USMC Scandal, Continued

American Military News has interviews with some female Marines, at least one of whom appears in the database of nude female Marines. At least the ones they spoke to all agree that this is a problem with male Marines, period. At no point do any of them appear to entertain any idea that there's any additional discipline that might be imposed on the exercise of sexuality in general.

Maxmilian, the creator of Terminal Lance, agrees. The idea that discipline should be imposed on sexuality is right out:

To the first point, everyone sends nudes in 2017. There are so many photos of my modestly large penis out there that you could fill a 7-ton if you printed them out. The argument that women are asking for it is rapey as hell and straight up victim-blaming. Nude photos sent or received, unless otherwise specified, have a pretty clear implication of privacy involved in it.

That's a pretty big generational shift. Even 20 years ago, the mere existence of nude photos -- physical ones, which couldn't be instantly transmitted around the globe -- was pretty racy stuff.

This is an area where the law is really not very helpful. In general, if I take a photograph that photograph is my intellectual property and I can share it if I want to do. If I share it with you and you, without my consent, publish it widely I can sue you for copyright infringement. But if you took the photo -- even if it's a photo of me taken without my consent, if I was in a public place at the time -- you can do whatever you want with it. It's your intellectual property.

One woman in another context tried to copyright the image of her own breasts as a method of using copyright infringement law to get her images taken down from 'revenge porn' sites. The method seems clumsy and impossible to extend to a broader set of cases, and may only have worked because she herself took the photos. If her boyfriend had taken them, it's not clear to me that she would have had a claim to copyright his photos (taken with her consent) even though they were images of her.

It may also be the case that copyright law, which is how we usually control images, really misses the point of what's going on here. We have stalker laws that punish what is otherwise perfectly legal behavior, for example, taking photos of someone in a public place. Perhaps the nature of the offense here is such that the ordinary laws shouldn't apply.

Maximilian speaks to this issue:

There’s an underlying reality that needs to be addressed, and that male Marines need to really internalize here.

Female Marines are female.

We can talk about one team, one fight and all of that, but at the end of the day they are still women.

He goes on to note that women are only 7% of the Marine Corps, and thus can't effect changes in the culture on their own. Male Marines will have to help them, if it is to be done.

Nevertheless, I still think that the coed combat arms are going to present a very real readiness concern that earlier integration did not. The Marine Corps' leadership was prescient about it, but they were told to shut up and stop thinking by Secretary Ray Mabus. Here are the first fruits.

UPDATE: The DB takes another swing.

A Little Revival

Big Stories, Small Time

There are two huge stories today: Paul Ryan's Obamacare-lite bill, which will surely die as it is opposed by CATO, the Club for Growth, Paul's libertarian faction, Cruz's conservative faction, all Democrats, but not Susan Collins. It deserves more attention, but won't get it because...

...of the second big story, Wikileaks' huge CIA dump. This purports to come from a leaker within the intelligence community itself, and to give away the store on the CIA's hacking techniques. Allegedly they can take over your car (or a big truck near your car) for assassination purposes, and listen in to your conversations through your iWhatever or smart television. This, likewise, is huge news if true and needs to be carefully studied, but we won't get to do that because...

...of yesterday's big story, the new EO on immigration and refugees. It is supposed to be a significant improvement over the first one, and Trump's legal team is in place to fight challenges as they arise. Opponents are swearing to combat it, but most of us won't have time to pay attention because...

...of the weekend's big story, on 'wiretapping' accusations, which threatens to turn into an all-engulfing war between the two leading political factions in America. This is likewise an intricate story that needs very careful parsing, but we won't get to do that because...

...of all the other stories, and the ones that will come starting tomorrow.

Nakbah

Gun sales down by double digits every month since Trump elected.

Privileges Abound

A couple of experiments that both involve switching the sex of a person to see how it impacts how people receive them. It turns out that, liberal though the professors and their audience both were, switching the sex in the second Trump/Clinton debate only proved why Clinton lost.



Clinton's mode of trying to smile off serious charges, backed with carefully-worded responses that are technically true but completely misleading, turns out to look even worse on a man. The audience described him as “really punchable.” The kind of smarmy 'I think I'm smarter than you so I'm going to give you an answer you know is false but can't prove is false' mode is completely unacceptable from a man, so much so that it provokes the impulse to give him a sock in the chops for trying it.

I wonder if it isn't only our society's very strong mores forbidding violence against women that allows someone like Clinton -- or Pelosi, or DWS -- to get away with this mode. Maybe Obama could do it, protected by a similar set of mores among educated Americans against similar lashing out at African-Americans. The protections extended to them, out of a kind of respect for the vulnerability of their position, can turn out to enable bad behavior. Not voting for one of them, though, isn't violence against them -- and it isn't sexist or racist, not if you'd reject the same mode in a white man (and indeed, even more strongly reject it).

The female Trump stand in, meanwhile, was not rejected (as the organizers expected her to be) for being too 'pushy' or outspoken. Instead, people were suddenly able to see in her answers what they had been unable to see in the same answers given by Trump himself.

We heard a lot of “now I understand how this happened”—meaning how Trump won the election. People got upset. There was a guy two rows in front of me who was literally holding his head in his hands, and the person with him was rubbing his back. The simplicity of Trump’s message became easier for people to hear when it was coming from a woman—that was a theme. One person said, “I’m just so struck by how precise Trump’s technique is.” Another—a musical theater composer, actually—said that Trump created “hummable lyrics”...

I was surprised by how critical I was seeing [Clinton] on a man’s body, and also by the fact that I didn’t find Trump’s behavior on a woman to be off-putting. I remember turning to Maria at one point in the rehearsals and saying, "I kind of want to have a beer with her!"

The second one is about a lesbian feminist who undertook the experiment without telling people she met she wasn't the man she was pretending to be. You've probably seen this one before, but it compares and contrasts nicely with the NYU experiment around Trump/Clinton.

Clarance Thomas on Civil Asset Forfeiture

“This system — where police can seize property with limited judicial oversight and retain it for their own use — has led to egregious and well-chronicled abuses,” wrote Thomas. “I am skeptical that this historical practice is capable of sustaining, as a constitutional matter, the contours of modern practice.”

Thomas went on to outline his concerns, noting that legal precedent ― most recently in the Supreme Court’s 1996 Bennis v. Michigan decision ― has been based largely on “early statutes” involving property related primarily to piracy and customs.

That's a good originalist objection: that the original justification for the practice no longer applies to the way the practice is currently being used. Piracy and customs involve things moving into the jurisdiction of the United States that, for example, you might have reason to believe were stolen goods. "Prove that these goods were not stolen if you want to bring them here" is much more reasonable than "prove that this money in your pocket was not stolen" when you and your money were always here. The burden of proof much more obviously falls on the government when the whole affair has happened within the jurisdiction of its courts and law enforcement officers.

Not your circus, not your monkeys

Or as Ace says, don't buy tickets on the crazy train.  He likens the psychic dislocations of 9/11 to those of 11/9.

Raising babies

Here's a theory that has a superficial appeal, especially to someone like myself with such ingrained anxiety about (and hostility to) dependence:

The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development has found:

Children in full-time day care were close to three times more likely to show behavior problems than those cared for by their mothers at home.

…

The more time in child care of any kind or quality, the more aggressive the child.

The result is young people who, a decade and a half after daycare, scream at the parent/State for not protecting them sufficiently. It is no coincidence that “safe spaces” resemble daycare centers.

Granted, I recognize the behavior, but I can't reconcile it with my own experience of motherlessness. Maybe you have to combine daycare with the other silly trends in child development, which my full-time working father and stepmother were, to put in mildly, not into.

I'm much more drawn to the approach of this sensible lady, Brene Brown, who has my number when it comes to the fear of vulnerability.

Irish Unification

Sinn Fein did very well in the recent Ulster elections, and is now the second-largest party in the North -- second by only one seat. But that's not enough. It's time to re-unify, says Martina Devlin.

A united Ireland, a free Scotland, a newly-liberated England and an end to EU international socialism. All thanks to Brexit.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, there's a new documentary on women of the Irish revolution.

Swords at Dawn

"As for me, I was in a place by myself; in a time by myself. I remember the water sparkling around our ankles as we fought. One part of my mind could not help admiring how so very picturesque it was. I remember my opponents eyes especially. They were yellow, like he was on drugs."

"Then I sensed, more than reasoned that I would die unless I ended this," he said. "So I stepped in and struck his arm. I didn't even feel the hit on my knee."

An actual knife fight, as metaphor for the current political feud. Wretchard, of course.

Media Moves to Make "Wiretapping" Purely About Phones

CBS: " Former president Barack Obama has denied President Trump's claims that the Obama administration wiretapped phones..."

Independent: "The FBI disputing Donald Trump's claim Barack Obama had his telephones tapped..."

AP: "President Donald Trump on Saturday accused former President Barack Obama of tapping his telephones..."

The FISA warrant apparently targeted a server, so it would be surprising if they tapped a telephone to find out what the server was saying to another server. I'm going to guess that the Obama team's careful denials, parroted by all these media outlets, mean that no actual telephones were "tapped." So we're only talking about internet traffic, servers being penetrated and covertly examined, maybe reading emails... but no, absolutely no "telephones."

The right thing to do would be to come clean on what spying was done, but of course they can't: all the information is surely classified at a high level. Still, some sunlight and honesty -- and not these carefully construed denials -- is the only way to restore any sort of trust.

That's How I Want Government to Work All The Time

Charles M. Blow at the NYT:

The American people must immediately demand a cessation of all consequential actions by this “president”.... no action to put this presidency on pause is extreme. Rather, it is exceedingly prudent.

Some things must be done and some positions filled simply to keep the government operational. Absolute abrogation of administrative authority is infeasible and ill advised. But a bare minimum standard must be applied until we know more about what the current raft of investigations yield.

Don't stop there! Let's adopt this as the model going forward: the Federal government should do only the bare minimum of things that absolutely have to be done. I'd suggest that we draw the line at "anything for which there is not explicit constitutional warrant." But if that's not good enough, I'll consider constitutional amendments designed to make the "bare minimum standard" for Federal action even tighter.

How Sauron Conquered Middle Earth

A short comic.

Of Course the Ambassador is a Spymaster

That is one of the principal functions of ambassadors.

“I don’t think they’d make the ambassador to the United States a KGB guy. It’s not really their style.”

That said, the job of any Russian ambassador is to oversee the rezidentura, or mission-bound spy station, putting Kislyak at the top of the pyramid of Russia’s security services in Washington. He would, therefore, likely have intimate knowledge of everything Russia's foreign and military intelligence operatives were up to in Washington and wouldn’t necessarily need to hail from the SVR or GRU or any of the other “power ministries" to cultivate assets and informants on foreign soil.

That is also how our own system works: the ambassador, in his role as Chief of Mission, leads and directs the Country Team. That team includes the CIA's Chief of Station. Though the COS reports back to Langley as well, the COM has the overall responsibility for directing US government operations in the country concerned.

That said, American ambassadors are often political donors -- especially ambassadors to countries without much need for aggressive intelligence collection. Still, this is a major part of their role, as everyone knows who has to deal with ambassadors in any official capacity.

UPDATE: Right on cue, Wikileaks sets out to prove the point.

Like Jesse James

Black Rifle Coffee

Another Mat Best & Company operation, they've recently posted their "hold music" online.



I'd post some of their videos, but... well, go see for yourselves if you dare. No warranty express or implied.

I mean, there's no excuse for this stuff.

Well, OK: maybe one excuse. If you're a Medal of Honor recipient, you can wink at this stuff if you want.

Orin Kerr, Troll Lord

I know Cass just said she hates this concept, but you have to give the man credit where credit is due.

Going To Have To Work On This

The USMC is having a bit of a scandal right now, over the existence of a Facebook group made up of Marines and former Marines that shared nude pictures of female Marines.

Oddly enough, it's the less-revealing images that are the greater concern.

In one instance, a woman corporal in uniform was followed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina by a fellow Marine, who surreptitiously photographed her as she picked up her gear. Those photographs were posted online in the Facebook group “Marines United,” which has nearly 30,000 followers, drawing dozens of obscene comments.

That woman, in her full dress, was victimized by being stalked -- and perhaps, again, by the commentary on her desirability. (I say 'perhaps' because it's unclear. Would she have been victimized if the comments had not been made public? Her identity is not public, so perhaps she doesn't even know herself what was said about her. Is she a victim of 'harassment' if she's suffered no mental harm? Maybe -- perhaps she could be victimized by being in a culture that was hostile to her even if she was completely unaware that it was hostile to her. On the other hand, a group of anonymous posters on Facebook is not her chain of command, so perhaps this group doesn't rise to the level of 'a hostile work environment.' I leave all that to others to sort out.)

The stalking is genuinely improper. On the other hand, what about this?

Many images appear to have originated from the consensual, but private, exchange of racy images, some clearly taken by the women themselves.

Here, the women consented to being photographed -- photographed themselves, even -- but not to having the images shared in a creeper database of which they knew nothing.

So... what exactly do you do about that? Presumably the woman has a right to take a photo of herself naked if she wants to, even though she's a Marine. She has a right to share it, arguably, even though she's a Marine (indeed, she's certainly not in uniform). So what do we say about the unauthorized sharing? Is it a copyright violation?

If you're sharing nude photos of yourself with other members of the Marine Corps -- not your spouse, I presume -- aren't you partially responsible for the collapse of good order that this represents? If you allow yourself to be videoed having sex by other members of your unit, aren't you partially responsible for the collapse of good order?

No, of course not. These are all "victims," and the PAO has put out a 10 page document in part devoted to explaining their rights under the law.

Meanwhile, the news stories about this are taking pains to paint this as a USMC failure, claiming that the Corps' hostility to the idea of integrating women into the combat arms is responsible for this whole incident. A gentle suggestion: is it worth considering that the leadership's hostility to the idea was built around the understanding that a collapse of good order and discipline such as this was highly likely? Doesn't this scandal prove the leadership's concerns about what this would do to their organization to have been fairly sound?

No, of course not. No one should ever think that.

UPDATE: Related.

The evacuation of pregnant women is costly for the Navy. Jude Eden, a nationally known author about women in the military who served in 2004 as a Marine deployed to Iraq, said a single transfer can cost the Navy up to $30,000 for each woman trained for a specific task, then evacuated from an active duty ship and sent to land. That figure translates into $115 million in expenses for 2016 alone.... [B]y August 2016 that number reached nearly 16 percent, an all-time high. The Navy reported that 3,840 of the 24,259 women sailors who were aboard Navy ships were pregnant.

The article goes on to note that the Navy has declared a policy of making sure that 25% of personnel on ships are women. That shifts this issue from a relatively easy to address situation to a front-and-center problem for the readiness of our warships. The Navy also grants a year of maternity leave (forced by former SECDEF Ash Carter to back down from 18 months, and vice 10 days of paternity leave), so it's a lengthy problem when it happens.

Like the nude photos that female Marines consented to having taken, or took themselves, female sailors have a right to get pregnant if they want to do so. If you want to solve this problem, though, you have to question the degree to which what we used to call 'liberated sexuality' is compatible with coed military service. You'll have to do more than crack down on predatory male behavior, though of course you should do that. You'll also have to reconsider what we currently believe are inalienable rights -- more inalienable to these female servicemembers than their right to free speech, for example, as that right is constrained quite a bit while in the service.

UPDATE: The DuffelBlog checks in.

A "Broader Point" About Truth

It's the last paragraph that marks out an interesting claim, but I'll give you enough of the setup to judge its worth in this context.

Obama and his surrogates–notably the slug (or is he a cockroach?) Ben Rhodes–harrumph that Obama could not unilaterally order electronic surveillance. Well, yes, it is the case that Obama did not personally issue the order: the FISA court did so. But even if that is literally correct, it is also true that the FISA court would not unilaterally issue such an order: it would only do so in response to a request from the executive branch. Thus, Obama is clearly implicated even if he did not issue the order. He could have ordered his subordinates to make the request to the court, or could have approved a subordinate’s request to seek an order. Maybe he merely hinted, a la Henry II–“will no one rid me of this turbulent candidate?” (And “turbulent” is a good adjective to apply to Trump.) But regardless, there is no way that such a request to the court in such a fraught and weighty matter would have proceeded without Obama’s acquiescence.

I therefore consider that the substance of Trump’s charge–that he was surveilled at behest of Obama has been admitted by the principals.

This episode illustrates a broader point that is definitely useful to keep in mind. What Obama and his minions (and the Democrats and many in the media) say is likely to be correct, strictly speaking, but fundamentally misleading. In contrast, what Trump says is often incorrect, strictly speaking, but captures the fundamental truth.

With apologies to the lawyers among us, whom I am sure are careful never to do this, this 'strictly speaking correct, but fundamentally misleading' bit is what people hate about lawyers. Sometimes also journalists.

Resistance

From a comment at Maggie's Farm, referring to a link identified by the website as "Rebellion: Trump Takes on The Blob - Washington’s foreign policy elites are used to battling America’s adversaries. Now they have a new common enemy: the president."

The people rebel. The bureaucracy mutinies.

A Typical March Afternoon at Berkeley

MPCOA vs MDCOA

This explosion around the FISA court is surprising to me, as I've known about this warrant since last year at least. Heat Street broke the story right before the election, which means the existence of the investigation was leaked in a blatant partisan attempt to sway the election. The existence of the server around which the warrant revolves had been reported in the press even earlier in the campaign

Nevertheless, there's an interpretation of this story in which no one -- except the leaker -- did anything wrong. On this interpretation, the FBI sought the warrant out of legitimate concerns, without political officers pressuring them in any way. The FISA court took the unusual step of rejecting the warrant until it was narrowed in scope precisely to avoid the kind of worries about wiretapping a political opponent that are now playing out. Though the Obama administration would of course have taken an interest in the findings, that is only because they had a duty not to hand the keys to a Russian agent (or a President under the influence of Russian agents). However, as no one on Team Trump was doing anything nefarious, the investigation came and went without anyone being charged.

On this interpretation, the pings from the Russian bank's server were part of the generalized Russian intelligence collection effort aimed at Team Trump -- an effort exactly similar to our CIA's efforts in France, and for the same legitimate purpose. While we have reason to contest Russia's intelligence collection efforts even where they have a legitimate purpose, in fairness we would have to say that Russian intelligence collection efforts aimed at understanding a candidate who might win the election represents a perfectly understandable interest.

So, there is at least one plausible interpretation in which no one has done anything wrong, except the leaker who decided to betray their oath to keep classified secrets for partisan political advantage.

Of course, there are also other interpretations. These run the gamut from the investigation into Trump being a purely political gambit aimed at using the national security state to destroy a political opponent -- similar to the IRS targeting scandal involving Lois Lerner -- to Trump or some of his close associates being spies in the service of Mother Russia.

In military intelligence, the MPECOA is the 'most probable enemy course of action.' Officers typically assess both that and what they take to be the 'MDECOA,' the 'most dangerous enemy course of action.' I have dropped the 'e' here because we are speaking of fellow Americans, both Team Trump and Team Obama.

I assess that the MPCOA is that something close to the 'everyone was legit' interpretation will prove to be true, and that the investigation that is likely to result from this will end up serving as a warning shot from Team Trump to Obama and his loyalists. Two can play at this game of using the national security state to delegitimize each other, and Team Trump controls all the actual levers of power. If that works out, we might see some backing-off on the constant leaks and attempts to delegitimize the Trump administration by Obama loyalists. That would work to the general benefit of everyone, even them, though they surely don't realize it. Still, the best thing for everyone would be for them to return to being a legitimate political opposition, and stop trying to overthrow the government through leaks and "narratives."

The MDCOA is that the investigation will turn up something that Team Trump can use to try to prosecute Obama loyalists, or worst of all, Obama himself. This is an extremely dangerous situation regardless of whether Obama deserves to be prosecuted or not. At that point the country will divide sharply, and turning back will be very difficult indeed. It could still be done -- Trump could magnanimously pardon Obama, and the two could shake hands and agree to respect one another henceforth. That isn't very likely, however. What is more likely is a heightened political division that would result in severe sheer stresses on the Republic.

Existential Threats and Lies

Harvard professor Charles Murray, most known for his book The Bell Curve, was invited to speak at Middlebury College in Vermont this past Thursday. Protestors disrupted the room and he was moved to a private room where he spoke via live web stream. After the protest, as he was leaving, a Middlebury professor who was escorting him was assaulted and injured.

“The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus.

“During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” Burger continued. “She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace.”

In the past, I've seen a number of comments from the right that the pajamaboys of the left can't really be dangerous, but I disagree. It's not like one of them is going to step up and challenge a conservative or libertarian to individual combat. No, when it happens, it will begin like this, hundreds of lefties surrounding the target, shouting hatred, someone pushing the target to the ground, and then a frenzied beating and stomping. God forbid, but that's where I see this trend heading.

But what was the protest about? Why did the protestors feel justified, even compelled, to attack? Before Murray spoke, apparently 500 alumni wrote a letter in beyond the green, which claims to be a student-run blog at Middlebury College. The claims in that letter are worth considering, so I will excerpt them at length.

Prof. Borjas on Immigration, Again

We've talked about Harvard Kennedy School economics professor George Borjas twice before at the Hall. Once when he wished Fidel Castro "Good riddance!" and again in the comments of a post on refugees as the author of a study on immigration.

Here he is recently at the NYT:

...

Over the past 30 years, a large fraction of immigrants, nearly a third, were high school dropouts, so the incumbent low-skill work force formed the core group of Americans who paid the price for the influx of millions of workers. Their wages fell as much as 6 percent. Those low-skill Americans included many native-born blacks and Hispanics, as well as earlier waves of immigrants.

... 

The National Academy of Sciences recently estimated the impact of immigration on government budgets. On a year-to-year basis, immigrant families, mostly because of their relatively low incomes and higher frequency of participating in government programs like subsidized health care, are a fiscal burden. A comparison of taxes paid and government spending on these families showed that immigrants created an annual fiscal shortfall of $43 billion to $299 billion.

...

Similarly, the ideological climate that encouraged assimilation back then, neatly encapsulated by our motto “E pluribus unum” (Out of many, one), is dead and gone. A recent University of California directive shows the radical shift. The university’s employees were advised to avoid using phrases that can lead to “microaggressions” toward students and one another. One example is the statement “America is a melting pot,” which apparently sends a message to the recipient that they have to “assimilate to the dominant culture.”

Europe is already confronting the difficulties produced by the presence of unassimilated populations. If nothing else, the European experience shows that there is no universal law that guarantees integration even after a few generations. We, too, will need to confront the trade-off between short-term economic gains and the long-term costs of a large, unassimilated minority.

...

He points out that Trump's answer to the immigration question is to put Americans first, and asks a poignant question.

Many of my colleagues in the academic community — and many of the elite opinion-makers in the news media — recoil when they hear that immigration should serve the interests of Americans. Their reaction is to label such thinking as racist and xenophobic, and to marginalize anyone who agrees.

But those accusations of racism reflect their effort to avoid a serious discussion of the trade-offs. The coming debate would be far more honest and politically transparent if we demanded a simple answer from those who disagree with “America First” proposals: Who are you rooting for?

Personally, I think he's casting his pearls before swine, but maybe this is how the conversation starts. There are some sensible people at Harvard, and at the Ivies in general. They are just a minority, and they're not usually the loud ones.

Poker Card Shootout

I've hit upon a new thing, inspired by the local rifle team, of setting up a poker card for my first set of practice shots. Not my last, at the end of the session. Not a set after I've warmed up and gotten into it. The very first six out of the very first cylinder, because that's how you're going to shoot -- at best -- in the field.

These were at forty feet.

Working Men

Secretary of Interior off to Good Start

Sea, land, air, horseback.

At Least McCarthy Was Worried About a Deadly Enemy

The Russians are not our friends, to be sure. They have their own interests, to be sure. They violated the sovereignty of an allied and friendly nation, Georgia, when they seized south Ossetia. Georgia's army was unable to resist in part because a large portion of it was deployed in Iraq alongside American forces at the time. At some point, we owe both the Georgians and the Russians a debt over that.

On the other hand, Russia is not formally our enemy. The Communists meant to destroy America, and indeed the whole capitalist world. The Russians want a regional hegemony. There are plenty of things that are in Russia's interests that are also in our own, such as encouraging energy development and trying to figure out how to tamp down Islamist terrorism.

Watching people go after Jeff Sessions for being a Russian agent today -- Jeff Sessions! -- is like watching the Red Scare play itself out again, only without an Evil Empire that really does intend to destroy the United States.

It's not just that the accusation is contrived, as the written context for the oral questions clearly established that Sessions wasn't being asked about his work with Senate Armed Services. It's not just that the Hillary Clinton State Department played the same games with Putin that Putin was playing with Hillary. It's not just that Russian intelligence collection efforts aimed at the Trump campaign mirror CIA collection efforts aimed at the Socialists in France, which the CIA did for perfectly legitimate reasons of national interest.

No, this is chasing after Russian spooks even where it is completely implausible that they exist. Sessions may have moderated his tone on Russia in order to align himself with the Presidential campaign he was supporting, but that doesn't change the fact that he's been one of the biggest Russia hawks in DC forever and a day.

Meanwhile, as W.R. Mead was recommending recently, why not look at the actions of the Trump administration to see how friendly it really is to Russia?

Is all this paranoia indicative of self-medication by the defeated elite?

Seamus Heaney's Translation of Beowulf

Part 1

Part 2

Pagan metal

Maybe Ash Wednesday isn't the best day to showcase a proudly heathen band, but I do like this music. Although the band seems to have some connection to the Netherlands, its vocalists are Northmen of various sorts, channeling the old culture.

Trump Channels Malory

... lexicographer Kory Stamper, who writes and edits dictionary definitions for Merriam-Webster, wants it known that bigly is a real word — even if it’s not the word Trump meant to use.

...

Stamper offers a brief history of the word bigly. This adverb came into use around 1400 and stuck around for roughly 500 years. It has been used two different ways over the centuries.

The first meaning, says Stamper, was to mean “with great force or violently or strongly.” It appeared in such fashion in the classic King Arthur tale Le Morte d’Arthur, published way back in 1485: “So roughly and so bigly that none might withstand him,” wrote Sir Thomas Malory.

The second meaning, which has been more popular in recent centuries, means “boastfully, haughtily or proudly.” Thomas Hardy put it to use in his 1874 novel Far From the Madding Crowd: “I don’t see that I deserve to be put upon and stormed out for nothing, concluded the small woman bigly.”

So, yes, let's cut taxes with great force, indeed.

The Lenten Prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian

O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk.

But give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to Thy servant.

Yea, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions, and not to judge my brother, for blessed art Thou, unto ages of ages. Amen.

Bear and Wolf

A beautiful series of photographs, capturing a surprising pair.

DB: Pentagon Cadence Study

"We know the saying: train like you fight," said Evans. "So why are you going to be chanting something that you're never going to encounter in a combat environment?"

According to Evans, the drive to overhaul cadences came when after-action reports from the 75th Ranger Regiment on the popular multi-service "C-130 Rolling Down a Strip" cadence showed that not only did Airborne Rangers' chutes not open wide, but when the reserve failed they were not able to go after Satan.

"Most couldn't even penetrate the ground," according to Evans...

Good news about napalm, though.

The Elite Smokestack in Britain

We have a problem here in America that I was recently discussing as the problem of the cursus honorum. All our leadership thinks alike, because nearly all of them went to Ivy League schools, then Ivy League grad schools, Ivy League law, then Wall Street or a ladder in government.

It's even worse in Britain. As the Guardian points out, the UK's government is almost wholly led by people who graduated from one university, Oxford, with exactly the same degree: Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE).

These schools, including Oxford, are not necessarily bad schools. They may well deserve much of the accolades and respect that attaches to them. But they produce tokens of a type, and that type has its own biases, and places where its mind is closed.

Of course, that view is the very reason that "diversity" arguments are floated at these very institutions: the idea is that more people from different backgrounds should undergo exactly the same education. What is needed is diversity on the other end, in terms of electing and appointing leadership.

That kind of diversity would undermine the existence of these schools, however. So much of what they do is built around producing the leadership class, which then hallows their position by sending its offspring back to the very same schools.

First Amendment Update

A Georgia couple is facing a combined 35 years in prison today after flying Confederate flags at a black child's birthday party. The longest sentence, 20 years with 13 years mandatory prison time, is technically for "aggravated assault," although it actually sounds less like assault and more like the misdemeanor offense of pointing a weapon. The state managed to convict on three counts of aggravated assault in spite of the absence of an actual assault.

The group was prosecuted under the Street Gangs Terrorism and Prevention Act, on the strength of the fact that they were part of a named group ("Respect the Flag"). In other words, organizing for a political purpose -- a protected 1st Amendment free association liberty -- now opens you to prosecution as a street gang.

Although the prosecutor denies that their choice to fly the Confederate flag in any way relates to the incredibly harsh sentences for a nonviolent confrontation, the judge described the confrontation as "a hate crime."

Georgia doesn't have a law against "hate crimes."

It looks a lot like the judge chose to accept a theory of prosecution under which free expression and free association are aggravating factors. The protected political freedoms, in other words, are themselves the reason why a misdemeanor is transformed into a 20 year felony. They chose to create a group to pursue a political agenda, and the fact that they had a group name is what lets them be prosecuted as a "street gang." They chose to fly flags and speak disapproved words, and that's what allows them to be convicted of "aggravated assault" instead of "pointing a weapon." They were convicted of the hate crime, in other words, that exists in the judge's mind even though it does not exist in the law.

AVI often says that we never get to pick the things we have to defend, and here's a good example. Doubtless these people are rednecks, probably they are racists, and nevertheless their protected liberties have been transformed by the state into crimes. That has to be opposed, even if the people involved are not particularly worthy of respect.

UPDATE: According to NPR, the sentence extends even to banishment.

UPDATE: This reminds me of a story I've been thinking about for a few days, but that I only know firmly know what to think about. Arizona has been considering a law to apply racketeering laws to political organizations whose protests become violent. This also allows the government to treat people who have come together to express a political opinion as a criminal organization, if at any point there is an altercation about it.

These are serious threats to important First Amendment freedoms.

Of Course

Headline: "Ex-Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee, gun control champion, heading to prison for weapons trafficking."

His organized crime associates know perfectly well that gun crime works better when the victims are disarmed.

The Kitchen They Called Hell

Sword and Sorcery Future

Wretchard writes that we are returning to an age of magic.

This, though, should not be a surprise. King Arthur came after the Roman age, not before it. A few years earlier, and Tacitus was writing his histories. A few years later, and you might ride out into a dark and mysterious forest and encounter a giant or a dragon.

I only wish I were younger again. But maybe I shall be.

Declassified Commie Jokes

No, really. The Agency apparently collected them like we'd collect "atmospherics" in Iraq. They just declassified a bunch of them.

Sentence from a schoolboy’s weekly composition class essay: “My cat just had seven kittens. They are all communists.” Sentence from the same boy’s composition the following week: “My cat’s seven kittens are all capitalists.” Teacher reminds the boy that the previous week he had said the kittens were communists. “But now they’ve opened their eyes,” replies the child.

I guess this is the week for Communist jokes, because I just ran across this one the other day.

American Legion Riders Unwelcome

We are extremely grateful to all of our active military members and veterans and are honored to have them as valued guests in any of our locations.

“Our dress code, which prohibits evidence of gang affiliation, is in place to ensure that everyone is able to enjoy themselves in a fun and safe environment. Though we understand that the American Legion promotes a positive mission, for consistency reasons we cannot allow motorcycle jackets displaying patches or rockers.

Seems like there's a well-known quote about foolish consistency.

This is roughly like deciding that, since you don't like fascists, and fascists wore uniforms, you won't allow anyone in uniform to eat in your place. Boy Scouts, cops, soldiers, nuns... we have to be consistent about providing that 'fun and safe' no-uniform environment!

Morons.

If They're 3,000 Years Old, They're Not Scottish

Headline: "Archaeologists Uncover 3,000-Year-Old Scottish Weapons Under Soccer Field Site."

Preach It

I have seen, in Catholic churches, minimalist Stations of the Cross that hardly can be recognized as depictions of the Passion. I have seen crosses that look as if a modernist Jesus were flying with wings outspread, like a theological pterodactyl. I have seen the Eucharist relegated to what looks like a broom closet. I have seen a baptismal font that bubbles. I have seen beautifully tiled floors, with intricate cruciform patterns, covered over with plush red carpet.

I have heard for decades effeminate “hymns” with the structure and melody of off-Broadway show tunes. I have read hymn texts altered so as to obliterate references to God with the personal pronoun “He.” This music would not be acceptable for a jingle to sell jelly doughnuts on television.

I have seen and heard enough.

This One's Going to be a Hard Sell

ISIS: Cannibalism is halal!

I'd love to see the argument, because I have a feeling that one is a stretch too far. Sex slavery of infidel women, yes, I can see the argument for that one. Eating human beings, well, I'm not sure how they're going to get there. But hey, let's keep an open mind and see what they have to say.

Talent Creates Conflicts of Interest

COL(R) David Johnson points out that our country is losing a lot of talent because government ethics officers are so worried about conflicts of interest. The more talented you are, however, the more likely you are to have created something that will result in a conflict of interest if you should enter government:

As part of his effort to eliminate conflicts of interest, Viola was negotiating the sale of his majority share in Eastern Air Lines for part ownership of Swift Air. Ironically, this divestiture created another conflict. The New York Times reported that Swift Air is “a charter company with millions of dollars in hard-to-track government subcontracts,” and that Viola “would find himself in the precarious position of being a government official who benefits from federal contracting.” More broadly, “his airline negotiations bring an unexpected twist, showing that even when appointees try to sell assets, the transactions can be bedeviled with ethical issues.” Viola withdrew his nomination.

Viola is yet another example of the costs one’s success can impose on those who seek to enter public service. Nevertheless, in the eyes of ethics lawyers in the government, it is an open and shut case. It is also a high-profile case where the conflicts are easy to identify yet the remedies by the individual, difficult to provide.

There may be other reasons to prefer a different candidate, of course. Still, there's a point to be made here. Aren't the people who have succeeded in creating successful businesses often going to be the very people we want?

"Drastic Cuts" Has Such A Nice Sound

Of course, "drastic" is in the eye of the beholder. My guess is that anything less than a continually-increased EPA budget will strike many as "drastic."

Germania

DB Headline: "‘We’re making real progress,’ say last 17 commanders in Afghanistan."

Publius Cornelius Tacitus, Germania, chapter 37:

It was on the six hundred and fortieth year of Rome, when of the arms of the Cimbrians the first mention was made, during the Consulship of Caecilius Metellus and Papirius Carbo. If from that time we count to the second Consulship of the Emperor Trajan, the interval comprehends near two hundred and ten years; so long have we been conquering Germany.

When You're Right, You're Right

Apropos of the last post:

Challenge: "Design a wearable solution that can keep women safe."

Accepted: "Didn't Col. Colt and John Moses Browning take care of this over a century ago?"

Turns out. Equality is a function of the firearm.

Women With Guns

Subtitled "the newest threat to the Democratic party," this article takes note of the increasing popularity of shooting among American women and wonders about its effect on electoral politics.

Well, anyone who believes the Second protects a real and vital right is going to have trouble finding Democrats to vote for right now.

Hunting, she said, "has always been a gender-neutral sport, and I think more and more women are realizing they want to be part of the adventure and the advantages of being able to feed your family with your own hands.

"Women have a tendency ... to not only feel but behave much more confidently when they know they are not only able to provide food for the table but also be able to protect ourselves."

Protecting the constitutional right to bear arms has driven women like her to vote for political candidates who are Second Amendment advocates.

"It was the leading reason that I voted for Donald Trump last November," Croney says. "He gave voice to a strong support of Second Amendment rights when he released his picks for the Supreme Court during the campaign [and] he followed that up, true to his word, with his pick of Neil Gorsuch."

Navy SEALs Granted Tartan

You might wonder why the US Navy SEALs would want a Scottish tartan. I do not have the answer to that question, although I did know a SEAL who was a prominent figure at the Grandfather Mountain Scottish Highland Games at one time.

In any case, a surprisingly large number of members of US military units have registered them in honor of their particular branch of service. The United States Marine Corps has the Leatherneck Tartan, which you can get in two quite different shades as you prefer. The US Army has a tartan, as do the US Special Forces, the US Army Rangers, and US Army Civil Affairs. The US Navy has a tartan as well. The US Air Force has one for the service, and one for its Reserve pipe band. Even the US Coast Guard has a tartan.

I'm probably even missing a few.

I guess a lot of Americans of Scottish heritage serve in the armed forces. In any case, though you rarely see a servicemember wearing a kilt outside of a Scottish Highland Games, it's more common than not for the option to exist.

Subsidies

The Heritage Foundation has claimed that the average annual benefits paid to Illegal-Alien Headed Families is $24,721. Wretchard asks the right question which is, "Isn't this a subsidy to employers who can hire for less because the govt pays more?"

It sure is.

It used to be the case that the Forsyth County Sheriff's Department paid such low wages that deputies were eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, and all sorts of other assistance from the state and Federal governments. The county commission argued that they were being good stewards of our tax dollars by getting a great deal on law enforcement paychecks.

In a way that was true: they had hit upon a successful scheme to push part of the cost of employing a deputy off onto taxpayers from outside the county (indeed, from across the entire nation). However, it was never clear to me why anyone in Oregon (say) should help pay the freight for local law enforcement from which they obtained no benefit whatsoever.

What's the benefit that we taxpayers obtain from high levels of illegal immigration? I know what benefit the corporations obtain, and what benefit the Democratic Party expects. But what's in it for us who are paying for it?

Patton

Turns out the famous speech that opens the movie was a highly-edited version of a speech Patton regularly gave. You can read the original, in all its profane glory.

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.