Hating Dolly Parton

In the wake of the recent fires near Gatlinburg, Dolly Parton was on the scene to help people get back on their feet. She runs charities and a foundation that operate all the time, not only when there is a major disaster.

But, she like me is what AVI calls "Mountain Tribe," and if you were born in the Mountain Tribe but want to join the City Tribe, you have to prove your loyalty.

I needed to question Dolly Parton’s meaning in my and our lives.

I needed to confront Dolly Parton’s blinding, dazzling whiteness....

Her Appalachia is pure and white and heroic; her Appalachia is drained of white America’s sins....

She’s embraced by feminists and queer folks at the same time she is declared a queen by Confederate apologists. Dolly-as-mountain-girl anchors her to an ancestral white home in the imaginations of white people, while her class-conscious and gender-transgressive performance of whiteness becomes a signifier for white progressives who embrace gender fluidity and working-class iconolatry. She exhibits worldliness at the same she cloaks herself in the symbols of white nationalism.

Dolly Parton has built her empire on and with the debris of old, racist amusements and wrapped it in working-class signifiers and feminist politics. I ignored that fact for a long time because it didn’t fit the script of the feminist, working-class heroine I had conjured. But I also ignored how others’ attachment to Dolly is exactly because of her embrace of Dixie and her complex celebration of whiteness. And I have ignored how whiteness clings....

Dolly Parton’s mythical story-songs of a mountain childhood and her witty and glitzy hillbilly performance were the secret ingredient to Dollywood’s success and expansion — an expansion that requires the ecological demise of the mountains, that gobbles up tons of water, land, and bodies in order to simulate a white Appalachian past of real hillbillies that Americans love.... Does Dollywood and Dolly Parton herself rejuvenate whiteness, fueling it so that it rises up again and again in its Dixie-forms and in its Appalachia-(Scots-Irish-Anglo-Saxon-mountaineer)-forms?

Do half as much good as she has done, and then get back to me with your criticisms of her. But they'd better be stronger criticisms than this. I don't much love Pigeon Forge just because it's so fake; but what I do love are the real things the fakery symbolizes.

Parton is for real.

New meme rising

Some numbers are rendered inherently ridiculous by rash political claims, like George McGovern's standing behind soon-to-be-ex-running-mate Thomas Eagleton "1000%."  So I suspect Elizabeth Warren's DNA-test face-plant will be with us for a while.  Greg Gutfeld immediately claimed that he was 1/1024th Asian, which "is why I can't get into Harvard."  A poster is circulating asserting that Sen. Richard Blumenthal's own test reveals that he is 1/1024th Viet Nam vet.

Remember Ivory soap's 99.44% purity?  The impurities were 1/179th of the total.

Occupational Hazards

So there's kind of a big story going around about the Saudi government killing a "journalist," which would be a big human rights no-no, especially since they allegedly brought in a cleaner to dismember the body and ship the parts out of the country. That sort of thing isn't supposed to happen to journalists.

It does happen to spies, though.

Germany's leading right-of-center daily Die Welt this morning reveals that Jamal Khashoggi was not a journalist, but a high-level operative for the Saudi intelligence service, an intimate of Osama bin Laden, and the nephew of the shadiest of all Arab arms dealers, the infamous Adnan Khashoggi. John Bradley reported last week in the Spectator that Khashoggi, who allegedly met a grisly end in a Saudi consulate in Istanbul, was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist organization that among other things wants to replace the Saudi monarchy with a modern Islamist totalitarian state.

I can't decide if all the upset and hand-wringing in the press about this is because they can't tell the difference between a journalist and a spy trying to pass himself off as a journalist, or if they're just emotional wrecks who can't think strategically, or if they're actively being influenced by Iranian allies like Ben Rhodes. Whatever it is, get a grip. Spies die sometimes. They know what they're getting into when they start trying to overthrow governments. It's a risky business, especially if you're playing against pretty much any state that isn't in the Anglosphere or Western Europe. The Saudis aren't worse than China, or Russia, or Iran for that matter.

Should we press Saudi Arabia to reform politically and socially? Of course. Should we get bent sideways because they killed a spy who was a buddy of Osama bin Laden? Come off it.

The World Gets Closer to Gattaca

According to an article in Wired:

In 2013, a young computational biologist named Yaniv Erlich shocked the research world by showing it was possible to unmask the identities of people listed in anonymous genetic databases using only an Internet connection. Policymakers responded by restricting access to pools of anonymized biomedical genetic data. An NIH official said at the time, “The chances of this happening for most people are small, but they’re not zero.”

...

Those interlocking family trees, connecting people through bits of DNA, have now grown so big that they can be used to find more than half the US population. In fact, according to new research led by Erlich, published today in Science, more than 60 percent of Americans with European ancestry can be identified through their DNA using open genetic genealogy databases, regardless of whether they’ve ever sent in a spit kit.

Gattaca is a great movie, but not a society I want to live in, really.

Who Gets Told To Shut Up?

In an article on "Women and Power," Nancy Pelosi writes: "If they tell you to sit down, stay standing. If they tell you to shut up, speak louder."

ᚲᚾᚮᚣᛚᛂᛨᛕᛂ

An Austrian fellow won a libel suit against a woman who falsely accused him of sexual harassment. But that's not fair, writes the NYT:

What do you do if you are accused of sexual misconduct and believe yourself to be innocent?

If you’re Brett Kavanaugh, you go nuclear. But if you’re a progressive man who sees himself as a feminist ally, the politically acceptable strategy is to keep quiet and lay low. If you do anything at all, put out a statement saying you support the #MeToo movement, that it’s an overdue and necessary corrective, and that you are taking some time for self-reflection. Spend some months ordering takeout and avoiding parties where everyone is whispering about what they think you did....

Of the dozens of men accused of sexual misconduct this year, many proclaim their innocence. But Mr. Elliott is the first from the list who is known to have sued. Some apologized. Some denied and carried on. Others were subject to internal investigations and kept their jobs. Some were fired. A few recently wrote widely panned articles about how the accusations ruined their lives. (Mr. Elliott checked this box with an essay in Quillette last month.)

Five of the men on the Media Men list on Thursday spoke to The Cut on the condition of anonymity to condemn Mr. Elliott’s lawsuit. What’s fascinating is that even as they expressed anger toward Mr. Elliott, most insisted that they, too, are not guilty of what they are accused of. But the collective sense is that Mr. Elliott should do what they’re doing: “taking one for the team,” as one of them put it.

That's quite a "team" you belong to, chief. The NYT hunted him down for an interview.

When I interviewed him this week, he seemed energetic. He’s moved from Los Angeles to New Orleans. He’s sober.

“I really feel like I’m happy for the first time since this started,” he said. “I have a politics. I know who my friends are.”

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What are those politics? “I still think of myself as a liberal,” he said. “But the left moved away from liberalism and I hadn’t realized that yet. If you are a liberal, by definition, you believe that it’s better to let a certain amount of guilty people go free than to jail one innocent man. That’s almost the definition of liberalism. These people on the left aren’t liberals at all, actually. What I’ve come to realize is how close they are to the people on the right.”

Yeah, well, I hate to break it to you but it's the right that is likely to ask for evidence before they convict you. If you're guilty -- if, say like Al Franken, there's photographs showing you doing what you are accused of doing -- the right will happily burn you for this stuff. But they will want to see some evidence before they do.

The NYT has been a reliably bad guide during this moment. They recently published a piece by someone describing herself as a philosopher who calls this a clash of "epistemic" worlds. In one world, accusers are believed; in the other world, she asserts, the desire is to maintain structures of power.

That isn't what epistemology is about. Epistemology is the study of knowledge, including theories about what constitutes knowledge. The Aristotelian conception of knowledge, which has been the standard for most of Western civilization's history,* is that knowledge is "justified true belief." When we hear people saying that they "believe the women," (or "believe survivors," when whether or not they survived anything is sometimes just what is needing to be proven), we should hear people proclaiming that they are ready to proceed to punishment without the bother of first obtaining knowledge that there was a crime. Belief is only one of the three conditions for knowledge. It is proper to ask also after truth and justification.

By all means we should take plausible claims seriously. That said, it isn't sound to ask people to 'take one for the team' when they are innocent. This really isn't about 'knowing who your friends are,' it's about knowing per se. Whatever you believe, ask about how that belief is justified and whether or not it is justified in the right way. Care about whether or not your beliefs are true. This is basic stuff, and as always, it's when you go wrong about the basics that you go really wrong.


* The 20th century brought some doubt on whether the JTB standard was complete. A few, including Timothy Williamson, have proposed abandoning it for alternative approaches. See the link for a full discussion.

"The End of Smugness"

Perhaps the shock of Trump winning the election is beginning to wear off- at least for some.  Devin Stewart, "senior fellow and director of the Asia program at Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs and a Truman Security Fellow. He has served as an adjunct professor of international affairs at Columbia University and New York University", and a Democrat who admits that he felt at the time that "a Trump victory seemed to portend certain economic disaster, nuclear war, and pretty much the end of America as we knew it." has penned a piece titled "Trump and the End of Smugness", and shockingly enough, he doesn't mean Trump's.

He puts aside the feelings Trump may evoke, and what he refers to as the left's "efforts at amateur psychoanalysis", to examine what Trump has actually done in the arena of foreign policy.  It turns out that it's a remarkably rational, incisive examination of Trump's foreign policy record, and an attempt to begin to define a "Trump Doctrine".  My sense is that he's reasonably accurate.  If you'd like to have a rational argument about Trump's foreign policy with someone who is against Trump, maybe have them read this first.

What's-Her-Name Loses Security Clearance

Odd that should happen at this long remove from a scandal allegedly resolved in her favor. Judicial Watch has been doggedly on the case, though. Maybe there's more to come.

Longing for the Magic Wand

The latest Hail Mary pass to derail Justice Kavanaugh is a series of ethics complaints filed against him by lawyers, not for anything he ever did on the bench, but for his demeanor at his Senate hearing. Fully a dozen of these complaints alleging him disqualified have made it past initial review, and have been delegated by Chief Justice Roberts to the 10th Circuit.

Well, not to the 10th Circuit exactly. To Chief Judge Timothy Tymkovich, himself a Trump SCOTUS short-lister. Not only that, whines "Above the Law":

Judge Tymkovich is a 2003 George W. Bush appointee, meaning his nomination would have fallen right into that sweet spot when Brett Kavanaugh acted as the judicial nomination shepherd. Amazing how that works! Judge Tymkovich also appeared on the short list of judges considered for a Supreme Court seat — along with Neil Gorsuch and Kavanaugh — because of course he was. It wouldn’t be 2018 without that last bit of salt thrown into the wound.

You know how you could have avoided the salt? Not filing bogus ethics complaints designed to have a single inferior judge undercut a Justice lawfully appointed by a President and confirmed by the Senate.

Say it ain't so

Talks about whom to appoint to the Ninth Circuit "collapsed over the summer," did they?

Changing My Mind about Climate Change?

I've been skeptical of the claims of anthropogenic global warming (AGW), and two climate scientists who have informed my opinion are Richard Lindzen, of MIT, and Judith Curry, of GIT, both retired now. Both of them, however, still considering themselves skeptics, agree that human carbon emissions are causing some warming of the global climate. That has caused a shift in my thinking.

Hand-wringing over "the children"

I used a screen shot because I decline to link either to articles of this type or to the NYT generally. But I've seen too many articles asking a question like this. What's with the inability to explain stuff to kids lately? OK, I don't have any kids, but would I have been at a loss to explain President Obama or Nancy Pelosi? "Kids, you may have heard a lot of talk about how some people in Washington are spawn of the devil. Rest assured that the grownups have this all under control, that a lot of what you're hearing is exaggerated political talk, and that you don't need to believe it literally. People have different ideas about how to solve problems, and sometimes it gets messy, but we work it out in the end. Now do your homework."

My parents voted in different parties, so I learned early that it was possible to remain civil about political disagreements. We were all atheists, but my parents required me to be civil to our churchgoing neighbors and relatives. Why would it be hard to explain that something happened 35 years ago that we're never going to be able to be sure about, so it didn't end up being the decisive issue in the vetting of a new Supreme Court Justice?

Shoot, just have the kids watch "To Kill a Mockingbird" again, and ask them whether they identify mostly strongly with Miss Mae Ellen or with Atticus Finch's client. "It's OK to feel sorry for Miss Mae Ellen, kids, without voting to hang Tom," and "even if all your friends tell you you'd be a traitor to your race if you believe Tom over Miss Mae Ellen, you don't have to go along, and the sooner you learn this, the better."

3 from the Bee

The Left Learns An Important Lesson From The Kavanaugh Fight: They Need To Be Even More Obnoxious

Mike Pence Admits To Heavy Root Beer Drinking In High School

'Kavanaugh Doesn't Have The Right Temperament!' Screams Protester Lobbing Grenade Outside Supreme Court

The 2nd Amendment as a Human Right

Down Brazil way, a presidential candidate wrestles with Brazil's horrible crime rates. The USA always gets compared to Europe in terms of gun violence rates, but Brazil is a much better comparison: it's a large, American nation with a multi-ethnic population and a history of slavery, demographically much more like us than the small ethno-states of Europe. Brazil has very strict gun control, and gun violence rates that dwarf the USA's.

So this candidate has hit upon the unspeakable but obvious answer: give the good people guns.

For many, Bolsonaro has the answer to the question that has preoccupied them for years -- how to lower the crime rate in a country with more than seven murders an hour?

"Give guns to good people," the former paratrooper insisted during campaign meetings.

"If one of us, a civilian or a soldier, is attacked... and if he fires 20 times at the assailant, he should be decorated and not have to go to court," the far-right candidate told a campaign meeting in the northern Rio neighborhood of Madureira in August.

It was a simple speech that hit the mark for Jamaya Beatriz, a manicurist from this violent suburb of Rio De Janeiro.

"I live in a dangerous neighborhood," the young woman said. "If someone breaks into my home, I want to be able to defend my children."

It's an important part of the answer to the violence in Central America, too, that is producing all those refugees on our southern border.

A shifting Court

This is a smarter-than-usual analysis of what happens when the membership of the Supreme Court changes:

I used to think the impact of a seat change is best measured by comparing the new justice to the old one, but that’s wrong. What we really want to know is what happens to the median (or swing) justice. The median justice provides the crucial fifth vote on cases that divide along ideological lines. So when Alito replaced O’Connor in 2005, the Court’s median justice switched from O’Connor to Kennedy. That was a slight rightward shift for the Court as a whole — but a smaller one than might be expected given Alito’s much more conservative record than O’Connor’s.

With Kavanaugh seated, the consensus is that Roberts will become the new median justice. This is a substantial movement to the right for the Court, especially on social issues where Kennedy typically voted with the liberals. Interestingly, in the short run it doesn’t matter where Kavanaugh fits in among the Court’s conservatives. Right now, Roberts is the least conservative, Thomas is the most, and Alito and Gorsuch fall in between. But whether Kavanaugh is closer to Roberts or to Thomas should have little effect on the Court’s rulings, since Roberts as the median justice will control the outcomes.

Where Kavanaugh’s ideology becomes important, however, is in determining the effect of replacing Ginsburg. If Kavanaugh turns out to be an Alito/Gorsuch–type justice, and so does Ginsburg’s replacement — let’s label that mystery person Amy B. — the median justice would be someone from the Alito-Gorsuch-Kavanaugh-Amy B. bloc. If you’re a conservative, shifting the median that far to the right would be a dream come true. It may cause a sea change in constitutional law.

But what if Kavanaugh turns out to be an ideological clone of Roberts? Then replacing Ginsburg with Amy B. would, in theory, have no effect on subsequent cases. The median justice would still have a Roberts-type ideology, and the Court’s decisions would continue to reflect his rightward but incrementalist approach.

Haley Out at UN

In a move that blindsided nearly everyone, Nikki Haley has resigned as UN Ambassador after a superstar performance at the General Assembly. No one seems to know why she's leaving; she says she's not running in 2020, and Trump says he hopes she'll come back in another role.

I've always liked Nikki Haley. I wish her well.

Enjoy the Bias Confirmation

If you thought the recent Grievance Studies Scandal was a hoot and would like to read five academics pile on and utterly confirm your prior biases against all this fashionable nonsense, here's your opportunity.

Update: Five academics, not five philosophers as I originally said.

Less power to the people

There's a lot of squawking this week about how things frustrate the popular vote, as if the Constution read in its entirety: "Do whatever the majority thinks is OK." From the New York Sun:

The job of the Senators is to represent the states.

That’s the Senate’s very purpose. The Left likes to suggest that the only reason for this was to protect slavery. Yet even the original Constitution anticipated an end to slavery. It still made the equal representation of the states in the Senate the only feature of the parchment that could never be amended absent the consent of the state being denied equal representation.

It is the foundation of our federalist system.

Now I admit I had completely forgotten this. The Heritage Guide to the Constitution explains it here:

Article V specifies the means by which the Constitution of the United States can be amended. It ends by forbidding amendments that would repeal the language in Article I, Section 9, which prohibits a ban on the importation of slaves prior to 1808, or the language in Article I, Section 3, which provides for equal representation of the states in the Senate. These are the only textually entrenched provisions of the Constitution. The first prohibition was absolute but of limited duration—it was to be in force for only twenty years; the second was less absolute—"no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate"—but permanent.

Tides

Looks to me like a bunch of "toss-ups" just edged into the "red" column.  Republicans need 20 of the remaining 32 toss-ups to retain the majority in the House.

Quit drawing the wrong conclusions!

I've stayed away from the latest StudiesStudiesGate story, not because it isn't one of the funniest things I've read in years, but I suppose because it felt too much like piling on from the right.  I initially clicked on an Atlantic article because it promised to buck the trend by sharing the thoughts of a disappointed progressive who was genuinely chagrined by what the hoax revealed about the state of Trendy academia.  Indeed, the article started out that way, even revealing one nugget that I'd managed to miss before:  the hoaxers got someone to publish an article suggesting that the remedy for excessively patriarchal astronomy was to encourage the field not only of feminist astrology but . . . interpretive dance.  Now, I thought "interpretive dance" was a "tell" for even the least observant, but, OK, these academics really were that dense and humorless.

The author goes on, however, to warn us not to make too much of this embarrassment:

Like just about everything else in this depressing national moment, Sokal Squared is already being used as ammunition in the great American culture war. Many conservatives who are deeply hostile to the science of climate change, and who dismiss out of hand the studies that attest to deep injustices in our society, are using Sokol Squared to smear all academics as biased culture warriors. The Federalist, a right-wing news and commentary site, went so far as to spread the apparent ideological bias of a few journals in one particular corner of academia to most professors, the mainstream media, and Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Now they've gone too far.  Undermine American academia all you like, you heartless right-wingers, but don't attack the integrity of the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee.  They're all that stands between us and an erosion of bedrock principles like due process and the presumption of innocence.

By the way, I think it's just awful how Dr. Ford doesn't get the respect she deserves for her psychology Ph. D.  I've just recovered a suppressed memory suggesting that her thesis was on interpretive dance.  OK, that may not be literally true, but it feels true, it's my truth, and who are you to say that someone else's phallo-truth is more valid?  Turn up the music.  No, not the BeeGees!  Get that Lindsey Graham video out my head!

In other news

I'm so glad there finally is some other news.  Of course, I'm still hoping that all future public appearances by Lindsey Graham on-stage will be accompanied by the strains of "Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk. . . ."

But I thought we might all enjoy this would-be bank heist story, complete with the Just a Lowly Bank Teller dramatic moment, about how a group of investigators and regulators helped Angola avoid a theft of $500 million from its public treasury.  As Harry Anderson used to say, a fool and his money never should have gotten together in the first place.

Show's Over

You know it's all over when the Downfall video posts.



There's also this Lindsey Graham video (language warning).



But I like this CCR version better. The Duran Duran version is not as good. But the Pixies version has something going for it.

Congratulations, Justice Kavanaugh.

Mr. Hines, you can choose whether you prefer the twenty bucks or the case of beer, but if you pick the latter you can help me drink it.

UPDATE:

Lindsey Graham with exploding fist bumps.

UPDATE:

UFC fighter shouts out to "Special K."

The big UFC victory of the night: "Donald Trump called me and told me to knock this Russian m*****f***** out.... USA in this house."

UPDATE:

Dispatches From Colonel Kurt’s Cruise

Quite a few old bloggers here tonight. Of the BLACKFIVE crew, me and Jim and Mr. Wolf. Ace of Spades is here. So is “Armed Liberal” of Winds of Change. [UPDATE: And streiff from Red State.] Lots of vets, lots of national security experts. Two Democrats [UPDATE: three], otherwise Republicans, but all are celebrating the day’s news. Great Ethiopian food thanks to one of the guests, an immigrant and friend. A quite respectable outlay of beer and wine [UPDATE: plus very fine bourbon and Laphroaig]. One professional comedian, one author of adventure fiction. One of Ted Cruz’s people, but otherwise no politicos that I’m aware of myself.

Colonel Kurt is a wild and crazy guy. Ace of Spades came dressed in a sailor suit.

UPDATE: A very pleasant evening. I spent most of it on one corner of Jim's patio that was staked out by myself and an old Iraq comrade, where we were joined by a rotating assortment of the veterans from the party. Jim traveled more widely, and probably has better stories -- or anyway stories he's more likely to repeat. Good times.

The week in pictures

Draken Harald Hårfagre

By great good fortune, this beautiful ship's voyage to DC coincides with my need to be here for Jimbo's book party. I am very fortunate to have the opportunity to see it in person. What a fine tribute, and what a worthy thing to sail such a ship across the Atlantic. All news is not bad, and the weather is fine.

Partial Credit

Sen. Murkowski yesterday displayed bad judgment in my opinion; but if this report is true and she follows through with it, she'll show class today. Showing class is not nothing.

A Lady of the Lake

Girl, 8, pulls a thousand-year-old sword out of the lake she was swimming in.

Glen Reynolds on Trump

Not everyone lost

Some good came out of this dumpster fire.

[Kavanaugh's] statement was variously dismissed or praised as “Trumpian” in its bluntness and disregard of convention. My friend Frank Cannon, in a column for The Hill, went a step further by observing, “For Republicans, Sept. 27, 2018, should be remembered as the day when their party became, clearly and unapologetically, the Party of Donald Trump.” And it is true that there was something about the scene that clarified, for anyone who needed it, the logic of Donald Trump’s ascension in American politics.

The judge, after all, was there in the first place courtesy of a president who has unequivocally kept his word on judicial appointments, sparing conservatives even the suspense that used to precede Supreme Court nominations by Republican presidents. And if the tone in which Kavanaugh addressed Democrats on the Judiciary Committee reflected the influence of Donald Trump, by displaying no respect for connivers who deserved none, then, yes, we could use more of it. Sometimes presidential words of conciliation and uplift are called for, and sometimes we can do without the gloss. I have never felt more attuned to the rhetorical style of our different kind of president than when, on first reaction, he called the smear campaign against his nominee the “con job” that it is.

As Bill McGurn notes in the Wall Street Journal, the worst part of all this for Kavanaugh is that it’s not even about him. His travails have nothing to do with some dark event in 1982, and everything to do with a disastrous event in early 1973, the act of “raw judicial power,” as Justice Byron White called Roe v. Wade, that smothered good will in American politics like nothing else could, corrupting everything it touches.

"They serve different masters now"

Ya think?

What I been saying

If you see yourself as perpetually in need of a champion, be careful what champion you choose. There can be a hefty price-tag attached to these bargains.

Wait, what?

I need help understanding something. I'm just a fragile woman, spirit broken by the patriarchy, and I lack the analytical skills that society unfairly assumes are the only valid cognitive skill for assessing difficult life problems. My glorious feminine intuition isn't up to the task of grasping how a city's police force can be disqualified by "conflict of interest" from investigating the claims of a prominent state official whose son is on the City Council. I'm not sure which party is involved, is that important? Can you big strong men help me? And then I need you to move a couch. Then shut up.

Rs win cloture vote on Kavanaugh

From the Guardian, which for some reason was the only source I could find that would lay the results out plainly:

Senate votes to advance Kavanaugh’s nomination to final vote.

The Senate voted 51-49 in favor of the cloture motion, which will bring an end to debate on Kavanaugh’s nomination to the supreme court.

The final vote on his confirmation could happen as early as tomorrow.

Support for cloture is not equivalent to support for Kavanaugh, so it’s not clear whether or not he will make it through.

A key senator, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, said she will reveal her plan for the final vote in a speech at 3pm this afternoon.

There's also an FBI investigation supplemental executive summary out, concluding that there is no corrobation for accusations against Kavanaugh, but strangely enough I can't find a link to it on any MSM sites except Fox. So here's a link to Wolf Howling at Bookworm Room instead.

Don’t Miss October

Today’s was the most perfect afternoon that I can remember. Don’t forget to get outside.

The picture is from a while ago: I’m mostly steel horses these days. But it made me happy to see it again.

The new Lindsey Graham

Something seems to have given way in the man.

Civil War Officers Recalled for WW I

Major James B. Ronan has an interesting military history blog. One short article on it is about two Civil War veterans who were recalled to duty for World War I.

He is apparently a member of something called the Company of Military Historians. Their 2019 annual conference will be in Columbus, Georgia, next April, if anyone is interested.

Why oh why

To be filed under "We may never know what motivated this _____ to _______", here is Kevin Williamson's take:

Why did Dunham fabricate a story about being raped by a campus Republican? It is impossible to say. We can say that she did not choose to fabricate a story about being raped by a member of the Oberlin democratic-socialists club, or a young Democrat, or an environmental activist.

Is that relevant?

* * *

Why would the young woman in [the Rolling Stone] case fabricate a story about being brutally raped by UVA fraternity brothers? It is impossible to say. We can say that Rolling Stone did not choose to publish a false story about a rape allegedly committed by members of the Berkeley chess club or by a creative-writing student at Bryn Mawr College.

Crashing and burning

From Jonah Goldberg, at best a lukewarm sometimes-Trumper:

But that’s not your job, you supposedly objective journalists. You should care every bit as much about disproving the allegations of Swetnick, Ramirez, and — yes — Ford as proving them. Your job — as you’ve said countless times, preening in your heroic martyr status in the age of Trump — is to report the facts. If Swetnick is lying, you should want to report that every bit as much as you would if you could prove that Kavanaugh is. Because you’re not supposed to have a team. It’s fine if you support the #MeToo movement in your private time, but you’re not supposed to lend any movement aid and comfort, never mind air cover, in your reporting.

Now, I get that most journalists are liberal, even if they deny it. I understand that most think they’re just seeking the truth. But, dear champions of the Fourth Estate, you might take just a moment to understand that you need to be fair to the other side of the argument even if you disagree with it.

You might also consider why millions of people love it when Trump says you are the enemy of the people: It’s because of how you are behaving right now. You’re letting the mask slip in Nielsen-monitored 15-minute blocks of virtue-signaling partisanship. You’re burning credibility at such a rate, you won’t have enough to get back to base when this is all over.

More shoes dropping

Maggies Farm has two links about the recent testimony from ex-FBI senior lawyer James Baker.  One reveals that Baker testified to the FBI's consultation with an "unusual" and "troubling" source before pursuing the FISA warrants to spy on Trump's campaign.  The other reveals that the troubling source was the DNC's law firm.

Lacking the temperament

I'm reminded of the meme from various controversies, notably the Trayvon Martin travesty, that the problem with some people is they wouldn't take their beating.

Buckle Up

The next three days are going to be wild.

She Must Be Tiny

In Canada, film of a pro-life woman being kicked down by a pro-choice protester. He succeeds even though he looks like he might blow away in a strong wind, but apparently he was bigger than her.

This is the sort of thing that works better in Canada. Don't get any ideas, American protesters.

UPDATE: She is, in fact, quite small. Her name is Marie-Claire Bissonnette, and here is her story.

Problem Solved, Ladies

The Ayatollah Khamenei has heard your outcry, and stands ready with a solution to all your #MeToo problems.

I think you'll really like it.

(No disrespect to any woman who chooses hijab for herself, of course; one is free to do what one likes.)

The Decline in Civics

Another depressing story.

Just a third of Americans can pass a multiple choice "U.S. Citizenship Test," fumbling over such simple questions as the cause of the Cold War or naming just one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.

And of Americans 45 and younger, the passing rate is a tiny 19 percent, according to a survey done for the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.

Worse: The actual test only requires that 60 percent of the answers be correct. In the survey, just 36 percent passed.

Among the embarrassing errors uncovered in the survey of questions taken from the U.S. Citizenship Test and conducted by Lincoln Park Stragtegies:
* 72 percent of respondents either incorrectly identified or were unsure of which states were part of the 13 original states.
* 24 percent could correctly identify one thing Benjamin Franklin was famous for, with 37 percent believing he invented the lightbulb.
* 12 percent incorrectly thought WWII General Dwight Eisenhower led troops in the Civil War.
* 2 percent said the Cold War was caused by climate change.

The last one is a good guess if you didn't know, since Climate Change is frequently said to cause everything.

Good Point

There is a report that Republican Senators currently cannot walk down the hall without crowds of protesters following them and shouting at them. In response, someone I've never heard of writes:

Imagine the rhetoric if conservatives were verbally harassing and stalking Democrats around. Shouting them down in elevators, restaurants, through the halls of Congress. If a random conservative had shot up a congressional bball practice, attacked candidates....

Any similar action by Republicans or conservatives would be said to be the work of Brownshirts. They would be said to be literal fascists trying to destroy the norms of democracy.

Militant Normals

I haven't read retired infantry colonel Kurt Schlichter's book yet, but I am invited to a release party that Uncle Jimbo of BLACKFIVE fame is hosting. If any regular readers want to come, and will be in Arlington on Saturday evening, drop me an email.

The book blurb sounds like I agree with the basic thesis:

They built this country, they make it run, and when called on, they fight for it. They are the heart and soul of the United States of America, They are the Normals, the regular Americans of all races, creeds, preferences, and both sexes who just want to raise their families and live their lives in peace. And they are getting angry...

For decades they have seen their cherished beliefs and beloved traditions under attack. They have been told they are racist, sexist, and hateful, but it was all a lie. Their ability to provide for their families has been undermined by globalization with no consideration of the effects on Americans who did not go to Harvard, and who live in that vast forgotten space between New York and Santa Monica.

A smug, condescending elite spanning both established parties has gripped the throat of the nation. Convinced of their own exquisite merit while refusing to be held accountable for their myriad failures, these elitists managed to suppress the first rumblings of discontent when they arose in the form of the Tea Party. But they were stunned when the Normals did not simply scurry back to their flyover homes.

If any of you think you'd like a signed copy -- I'm looking at you, D29 -- let me know and I'll see what I can do.

A Tolling Bell for Trump/Russia

Megan McArdle writes that the NYT's leaked Trump tax documents show the product of a byzantine system more than anything else. But one thing I notice that they don't show is Russian connections. The NYT would have been trumpeting that as the top-line finding if there were any, but they don't. So the theory that Putin is holding a chain on Trump that goes back to compromising information about Russian money laundering looks to be dead, or close to dead, as a result of this leak.

Since that was the only part of the story that was credible to me, I'd say that in my estimation this saga is closed.

A Disappointing Day

Today I've learned that my hopes to someday be appointed to the Supreme Court are never going to pan out. Apparently drinking in college, getting in bar fights, and similar things can be held against you in that regard. Fortunately, thanks to former President Obama, we know that cocaine and marijuana use cannot be held against you in your quest to become President; but unfortunately for me, I've never used cocaine or marijuana. I might have had some beer, though; and I can't promise under oath that there have never been any bar fights. Friendly ones, more or less. Just good fun. All the same, there might have been some.

Apparently this sort of thing is disqualifying. The latest story I've heard is that someone is alleging that K's frat may have hired a stripper to perform a "public sex act" at the frathouse, albeit after he had graduated and gone on to law school. I'd heretofore understood the Democratic Party's position on 'sex workers' to be that they should be treated with respect, which surely should mean that giving them some employment shouldn't be beyond the pale. I certainly don't wish to suggest that people who engage in such work are necessarily immoral or wicked, nor those who employ them; all the same, I've never been interested. However, I did once attend a birthday party where a stripper performed. I was 15 or 16, and so embarrassed that I fled immediately. But the folks who employed her were Volunteer firefighters, friends of my father's and pillars of the community insofar as they'd report anywhere in the middle of the night to deal with fire or accident. They just liked to see a pretty girl once in a while. They had no intention of assaulting her, and she was performing there of her own free will.

Catholic theologians can explain just why this is nevertheless sinful, although at the moment the Church might better avail itself of expunging the beam in its own eye than in explication in the mote in others'. In fact one might argue that the Church might have better employed strippers occasionally, as by all accounts it used to do, than to have handed itself over to those who didn't care to see a pretty girl once in a while. Lusting after the pretty girl who voluntarily performs for you can be handled in Confession; the assault on the children is unlikely to be as readily satisfied, even according to the most careful theology of the Church.

The Democratic Party is not covering itself in democracy here. Opposing sex and beer and rowdy fire may be moral according to some visions, but not according to the democratic vision.

All the same, I've learned this week that I'll never be a judge. Too bad for you: I'm a pretty lenient one. You'll be sad to be judged by those who never had a fault themselves, if such people can in fact be found. As Chesterton warned: "Oh drunkards in my cellar, boys in my apple tree: the world grows stiff and strange and new, and wise men shall rule over you; and you shall weep for me."

My.... "Kampf"

Apparently grievance scholarship is subject to some... many... weaknesses.

Affilia, a peer-reviewed journal of women and social work, formally accepted the trio’s hoax paper, “Our Struggle Is My Struggle: Solidarity Feminism as an Intersectional Reply to Neoliberal and Choice Feminism.” The second portion of the paper is a rewrite of a chapter from “Mein Kampf.” Affilia’s editors declined to comment.

Now, in fairness, no one reads "Mein Kampf." You wouldn't be expected to recognize a rewrite the way you would a rewrite of the Declaration of Independence or something similar. On the other hand, unless Hitler was a writer of greater intellectual quality than I've been led to believe, you'd think a mere rewrite of his work would draw something less than academic approval.

But that's not all. Oh, no. This crew has been up to quite a bit of mischief, which you can read about at the link.

Battlefield Rations: The Food Given to the British Soldier for Marching and Fighting 1900-2011

Just read Mark Barnes's review of the book Battlefield Rations: The Food Given to the British Soldier for Marching and Fighting 1900-2011 by Anthony Clayton. It looks like an interesting read, and I enjoyed the review.

Many years ago I had the opportunity to try out some of the British Army's field cuisine. I remember the packet held two meals and included a one-mug sized stove for heating your tea. That's really about all I remember of it, now.

A Wrinkle in the Memory Discussion

As readers know, I've been entertaining the hypothesis of false memory since the revelation that Dr. Ford's memories first were attested long after the alleged fact in a psychotherapy session. While not proven, the hypothesis' probability of being true was considerably strengthened in my view when literally all of the people she remembered as present denied that the event had ever happened -- including a life long female friend. The basic form of the memory, a life-altering trauma occurring early in life but first attested years later in therapy, fits a well-known phenomenon.

Now the Federalist has uncovered a study that Dr. Ford participated in, indeed co-authored, on the use of hypnosis to 'retrieve' memories as well as to "create artificial situations that would permit the client to express ego-dystonic emotions in a safe manner." While Dr. Ford is a statistician, and thus was professionally most likely involved in the quantitative work, we know now that she was familiar with these techniques. It would be fair to ask whether or not she has used them in this matter.

UPDATE: The Federalist is now also publishing a piece based allegedly on a sworn statement from an old boyfriend that claims Ford perjured herself in her testimony about lie detector tests. I'm not sure if this means that the Federalist is running hit pieces on her, which would demean the quality of the previous citation; or if it means that Ford is going to prove to be generally unreliable.

Another Embracer

The first President to brew beer on the White House grounds was... Barack Obama. It's just what you do, explains a former White House aide for nutrition, if you're 'a regular guy and you're a good guy.'

I read that President Obama’s administration was the first that had brewing in the White House. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

That’s my understanding. You know, obviously, there could be some beer that we don’t know about, but the person who ran the archives for the White House did research and looked through all the records and sort of found no evidence of any beer being brewed, or liquor distilled, on the grounds of the White House.

Washington was distilling various spirits in Mount Vernon and Thomas Jefferson was making wine in Monticello, but at the White House proper, we don’t know of any evidence that there was a president who brewed beer....

Beer had a prominent role in this White House administration. There was the beer summit, and Obama was often photographed drinking beer in his travels. Can you help us understand that?

I think there’s something powerful about beer. It’s food more broadly, but I think beer really captures the spirit of coming together, of sitting down, of sharing human moments, friendship moments, bonding moments. I mean, we all do it all the time. What’s better than sitting down with some friends or even sitting down with somebody to work something out and saying, “OK. Let me buy a beer. Let’s talk this over”? And I think it holds a really sacred part of our culture.

Showing the country that we’re part of this ongoing narrative and dialogue that’s been going on for centuries––well, it’s quite powerful. It’s also just naturally what you do if you’re a regular guy and you’re a good guy, and that’s really what the president is.

I don't disagree. It's a pretty normal thing for regular, good guys to like.

Counterattack

Lindsey Graham has decided to press for an investigation of Sen. Fenstein's conduct.

Done, done, done, done, and done.

Apropos of our earlier discussion in the comments about taking concrete action rather than writhing in impotent disgust, here are five links to Republican Senate race campaigns where your donation might do the most good:

Missouri
North Dakota
Indiana
West Virginia
Montana

And in the meantime, everyone will be pleased to hear that the polls just flipped on Sen. Claire McCaskill in her Missouri race, on the heels of her announced intention to vote against Judge Kavanaugh.

Burn it down.  Plough it under.  Salt the ground it stood on.

The wind that would blow

Mountain Heritage Day

Today was the 44th Mountain Heritage Day at Western Carolina University. There were wagon trains led by Belgians or mules, tractors, three music stages featuring traditional music, and a full scale arts and crafts festival. Some of the latter included custom iron and knives, but also beading and woodworking. If you're ever in that part of the world for a future one, consider stopping by.

One of the events was shape note singing.

Bluegrass was a favorite.

Clogging, which was performed as well as other forms of traditional mountain dancing.

It was a welcome escape. Crazy is on the internet; ride out into America, and it's still sane and nice.

Something else that might work.

Or maybe not.  Ian Millhiser is just spitballing here:

Tell me again why we shouldn't confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy.

I'll bet all of you can come up with the answer that eludes him.

That might work

From Powerline's "The Week in Pictures":  "Trump should nominate Hillary Clinton to the Supreme Court, so he can finally get an investigation of her started."

I Embrace Beer

This is actually not the Clancy Brothers, in spite of the video, but the Dubliners. But let all that go; drink up, mates. May the wicked like us find forgiveness, and the wicked like them find justice. Or even better: God forgive us all, though none of us deserves it.

UPDATE:

An Aussie tune.



UPDATE:

I particularly like this song because every single claim it makes is wrong. Beer long predates tea; it's not made of hops, which are a late addition for flavor; and the rest of it too is nonsense.

But it's fun.

Let's Be Sure To Baby Those Women

"How to talk to the women in your life right now."

Let me tell you: it's a lot. And it makes functioning on a baseline level difficult. You may have noticed that the women in your life have been particularly unhappy over the past two weeks as this news cycle reared its ugly head: we have been showing up late to work, giving you surly looks, loudly complaining about "men", et cetera. These are coping mechanisms. And perhaps you, a thoughtful and potentially kind-hearted person, want to know how to better support your non-male friends and colleagues. This is a very good instinct! We appreciate it. Here is some advice on how to do that...

Showing up late for work is of course perfectly excusable if you're... upset? Right. Because you're not a real professional. You're a woman. We should be glad you deigned to come in to work at all, given how difficult all this is for you.

My guess is that teaching people that they're rightly treated as frail, or fragile, makes them worse people. Teach them they need to deal with the stuff life throws at them, and that they shouldn't expect it to be fair. That's how you build resilient people. People who don't show up late for work just because they're angry about something else.

Professionals. Killers. The kind of people who make the world heel to them, rather than running late to appointments. Five minutes early is on time; on time is late; late is unacceptable because it's disrespectful.

A new civil rights crisis

I can't be sure, but I think this author is serious:

The profile of an early voter tends to be more partisan, older and well educated. Early voters are also motivated and organized, which stands to reason since there are many steps involved, particularly with absentee voting; one must obtain the ballot in advance, fill it out correctly and mail it back on time.

These tend not to be the strongest traits of millennial voters. Fairfax County, Va., government recently surveyed the voting behavior of its summer interns, and discovered that a major obstacle to mailing in ballots was not knowing how to get a postage stamp. (For some millennials, mailing anything is a new experience.)

In addition, “college students are busy and the slightest hurdle can prevent them from mailing back a ballot,” said Lisa Connors, a public affairs officer with Fairfax County. She added, “Having a book of stamps or mailing anything is an old-fashioned concept.”

In many states, ballots now include return postage, so the completed ballot is automatically sent to election officials, who will reimburse the Postal Service for the expense. But this assumes millennials know about mailboxes.

Better Dead Than Red

Communists plot violence in the USA. Not even in hiding -- on Twitter.

A Start, Perhaps

The Pope defrocks a priest at the center of scandals.

Pope Francis has defrocked a Chilean priest who was a central character in the global sex abuse scandal rocking his papacy, invoking his “supreme” authority to stiffen an earlier sentence because of the “exceptional amount of damage” the priest’s crimes had caused.

In a statement Friday, the Vatican said Francis had laicized 88-year-old Rev. Fernando Karadima, who was originally sanctioned in 2011 to live a lifetime of “penance and prayer” for having sexually abused minors in the upscale Santiago parish he ran.

The Vatican said Francis was doing so for “the good of the church.”

“It is without doubt an exceptional measure, but Karadima’s grave crimes have caused exceptional damage in Chile,” Vatican spokesman Greg Burke said.

The “penance and prayer” sanction has been the Vatican’s punishment of choice for elderly priests convicted of raping and molesting children. It has long been criticized by victims as too soft and essentially an all-expenses-paid retirement, and Karadima’s whistleblowers had pressed for it to be toughened.

This Is Perfectly Healthy

"They complain that even when they give them gender-neutral toys, the boys immediately rush for the trucks."

As you would expect, the radio interview is totally in favor of feminism, but can't help but admit that the relationship has been poisoned. "Some feminists envision a world without men." "I was forced to conclude that feminism had failed mothers and sons." It ends up endorsing a kind of cross-dressing dance therapy, because of course life itself is so traumatic that therapy is necessary for everything and dance therapy is obviously the right way to bring up your son. (Also cross-dressing, clearly. You think I'm joking about the content of the interview, but I'm not at all joking. This is their idea for fixing things.)

The Most Unexpected Hero

Lindsey Graham, lion of the Senate.



I have to admit that this is not the one I would have expected to shine brightest today or any day. But here we are. Well done, Senator.

"Violence"

Who is more likely to be victimized by teen dating violence? If you’re quick to think it’s girls, new data shows you’re wrong. In a surprising twist, recently published research indicates boys are more likely to report being victims of dating violence committed by partners who hit, slap or push them.

Researchers with the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU) conducted a longitudinal study of dating violence. While reports of physical abuse went down over time, they say there is a troubling gender-related trend.

Five percent of teens reported physical abuse from their dating partners in 2013, down from 6 percent in 2003. But in the last year, 5.8 percent of boys reported dating violence compared to 4.2 percent of girls.

“It could be that it’s still socially acceptable for girls to hit or slap boys in dating relationships,” says lead author Catherine Shaffer, a PhD student with SFU, in a release. “This has been found in studies of adolescents in other countries as well.”

I'm surprised it's that small a difference (and encouraged that the figures make it close to 95% of relationships that do without such violence). My sense is that girls are indeed taught that it's socially acceptable to slap boys, and women often continue to believe that it's appropriate to slap men for certain things even in adulthood. Perhaps they just don't usually choose to date the boys they have to slap.

In any case, most of this "violence" is pretty mild, and a lot of it is defensive (and therefore really appropriate, not just 'felt to be appropriate'). The inability to distinguish between legitimate violence and illegitimate violence is a problem with our current society. Much violence is socially beneficial, or we wouldn't maintain police forces nor prisons nor armies.

The NRA Speaks

Midterms

Midterm elections are traditionally brutal for the party in power. What if this November, however, is as atypical as November 2016?

Trump is a singularly energetic campaigner. His efforts this year will likely move more Republicans and Republican-leaning independents to the polls. Seeing large arenas overflowing with animated Trump-supporters is probably a drag on Democrats. His simple message at these rallies is perfect: things are going well, but the Democrats will take it all away and stop any further progress, so we need more Republicans in Congress.

Re widely publicized negative job-approval ratings for President Trump:

Factors such as the Bradley/Wilder Effect and the "job performance" vs. "handling" question might each count for 5% or more by themselves. If the above factors average just 1% each, the approval picture for Trump changes dramatically, and the GOP's election prospects change dramatically.

[Real Clear Politics's] polling average for the direction of the country is at a five-year high and has been steadily rising for the last year. The peak under Obama was in June of 2009, with 45.8% of those polled saying the country was moving in the right direction. Two years later, Obama bottomed at 17%. On election day 2016, it was 31%. Today it stands at 41%. Because of Trump's unprecedented commitment to keeping his campaign promises, for the first time in a generation, Republicans have a chance to vote with great enthusiasm. They should ignore the polls and do so.

It is my fervent hope that the American electorate is disgusted with the dumpster-fire known as The Resistance and will show up at the polls to do something about it. And that goes double for the next primaries affecting any Senators who wobble on this nomination.

"Some" Irked by Superstar Haley?

Well, not me, pal. I like it when she does her thing. Trump is good at a certain kind of rhetoric, but it's not the only kind. Haley's much easier to take seriously (or even literally). She seems fearless and determined. We've rarely had such a good advocate.

Groupthink

From Jim Geraghty in the National Review, wondering how a general indictment of the toxic sex culture at Yale Law School plays out to its logical conclusion:

If, in an effort to get Kavanaugh, the left wants to retroactively declare that Yale University and its law school are and always were some sort of teeming cesspool of abuse and exploitation and elitist unaccountability . . . go ahead, fellas. Of course, a declaration like that spurs some questions about what the likes of Booker and Blumenthal saw and did when they were there. If this “institutional culture” of harassment and protecting the powerful was so deeply ingrained and so pervasive in the school for so long, how could those men somehow emerge with clear consciences? How could they themselves remain silent about it for so long?

There are a lot of Yale Law School graduates in the highest ranks of the progressive legal world — no doubt all of them should face the same suspicions. Were they complicit in continuing or even promoting and strengthening an exploitational culture?

If the aftermath of this whole angry mess is that Yale Law School has a permanent cloud over it, and everyone who went there is regarded with newfound suspicion . . . which side of the political divide do you think is going to pay the higher price?

When you try to indict a man by indicting the culture around him, you end up indicting a lot of other people in the process.

Every time I'm in a jury pool, I see people struggling with the need to abide by difficult evidentiary rules designed to keep verdicts from depending on the kind of thinking that runs: "I don't know if there's any actual proof, but that's less important than the fact that this seems like the kind of thing a guy from his kind of neighborhood would do."

Providing Protection

At The Federalist, Melissa Danford writes about her fears for her husband and sons.

My husband is in the military, so I am no stranger to a culture of double standards, but until now we thought it was more isolated. In the military it is common knowledge, whether senior leaders will acknowledge it or not, that a mere accusation of sexual harassment or assault, proven or not, is enough to end a man’s career....

All indications now are that too many in our society have abandoned the idea that all people, men and women, are innocent until proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt through due process. Instead people want a guilty until proven innocent standard for men accused of sexual assault. People think mere accusations, made without evidence and decades after the fact, should result in intrusive and embarrassing investigations simply because a woman made them.... Likewise, many seem to think that men and women should be judged by different standards. This is the opposite of equality before the law. Without equality before the law, how can we say the law rules and not men (or women)? As we make this turn toward “believe women” regardless of a trial or presence of proof, our society will only get worse.

Many also seem willing to abandon all statutes of limitation and questions of jurisdiction.

She mentions the military's zero tolerance of accusations of sexual misconduct, but that is probably not the proximate precursor to what we are seeing right now. I would argue that the Title IX kangaroo courts the Obama administration set up at universities served as a model and training ground for this. They normalized extrajudicial handling of such accusations with none of the normal protections or standards of evidence.

Double the Pleasure

A new study suggests that there are twice as many illegal aliens in America as previously believed.

AVI: Irony

If you had told me while I was in college in 1971 that a few decades later, a US Supreme Court justice was going to be questioned hard on whether there was too much sex and alcohol at his high school, I would have been petrified that the conservatives had somehow achieved total power, possibly by violence, and were imposing some sort of Puritan standards of a type later fictionalised in The Handmaid's Tale.

These are strange days.

Well, This Will Be A Fun Week

Rosenstein resigns, leaving a Trump appointee in charge of the Mueller investigation. The matter that men are not supposed to discuss has gotten psychotic. Trump is at the UN, talking DPRK nukes and national sovereignty. Also, this week is the end of the fiscal year, so government bureaucrats who have unspent money have to do something with it or lose it.

Should be quite an interesting few days for those of us who have to deal with the government.

UPDATE: The Rosenstein report was apparently false; for now he remains in place.

Last Light of Summer

P-hacking vs. the Kaballah

The replication crisis in psych research:

Let’s just put a bright line down right now. 2016 is year 1. Everything published before 2016 is provisional. Don’t take publication as meaning much of anything, and just cos a paper’s been cited approvingly, that’s not enough either. You have to read each paper on its own. Anything published in 2015 or earlier is part of the “too big to fail” era, it’s potentially a junk bond supported by toxic loans and you shouldn’t rely on it.

Cyberpunk 2020

More or less on schedule?

Researchers claim to have developed a simulator which can feed information directly into a person’s brain and teach them new skills in a shorter amount of time, comparing it to “life imitating art”.

They cite "The Matrix" for this, but the idea was fully formed in William Gibson's early works.

UPDATE: The splintering of cyberspace.

Project Veritas "Deep State" Videos

These are not as explosive as they'd like them to be, but they certainly are telling. Now they've gotten their first scalp, at least temporarily. I'll be surprised if 'removed from duties' translates into 'fired,' given that it's a government employee.

Wrong House

This sort of thing happens from time to time. It's a good reason not to raid people's houses unless there's suspicion of something going on there that is worth the risk of loss of innocent life -- including police life.

A View of Florence

From inside a storm-cloud as they rolled across these mountains.

Beer Hall in Seattle

Seems like a nice place.

Meanwhile, the open kitchen will be inspired by the idea of a Viking butcher shop and will feature bar bites and shared plates that explore wild flavors from the woods and sea. Imagine being at a gathering “near a roaring fire at the edge of a fjord,” said McQueen. There will be game, meat skewers, a large rotisserie for chicken, pork, and rabbit. “We’ll also have lamb and pork sausages, potato dumplings and pickled herring,” revealed McQueen[.]

Just Shut Up

All right, Senator. You got it. No more talk. We'll just get on with doing what we take to be right.

A Eulogy Fit for a Warrior - Ari Fuld, Rest in Peace.

Yesterday in Israel, Ari Fuld was killed by a knife wielding terrorist who had stabbed him in the back.  Before he collapsed, he turned, drew his weapon, climbed over a fence to chase after the attacker and fired on him hitting him multiple times, wounding him.

The Eulogy given by his wife, Miriam, was fitting for a man who was truly a warrior- and clearly she, a fitting match for him.

"When they sent you your discharge papers from the army at age 40, you tore them up. because the greatest [joy] you had was to serve in the Israeli Jewish army." - @arifuld's wife at his funeral tonight

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) September 16, 2018

"No-one knew [your life] would be cut so short this morning on your way to do shopping I asked you to do. You always ran towards danger, instead of away from it and you never backed down from a fight. Because you knew you were in the right. You fought for what you believed in."

— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) September 16, 2018

There is more in that thread, and it's worth reading.

For Some Sad Men Among Us

Once even David Allan Coe knew what it was to be lonely. There's hope for you yet. You know who you are.

Haga of the First Water

I wish I could remember where I read the suggestion -- Dad29 only hints at it -- but sometime around Friday I read someone who suggested that the Kavanaugh accuser would turn out to have had first made the accusation in a therapy session, many years after the fact. The idea is that 'recovered' (but actually false) memories in psychology work are a known issue, and this was likely enough to turn out to be one.

Now it may be that the accusation is true, although both of the people she names as having been there deny that it or anything like it ever happened. But the psychotherapy-created-memory idea doesn't sound implausible to me given the facts. For one thing, it did in fact first come up in a therapy session in 2012, when she and her husband were having trouble and she needed a way to try to right that ship. But also:

She did tell someone about this years before Kavanaugh was nominated — but never mentioned his name. She doesn’t remember where or even when exactly the incident happened, but she does remember the names of two other people who were allegedly there. (Neither responded to WaPo’s request for comments.) She passed a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent but her own therapist had notes saying four boys were involved, not two, which Ford blames on a misunderstanding.

All of that is explicable if the hypothesis is correct. The fuzziness on exactly where and when this happened arises from the fact that it never did happen, as does the fuzziness on just who was responsible or how many people were present at the time. But also the polygraph: she could readily pass one, per hypothesis, because she isn't lying. She's telling the truth of what she thinks she remembers.

(UPDATE: Paragraph removed due to inaccurate source. I regret the error.)

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was in fact the truth. Kavanaugh has passed six FBI background checks, none of which turned up anything like this; there's no pattern of behavior, as you'd expect if this accusation were true. But that doesn't mean she is lying, not in the strict sense. She is quite possibly telling the truth as she believes she understands it.

Defenders might say that a good reason for being unstable is having suffered a rape attempt in your young adulthood, and perhaps that's fair. In the end, both hypotheses are possible. We just have to decide which one is more plausible. Or maybe not even that; a 17 year old's bad behavior, even if proven at law rather than being alleged after the statute of limitations had passed seven times over, would normally be sealed in juvenile records just because we wouldn't want it to prevent them from reforming and living a responsible life as an adult. By all indications, he has led a responsible life as an adult. Maybe we don't have to decide what is true about the one allegation from 35 years ago to know the right way to proceed now.

All of that involves taking this accusation seriously. It leads us to the same place we would get to if we didn't take it seriously at all, as well we might not given the way the Democratic leadership sat on the thing for a month until they could raise it at the last minute to cause chaos. I'm open to the idea that we shouldn't given them an inch given how they've behaved; but a lot more is at stake than punishing Sen. Feinstein for her perfidy. I'm willing to take the matter seriously. All the same, I think that absent any new evidence or additional accusers, the course is clear.

BB: Interview with Ms. Chelsea Clinton

The Bee gently mocks her latest. “I’m a devout Christian, but suggesting that I need to believe Christian things that would go against my political platform is the very definition of the war on women.”