Calexit
A small problem for that vision of the future in which California is the model for the whole United States. What if people would rather be free?
Disney Princesses & Abortion
A very sad piece by a woman who worked for Disney as a "princess," who did in fact have an abortion. I forward it because she ends up endorsing a thought that Chesterton also endorses, and that I reflect on myself from time to time: that the old fairy tales are reliable.
The stories little girls need to continue to hear are already exemplified in the fairy tales that teach us about goodness and truth. It has always been the witches plotting to confuse the princesses, attempting to lure them away from their noble pursuits ... Cinderella, battling through unplanned circumstances as an orphan in the fire before being transformed into a sparkly princess and future queen, is a story that brings hope and teaches us about true empowerment. It’s a story of making something beautiful out of the life surprises that threaten to burn us.I think you're forbidden to suggest that there are "evil women" in the world, or that they bear responsibility for the harms caused by their words. But it is a prominent feature of the old stories, for what are doubtlessly wicked and patriarchal reasons.
Cinderella’s crown represents victory over the lies of evil women that told us we were dirty girls destined to sit in the cinders rather than future monarchs destined to rule. Princess fairy tales have lasted ages and teach women about goodness, mercy, kindness, power, perseverance, and strength in a world trying to whistle songs of death past little ears.
Jacksonian Foreign Policy
An interview with one David Reaboi, a former member of the "New York city avant garde" jazz scene, until he was present at 9/11. Present at the creation, as it were. His insights on foreign policy thought on the right are worth hearing.
Update on British Self-Defense Case
From no less than Kim du Toit, we learn that the police have decided not to prosecute the elderly man who successfully defended himself from home invasion. However, the police are also not doing much to protect him against apparent revenge attempts by the career criminal relatives of the dead invader.
So in defending himself from two murderous intruders, he now has to live his life cowering behind boarded-up windows, in fear of reprisal from the dead asshole’s relatives; because while the Britcops are very efficient in arresting the law-abiding, they’re completely incompetent when it comes to protecting them. And of course, there is no way in hell Our Hero is ever going to be allowed to own a shotgun to protect himself....
So when our local would-be gun controllers confiscators talk about “reasonable U.K.-style gun laws”, please note that this would be one of the outcomes for us law-abiding folks.
Viking Sunstones
A detailed article on the subject of the legendary stones.
The team simulated 3600 voyages taken during the spring equinox, the presumed start of the open seas travel season, and the summer solstice, the longest day of the northern year....
When navigators took readings every 4 hours, their ships reached Greenland between 32% and 59% of the time. Readings every 5 or 6 hours meant the ship had a dramatically poorer chance of making landfall. But for voyages on which the seafarers took sunstone readings at intervals of 3 hours or less, ships made landfall between 92% and 100% of the time, the researchers report today in Royal Society Open Science. In addition to the frequency of readings, key to a successful journey was using the sunstone for an equal number of morning and afternoon readings, the researchers say. (That’s because morning readings can cause a ship to veer too far northward and afternoon readings can cause it to veer too far southward, sometimes missing Greenland altogether.)
Privilege
An idea isn't necessarily bad just because the person who came up with it is rich or privileged in certain ways. However, there is a valid criticism when -- as here -- the idea's plausibility depends on the very access to wealth or privilege that isn't always present for others.
There is another issue around the analogy between police and maids. I imagine the police wouldn't appreciate being analogized to maids for the rich, but they do sometimes speak of 'cleaning up the streets.' They don't mean this literally, in terms of sweeping the sidewalk. They mean they are arresting and throwing people into prison, so that those people -- in the analogy, the trash -- are not on the streets anymore. Who are those people who are analogically 'trash'? Not the rich!
So the issue isn't just that the suggestion is 'have the maid do it' when not everyone can afford a maid. Another issue is that not everyone can rely on the maid to think of them as one of her clients.
Of course, one could counter-argue that no one would benefit from a good maid as much as those who currently find themselves surrounded by trash. Surely that's true, as long as the maid is reliable in discerning the trash from the clients who need help with the cleaning.
Fact-checking the fact-checking
Well, this is very meta, but seems a useful tool. Real Clear Politics analyzes the methods of a number of fact-checking organizations such as Politifact and Snopes.
A New Model for Sportswriting
There's some promise here.
When I worked at NHL.com, we had to write these “Why the [TEAM NAME] will win the Stanley Cup” pieces before every postseason that were just nightmares, especially when you didn’t believe what you were writing... We were guaranteed to get 15 of 16 of these stories wrong every spring yet we did them anyway.I don't know much about the current state of hockey, but the model he's hit upon is clearly valid.
Six years later, I’ve found the perfect antidote to that insufferable optimism—telling you why your team isn’t going to win the Cup. I’m guaranteed to get 15 of 16 correct! You can’t beat those odds!
A voice and a heart
From a Gutenberg project I'm working on, this excerpt from Browning's An Epistle Containing the Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, an Arab Physician, "the startled utterance of
the Syrian contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth":
"... think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-great were the All-loving too!
So through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying: "O heart I made, a heart beats here!"
The NRA and Race
It's a point we've featured here before, but it's worth hearing it again.
The NRA, from its very beginnings, took seriously the issue of black Americans' right to defend themselves with firearms. The worst that can be said about them is that they could do more, for example in cases like Philando Castile's; but that wish for more happens in a context in which very few are doing anything to protect their rights at all. Many, in fact, are doing the best they can to strip their rights away.
The NRA, from its very beginnings, took seriously the issue of black Americans' right to defend themselves with firearms. The worst that can be said about them is that they could do more, for example in cases like Philando Castile's; but that wish for more happens in a context in which very few are doing anything to protect their rights at all. Many, in fact, are doing the best they can to strip their rights away.
Nonsense, Mr. Khan
"There is never a reason to carry a knife"? The knife is one of the most universal tools in human history. There are hundreds of reasons to carry a knife, which is why everyone everywhere has typically done so.
Self-defense is a valid reason, for that matter. The collapse of order in your city, Mr. Khan, is a more than adequate reason by itself. But for goodness sake, don't try to sell me on "never." I carry a knife everywhere, and I find it endlessly useful. Other people who have neglected to carry a knife very regularly ask to borrow mine.
Why don't you try establishing a civilization in which you don't have to ban ordinary useful tools in order to have peace and good order? The British used to know how to do that.
Middle-Earth Announces Heavy Tariffs On Narnian Imports
MINAS TIRITH, GONDOR—Kicking off a major trade war between the two
kingdoms, the Middle-Earth Trade Federation has announced heavy tariffs
on the import of Narnian steel, sending the stock market into a freefall
Thursday...
Happy Dance
Speaking of MercyMe ...
I had a teacher once who told me, "I can't sing worth anything, but I can sure make a joyful noise."
I had a teacher once who told me, "I can't sing worth anything, but I can sure make a joyful noise."
The Left's Enemies Must Be Crushed
The head of Twitter endorsed this article on eliminating the political opposition, so you might want to read it.
It's not well-argued, and there's almost nothing of value in its extremely loose historical analogies. The endorsement thus isn't based on the notion that this is a tightly argued piece that maps out a plausible way forward. The endorsement is of the overarching vision of a nation where only Democrats exercise political power, where Republicans and conservatives are as powerless as in California, and where 'the wrong side' is crushed and subordinated.
California accomplished this, the author says, so the nation as a whole can as well. There are in fact substantial road blocks to doing that in the rest of the country, but you might usefully ask how California became so reliably Democratic. The answer is straightforward: Democrats endorsed mass immigration, Republicans opposed it, and the massive number of immigrants voted for Democrats as a result. It's actually completely unlike the historical analogues chosen by the author, i.e., the Civil War and the FDR era that arose in the Great Depression. Those political outcomes were the result of calamities that persuaded people to accept a new order. In California, they just imported enough new voters to tip the scales.
California also exported a lot of Republican voters, of course, as they fled the state for Texas or other friendlier climes. In the envisioned scenario, there would be nowhere to go.
It's not well-argued, and there's almost nothing of value in its extremely loose historical analogies. The endorsement thus isn't based on the notion that this is a tightly argued piece that maps out a plausible way forward. The endorsement is of the overarching vision of a nation where only Democrats exercise political power, where Republicans and conservatives are as powerless as in California, and where 'the wrong side' is crushed and subordinated.
California accomplished this, the author says, so the nation as a whole can as well. There are in fact substantial road blocks to doing that in the rest of the country, but you might usefully ask how California became so reliably Democratic. The answer is straightforward: Democrats endorsed mass immigration, Republicans opposed it, and the massive number of immigrants voted for Democrats as a result. It's actually completely unlike the historical analogues chosen by the author, i.e., the Civil War and the FDR era that arose in the Great Depression. Those political outcomes were the result of calamities that persuaded people to accept a new order. In California, they just imported enough new voters to tip the scales.
California also exported a lot of Republican voters, of course, as they fled the state for Texas or other friendlier climes. In the envisioned scenario, there would be nowhere to go.
The Great Leveler
On Jordan Peterson's recommendation, I'm about to start "The Great Leveler," an attempt to analyze how much income inequality has occurred from 9,000 B.C. through the present. The general consensus is that the author is descriptivist not prescriptivist and has no political agenda to push. His overall conclusion is that income inequality is persistent, interrupted only by cataclysms like war and pestilence, which foster an equality by general immiseration.
It's interesting to read the most positive and negative reviews, as I usually do before taking a chance on a book: about the same number of negative reviewers object that his political bias is obvious. Some, however, object that he is betraying a bias to the left by arguing that inequality must be bad, without explaining why or noting that what's important is how tolerable life is for those on the bottom. Others object that he is betraying a bias to the right by arguing that equality can be achieved only by violent disaster, whereas all sensible and compassionate people know that inequality occurs only when bad men use violence. The positive reviews tend to find him apolitical, whether the reviewer betrays a disposition towards the left or the right. The author himself apparently offers no suggestions other than to be careful what we wish for.
It's interesting to read the most positive and negative reviews, as I usually do before taking a chance on a book: about the same number of negative reviewers object that his political bias is obvious. Some, however, object that he is betraying a bias to the left by arguing that inequality must be bad, without explaining why or noting that what's important is how tolerable life is for those on the bottom. Others object that he is betraying a bias to the right by arguing that equality can be achieved only by violent disaster, whereas all sensible and compassionate people know that inequality occurs only when bad men use violence. The positive reviews tend to find him apolitical, whether the reviewer betrays a disposition towards the left or the right. The author himself apparently offers no suggestions other than to be careful what we wish for.
"I'm the Majority" - the Law Abiding Citizen
Four minutes that perfectly explain the gun issue. Thank you Mr. Mark Robinson of Greensboro, North Carolina. I'll say no more and just get out of his way...
Pueblo Sin Fronteras
More looking-glass-world news coverage this week. President Trump announced that there would be some really unpleasant consequences to Mexico if a caravan of illegal immigrants from Central America were ushered politely through Mexico to the southern U.S. border, and magically, they called the march off and dumped the participants into Mexico City. Now it seems that there is an annual caravan of this type, organized by a group called "Pueblo Sin Fronteras" (People Without Borders), whose website asks for donations but doesn't give any information about where it's based or who runs it. PSF explained that the halt had nothing to do with Trump, whatever you might have assumed, but was a rational response to the fear of the dangers of an arduous train ride that normally forms the next link in this standard trek.
You might think that the news coverage would stress the fact that this is an annual organized attempt to challenge the U.S. borders and to spin up favorable news coverage for open-border enthusiasts, but instead the coverage is . . . strange. This NBC story, for instance, explains that President Trump is misleading everyone into thinking that there's a large organized group of illegal immigrants being shepherded through Mexico on their way here, because it's really an annual publicity stunt that's been going on for years, what's the big deal? Snopes takes the same strange view: you may have heard that there's a caravan, etc., but a quick look at the facts shows that it's just the usual annual, etc. What's more, no one is planning an illegal entry. Instead, they intend to ask for asylum, as usual. It's true that, in order to ask for asylum, they have to present themselves to immigration officials inside the U.S., having first crashed the border, but what's the big deal? Why is Trump being a meanie all of a sudden? The whole purpose of the annual march is to highlight the plight of people on an annual march to crash the U.S. border, and suddenly you guys want to make it harder?
I think "People Without Borders" is a better description of us than of the organization that organizes the annual caravans. PS, as the Washington Examiner points out, there is also an American organization called People Without Borders that facilitates assimilation of legal immigrants, but it is getting flak from people who have confused it with Pueblo Sin Fronteras. PSF's Facebook page is short on background but identifies itself as an "International Migrant Outreach Collective," whose "product" is "humanity."
You might think that the news coverage would stress the fact that this is an annual organized attempt to challenge the U.S. borders and to spin up favorable news coverage for open-border enthusiasts, but instead the coverage is . . . strange. This NBC story, for instance, explains that President Trump is misleading everyone into thinking that there's a large organized group of illegal immigrants being shepherded through Mexico on their way here, because it's really an annual publicity stunt that's been going on for years, what's the big deal? Snopes takes the same strange view: you may have heard that there's a caravan, etc., but a quick look at the facts shows that it's just the usual annual, etc. What's more, no one is planning an illegal entry. Instead, they intend to ask for asylum, as usual. It's true that, in order to ask for asylum, they have to present themselves to immigration officials inside the U.S., having first crashed the border, but what's the big deal? Why is Trump being a meanie all of a sudden? The whole purpose of the annual march is to highlight the plight of people on an annual march to crash the U.S. border, and suddenly you guys want to make it harder?
I think "People Without Borders" is a better description of us than of the organization that organizes the annual caravans. PS, as the Washington Examiner points out, there is also an American organization called People Without Borders that facilitates assimilation of legal immigrants, but it is getting flak from people who have confused it with Pueblo Sin Fronteras. PSF's Facebook page is short on background but identifies itself as an "International Migrant Outreach Collective," whose "product" is "humanity."
Amazing Grace
This song in one form or another has come up in my life several times over the last week. Might as well put the Dropkick Murphy's version up.
I Can Only Imagine
Also a good movie, though of the two I preferred "Paul, Apostle of Christ."
If you aren't familiar with it, the song "I Can Only Imagine" launched MercyMe's career in the Christian music world and I believe is the best-selling Christian single ever.
If you aren't familiar with it, the song "I Can Only Imagine" launched MercyMe's career in the Christian music world and I believe is the best-selling Christian single ever.
UK Holds 78 Year Old For Defending Himself
A pensioner in London is under arrest after stabbing one of two men who invaded his home and assaulted him.
The injustice of this is apparently not obvious to British authorities. One begins to suspect it is the desired future for some of our fellow Americans, too.
The injustice of this is apparently not obvious to British authorities. One begins to suspect it is the desired future for some of our fellow Americans, too.
The California Secession
States control their own ballots for their own state and local elections, and they can let non-citizens vote if they want to do. However, in Federal elections, they must ensure that only citizens vote. If they knowingly register non-citizens to vote without ensuring that those non-citizens can be excluded from Federal elections, they're out of order. What's to be done about it?
Imagine a better alternative. Suppose that President Trump announces today that the new California law has made all future elections unconstitutional and illegal, because foreigners are now allowed to tilt the outcome. Neither he nor the Republican House and Senate will accept the credentials of anyone elected by California (one of eight states, incidentally, that have more registered voters than voting-age citizens).I can imagine that, but what's the mechanism for not counting the votes of Presidential electors appointed by California? Does the Office of the Federal Register have the authority to do that? Would they exercise it?
Imagine after November's vote that California's two Democratic senators and 53 members of Congress (39 of whom are Democrats) are not seated until a new California election purges all illegal aliens and other foreigners from the voter rolls in federal elections. No California presidential votes will be counted in 2020. Imagine the federal government requiring voter IDs and declaring it a felony punishable by permanent forfeiture of future U.S. citizenship if a non-citizen votes illegally in any federal election.
Two Against the Conventional Wisdom
This first one shouldn't be a surprise. Maslow's famous hierarchy of needs suggests that only people who have succeeded at fulfilling more basic needs will have attention for ideology. It takes a high degree of resources to have time and attention for the processes of radicalization, which involve study and thought. All the same, it will be a surprise, because the basic assumption of many is that some sort of actual injustice is behind radicalization: poverty and its resentments.
The second one isn't surprising either, since the numbers they're putting up mirror the population far better than the ones the NYT ran. In a high-stakes election like 2016, it makes sense that the population would turn out in numbers that are more representative than less. But, again, it'll be a surprise even though it shouldn't be.
The second one isn't surprising either, since the numbers they're putting up mirror the population far better than the ones the NYT ran. In a high-stakes election like 2016, it makes sense that the population would turn out in numbers that are more representative than less. But, again, it'll be a surprise even though it shouldn't be.
Swinging Hammers
London has surpassed New York in murder in spite of nationwide gun control laws that would make an American blush. So, what's next? "London mayor looks to Glasgow's anti-knife unit."
Not that there aren't already knife controls, too.
The UK has followed Pakistan and Bangladesh in introducing "acid control" laws aimed at common household chemicals, which for some reason people have been throwing in each other's faces.
Whether this succeeds or fails, expect to be reading soon about "hammer control laws" and "common-sense limits on how large a rock you can own." Unfortunately the only way to make the rocks smaller is with hammers, so those laws will be a bit at cross-purposes.
Not that there aren't already knife controls, too.
The UK has followed Pakistan and Bangladesh in introducing "acid control" laws aimed at common household chemicals, which for some reason people have been throwing in each other's faces.
Whether this succeeds or fails, expect to be reading soon about "hammer control laws" and "common-sense limits on how large a rock you can own." Unfortunately the only way to make the rocks smaller is with hammers, so those laws will be a bit at cross-purposes.
The Interesting Story of Otto Skorzeny
How Otto Skorzeny Went from Hitler's Favorite Commando to Israeli Hitman
It's a compelling story, though possibly his funerals gave me the biggest surprise.
Of course they would. But I have this naive ... feeling ... that after WWII ended and the horrors of the holocaust were revealed, the Nazi veterans would have been too ashamed to give the Nazi salute or celebrate Hitler. I know that's not true or realistic, but it's still there.
It's a compelling story, though possibly his funerals gave me the biggest surprise.
On July 5, 1975, Otto Skorzeny died at the age of 67 from lung cancer. He had two funerals, one in Madrid, and the other at his family plot in Vienna. At both, he received a full Nazi send-off with Nazi veterans giving him the Nazi salute and singing some of Hitler’s favorite songs.
Of course they would. But I have this naive ... feeling ... that after WWII ended and the horrors of the holocaust were revealed, the Nazi veterans would have been too ashamed to give the Nazi salute or celebrate Hitler. I know that's not true or realistic, but it's still there.
Ugly's Son
The surname MacLeod (pronounced mc-loud) (Scottish Gaelic: MacLeòid) means son of Leod. The name Leod is an Anglicization of the Scottish Gaelic name Leòd, which is thought to have been derived from the Old Norse name Ljótr, meaning ugly.The man might be, but the pipes are not.
Easter
I can't improve upon AVI's Easter post, which brought attention to an aspect of the story I hadn't thought about before. I'll simply refer you to it.
Happy Easter, all.
Happy Easter, all.
The Big Short
I just finished listening to The Big Short, which was pretty good. It was odd not to hear the least mention of the role of the Community Reinvestment Act in the mania to issue loans that no one seriously expected to be repaid. It also was odd, in all the discussion of the confusion of guys going short who wondered "who are the crazy people who are taking the long side of this bet?"--never hearing any mention of the appetite of Fannie Mae et al. in buying up the junk mortgages. Possibly they had a smaller role than I had gathered. In every other ways, it's a very informative discussion of how structured finance worked and how deliberately opaque all the terms were. There is a more comprehensible explanation of how badly the rating agencies dropped the ball, and the consequences of their dereliction, than I've seen before.
Back on this Side of the Sea
The trip to the desert went as well as could be hoped, and better than expected. I’ve touched down on American soil, and with one more hop will be home.
Special thanks to Thomas for remembering Zell Miller. Though I never met him, he was an important man in my life. I wish we had many more like him. He will be missed. His kind is passing from the world. They will all be missed.
Special thanks to Thomas for remembering Zell Miller. Though I never met him, he was an important man in my life. I wish we had many more like him. He will be missed. His kind is passing from the world. They will all be missed.
A Nice Set and an Interview with Nathaniel Rateliffe
Earlier this month, Seattle KEXP had the band on to play a few tunes and to interview them. Apparently, they were getting ready to pack it in and get jobs when the song SOB took off. The songs are from the new album, I believe.
A two-minute hate for "privatization" and "Kochs"
This Politico coverage of the sacking of VA secretary Shulkin is bizarre. I must be so far in the conservative echo chamber that I'd lost sight of how even moderately leftist people view the dangers of allowing vets to go outside the nonfunctional VA system to get actual care from actual private doctors. To Politico, apparently, this is "privatizing VA benefits while leaving taxpayers with the bill." If the point is to provide vets with benefits, I'm at a loss to see what's wrong with using taxpayer funds to pay private doctors. Isn't that what Medicare does, or theoretically does? Usually we see complaints about the juxtaposition of "privatizing" with "taxpayer" funds when it's a pseudo-investment, as in infrastructure, and the upside is on the private side while the downside is left to the taxpayers.
Google Actually Has More Data on Us than My Paranoia Had Suggested
Over in The Guardian, Dylan Curran goes through many of the different kinds of data Google has on its users and how that data is collected. Some interesting bits:
He gives links to see Google's files on you for each of these kinds of data, and others. Creepily, Google apparently keeps information you have deleted.
And then ...
Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you’ve been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone. ...
Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices. ...
Google stores all of your YouTube history ...
Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I’ve requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.
This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve taken on your phone, the businesses you’ve bought from, the products you’ve bought through Google …
They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you’ve purchased, the Google groups you’re in, the websites you’ve created, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day …
He gives links to see Google's files on you for each of these kinds of data, and others. Creepily, Google apparently keeps information you have deleted.
And then ...
Manage to gain access to someone’s Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.I thought I might have avoided some of this by not being logged in to Google most of the time, which is a good step. Then I noticed that when I visit this blog, I always have the option to post, and thus must be signed in. Oh well. Guess I'll change that now.
Falconry, Kidnapping, and Syria
Robert F. Worth has an interesting article in the New York Times about a band of kidnapped Qatari falconers and the ransom paid for them. Here is a taste:
A week later, the money still impounded, the Qatari team left Baghdad in the same jet that had brought them. They were now accompanied by two dozen Qataris, including members of the ruling Al Thani family, who had been kidnapped during a hunting trip in southern Iraq 16 months earlier. The story of what happened on that trip has not been reported until now. It entails a ransom deal of staggering size and complexity in which the Qataris paid vast sums to terrorists on both sides of the Middle East’s sectarian divide, fueling the region’s spiraling civil wars.
...
To Arab falconers, the houbara bustard — a bug-eyed, long-legged creature about the size of a large chicken — is the king of game birds. It is a fast flier with an unusual defense: When cornered, it vomits an oily green substance that can temporarily blind an attacking falcon or hobble its wings. In the days before oil was discovered in the Arabian desert, the houbara’s seasonal return every fall was met with celebratory poetry and long hunts on camelback. The Land Rover made things a lot easier, but chasing the houbara, whose stringy flesh is said to be an aphrodisiac, remains one of the hallowed pursuits — along with thoroughbred stallions, huge yachts and French chateaus — that occupy the minds of Persian Gulf royalty.
In late November 2015, a large group of Qatari falcon hunters left Doha in a column of 4-by-4 vehicles and headed south. Crossing the Saudi border, the convoy turned north, traversing a portion of Kuwait and continuing on to their destination, the southern desert of Iraq, 450 miles from Doha ...
Rest in Peace, Zell Miller
Zell Miller passed away last Friday.
Miller served his nation in the Marines, then served the State of Georgia as a state senator, lt. governor, governor, and US senator. He was a lifelong Democrat who, in my opinion, did what he believed was best for the nation rather than his party.
He also wrote some interesting books. Two that might interest those at the Hall are A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat and Purt Nigh Gone: The Old Mountain Ways, a book about Appalachian history and culture.
Miller served his nation in the Marines, then served the State of Georgia as a state senator, lt. governor, governor, and US senator. He was a lifelong Democrat who, in my opinion, did what he believed was best for the nation rather than his party.
He also wrote some interesting books. Two that might interest those at the Hall are A National Party No More: The Conscience of a Conservative Democrat and Purt Nigh Gone: The Old Mountain Ways, a book about Appalachian history and culture.
Remembering who got elected
I've always liked John Bolton.
Ronald Reagan famously said that no war in his lifetime ever started because America was too strong.
Scott Pruitt strikes again
The man environmentalists love to hate has instituted the un-heard-of rule that EPA regulations must be based on public data. Is there no end to the science-bashing by Trump appointees?
Curling and Cars
I am only showing this video ...
because it makes this one funnier ...
although I do have to feel bad for the folks caught in that.
because it makes this one funnier ...
although I do have to feel bad for the folks caught in that.
Crimean Tom
Today, Wikipedia's "Did you know ..." section mentioned a hero of the Crimean War. From the full entry on Crimean Tom:
During the Crimean War British and French forces captured Sevastopol from the Russians on 9 September 1855 after an almost year-long siege. Lieutenant William Gair of the 6th Dragoon Guards, who was seconded to the Field Train Department as a deputy assistant commissary, led patrols to search the cellars of buildings for supplies. Gair noticed a cat, covered in dust and grime, that was sat on top of a pile of rubbish between two injured people. The cat, unperturbed by the surrounding commotion, allowed himself to be picked up by Gair. The cat, estimated to have been 8 years old when found, had survived within the city throughout the siege.
Gair took the cat back to his quarters and he lived and ate with a group of British officers who initially named him Tom and later Crimean Tom or Sevastopol Tom. The occupying armies were struggling to find supplies, especially of food, in a city much-deprived by the year-long siege. It is said that the officers noticed how fat Tom was getting and realised he must have been feeding off a good supply of mice nearby. Knowing that the mice may have been themselves feeding off hidden Russian supplies they followed Tom to an area cut off by rubble. Here, they found a storeroom with food supplies that helped to save British and French soldiers from starvation. Tom later led the officers to several smaller caches of supplies near the city docks.
St. Patrick's Day Movie Recommendations
So the family has decided that we are to stay in this evening and watch a movie.
I'm well equipped with Guinness and Tullamore Dew, and my lovely Mrs. has prepared some fine corned beef.
I can think of a few obvious suggestions for St. Paddy's Day movies- The Quiet Man for instance, but I think I'd get vetoed on that one.
I suspect you all might have some suggestions...
So?
I'm well equipped with Guinness and Tullamore Dew, and my lovely Mrs. has prepared some fine corned beef.
I can think of a few obvious suggestions for St. Paddy's Day movies- The Quiet Man for instance, but I think I'd get vetoed on that one.
I suspect you all might have some suggestions...
So?
With Dems like this . . . .
If the Democrats take back the House or Senate with Democrats like Conor Lamb, what will the House and Senate look like?
[W]ill Democrats run moderates who demand Nancy Pelosi resign and who hail their Second Amendment cred in other races this year, all of whom refuse to criticize Donald Trump? Will they even run one more challenger who follows the Lamb pattern? Not terribly likely, which is why Lamb’s win may not mean much at all seven months down the road.On the other hand,
[L]et’s not pretend he was basically a Righty. He opposes the tax cuts, supports Big Labor, opposes Obamacare repeal, opposes mainstream abortion restrictions (despite his pro-life song and dance), and is strongly opposed to entitlement reform. He’ll be a fairly reliable vote for the Democrats on most issues, even if he was strategic about playing up certain cultural differences.
Sleazy FBI agents
This kind of thing really does not look good.
Newly discovered text messages obtained by The Federalist reveal two key federal law enforcement officials conspired to meet with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) judge who presided over the federal case against Michael Flynn. The judge, Rudolph Contreras, was recused from handling the case just days after accepting the guilty plea of President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser who was charged with making false statements to federal investigators.
The text messages about Contreras between controversial Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) lawyer Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, the senior FBI counterintelligence official who was kicked off Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, were deliberately hidden from Congress, multiple congressional investigators told The Federalist. In the messages, Page and Strzok, who are rumored to have been engaged in an illicit romantic affair, discussed Strzok’s personal friendship with Contreras and how to leverage that relationship in ongoing counterintelligence matters.
“Rudy is on the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court]!” Page excitedly texted Strzok on July 25, 2016. “Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”
“I did,” Strzok responded. “I need to get together with him.”
“[He] said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at.”
Contreras was appointed to the top surveillance court on May 19, 2016, federal records show.
The pair even schemed about how to set up a cocktail or dinner party just so Contreras, Strzok, and Page could speak without arousing suspicion that they were colluding. Strzok expressed concern that a one-on-one meeting between the two men might require Contreras’ recusal from matters in which Strzok was involved.
“[REDACTED] suggested a social setting with others would probably be better than a one on one meeting,” Strzok told Page. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to invite you to that cocktail party.”
“Have to come up with some other work people cover for action,” Strzok added.
Review: Birra Etrusca
Dogfish Head brewery, in partnership with Birra del Borgo and Baladin, and biomolecular archeologist Patrick McGovern, have produced a reproduction of an ancient ale from the 8th century B.C. This, as far as they can tell, is what people in Italy drank before the arrival of wine.
It may be hard to imagine Italy before wine, which is itself of great antiquity. Indeed wine itself is at least eight thousand years old. However, it did not exist everywhere eight thousand years ago, and it is currently thought to have been spread into the Mediterranean regions of Europe by the Phoenicians. By the time of Homer, of course, wine was already a mental fixture in southern Europe.
The drink is refreshing, fruity in character. It features hazelnut flour as well as wheat (of heirloom varieties, they note, although I doubt any of our heirloom wheats are as old as the beverage they're aiming at here). It draws additional sugars for fermentation from honey and pomegranates, plus other fruits.
If you come across a bottle, and you're interested in exploring ancient things, it's worth a try.
It may be hard to imagine Italy before wine, which is itself of great antiquity. Indeed wine itself is at least eight thousand years old. However, it did not exist everywhere eight thousand years ago, and it is currently thought to have been spread into the Mediterranean regions of Europe by the Phoenicians. By the time of Homer, of course, wine was already a mental fixture in southern Europe.
The drink is refreshing, fruity in character. It features hazelnut flour as well as wheat (of heirloom varieties, they note, although I doubt any of our heirloom wheats are as old as the beverage they're aiming at here). It draws additional sugars for fermentation from honey and pomegranates, plus other fruits.
If you come across a bottle, and you're interested in exploring ancient things, it's worth a try.
Irony
My meter is pegged.
From The Blaze:
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/974355843515895808
Eric Hines
From The Blaze:
https://twitter.com/theblaze/status/974355843515895808
Eric Hines
Leaders and the led
Arthur Herman on "Why Tillerson Had to Go":
Trump thought he was getting a lion in Tillerson. Instead, he was getting a Saint Bernard. Like the breed, Tillerson may be large and imposing at first glance; but he is no fighter, least of all against the bureaucratic mentality that permeates the U.S. State Department.
Here we can stipulate a third point. Virtually every secretary of state since Cordell Hull has suffered one of two fates. Either he or she becomes the president’s representative to the bureaucracy — and when necessary the ruthless enforcer of the chief executive’s will in Foggy Bottom — or he or she becomes the bureaucracy’s representative to the president, and assumes the role of bringing the State Department’s views to the chief executive’s attention — even at times serving as an advocate of those views.
Profiling
More than one profile, really. Scientific American gives this one:
According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.But there's another profile that these men fit: they're particularly good citizens.
These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives.
Crime rates involving gun owners with carry licenses have consistently been about 0.02% of all carry permit holders since Florida’s right-to-carry law started in 1988.... People with concealed carry licenses are:Its as if they respect the rights of others -- in spite of all those alleged crises of meaning and stuff.
5.7 times less likely to be arrested for violent offenses than the general public
13.5 times less likely to be arrested for non-violent offenses than the general public
Better "17s"
A public school teacher of my long acquaintance posed this the other day. I didn't understand the "17" reference until today, but the 'protests' made a lot of the 17 because that was the number of people killed while police on the scene absolutely refused to do their jobs and stop murders in progress.
Unlike the 'protests,' here are some things students could do that might actually make a difference.
That's all probably too hard. Virtue signalling is easier, especially when the path has been paved for you by adult organizers.
Unlike the 'protests,' here are some things students could do that might actually make a difference.
That's all probably too hard. Virtue signalling is easier, especially when the path has been paved for you by adult organizers.
Reason Magazine: "No."
Today, all across the country, adults who oppose the 2nd Amendment are herding school children out before cameras to pose with signs suggesting that the students oppose gun rights. Reason magazine has a thoughtful answer.
Where this lands us is that even if today's protesters get their way and legislators vote to impose restrictions on gun ownership and self-defense, that doesn't mean that those of us who value those rights will change our conduct. Statutes aren't like the law of gravity—we get to choose whether we're going to abide by them, or else actively oppose them and sabotage their enforcement....The same people in favor of gun confiscation argue that immigration laws shouldn't be enforced by local police because the consequent refusal to talk to police will make policing that community impossible.
The track record on disobeying such laws is very clear. Residents of Connecticut and New York defied requirements that they register their so-called "assault weapons." Gun owners in Colorado ignored mandates that they pass all their person-to-person sales through the background check system. Even the French and Germans flip the bird to laws that gun-haters can only dream of imposing in the United States, owning millions of illegal firearms that supporters of restrictions wish they didn't have.
Exercising your liberty in total contradiction to restrictive laws is a good thing, by the way. Nothing limits the power of the state like the outer boundaries of people's willingness to do what they're told. ...
I don't begrudge today's protesters their right to voice their opinions, even as they call for restrictions on my own rights. Their rights to free speech and free assembly are, after all, among the rights that aren't subject to popular opinion or debate. I even wish them good weather and a pleasant experience.
But they need to be aware that, just as I would never try to impose limits on their liberty, I and people like me will never submit to the restrictions that they demand.
How's Your Hearing?
A sociologist talks to rural voters for eight years. His results?
Sounds like they've got their candidate for 2020 all lined up, though. She, at least, sees the world just the very same way that they do.
Robert WuthnowI'd have thought you'd have had to have worked harder at something before it tired you out.
They believe that Washington really does have power over their lives. They recognize that the federal government controls vast resources, and they feel threatened if they perceive Washington’s interest being directed more toward urban areas than rural areas, or toward immigrants more than non-immigrants, or toward minority populations instead of the traditional white Anglo population.
Sean Illing
But that’s just racism and cultural resentment, and calling it a manifestation of some deeper anxiety doesn’t alter that fact.
Robert Wuthnow
I don’t disagree with that.
...
Sean Illing
I’m still struggling to understand what exactly these people mean when they complain about the “moral decline” of America. At one point, you interview a woman who complains about the country’s “moral decline” and then cites, as evidence, the fact that she can’t spank her children without “the government” intervening. Am I supposed to take this seriously?
Robert Wuthnow
It’s an interesting question. What does it mean for us to take that seriously?
...
Sean Illing
Which is why I’d argue that the divide between rural and urban America is becoming unbridgeable. We can talk all we like about the sanctity of these small communities and the traditional values that hold them together, but, as you say, many of the people who live in these places hold racist views and support racist candidates and we can’t accommodate that.
Robert Wuthnow
Yes, this is one of the most difficult aspects of the discussion we’re now having about morality in America. What counts as moral varies so much from place to place. In the South, for example, you have clergy who are vehement about abortion or homosexuality, and they preach this in the pulpits every Sunday. But then they turn a blind eye to policies that hurt the poor or discriminate against minorities.
Sean Illing
I know a lot of people who don’t live in rural America are tired of being told they need to understand all these resentments.
Sounds like they've got their candidate for 2020 all lined up, though. She, at least, sees the world just the very same way that they do.
Road Trips
I'm home today, but I've been on the road an awful lot lately. More to come! It's pretty exhausting.
In point of fact, the next two or three months look pretty exhausting.
All the same, good things come to those who work for it -- well, at least, that's the way to lay your bets.
In point of fact, the next two or three months look pretty exhausting.
All the same, good things come to those who work for it -- well, at least, that's the way to lay your bets.
The Shape of Water
I saw the movie The Shape of Water recently. I really only have a couple of comments about it.
First, it seems to be a remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, only if the creature were the good guy.
Second, a quick way to get a grasp on the politics of a movie is to look at who the bad guys are. If the bad guys are essentially normal, patriotic Americans dressed up with evil motivations and disgusting habits, you're watching a left-wing movie. A somewhat less-frequently-helpful method is to see who the good guys are.
In Shape, both methods are useful. The bad guys are US government agents and soldiers during the early Cold War. The good guys are a mute woman, a black woman, a Soviet scientist / spy, a gay man, and the creature.
There's more that could be said, but I'll leave it at that.
First, it seems to be a remake of The Creature from the Black Lagoon, only if the creature were the good guy.
Second, a quick way to get a grasp on the politics of a movie is to look at who the bad guys are. If the bad guys are essentially normal, patriotic Americans dressed up with evil motivations and disgusting habits, you're watching a left-wing movie. A somewhat less-frequently-helpful method is to see who the good guys are.
In Shape, both methods are useful. The bad guys are US government agents and soldiers during the early Cold War. The good guys are a mute woman, a black woman, a Soviet scientist / spy, a gay man, and the creature.
There's more that could be said, but I'll leave it at that.
Forest for the Trees
In testimony last November before the panel, Erik Prince was questioned extensively about the January 2017 Seychelles meeting and whether it was an attempt to set up secret communications between the Trump administration and Russia. As Prince furiously denied that was the case, he also did not reveal that George Nader -- a Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East specialist with ties to the Trump team -- also attended at least one meeting there, raising fresh questions among Democrats about whether Prince misled the panel when testifying under oath.If the meeting had been about "setting up secret communications between the Russians and the Trump administration," that would mean that there were not any extant communications. The meeting was in January 2017, only days before Trump would become President. Where's the 2016 collusion if he had to set up back-channel comms at as late a date as this? If you prove the thing you're asking about, you've proven that 2016 collusion probably didn't exist.
A possible counter argument: perhaps they'd had such comms before, but they'd become compromised and had to be abandoned. If that were the case, though, the same intelligence community that's been leaking like a sieve here would have leaked this too.
Dispatches from Kennesaw
I passed by Kennesaw, Georgia last night on my way home from the Dropkick Murphys concert near Atlanta. (If you have the opportunity, they put on a great live show.) It's now a full-fledged suburb of Atlanta, not the quiet little town it was when it first adopted the law described in this article.
“In Kennesaw, Georgia, local law says that ‘every head of household residing in the city limits is required to maintain a firearm.’The violent crime rate is below two percent all these years later.
"‘If you're going to commit a crime in Kennesaw and you're the criminal -- are you going to take a chance that that homeowner is a law-abiding citizen?’ asked Kennesaw Mayor Derek Easterling."
Runoff
The Texas primaries were today. In my four-way race, I came in first by 3 votes and will face a run-off on May 22 with the guy in second place. We both got about 32% of the vote. The other guys got 24% and 12%. Since the fellow I'm running against is basically the establishment candidate, I like my chances for picking off the votes of the other two.
Otherwise, all the incumbents in my county were re-elected, despite all the talk about the upheaval because of the storm. The seat I'm running for is open, as the current commissioner elected not to run again.
Otherwise, all the incumbents in my county were re-elected, despite all the talk about the upheaval because of the storm. The seat I'm running for is open, as the current commissioner elected not to run again.
Against Conformity
An academic from 'low backgrounds' asserts her claim not to have to adopt the mores that rule in the Ivory Tower.
The image is no longer unsullied simplicity but befouled by bigotry, misogyny and cruelty. This too is a stereotype, and one that, however different, achieves force precisely in its distance. I wrote about this just after the 2016 presidential election, and was surprised by how quickly the contempt directed at the poor rural voter came my way. A friend of mine summed up the new atmosphere: ‘No one wants to read about poor rural people struggling to walk upright.’ This too works to keep the ivory tower pristine, for even fewer now are likely to confess low origins.
Academia’s representations of the poor and rural inspire an oppositional impulse in me – a resistance to seeing people like mine as people like that, as people tidily captured, whether quaint or corrupt, pitiable or pitiless. Assimilation in academia entails the denial of one’s own experience and history. It demands epistemic sacrifice, a willingness to shed complexity and, along with it, possibilities. It’s the possibilities I begrudge the most.
Stripping out the Christianity
There's a piece at the Federalist arguing against the authenticity of the new "A Wrinkle in Time."
To take just one example, consider the centrality of Christianity to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Malory's sources are clear about Arthur's status as a Christian king. The whole book is built around the Christian liturgical year, so much so that you won't realize that scenes take place in winter or spring except by the feasts cited. The Quest for the Holy Grail makes up the dramatic center of the work, beginning at the high water mark of the secular Arthurian kingdom and hastening its downfall as so many knights -- successful at establishing worldly goods and attaining worldly virtue -- are destroyed by the pursuit of spiritual perfections of which they fall far short. Though the destruction of Arthur's kingdom is eventuated by Lancelot and Guinevere's sin, and Gawain's sin of pride and wrath in pursuing vengeance against them, the pursuit of the Holy Grail weakened the kingdom as a practical power; it stored up treasures in heaven for the martyrs, but at substantial earthly cost.
Yet go and find any version of the Arthurian story told since the 1970s, and you'll find that some sort of paganism is presented as the real moral core of the work. Arthur is secretly a worshiper of Mithras, or really the hero(ine)s were pagan goddess worshipers, or Merlin was secretly a pagan and guided Arthur around a benighted Christianity, or....
Indeed, the one easy counterexample is Tolkien. Tolkien's great work differs in that it barely makes reference to the Christianity it nevertheless assumes as basic to its structure. This seems to have been a conscious decision on Tolkien's part. You can engage with Frodo and Sam's quiet faith based on the stars being beyond Sauron's reach; you don't need to believe in a transcendent God. You can examine the heroism of Gimli and Legolas, or their friendship across differences of species and culture and history. Aragorn's acceptance of his need to strive heroically against the winds of fate is noble in a way that a Roman or a Viking would appreciate. Only occasionally, in the whispers of Gandalf, do you get the idea that there is a hidden power directing the world, a "Secret Fire" before whose worn and tired servants even Balrogs cannot prevail.
Even at the end of the book, you have only received a hint that Gandalf is one of those beings like the 'Wrinkle in Time' messengers. If you don't read further into the legendarium, you'll never be told that Gandalf is not just a 'wizard,' but a Maiar, a kind of lower angel. Tolkien hid it for them, for reasons of his own.
Lee seems to feel that the Christian faith of L’Engle is not a big deal, and that it’s something that should be moved on from.... A story by a Christian author who made deliberate choices to incorporate Christian themes in a story about good vs. evil is a story with Christianity as a central theme, not just some minor element to be shrugged off.The culture as a whole is trying hard to shrug off Christianity, so it's not surprising that they wish to do so here. Nor is this the first time this has happened. Though C. S. Lewis (mentioned in the piece) and L'Engle were explicitly attempting to tell Christian fairy tales that would reinforce the faith, other authors for whom Christianity was central have also seen it stripped of its place in their works.
The Christianity of “A Wrinkle in Time” is not implied or subtle, but rather masterfully and beautifully interwoven throughout the whole story. It’s a shame if the motivations and understandings of the characters are stripped from them. At the climax of the book, when the main character, Meg, is discouraged and needs hope, it is the Bible that is quoted to her: “The foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”
To take just one example, consider the centrality of Christianity to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. Malory's sources are clear about Arthur's status as a Christian king. The whole book is built around the Christian liturgical year, so much so that you won't realize that scenes take place in winter or spring except by the feasts cited. The Quest for the Holy Grail makes up the dramatic center of the work, beginning at the high water mark of the secular Arthurian kingdom and hastening its downfall as so many knights -- successful at establishing worldly goods and attaining worldly virtue -- are destroyed by the pursuit of spiritual perfections of which they fall far short. Though the destruction of Arthur's kingdom is eventuated by Lancelot and Guinevere's sin, and Gawain's sin of pride and wrath in pursuing vengeance against them, the pursuit of the Holy Grail weakened the kingdom as a practical power; it stored up treasures in heaven for the martyrs, but at substantial earthly cost.
Yet go and find any version of the Arthurian story told since the 1970s, and you'll find that some sort of paganism is presented as the real moral core of the work. Arthur is secretly a worshiper of Mithras, or really the hero(ine)s were pagan goddess worshipers, or Merlin was secretly a pagan and guided Arthur around a benighted Christianity, or....
Indeed, the one easy counterexample is Tolkien. Tolkien's great work differs in that it barely makes reference to the Christianity it nevertheless assumes as basic to its structure. This seems to have been a conscious decision on Tolkien's part. You can engage with Frodo and Sam's quiet faith based on the stars being beyond Sauron's reach; you don't need to believe in a transcendent God. You can examine the heroism of Gimli and Legolas, or their friendship across differences of species and culture and history. Aragorn's acceptance of his need to strive heroically against the winds of fate is noble in a way that a Roman or a Viking would appreciate. Only occasionally, in the whispers of Gandalf, do you get the idea that there is a hidden power directing the world, a "Secret Fire" before whose worn and tired servants even Balrogs cannot prevail.
Even at the end of the book, you have only received a hint that Gandalf is one of those beings like the 'Wrinkle in Time' messengers. If you don't read further into the legendarium, you'll never be told that Gandalf is not just a 'wizard,' but a Maiar, a kind of lower angel. Tolkien hid it for them, for reasons of his own.
The Powers of a King
Conservative Review points out that yesterday was supposed to be the end of the DACA program, except that the courts have so far said that the President isn't allowed to end a program created purely by the action of the previous President.
1) The Iran Deal was a treaty governing nuclear weapons that was effected without any input from the legislature -- the Corker-Cardin bill set up a means for Congress to express disapproval, but Democrats in the Senate filibustered a vote, so no vote was ever taken on approval or disapproval. The 2/3rds majority consent, required by the language of the Constitution, wasn't seriously considered as a standard the Obama administration would attempt to meet.
2) The 'denizens of aliens' was the intent of DACA. The courts are merely affirming Obama's right to rule as king, such that his successor by democratic election may not undo his fiat.
3) At this point most of the regulations on commerce originate in the executive. At some point the legislature consented to the delegation of its authority to the executive, and now most things affecting commerce that have the force of law are created undemocratically by the executive bureaucracy.
Serious problems, all, and it's just one paragraph of one of the Federalist papers.
UPDATE:
Oh, and as for the power of declaring war, Obama's actions in Libya never once passed any sort of 'by your leave' by Congress.
Yet thanks to a political system that has crowned district judges the kings of our society, the very underpinnings of the self-governing nation established in the Declaration of Independence have now been abandoned. We have district judges who can unilaterally make denizens of aliens – the power of a king, according to Alexander Hamilton in Federalist #69.The relevant section of Federalist 69 is about why a president is preferable to a king.
The President of the United States would be an officer elected by the people for FOUR years; the king of Great Britain is a perpetual and HEREDITARY prince. The one would be amenable to personal punishment and disgrace; the person of the other is sacred and inviolable. The one would have a QUALIFIED negative upon the acts of the legislative body; the other has an ABSOLUTE negative. The one would have a right to command the military and naval forces of the nation; the other, in addition to this right, possesses that of DECLARING war, and of RAISING and REGULATING fleets and armies by his own authority. The one would have a concurrent power with a branch of the legislature in the formation of treaties; the other is the SOLE POSSESSOR of the power of making treaties. The one would have a like concurrent authority in appointing to offices; the other is the sole author of all appointments. The one can confer no privileges whatever; the other can make denizens of aliens, noblemen of commoners; can erect corporations with all the rights incident to corporate bodies. The one can prescribe no rules concerning the commerce or currency of the nation; the other is in several respects the arbiter of commerce, and in this capacity can establish markets and fairs, can regulate weights and measures, can lay embargoes for a limited time, can coin money, can authorize or prohibit the circulation of foreign coin. The one has no particle of spiritual jurisdiction; the other is the supreme head and governor of the national church! What answer shall we give to those who would persuade us that things so unlike resemble each other? The same that ought to be given to those who tell us that a government, the whole power of which would be in the hands of the elective and periodical servants of the people, is an aristocracy, a monarchy, and a despotism.I've highlighted three areas in which we've gone astray.
1) The Iran Deal was a treaty governing nuclear weapons that was effected without any input from the legislature -- the Corker-Cardin bill set up a means for Congress to express disapproval, but Democrats in the Senate filibustered a vote, so no vote was ever taken on approval or disapproval. The 2/3rds majority consent, required by the language of the Constitution, wasn't seriously considered as a standard the Obama administration would attempt to meet.
2) The 'denizens of aliens' was the intent of DACA. The courts are merely affirming Obama's right to rule as king, such that his successor by democratic election may not undo his fiat.
3) At this point most of the regulations on commerce originate in the executive. At some point the legislature consented to the delegation of its authority to the executive, and now most things affecting commerce that have the force of law are created undemocratically by the executive bureaucracy.
Serious problems, all, and it's just one paragraph of one of the Federalist papers.
UPDATE:
Oh, and as for the power of declaring war, Obama's actions in Libya never once passed any sort of 'by your leave' by Congress.
Some Appropriate Music for Leaving DC
Or, music for expressing one's feelings towards the governing class after a week of examining their exploits. It puts a man in a mood.
Language warning.
I'm back in the true South now, headed for home.
Language warning.
I'm back in the true South now, headed for home.
Trekking Through DC
I'm away north for a bit, trying to wrestle with some of the things I can affect within our national government. I'll be back in a while, perhaps by the weekend.
The weird hormone argument
USA Today follows a trend I'm seeing more often in recent years, to explain human failings in terms of testosterone. When the father is absent from the home, we're told, young men can't channel their innately destructive male hormones. Now it seems, however, that even young women don't do well in fatherless homes, and we can hardly blame their unchanneled testosterone for that. Nor does it make much sense to blame the testosterone of the absent father, which presumably isn't polluting the home from his new location across town or a couple of states away.
What does this leave? The mother, who is still present? Does she have toxic hormones?
Such a lot of silliness to avoid the idea that having both a mother and father present is a pretty good idea whenever you can pull it off, and not because of their complex chemical interactions.
What does this leave? The mother, who is still present? Does she have toxic hormones?
Such a lot of silliness to avoid the idea that having both a mother and father present is a pretty good idea whenever you can pull it off, and not because of their complex chemical interactions.
Not a bad argument
The problem with twisting legal arguments into a pretzel is that that loose may come back around and kick you in the butt:
A coalition of 20 states has filed a lawsuit alleging ObamaCare is unconstitutional.
They’re claiming that since the GOP eliminated the tax penalty associated with the individual mandate, that ObamaCare itself is no longer constitutional. …
The GOP tax law “eliminated the tax penalty of the ACA, without eliminating the mandate itself. What remains, then, is the individual mandate, without any accompanying exercise of Congress’s taxing power, which the Supreme Court already held that Congress has no authority to enact,” the complaint states.
“Not only is the individual mandate now unlawful, but this core provision is not severable from the rest of the ACA—as four Justices of the Supreme Court already concluded.”
What's a guy gotta do to get arrested in Broward County?
“We’ve accomplished reducing the arrests. Now it’s ‘how do we keep that up without making the schools a more dangerous place.’"
The thing that goes down
Once again we face the spectacle of legislators writing bills about weapons they know nothing of. They may as well outlaw weapons that are scary or icky.
The problem with public-sector unions in a nutshell
From HotAir, better today than it's been lately:
The authors are correct in citing the cost of these retirement packages as a problem. It’s the primary driver which has nearly sunk New Jersey’s state government and embroiled Chris Christie throughout his entire tenure as governor. So one way to look at this (if you happen to be a liberal) is to say, as the authors do, that strong unions are able to push back against cuts to benefits.
Well, that’s a dandy solution if you happen to be one of the people receiving those benefits or planning your retirement around them. But it doesn’t do anything for the tens of millions of people in the private sector who have little chance of landing a job that offers anywhere near that level of retirement stability. It also does nothing to magically make more money appear in state and municipal budgets to cover these skyrocketing expenses. The authors attempt to claim that such expensive pension plans are justified because “many public-sector jobs offer lower salaries than their private-sector counterparts. As a result, public employees tend to have far more stable and secure retirements than similarly situated private-sector workers."
No citation is offered for this incredible claim. If you look long and hard, you can probably find a handful of cases where it’s true, but for the most part and in nearly all cases, public sector workers earn more than their private-sector counterparts. And I did offer a linked citation for that. Perhaps even more embarrassingly, it’s from… The Washington Post.
What they should have been asking was why there was never anyone at the table arguing on behalf of the taxpayers when these labor agreements were originally crafted.
"Not according to this kid . . . aaaaaaaand I trust this kid"
Deputy Scott Peterson's counsel is floating the theory that he had a good reason not to go inside the Florida school building. It's not easy to square, however, with the eye-witness testimony of a horrified student.
Note the sequence of events described by senior Brandon Huff. He told reporters that Peterson didn’t move even while other teachers were running into the building, including Aaron Feis, who lost his life shielding his students.
Now you tell us
Senate Democrats are shocked, shocked to learn that politicizing the Supreme Court may not have been an ideal strategy.
“If stare decisis means anything, it must mean that a precedent should not be overturned simply because a differently composed court emerges,” the senators wrote. “Decision-making begins to look like prize-taking when precedents are reversed as Court majorities shift.” …
Col. Schlichter and the New Rules
I like Kurt Schlichter's stuff, generally speaking. Right now he is pushing government regulation of businesses going against conservatives:
The liberal elite is using its social and cultural ties to those at the helm of big companies to essentially blacklist the NRA, and thereby the tens of millions of Americans who support gun rights. But oppression is oppression whether it’s done by a government bureaucrat or a corporate one, and our principle of non-interference in business assumes business stays out of politics. But now National, Hertz, and others are cutting ties to the NRA, and liberals are advocating banks do the same. Their intent is clear – what they can't do in politics they will simply do by not allowing the representatives of people whose politics they don't like access to the infrastructure of society. And we're not supposed to do anything about it because, you know, free enterprise and stuff. You know, our principles.I think he has more of a point with companies like Google. Not giving a discount to a particular group isn't the same thing as denying its members "access to the infrastructure of society." On the other hand, an algorithm that keeps traffic away from a site because Google doesn't approve of its politics kinda does, to a point. Then again, there's always Duck Duck Go.
No. They are exercising political power. We have our own political power, and we need to exercise it - ruthlessly. ...
Ouch
"As long as but a hundred of us remain alive, never will we on any conditions be brought under English rule. It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself."
Lt. Gov. Casey Cagel, Ya'll.
If I have had one standing criticism of the government of the Great State of Georgia, it has been the degree to which it has bent over backwards to give away the rights of citizens in favor of corporate interests. On gun rights, on religious liberty, as on many other issues, once you knew what side Coca-Cola and Delta wanted to win, you knew what the Republican government would do -- no matter what their voters wanted, and no matter which constitutional right was being undermined by the action.
Not today.
Casey Cagel for Governor.
Not today.
Casey Cagel for Governor.
What they're teaching in the schools
A neighbor just told me her grandson's high school teacher is requiring the entire class to write a Congressman and demand gun control laws. There is no leeway in the position to be adopted, the penalty being a failing grade. I'm sorry to report that the fellow will be going along and even asked his grandmother not to complain directly to the school, for fear of retribution. He did say he was reporting the matter to his ROTC commander, so maybe something will come of that. Hey, I count my blessings that ROTC hasn't yet been run off the campus.
I told her the young man could at least write separately to the Congressman explaining the circumstances, so the congressional staff would know how little weight to place on the deluge of letters. This confused her at first; wasn't the teacher in charge of the mailing? Wouldn't she read all the letters and detect the heresy? At last I got across the message that the student could write separately, put it in his own envelope, affix a stamp to it, and put it in the mailbox himself. Good practice in learning how to communicate with his elected representatives. It sounds like she needed a refresher herself. I was very surprised how alien all this advice seemed to her. There is a fatal passivity, though she's quite a red-meat conservative.
I told her the young man could at least write separately to the Congressman explaining the circumstances, so the congressional staff would know how little weight to place on the deluge of letters. This confused her at first; wasn't the teacher in charge of the mailing? Wouldn't she read all the letters and detect the heresy? At last I got across the message that the student could write separately, put it in his own envelope, affix a stamp to it, and put it in the mailbox himself. Good practice in learning how to communicate with his elected representatives. It sounds like she needed a refresher herself. I was very surprised how alien all this advice seemed to her. There is a fatal passivity, though she's quite a red-meat conservative.
Trusting in Failure
The more we learn about what happened (and did not happen) in and around the recent mass murder, the more we are seeing that the institutions we erected to try and have some security simply failed to consider their primary functions in favor of more politically correct agendas, or simply exhibited cowardice.
-The School District enacted a progressive agenda to reduce the number of police interactions (arrests), which allowed the perpetrator to not be arrested and charged with assault, which would have red flagged him.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen refused to share information with State Social Services in their 2016 Investigation into the perps home.
-State Social Services failed to find anything actionable, or failed to act on actionable information in their 2016 investigation.
-The FBI failed to forward clear tips indicating a criminal threat.
-The FBI, five months earlier failed to act on an actionable criminal threat.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen was a coward, and perhaps also several other sheriff's deputies. (after watching this video- which implied that the coaches Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel, and Chris Hixon- ran past him to enter the building, while he stayed outside- I had to spend a few minutes on the heavy bag)
-Even now, it looks like the Broward Sheriff's office is in full CYA mode, rather than facing up to their apparently multiple and multi-valent failures. I commented to someone who said that the Sheriff needed to resign that 'if this were Japan, he'd be expected to do more than that'.
So at least three government agencies failed to take actions that might have prevented this event, some of them multiple times, but rather than raising the question of what the limits of just how well the government can protect us is, we're talking about guns, which we know is an issue that isn't moving anywhere and so is only crassly being used as a political cudgel, and in many cases, people hiding behind children to do it.
What we should be talking about are things like:
-Why aren't groups like No Notoriety getting any attention?
-How making these perps infamous potentially inspires others to emulate him
-How the media can help reduce the appeal of committing these acts
-How we can hold failures of the bureaucracy to account
-How we should deal with discipline in schools
-How we should be raising our kids, and especially our boys in a society that increasingly is devoid of fathers, or even father figures, such as God the Father.
-How a culture that values fame as if it were a virtue creates a hollowness in it's people
I think most of us here are of like mind, and understand these issues, but I just wanted to lay this all out somewhere, so please forgive my indulgence.
Since we've been again made to defend our Second Amendment rights yet again instead of actually dealing with the matters at hand, how about some appropriate music:
Grand Funk Railroad's "Don't let 'em Take Your Gun" (Produced by Frank Zappa)
Ted Hawkins- The Constitution
-The School District enacted a progressive agenda to reduce the number of police interactions (arrests), which allowed the perpetrator to not be arrested and charged with assault, which would have red flagged him.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen refused to share information with State Social Services in their 2016 Investigation into the perps home.
-State Social Services failed to find anything actionable, or failed to act on actionable information in their 2016 investigation.
-The FBI failed to forward clear tips indicating a criminal threat.
-The FBI, five months earlier failed to act on an actionable criminal threat.
-The Sheriff's SRO Petersen was a coward, and perhaps also several other sheriff's deputies. (after watching this video- which implied that the coaches Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel, and Chris Hixon- ran past him to enter the building, while he stayed outside- I had to spend a few minutes on the heavy bag)
-Even now, it looks like the Broward Sheriff's office is in full CYA mode, rather than facing up to their apparently multiple and multi-valent failures. I commented to someone who said that the Sheriff needed to resign that 'if this were Japan, he'd be expected to do more than that'.
So at least three government agencies failed to take actions that might have prevented this event, some of them multiple times, but rather than raising the question of what the limits of just how well the government can protect us is, we're talking about guns, which we know is an issue that isn't moving anywhere and so is only crassly being used as a political cudgel, and in many cases, people hiding behind children to do it.
What we should be talking about are things like:
-Why aren't groups like No Notoriety getting any attention?
-How making these perps infamous potentially inspires others to emulate him
-How the media can help reduce the appeal of committing these acts
-How we can hold failures of the bureaucracy to account
-How we should deal with discipline in schools
-How we should be raising our kids, and especially our boys in a society that increasingly is devoid of fathers, or even father figures, such as God the Father.
-How a culture that values fame as if it were a virtue creates a hollowness in it's people
I think most of us here are of like mind, and understand these issues, but I just wanted to lay this all out somewhere, so please forgive my indulgence.
Since we've been again made to defend our Second Amendment rights yet again instead of actually dealing with the matters at hand, how about some appropriate music:
Grand Funk Railroad's "Don't let 'em Take Your Gun" (Produced by Frank Zappa)
Ted Hawkins- The Constitution
Scandalous
According to Vice magazine,
Can you imagine that? Arming women and preachers?
Unfortunately the NRA isn't offering to put guns in their hands. They'd have to provide their own guns. The NRA is just supporting their right not to have to be disarmed and helpless.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before now, I've trained some several women to shoot for such purposes. It often occurs during or shortly after a divorce, when emotions are high on both sides. So far none of them have had to make recourse to their arms for self-defense because, as xkcd reminds us, most people aren't murderers even in moments of high emotion. However, it does sometimes happen that a former spouse tries to kill his ex-wife. It's neither unreasonable nor unwise for a woman in that position to consider arming herself, and I am happy to support it.
Can you imagine that? Arming women and preachers?
Unfortunately the NRA isn't offering to put guns in their hands. They'd have to provide their own guns. The NRA is just supporting their right not to have to be disarmed and helpless.
As I'm sure I've mentioned before now, I've trained some several women to shoot for such purposes. It often occurs during or shortly after a divorce, when emotions are high on both sides. So far none of them have had to make recourse to their arms for self-defense because, as xkcd reminds us, most people aren't murderers even in moments of high emotion. However, it does sometimes happen that a former spouse tries to kill his ex-wife. It's neither unreasonable nor unwise for a woman in that position to consider arming herself, and I am happy to support it.
Would You Believe -Four- Deputies?
Just how many Deputy Sheriffs would it have taken before they got comfortable enough to do their jobs and save the lives of the children dying in front of them? We'll never know, since they apparently waited for a different department to arrive and do the job the deputies would not do.
Asked about corruption in his department, by the way, the Sheriff said, "Lions don't care about the opinions of sheep." He did not explain how he knew anything about the opinions of lions, but we can clearly rule out any direct experience. The article suggests it was from watching Game of Thrones in his leisure hours, which seems much more plausible.
Asked about corruption in his department, by the way, the Sheriff said, "Lions don't care about the opinions of sheep." He did not explain how he knew anything about the opinions of lions, but we can clearly rule out any direct experience. The article suggests it was from watching Game of Thrones in his leisure hours, which seems much more plausible.
A Philosophical Reading of Walls
I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness of this essay on wall-building as fortification technique. It contains at least two insights that are very much worth having:
1) Advances in weapons and advances in defense technology tend to mirror each other,
2) No matter what, defense in depth is necessary.
The relationship in (1) is a little more complex than the author suggests. It's not that advances in walls provoke advances in weapons, but rather that a two-way relationship exists between attack and defense. I drew up a slide to explain this for a conference once.
This was just a sketch of the issue for an academic audience; the more expert audience here will readily identify complexities I didn't bother to draw for them. The basic point is that swords got longer, and then they got shorter. Why? Well, armor got better and better for a while, meaning that it required more force to overcome. A sword is basically a lever, and the longer the lever, the greater the force at the end of the lever. Thus, longer swords.
After the advent of effective gunpowder weapons, however, armor was increasingly less effective and less present. Thus, swords got shorter again. Indeed, to a large degree they were abandoned in favor of the gunpowder weapons. They survive today as combat knives and bayonets, both normally considered last-ditch weapons whose use is preferably to be avoided in most circumstances. There is at least one example of an intentional bayonet charge from the Iraq War, as a way of attacking into an L-shaped ambush, but it isn't a go-to tactic anymore.
To return to the first article, I am impressed with the way the author treats the universals at play in defense. As he notes at the end, the question of the usefulness of walls remains up for debate. "Plato reckoned that walls encourage 'a soft habit of soul in the inhabitants, by inviting them to seek refuge within it instead of repelling the enemy.' Aristotle retorted, that not building walls was 'like desiring the country to be easy to invade.' It’s still an open argument."
1) Advances in weapons and advances in defense technology tend to mirror each other,
2) No matter what, defense in depth is necessary.
The relationship in (1) is a little more complex than the author suggests. It's not that advances in walls provoke advances in weapons, but rather that a two-way relationship exists between attack and defense. I drew up a slide to explain this for a conference once.
This was just a sketch of the issue for an academic audience; the more expert audience here will readily identify complexities I didn't bother to draw for them. The basic point is that swords got longer, and then they got shorter. Why? Well, armor got better and better for a while, meaning that it required more force to overcome. A sword is basically a lever, and the longer the lever, the greater the force at the end of the lever. Thus, longer swords.
After the advent of effective gunpowder weapons, however, armor was increasingly less effective and less present. Thus, swords got shorter again. Indeed, to a large degree they were abandoned in favor of the gunpowder weapons. They survive today as combat knives and bayonets, both normally considered last-ditch weapons whose use is preferably to be avoided in most circumstances. There is at least one example of an intentional bayonet charge from the Iraq War, as a way of attacking into an L-shaped ambush, but it isn't a go-to tactic anymore.
To return to the first article, I am impressed with the way the author treats the universals at play in defense. As he notes at the end, the question of the usefulness of walls remains up for debate. "Plato reckoned that walls encourage 'a soft habit of soul in the inhabitants, by inviting them to seek refuge within it instead of repelling the enemy.' Aristotle retorted, that not building walls was 'like desiring the country to be easy to invade.' It’s still an open argument."
If you don't use a gun, what's the bother about?
I'm gonna predict that the hoopla over the massacre now goes away, if this is true:
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The armed school resource officer assigned to protect students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School took a defensive position outside the school and did not enter the building while the shooter was killing students and teachers inside with an AR-15 assault-style rifle, Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday.That, I initially supposed, might have been protocol, but if this quote from the sheriff is correct, I guess not.
He said Peterson was armed, and was in uniform, and should have gone into the building during the 6-minute event, which left 17 people, most of them teenagers, dead. When asked what the deputy should have done, Israel said: “Went in and addressed the killer. Killed the killer.”So what we have here, is a cascading failure of institutions. FBI, Sheriff's department, and likely the Federal government, due to the initiative to reduce minority teenage incarceration, the so called "school to prison pipeline" 39 visits from the cops, not a single arrest? I'm not even going to discuss the FBI, since that organization probably just needs to be disbanded at this point.
And Just Like That, The Story Changed
An officer was on the scene of last week's shooting. He hid.
But by all means, let's all disarm and trust the government to protect us and our children.
But by all means, let's all disarm and trust the government to protect us and our children.
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