only nurture more Nazi-style horrors. 

...

And of course, what they describe as ‘fascism’ — Brexit, people worried about immigration, Trump — is nothing of the sort. These things don’t even come close to fascism. As Weismann argued, even ‘dictatorship, mass neurosis, anti-Semitism, the power of unscrupulous propaganda, the hypnotic effect of a mad-genius orator on the masses, and so on’ do not necessarily constitute fascism. Fascism, he said, was something different to all that, something more than all that. Fascism, in essence, is a mass, paramilitary movement that acts as a stand-in for normal politics and normal statehood when that politics and statehood cannot deal with a threat it faces ...

Something interesting here is that O'Neill uses Communist sources to define fascism, and I think in the end he misses the correct definition because of that. However, he seems to understand the historical realities better than most, and I think he is absolutely right about the elites learning the wrong lessons from history. Fascism to them is the people taking control of government. We the people call that something different.

Vision of the US Future?

Self-described anarchists have escalated to killing their political opponents in Greece. There, as here, they describe their opponents as "Nazis." I assume they also really conceive of their opponents in that way, and thus that there -- as here -- they think of themselves as not only justified but virtuous in their actions.

Dammit, We Might Win!

Andrew Exsum is warning his people that Donald Trump is going to defeat the Islamic State. Prepare your hearts.

Housecleaning

Holdovers from the Obama administration in the Pentagon are hampering efforts to fix the military’s major readiness problem, leaving Secretary of Defense James Mattis alone in his efforts to properly equip U.S. forces, according to the chairman of the House Committee on Armed Services.

Sounds like Spring Cleaning will need to be especially intense this year.

Their reports revealed, among other substantial problems, only three of 58 Army brigade combat teams are ready for combat, while fewer than half of the Air Force’s aging aircraft fleet is ready to fight.

The Navy/USMC air fleet is similarly handicapped, drawing this bit of commentary from the DB.

Troubling reports just recently released by the Pentagon reveal that as of New Year’s Eve, only 41 percent of Marine Corps aviators were able to get their aircraft up.... Maintenance crews have been working around the clock, polishing the rod, adjusting the heat-seeking missile, cranking the shaft, conducting manual override, clearing the snorkel, debugging the hard drive, priming the pump and frankly just giving it a tug, but none of these techniques have enabled the aviators to achieve altitude.

"I used to be able to fly all night and go deep into enemy territory over and over without a break, but money troubles have really got me down," said Capt. Richard "Snake Charmer" Smythe.

The hangover continues, but hopefully America will be able to purge the last toxins from its system and return to majestic virility -- I mean, "readiness."

UPDATE: It begins.

Turnabout and Foreign Elections

The NY Observer reminds us of this leaked audio of Hillary Clinton claiming that we should have rigged a foreign election. (H/t: Outlaw Morgan)

I take her comments to be proof that we didn't rig that election, though also proof that she thought rigging foreign elections was a fine thing to do. Clinton's friends described her efforts in Putin's last election as "calling out his rigged election," but Putin saw them as efforts to rig it. The Wikileaks demonstration of how the DNC was rigging the Democratic Primary was nothing except an inversion of Clinton's own tactics against Putin: set up an allegedly independent NGO, and have it convey true information about your party's attempts to corrupt and control the outcome of what was allegedly a democratic process.

Wikileaks reminds us, in the wake of information that Russian intelligence targeted the Trump campaign, that the CIA performed the same maneuver with the French presidential campaign. "... the current ruling party, is not assured of winning the presidential election and, as a result, analysts are interested in the electoral strategy of the non-ruling parties listed below. Additional information on these topics will help analysts assess, and prepare key US policymakers for, the post-election French political landscape and the potential impact on US-France relations."

That's a perfectly fair assessment and a completely reasonable thing for the CIA to do. You can imagine the FSB, though, writing exactly the same memo to justify a move to get more visibility on what the Trump campaign was thinking. "The current ruling party is not assured of winning the presidential election... additional information on these topics will help analysts assess, and prepare key Russian policymakers for, the post-election American landscape etc."

The CIA also has a history of rigging the occasional foreign election. "The Christian Democrats eventually won the 1948 election with 48% of the vote, and the FDP received 31%. The CIA's practice of influencing the political situation was repeated in every Italian election for at least the next 24 years.[13]"

There's a long article on the history of the practice here. It's in the Washington Post, one of the same papers that has been worrying out loud that all this Russian influence means we don't have a real democracy.

I'm sure we all stand resolutely against foreign meddling in our elections. Noticing that turnabout is fair play doesn't mean that we shouldn't want our elections to represent only the will of the American people.

It does suggest that a more thoughtful dialogue should be engaged by our press here. Is the clandestine activity conducted by the CIA to improve its analysis and predictive capacity reasonable (as I argue)? If so, why shouldn't the Russians do the same thing? Is tampering in elections wrong? If so, why shouldn't other countries resent that we have done it to them -- and respond in kind?

Let's Agree That You Just Surrender

E. J. Dionne has a nice proposal. First, agree that Trump is unfit to be President. Second, have his attorney general "immediately recuse himself from all decisions about all aspects of the Russia investigation by the FBI and the intelligence services."

I was way more interested in "Donald Trump is unfit for the office" arguments before the election. This isn't a proposal for an investigation, it's a proposal for Republicans to take the brakes off the deep state. But if Jeff Sessions is unfit to exercise his office, surely so is everyone else in the administration. What's left? Impeachment based on Trump's performance at press conferences or in writing executive orders that he's apparently fine with having courts review? For Trump and his team to resign and... what? Paul Ryan to be President? Or does he need to resign too? Or should we just dispense with having a President, and leave "the FBI and the intelligence services" to determine what is right, with of course the informative blessings of the 9th Circuit Court?

Does anyone else have a more serious proposal?

America's Third Century

Wretchard makes one of those historical analogies that Eric Blair hates, this time to the Third Century Crisis in Rome. Analogies always break, of course, as the only way an analogy would not break is if the two things being compared turn out to be the same thing and not different things. Otherwise, there are always differences that create a breaking point for the comparison.

Setting aside the usefulness of the comparison for discussion in the comments, Wretchard is not wrong that this is a moment in which Constitutional norms seem to have weakened. The "deep state" to which Bill Kristol pledges a kind of conditional loyalty has no Constitutional warrant for its existence.

While this 'deep state' fights with the Constitutional state, at a moment of the Constitutional state's supreme weakness, there is a third power -- for Wretchard, an analog to the barbarians.

If Trump is overthrown by the Deep State in a year, he's unlikely to be the last. If neither faction will suffer itself to be governed by the other, whoever succeeds Trump can expect his term to be short. America could have its own period of the 26 presidents. That will be good news for the Barbarians, waiting at the edge of Baltics, in the South China Sea and on Europe's borders, ready to move in.

Rome's Third Century crisis did not end well. The new normal was not a return to the Golden Age, but the end of it. It resulted in a landscape with a broken internal trade network and a patchwork of locality.

I think I'm going to have to go against Kristol on this one, and try to reinforce the Constitutional state. That's not the same thing as declaring loyalty to the Trump administration, but rather, to the explicitly Constitutional forms. The American solution is not unelected bureaucrats with powers the Founders never imagined but Congress, the courts in their proper role, and the officials that We the People can actually choose either directly or indirectly. If those options are inadequate, then the right thing to do is to call that Article V convention, and start planning a new Constitutional state (or states).

Heading off a Revolt at State

Josh Rogin makes recommendations.

Headline vs. Article

NYT Headline: "Trump Campaign Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence"

FTA:

The intelligence agencies... sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

Guardian Headline: "Deutsche Bank examined Donald Trump's account for Russia links"

FTA:

The internal review found no evidence of any Russia link[.]

Seems like there's kind of a theme here.

The headline to the first piece might have been, "Trump campaign targeted by Russian intelligence." That would undermine the idea that only the Democrats were targeted by a Russian intelligence that was friendly to the Trump campaign, though. As Manafort, who lost his job over accusations of ties to Russia, is quoted as saying when told he'd talked to suspected spies: “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’”

The Matrix Starring Forrest Gump

From the funny folks at How It Should Have Ended.

Flynn in Clear with FBI

"More: FBI says Flynn was cooperative and provided truthful answers."

That's it, then. The only possible criminal charges, given that the Logan Act is a non-starter, were if he lied to the FBI. If the FBI says that didn't happen, there's nothing more to the Flynn part of the story.

The felonious leaks, on the other hand -- that I expect we'll hear a bit more about. My guess is that Attorney General Sessions will find reason to take an interest in that matter.

Helping A Brother Out

According to the Times of Israel, the CIA's just doing their best for President Trump.

... veteran diplomatic correspondent Oren Nahari cited an Israeli official, who said a senior member of the US intelligence community told him the agency suspects that Russia has information on Trump that can be used to pressure the US leader. As a countermeasure, US intelligence operatives are quickly leaking everything they learn about ties between Russia and the Trump administration so that the information can’t be used as leverage against the president.

That's not how the intelligence process works. "Everything we learn" is not intelligence, it's raw information. It becomes intelligence only through a process of analysis, as these Agency spooks know perfectly well.

Thus, this is not an acceptable excuse for these leaks, many of which are actual felonies. Even on the most generous possible interpretation of their motives, what they're putting in front of the public is nothing but a raw feed that the public doesn't know how to interpret. It would be reckless of any intelligence officer to transmit such things without clearly labeling them as such, even if the recipient was a professional who knew how to read and handle intelligence. Journalists typically do not, in my experience often including journalists who allegedly specialize in foreign affairs or national security, and the public certainly has no reason to be expected to know how.

No, that excuse won't wash.

National Security Professionals in at NSC?

If Admiral Harward comes in as the new NSA, we'll have General Mattis as SECDEF, his former CENTCOM #2 as NSA, and his former assistant division commander as Secretary of Homeland Security. This is a hardened team that knows how to work together from more than a decade's wartime experience.

There is a question about what will remain of the President's foreign policy agenda. Whatever else may be said about Trump, good and bad, he was not elected to continue inherited policies. On the other hand, it may be that the American people do not mostly care about foreign policy, and just want steady hands to keep that locked down so they can worry about the issues they do care about -- chiefly, among Trump supporters, immigration and domestic economic growth. (Immigration is often said to be a subset of 'domestic economic growth,' even, as one of the concerns about it is the degree to which it is suppressing domestic workers' wage growth. However, I suspect that the rapid and uncontrolled immigration of the last three decades has created immigration as a substantial issue in its own right -- relieving pressure and buying time for assimilation strike me as things people care about independently of economic consequences.)

The Secretary of State is still on board with a new foreign policy, and officially he is the chief of the President's officers in this regard. Still, the military and security aspects of the state have long since outgrown its weak diplomatic arm. As professionals, all these career Marines and Sailors will have the utmost respect for civilian control of the process. Still, there is going to be a weight on their side of the scale that even mindful respect of State's role won't be able to eliminate.

Of course, if you think Donald Trump's foreign policy ideas are no good, the idea of having seasoned military members in charge instead of the President and his Secretary of State must be attractive. They represent an apolitical, non-ideological, professional American government.

Nevertheless, I notice: "an apolitical, non-ideological, professional" government is exactly the opposite of what voters in both primaries demanded in 2016.

VA Head Confirmed

I was under the impression that a unanimous confirmation was not permitted under current rules governing the Trump administration. Apparently, that's not correct.

They Killed John Wick's Dog's Human

If you've seen the movie John Wick, this should be funny.

Second Look at Moderate Islam?

In a sharp contradiction to what is common among Muslims, Khaled Al Gendy, a famous Islamic cleric and a member of the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, stated that drinking liquor without getting drunk is not sinful.

“If the same alcoholic drink was consumed by one person without getting drunk, it is not haram, while being consumed by another person to drunkenness makes it haram [for this person],” the sheikh said, highlighting the difference between drinking liquor and getting drunk.

During a talk show on DMC TV channel, Al Gedy said that getting drunk is haram, sinful and forbidden in Islam, and all Islamic sharia laws related to the punishment apply to getting drunk as a consequence of drinking alcoholic beverages.

A drunken person is defined as one who cannot tell the bottom of a valley from its top, Al Gendy added.

That sounds like a wholly reasonable standard.

More brier-patch action

No, no, not the home-schooling!

Secretive Military Unit Offers Conditional Aid

In recent months, ill-informed Leftists who have spent the last 8 years repeatedly telling the public that they do not “need” guns and have no reason to fear the Federal Government (except of course for the police) have discovered that they are totally unprepared to carry out the violent overthrow of the Trump Administration and the revolution that they feel our country so desperately needs.

Those pleas for a military-led coup had gone unanswered (and largely laughed at) by members of the Armed Forces until yesterday, when a little known Army Special Mission Unit responded to left-wing demands for a military removal of the Commander-in-Chief.


This is either never-before-seen footage of the Spec-4 Mafia and their list of demands, or Adobe Stock Art. We’re not sure which.
Known only as the “E4 Mafia..."

The list of demands confirms that this offer is certainly legitimate.

Could Frisco ISD Soon Use Students as Janitors?

This is part of the headline on an article about suggestions for the school district to cut costs.

This is normal in Japanese schools. Students finish their morning classes, eat lunch, clean the whole school, and then go to recess. Each class is assigned a particular area of the school to clean on a rotating schedule and the areas are inspected by their teachers before they are released for recess.

I think it might be good to make it normal here, as well, not just to cut costs, but also because it develops a sense of responsibility, work ethic, etc.

Georgia Legislature Pondering Gun Rights

There are bills both expanding and contracting gun rights in Georgia before the Legislature right now.

NRA-ILA points to two bills that are restrictions. The more restrictive, HB 10, is an "assault weapons" ban that has very little chance of passage -- but if you're a citizen of Georgia, help kill it anyway.

HB 232 calls for concealed weapons permit holders to file some proof that they have received training in how to use a firearm. "House Bill 232 would require most gun license applicants to first complete a training course that would introduce the features of the handgun and a brief explanation of the loading, firing and unloading of a firearm. However, it would not require the applicant to actually fire a firearm. HB 232 does not provide specifically where the training would come from, nor does it provide a guide on potential costs associated with this training. All that HB 232 provides is that the instructor must be a law enforcement officer, nationally recognized organization that promotes gun safety or a licensed firearms dealer."

The NRA is opposed to this, on the grounds that it would add to the cost of exercising a Constitutional right. I'm not actually convinced it's a bad idea, though. The concept of the militia is that it should be a trained fighting force, and I think that in the ideal case we would provide for such training for all able-bodied citizens. In the less-ideal case, it's not outrageous to suggest that you should have had basic training in the operation of a firearm before you carry one around; furthermore, the NRA stands to profit off this deal as the similar law in Virginia accepts NRA-licensed trainers as one of the options.

Finally, it brings the concealed weapons permit in line with Georgia's hunting licenses, which also require a hunter's safety course before issuance of the license. In Georgia, hunting is a right enshrined in the state constitution on the same terms as the right to keep and bear arms. "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, but the General Assembly shall have power to prescribe the manner in which arms may be borne," says the state constitution. I don't know that it merits an infringement to state that you must have proper training, as such training would not infringe upon your right but rather enhance your capacity to exercise it effectively.

Thus, on the merits I would almost be inclined to support this law. The only concern is that the government can't be trusted to get its nose under the tent wall, so to speak. I will leave the matter to your consciences, those of you who are fellow citizens of the Great State of Georgia.

On the pro-gun side, Campus Carry is back again. You'll remember that it was passed and vetoed last year by our esteemed Governor, who did at least file a reasonably worthy and articulate explanation for his veto. This is HB 280. In my opinion it is sensible; in the opinions of the whole universe of college professor types that I know, it's a horrible invasion of barbarity on their sacred ground. So, again, follow your conscience.

While We're On The Subject of Standards

No.

A Record?

Mike Flynn just resigned as National Security Adviser, in what may be a record for shortest term ever in an NSA.

Standards have to apply to the powerful at least as much as to the weak, if things are to be any good at all. Hopefully that lesson is being learned.

UPDATE: Judging from the letter of resignation, Mike Pence is the one who put him down. Don't lie to the Biker in Chief.

Meryl Streep on Honor

"Yes, I am the most overrated, over-decorated and currently, I am the most over-berated actress ... of my generation," she said to laughs.

She noted that she wished she could simply stay home "and load the dishwasher" rather than take a podium to speak out - but that "the weight of all these honors" she's received in her career compelled her to speak out.

"It's terrifying to put the target on your forehead," she said. "And it sets you up for all sorts of attacks and armies of brownshirts and bots and worse, and the only way you can do it is if you feel you have to. You have to! You don't have an option. You have to."

Leaving aside the particular political questions -- including whether or not her opponents are properly described as "brownshirts" -- her remarks about honor are themselves interesting. What compels her to speak is honors, she says: in other words, just because so many people have said nice things about her or presented her with awards admiring her work as an actress, her voice in politics is important and needed in the public debate.

At first it seems as if this might be a sensible thing to say. After all, one is honored for excellence; she has received many honors; therefore, she must in some sense be excellent. Politics should in theory benefit if it draws excellence. Certainly Aristotle and Plato both argue that political roles are best filled by those with excellence. Our English word "virtue" is from the Latin, but the Greek word is arete, which really does mean "excellence."

Thus, it seems as if a woman of proven excellence really ought to play an outsized role in politics -- just as she says, the honors she has received prove that she has a greater capacity than most, and that implies a duty to exercise that capacity for the common good. Politics needs people like her.

Well... maybe that's not quite right.

The problem is that there are two different things going on, and Streep is conflating them. As an actress, she is highly honored (and has therefore outsized duties, presumably). As a citizen, however, she is properly the equal of any other citizen. It is wrong to claim that she has an outsized role to play in a sphere in which she is properly only the equal of all other American citizens, not their superior.

Her celebrity gives her a louder voice, so to speak, but she is reading her warrant the wrong way. Rather than her honors as an actress making it imperative that she speak publicly, they ought to disincline her to do so -- and this is true for all such celebrities, regardless of their political views. Knowing that the attention they will receive will drown out others to whom they ought only to be equal, they should be circumspect about their political views.

Certainly that does not mean that celebrities should not participate in politics, which they have an equal entitlement to do. They should just take care not to use the honors they have received in the fields of arts, or sports, to 'talk over' their fellow citizens. That is what honor really requires here.

Jim Webb on NBC

American politics needed a jolt, Webb says. Was it this one? What about the Democrats in 2018?

The journalist pins him early on the fact that he refers to Democrats as "they," not "we." Webb thinks about that for a minute and says that, you know, he's not really part of the system at the moment -- he's thinking about this all from the outside, as the journalist is himself, and as are all of us here. It's still an interesting observation.

UPDATE: Another piece on Webb today wonders what might have been.

Islam, Reformation, the West

Andrew McCarthy proposes that we start asking politicians whether or not they think Islam needs reform. McCarthy's a thoughtful guy, and he has a point, but he hasn't reflected philosophically on the question. What does it even mean to ask "Does Islam need reform"? Islam is a religion. A religion either points to the true ground of the divine or it does not. If it does, then what sense is there to reform it? The structure of right and wrong, whatever it looks like, follows from the divine expression.

If it does not, then of course it ought to be reformed -- which is not to say that "it" needs reform. A religion that does not point to the divine is just a set of conventions, and a set of conventions has no needs. It's just something people do. People have needs. A longing for the divine is one of those needs for many people.

So the question really ought to be, "Do you think Islam is true?"

And, then, only if they answer in the negative, the second question is, "How should Muslims reform their faith so that they do in fact genuinely connect with the divine?"

Now, the proper thing to say about the second question is that anyone who is not a Muslim can only have an advisory opinion. We're not going to be the ones reforming Islam -- we're just going to be giving advice about it. Of course, what I said before holds for these. Even Muslims who want to reform Islam must first reject that it correctly captures the divine expression. They also must first admit, however tacitly, that they do not in fact believe what is taught by their faith.

The first question is the one that matters. It's only even sensible to talk about reform if you deny that Islam is true. Saying that has consequences we should face honestly.

The Introduction of Beowulf in the Original

Apparently, he performs the whole thing live. He'll be up in the northeast in March and April if you want to catch him.

If, on the other hand, the northeast is a bit far, he sells a DVD on his website as well.

Toss the Feather

"Learn Old English," He Said

"It'll open up 'Call Me Maybe'," he said ...

And it doesn't end there.

9th Circuit to Consider Reconsidering

Think one of the judges not on the 3 judge panel noticed they had completely forgotten to give an opinion on the relevant law?

Damned if you Do

So just a few days ago, I read in the Nation that Trump's nominee for the #2 spot at State was "an actual American war criminal."

As assistant secretary of state for human rights, Abrams sought to ensure that General Efraín Ríos Montt, Guatemala’s then-dictator, could carry out “acts of genocide”—those are the legally binding words of Guatemala’s United Nations–backed Commission for Historical Clarification—against the indigenous people in the Ixil region of the department of Quiché, without any pesky interference from human-rights organizations, much less the US government.

As the mass killings were taking place, Abrams fought in Congress for military aid to Ríos Montt’s bloody regime.... Abrams not only supported the nonsensical official explanation (there was “no evidence indicating other than that the deaths were due to an accident”), he also denounced a spokeswoman for the group who demanded an investigation, insisting that she had “no right to call herself a human rights worker.” When The New York Times published an op-ed challenging the official State Department count of the mass murders under way—by a woman who had witnessed a death-squad-style assassination in broad daylight in Guatemala City without ever seeing it mentioned in the press—Abrams lied outright in a letter to the editor, even citing an imaginary story in a nonexistent newspaper to insist that the man’s murder had, in fact, been reported.

I don’t know about you, but intentionally helping the US government to aid and abet the commission of genocide, while attacking the character and reputation of those trying to expose it, strikes me as securely within the definition of “war criminal.”

So it now looks like the Abrams appointment is off. Is this evidence of Team Trump's good judgment? Of course not. In fact, the allegations against Abrams don't even appear in the piece about Trump shooting down the nomination. Abrams is presented in an unfailingly flattering light now that Trump doesn't want him.

Two different publications, of course, but it's still enough to make one's head spin.

Bad carbon math

More on the topic of how not to get bogged down in procedure when we roll back some of the dumber climate regs promulgated by the EPA.  Apparently the agency's "social cost of carbon" calculation failed to distinguish between the domestic and foreign costs, in violation of OMB standards.  Correcting this part of the procedure may be a quicker fix than others.

Judicial Review Suffers Self-Inflicted Wound

I don't object in the slightest degree to Trump's executive order coming under judicial review for its constitutionality. I do think the 9th circuit should probably have at least mentioned the law he was citing as granting him the legal authority.

(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President

Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.

Remarkably, in the entire opinion, the panel did not bother even to cite this statute, which forms the principal statutory basis for the executive order (see Sections 3(c), 5(c), and 5(d) of the order). That’s a pretty big omission over 29 pages, including several pages devoted to determining the government’s likelihood of success on the merits of the case.

This would be roughly like me being brought into court for carrying a firearm in Georgia, presenting my license to do so, and citing the sections of the Official Code of Georgia, Annotated, that specifically permit someone with such a license to carry such a firearm -- and then having the court rule against me without acknowledging the law existed.

Also, its reasoning would have to be that my protected exercise of free speech proved that I was such a bad person that I must be denied what would be legal for anyone else in my position.

Judicial review can be a good thing, but this is a poor example of it.

The Young British Soldier

by Rudyard Kipling

The Perfect Timepiece for the Hall

Cannon Sundial by Victor Chevalier, Paris

Photo by Andres Rueda, CC 2.0

Fresh Meat

Derailing Conversations: A Primer

This satirical site is meant to chide "Privileged People" in the interest of "marginalized groups," but it plays in surprisingly well with our recent conversation about journalists seeing themselves as members of the elite.

If you really want to excel as a privileged person you need to learn to value data, statistics, research studies and empirical evidence above all things, but especially above personal experiences. You can pretend you are oblivious to the fact most studies have been carried out by privileged people and therefore carry inherent biases, and insist that the marginalized person produce “Evidence” of what they‘re claiming.Their experience does not count as evidence, for it is subjective and therefore worthless.
This is very important because it works in two ways: 1) it communicates to the marginalized person that their personal testament is disbelieved and of no value, causing them great hurt; and 2) it once again reinforces your privilege.

You see, the very capacity to conduct studies, collect data and write detached “fact-based” reports on it, is an inherently privileged activity. The ability to widely access this material and research it exhaustively is also inherently privileged. Privileged People® find it easier to pursue these avenues than marginalized people and so once again you are reminding them you possess this privilege and reinforcing that the world at large values a system of analysis that excludes them, and values it over what their actual personal experience has been.

The process of valuing “fact” over “opinion” is one very much rooted in preserving privilege. Through this methodology, the continued pain and othering of millions of people can be ignored because it’s supported by “opinion” (emotion) and not “fact” (rationality).

It is also important because it calls on the marginalized person to do something that is simply impossible, and that is to summarize the entirety of their group’s experiences into a definitive example. It is important that you establish this precedent for the next couple of steps.

Well, fair enough -- blue collar guys are definitely a marginalized group, increasingly these last several years. I wonder if that's what they meant us to discover, though.

An Interesting Question from AVI

In a post about reducing racism, AVI ends on a note that is worth further exploration. I'd like to put it before the Hall, even though there is a lot of overlap in readership. I'll give enough of the setup for context, and then the ending question.

When did we make our biggest gains in reducing racism in America? I think people would point to the 40's-60's.... It is at least co-incident with the period when we had much less immigration, 1927-1964. The common declaration is that all prejudices go together, and reducing prejudice against immigrants is just the same thing as reducing it against blacks, with the requisite accusations of white American disliking "brownness" in general....

What if it's just not true? What if it would be better and more praiseworthy if human nature were that way, especially in aspirational, open-hearted America - but it's just not?...

We sometimes speak of immigrants making it harder for blacks to get ahead in terms of employment and wages - it was one of Bernie Sanders's core values until he gave all those away. We aren't supposed to mention that, but it is likely true for economic gain. What if it is also true in an emotional, associational sense? What if Universal Brotherhood is actually a dead end, and step-by-step changes of becoming a people are all that is possible?

I don't know this to be true. I simply note that it is possibly true but no one says it. Which in turn immediately leads to "Why don't we want this to be true? Why is it not one of the cliches of the discussion, rather than an unmentionable?" There are plenty of untrue cliches out there all over the political spectrum, but this one is not even a Facebook poster.

So why isn't it one of the cliches, do you think?

Less Defensible

The conflict of interest issues around the Trump businesses are not going away, and the Trumps do not seem very interested in even minimizing them. Maybe it doesn't matter today, because the opposition is too weak to do more than squawk about it, but someday that will change -- and indeed, the clear appearance of impropriety may help it change.

Paving the Way for that MB Designation

One of the red headlines on Drudge today is about Hamas sending a team of commandos to train with ISIS bomb-makers. Hamas, as I assume everyone knows, was founded as the Palestinian branch of the nearby Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.

The Trump administration is reportedly mulling a move to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist (or terror-supporting) organization, following a bill introduced last year by Ted Cruz. Needless to say, all the smart people are against this proposal. It will damage academic research, say academics. It will fuel extremism, says a(nother) leaked CIA memo. It will lead to a witch-hunt, says the Council on American-Islamic Relations (which has some reason to fear it will be target #1 of that hunt, given that Ted Cruz's bill mentions them by name). Human Rights Watch tells us that the move would threaten rights to free association for Muslims in the United States.

The most interesting argument is that the designation would actually be illegal.

To qualify for a designation, the organization has to be engaged in terrorism or still has the capability and intent to do so, and it has to pose a threat to U.S. nationals or our national security. The Muslim Brotherhood as a whole obviously doesn’t qualify on either count. McCants and Wittes say that certain individual affiliates might qualify for such a designation, but the entire group cannot be defined as a terrorist organization:

The short answer is that the Brotherhood is not in a meaningful sense a single organization at all; elements of it can be designated and have been designated, and other elements certainly cannot be [bold mine-DL]. As a whole, it is simply too diffuse and diverse to characterize. And it certainly cannot be said as a whole to engage in terrorism that threatens the United States.

The decision by Hamas (which is already designated) to ally with ISIS seems to me to ease the path to designation. ISIS is not just a terrorist organization in the same way that Hezbollah is not. They also intend to run a state, and are organized in part to do so. Yet no one would argue that ISIS should not be designated as a terrorist or terror-supporting organization just because some elements of their organization are aimed at, say, provision of clean water.

My guess is that the new Attorney General will be able to defend the decision if they decide to go forward with it, and this report only makes that defense easier to do.

UPDATE: Apparently Hamas could really use the help.

Having the Wrong Fantasy Again

Slate demands to know why female superheroes take men down with their legs, instead of punching and kicking like male superheroes. "Is this even practical?"

There are two answers to that question, speaking as someone who has trained in and taught several martial arts. The harsh answer is that the impractical thing is the idea that a 120 pound woman is capable of beating the three or four men arrayed against her in hand-to-hand combat under any circumstances. She's going to need a weapon for the scene to be "practical" in any strict sense.

However, we're doing fantasy, aren't we? So if we're fantasizing, why not fantasize that she can do it? She's got 'spider-senses' or whatever.

The less harsh answer is that grappling arts -- which frequently use the lower body -- are much more female-friendly than "hard" striking arts. There are a lot of mechanical reasons for this. One is that female limbs are shorter, and the limb functions as a kind of lever in striking ('the longer the lever, the greater the force'). Another is that female limbs are lighter-weight on average, and with less muscle-to-bone, and force is a function of mass times acceleration. They both have less mass, and less muscle to accelerate it. Females also tend to have smaller bones in the striking surfaces, making them more prone to shattering or cracking on impact.

The leg grapples thus use the strongest part of their body to its greatest effect. Although the silly acrobatics that appear in these movies are not terribly practical -- nor, again, are they meant to be -- showing women fighting with a focus on leg-grappling is the most plausible non-weapon form.

But, I suppose, if you're going to fantasize, why not fantasize they can punch like Rocky? Why would you want the more-plausible still-implausible fantasy?

This policing of the fantastic is becoming tiresome.

A Journalist Getting the Facts Right

"How many arrests have there been of foreign nationals for those seven countries since 9/11?" Robart asked a Justice Department lawyer in court on Feb. 3. When the lawyer said she didn't know, Robart said, "Let me tell you. The answer to that is none, as best I can tell."

It turns out the judge, and Nadler, and everybody else repeating the talking point had it wrong. Last year the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration and the National Interest released information showing that at least 60 people born in the seven countries had been convicted — not just arrested, but convicted — of terror-related offenses in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001. And that number did not include more recent cases like Abdul Artan, a Somali refugee who wounded 11 people during a machete attack on the campus of Ohio State University last November.

I assume Byron York is a journalist, anyway. I gather from recent comments that some of you have very particular standards! I tend to think anyone is a journalist who contributes to these 'journals' (currently as much online or televised as written) of news and opinion, either reportage or punditry. I don't think of it as being very specialized, as those with 'real degrees in journalism' often don't do as good a job as local folks who decide they're interested in something and start going to the meetings about it.

The "S" Stands For "Shut Your Mouth"

Apparently Harry S Truman laid some precedent for our current President's defense of his daughter.

Why Do They Hate Us?

It's a little late, but KSM has an answer for us. His letter to former President Obama is now available to be read by all.

Déclassé

Apparently Trump doesn't spell well, when engaged in midnight "tweets." Journalists, who think of themselves as part of the elite and for whom words are bread and butter, are appalled.

In spite of his wealth and formal education, Donald Trump most reminds me of the ordinary blue-collar guys I know. His approach to politics comes under a similar sort of criticism: he doesn't care very much about facts, and journalists are also all about facts. So they think he's an ignorant ass, as they think the blue collar guys are ignorant asses too. They're wrong on the merits about so many particular facts, demonstrably wrong.

What people miss is that guys like this are principled in a way that is sturdy and reliable. They don't care about the particular facts because they care about the universal principles. They have a principle that manufacturing jobs are what made America great, and therefore they want more of them. All the particular facts about a particular case you can muster aren't going to undermine that principle. ("The Carrier deal was not that great!") Their principles are what they believe in, and they're going to do what their principles tell them is right.

Given that principles are pre-judgments about cases of a certain type, they are in a literal sense prejudices. But when we say that someone is "principled," we don't mean anything negative as we do when we say that someone is "prejudiced." Normally it's taken to be quite a positive thing.

Nevertheless, it does present difficulties. You can't talk them out of doing what they think is right in a given case, even if it's not the ideal solution in that case, because they're not interested in particular facts about particular cases. They're governed by universals that stand above any particulars. Telling them that they're wrong about the particulars won't bother them because they don't care about the particulars at all. They have lasting ideas about the world and what right looks like, and that's where they put their faith.

It's a very different world from the one that journalists live in.

An alternative to cloture

Turns out the Senate rules provide more than one way to terminate debate.

Donaeld the Unready

An inside joke for Viking / Anglo-Saxon history buffs.

And the Right Doesn't Seem to Care Much for My Company Either

Col. Schlichter says the left hates me, but these days, the right isn't looking that friendly, either.

Here's our new Republican president on Bush, lies, and Iraq:

Of course, it turns out we did find WMDs, but whatever. The facts have almost reached the point of irrelevance, it seems. Time for the historians to take over.

Here's Rand Paul, who says a lot of sensible things, and then at 5:50 or so begins a slow slide into the "Dick Cheney pushed the Iraq invasion for Halliburton profits" shuffle.

That was back in 2009, but here's "Spengler" (David P. Goldman) at PJMedia a couple of days ago:

Trump said it best: the Iraq War was one of the dumbest things America ever did in foreign policy, the equivalent of "throwing rocks into a hornet's nest."

Grandiose blunders of this kind are not made out by stupidity, though, but by insanity. The American conservative movement was infected by a cult that eroded the common sense of its victims and instilled a messianic, fanatical commitment to nation-building and democracy promotion. What are broadly (and sometimes inaccurately) referred to as the "neo-conservatives" are a cult that succeeded in persuading the unfortunate George W. Bush to spend trillions in treasure and tens of thousands of casualties for the mirage of democracy in Iraq. Such was their influence that an entire generation of Republican foreign policy officials was vetted for cult loyalty.

Messianic? Yeah, whatever. Apparently he's been doing a whole series on this theme. And I'm seeing more commenters at right-wing sites spouting this kind of stuff.

I don't know what to say about all this. I disagree with all three of them, but I don't know that I'm right, and I don't have time to sort it out right now. Since I don't have time to figure it out, this just leaves me with the taste of being betrayed.

I like a lot of what Trump is doing, but I still don't like Trump. Paul has some very good ideas, but he always seems to end up in conspiracy theories. I'm sure Goldman is a smart, educated guy, but I know a lot of smart, educated guys who are blind when it comes to politics, so I'm not really impressed.

What I do know is, a lot of people apparently hate me, and it increasingly doesn't seem to have much to do with right or left, conservative or liberal.

Mo Ghille Mear (My Gallant Hero)

Don't Forget to America Today

Who's to Blame?

This guy thinks he knows.

President Obama either bombed, sanctioned or sent American soldiers to the seven nations on President Trump’s travel ban. Thus, the precedent for Trump’s stance on refugees correlates directly to policies from the Bush and Obama years. These policies helped create the refugee crisis that Trump has so awkwardly addressed with his draconian executive order.

From Trump’s travel ban of Muslim majority nations to allegedly belligerent phone calls with world leaders, media and Democrats have reacted with outrage and disbelief. It’s as if the Democratic Party and loyal “lesser evil” voters didn’t think cheating Bernie Sanders would lead to such political turmoil. When Debbie Wasserman Shultz resigned from the DNC and friendly journalists covered-up the crime, it was too late; Bernie was forced out of the primary. The only chance for Democrats to defeat a populist Republican nominee, during an anti-establishment year in American politics, was destroyed along with Hillary’s yoga emails and Anthony Weiner’s self-portraits.

The article is titled, "Enjoying President Trump? Then Blame Democrats For Cheating Bernie Sanders." There's a lot more. Some of you, who really are enjoying President Trump to a greater or lesser degree, may find it light reading.

92% of Left-Wing Activists Live with their Parents

These findings are limited to Berlin, please note. I'm sure it's totally different here.

DeVos Confirmed, Opening Path for Sessions

This bit of Senate Kabuki theater really got the hopes up of several left-leaning people I know, who thought they had a chance of beating DeVos just because the Republican leadership chose to protect the maximal number of their Senators from the consequences of voting for her.

Nope. Lucy & the football.

Now that Jeff Session's vote is no longer needed immediately, I guess he'll be confirmed soon too.

ATF White Paper

The second-highest-ranking official at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has written a proposal to reduce gun regulations, including examining a possible end to the ban on importing assault weapons into the United States....

“Restriction on imports serves questionable public safety interests, as these rifles are already generally legally available for manufacture and ownership in the United States,” Turk wrote of the ban on imported AR-15s and AK-style weapons.

“This white paper offers a disturbing series of giveaways to the gun industry that would weaken regulatory oversight of the gun industry without adequate consideration of the impact on public safety,” said Chelsea Parsons, vice president of guns and crime policy at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

Well, repealing the ban on imported rifles is hardly a 'giveaway to the gun industry.' The American gun industry flourishes in part because of the artificial scarcity created by the ban.

Cf.

Right-wing pundit Kurt Schlichter:

They hate you.

Leftists don’t merely disagree with you. They don’t merely feel you are misguided. They don’t think you are merely wrong. They hate you.

Tucker FitzGerald, self-described as "deeply curious about justice and equality":

Universities aren’t bereft of conservatives and Evangelicals because of a vast left-wing conspiracy. They’re bereft of those people because people committed to those world views so rarely have anything to offer to an open-minded, inquiring, growing community. Universities are lacking in conservatives and fundamentalist Christians because the amount of education that it takes to become a professor is likely to expose Evangelicals and conservatives to enough good ideas that they’re no longer fundamentalist or conservative.

Ah, yes. If only I'd been exposed to more left-wing -- I mean, "good" -- ideas in my education. That's probably what's holding me back. Lack of exposure.

Morons

Republican hawks took to Twitter and the Sunday political shows to attack President Donald Trump for his latest comments defending Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal regime.

Pressed by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly about how Trump could respect a “killer” like Putin, Trump said, “We got a lot of killers [too]. What, you think our country is so innocent?”

“I don’t know of any government leaders that are killers in America,” O’Reilly retorted.

This O'Reilly guy is talking to a man who ordered a hit on al Qaeda just days earlier. He sent a team of highly-trained commandos who killed 14 Qaeda fighters on purpose. They also apparently killed at least one little girl not on purpose, and she was the sister of a 16-year-old American citizen Barack Obama killed with a drone strike. Obama also killed their father, an al Qaeda honcho with ties to terrorist attacks inside the United States, in the same way.

Both Presidents are killers in a sense, the same sense in which the President of Russia is a killer: they order killing done. The SEALs are killers in a more direct sense. The separation from the gun doesn't make the Presidents better people than the SEALs -- I would wager any sum, based on the SEALs I've known, that the opposite would prove true if the SEALs' identities were known for comparison.

Do these media jockeys think their world would survive without killers? Are they so blind that they can sit down and talk with one and not even know it?

Manifestly.

Building Jerusalem

My kind of hymn.

For Readers in Washington State

I can't remember if Raven is currently living in Washington state or not, and it may be that others of you are. Your legislature is considering a bill, HB 1553, that could make life a little bit easier for bikers.

The law is supported on a bipartisan basis. It simply forbids using the wearing of "motorcycle-related" clothing and gear as part of a profiling decision by police. Thus, while engaging in unlawful activity would still make you subject to being stopped, questioned, and so forth, merely wearing a biker shirt or a club vest (or something that could be mistaken for a club vest) would not.

If you're a Washington state resident, you can consider the text of the bill and inform your representatives of your opinion on it.

The Dubliners' Guide to Dublin

Ran across this this evening. Haven't watched it all, but it seems interesting.

So, Atlanta Had A Good First Half

Brother-in-law is a huge Pats fan, so I'm enjoying the affair more than usual.

So far.

UPDATE:

Turns out that scoring 21 unanswered points in the first half won't save you if you give up 31 unanswered points in the second half plus Sudden Death overtime.

Problems with Statistics on Refugees

Matt Y. over at Ricochet makes the argument that American Christians should welcome the refugees from the Middle East instead of opposing their resettlement here. He does make some good points, but he also uses the following statistic, which seems irrelevant to this argument:

The likelihood of being killed by a terrorist attack from a refugee in the United States has been calculated at 1 in 3.6 billion.

I think there are three problems here, and this is the second article I've seen these same three problems show up in, so I'd like to address it.

First, there is no real opposition to "refugees," but rather "Muslim refugees from nations with Muslim terror problems." In fact, among Americans who oppose taking in more Muslim refugees, I suspect there would be a strong willingness to take in Christian and Yazidi refugees from these same regions. The conflation of terms here implies a general xenophobia rather than specific concerns about a specific population, and although I don't think it is intentional, it is insulting.

Second, limiting the geographical area to the United States is also problematic because most of the Muslim refugees from nations with Muslim terror problems have gone to other places, such as Europe. So, to be relevant, one should include all nations that have accepted these refugees.

Third, the fear of taking large numbers of these particular refugees is not limited to terrorism. When Europe began taking in large numbers of these refugees, there were immediate problems with  sexual assault and other crimes.

Because of these factors, it seems to me that the only really meaningful statistic would cover the particular refugee populations in question regardless of geographic area of resettlement and it would include all crimes, not just terrorism. If that statistic were used, I suspect the argument would look very different.

All that said, I have yet to see anyone arguing for bringing in 100,000 Muslim refugees from nations with Muslim terror problems address some of the deeper concerns of their opponents, including issues of long-term assimilation and the radicalization of second and third generation Muslims in Western nations. These are also important issues, and if someone wanted to change my mind about bringing in tens of thousands of Muslim refugees from nations with Muslim terror problems, they would have to address them as well.

Frog spit

Frog tongues are incredibly soft, which helps them glom onto prey. Apparently, though, the saliva is even more ingenious:

A mixture of cornstarch and water becomes solid if you hit it. Ketchup becomes runnier if you shake the bottle. Saliva is like ketchup: Forces makes it less viscous. But while human saliva becomes around ten times less viscous if you apply force to it, frog saliva becomes a hundred times less viscous.

So when a frog tongue strikes an insect, its saliva flows freely and readily seeps into every crack and gap. When the tongue slows down and starts retracting, the saliva thickens again into a paste, the equivalent of a closed fist grasping the insect for the journey back.

“The analysis helps to explain many bizarre observations, like why frogs use the backs of their eyeballs to push prey down their throats,” says Kiisa Nishikawa from Northern Arizona University. When the insect’s in the frog’s mouth, the frog has to get it off its tongue. Fortunately, all of its adhesive tricks work best in the perpendicular direction—it may be really hard to pull the insect off, but it’s comparably easy to slide it off. The frog just needs something to push against the insect—so it uses its eyeballs. Twelve years ago, Robert Levine used X-ray videos to show that a frog swallows, it retracts its eyeballs inwards, and uses these to push victims off its tongue.

Cat tongues are another kettle of fish.

MS treatment advance

A new treatment for multiple sclerosis, using the patient's own stem cells from the bone marrow, shows surprising promise.