AVI mentioned in passing over at his place a certain tolerance for 'moderate' regional pride. I'm not sure I've adhered to the moderation standard, which I hadn't understood was expected; but in fairness, Southerners are rarely moderate in this regard.
By sad coincidence, Roy Clark passed away just a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I mentioned it at the time. He was a man whom our region could be proud to have born. His contributions to the world included music and humor, and he was great at both. Here he is with Buck Owens and another of my favorite fellows, the late, great Jerry Reed.
And here he is with Buck Trent, doing a playful variation on a playful standard.
Although he was most famous for these Southern types, he was a thoroughly trained musician who could play anything on one of several instruments.
It was nice to share the stage with these men for a while. I hope they will be long remembered.
UPDATE:
Let's do a couple more. One older:
And one with Johnny Cash. Both of these are funny because it's impossible to believe Roy Clark ever shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die. Johnny Cash could sell the line, but Roy Clark just wants to play tricks on the guitar.
Johnny doesn't care. He's having fun too.
Inappropriate Christmas gifts
This is a gift you should reserve for small children of parents who have deeply offended you--like giving a young boy a drum set. But I have to admit to a strong temptation. It's a toy fire truck that lights up and emits a siren, which is bad enough, but it also squirts water out of the hose attached to the ladder, how cool is that?
The best part is the video on the Amazon page, showing an adult running the toy through its paces, complete with a small alcohol fire in what looks like carpet near the truck, which the adult carefully extinguishes. You can tell by the wording of the toy's description that no American lawyers went anywhere near this promotional video:
My grand-nephew is in that toddler toy-truck stage. After last week's snows in the Northeast, his admirable father affixed cardboard snow-plow blades to all his trucks, and now the kid runs around the house delightedly yelling "'no pow! 'no pow!"
The best part is the video on the Amazon page, showing an adult running the toy through its paces, complete with a small alcohol fire in what looks like carpet near the truck, which the adult carefully extinguishes. You can tell by the wording of the toy's description that no American lawyers went anywhere near this promotional video:
IMAGINAIVE EDUCATION TOY: This fire rescue truck is a great educational toy for kids, for it helps to cultivating the toddlers fire protection consciousness and emergency situation handling, so that children can protect themselves in the danger to some extents.
My grand-nephew is in that toddler toy-truck stage. After last week's snows in the Northeast, his admirable father affixed cardboard snow-plow blades to all his trucks, and now the kid runs around the house delightedly yelling "'no pow! 'no pow!"
A Series of Historical Analogies
Beware the attempts to roll things back to control by 'the experts.'
The author actually has some credentials of his own: a former US Army infantry NCO, with a Ph.D. in history.
The author actually has some credentials of his own: a former US Army infantry NCO, with a Ph.D. in history.
A Reasonable Point
"Giving your child a dumb name like ABCDE should be considered child abuse because you’re willing to condemn your child to a lifetime of mockery so you can get attention."
Relevant story.
I wouldn't want the government to have authority to prosecute for 'child abuse,' but I definitely think that we should adopt the cultural stance that this sort of thing is an abusive behavior. We ought to treat parents who do this to their children as bad people.
By the way, why are all these crazy stories coming out of Texas? What's going on down there? Texas used to be reliable.
Relevant story.
I wouldn't want the government to have authority to prosecute for 'child abuse,' but I definitely think that we should adopt the cultural stance that this sort of thing is an abusive behavior. We ought to treat parents who do this to their children as bad people.
By the way, why are all these crazy stories coming out of Texas? What's going on down there? Texas used to be reliable.
A Wrinkle in the Texas Divorce Case
This feature of the story about the divorce in which the parents dispute the gender of their child escaped me before.
I don't ever want to hear another word about how America is some kind of patriarchy.
In their divorce proceedings, the mother has charged the father with child abuse for not affirming James as transgender, has sought restraining orders against him, and is seeking to terminate his parental rights. She is also seeking to require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight.A mother is asking a court to force a father to pay for the castration of his son. She's not just demanding that the father be forced to accept the castration of his son, which would be a monstrosity by itself. She is demanding that he be forced to pay for it to be done. An American court is actually entertaining that request.
I don't ever want to hear another word about how America is some kind of patriarchy.
In Fairness to Brian Kemp
The Free Beacon points out that registration and turnout both increased under Secretary of State Kemp -- now Governor-Elect Kemp.
OK. Fair enough. The real problem with the system wasn't registration, though: it was the ultra-hackable computers with no way to verify that your vote had been counted, or that it hadn't been altered. I don't think Kemp cheated, because if he had the margin would have been safer: if he had given himself 51% instead of 50.3%, there would have been no talk of a runoff and a lot less pressure toward a recount. The duty of the Secretary of State isn't satisfied simply by not cheating, though: he ought to have done his best to set up a system that no one thought you could cheat.
OK. Fair enough. The real problem with the system wasn't registration, though: it was the ultra-hackable computers with no way to verify that your vote had been counted, or that it hadn't been altered. I don't think Kemp cheated, because if he had the margin would have been safer: if he had given himself 51% instead of 50.3%, there would have been no talk of a runoff and a lot less pressure toward a recount. The duty of the Secretary of State isn't satisfied simply by not cheating, though: he ought to have done his best to set up a system that no one thought you could cheat.
Unsympathetic Guys Sometimes Deserve to Win
The Supreme Court looks set to deliver a win to a heroin dealer, along with thousands of others punished by excessive fines and asset forfeiture.
A decision in favor of 37-year-old Tyson Timbs, of Marion, Indiana, also could buttress efforts to limit the confiscation by local law enforcement of property belonging to someone suspected of a crime. Police and prosecutors often keep the proceeds.I hope they lose big.
Timbs was on hand at the high court for arguments that were largely a one-sided affair in which the main question appeared to be how broadly the state would lose.
And Don't Forget the Fire Hazard
Schools in Sweden ban St. Lucia celebrations. (Some of you know these from The Ref's famous Scandinavian dinner scene.)
According to preschool manager Anna Karmskog, they want to avoid discrimination, offensive treatment and do not want to “exclude” anyone.Well, in fairness, most of the Muslim migrants are without concerns about gender, equality, exclusivity, or discrimination. So really, everybody is getting their way.
It is also seen from an “equality perspective”. Many people buy Lucia costumes for one occasion. It does not feel right to force the parents to buy these, she says.
Furthermore, many children are reported to be anxious and sad in a large crowd, and the “gender perspective” as the children “walk in a row” is questioned. The school has not discussed the cancellation with the parents.
In Mellerud, Åsen’s school decided to boycott the Lucia celebrations altogether...
“But last week, the school celebrated Muhammad’s journey to heaven without even informing us.”, [one school parent said].
Some now say that the cancelled Lucia celebration is a prelude to tone down Christmas to adapt to Islam. Recently, to prevent terror attacks, barriers have also been set up at Christmas Markets in Malmö.
Battle of Visby
I came across this picture of a skull fused to a mail coif, from the 1361 Battle of Visby. The Swedish History Museum hosts the remains.
The issue at stake was, unsurprisingly, which government got to collect taxes. Gotland was paying taxes to the King of Sweden, but the Danes felt they had a claim -- and they also had professional fighting men with recent experience and what were at the time modern arms.
The issue at stake was, unsurprisingly, which government got to collect taxes. Gotland was paying taxes to the King of Sweden, but the Danes felt they had a claim -- and they also had professional fighting men with recent experience and what were at the time modern arms.
The Danish army was composed mainly of Danish and German troops, many mercenaries from the Baltic coast of Germany, with recent experience in the various feuds and wars between the German and Scandinavian states. These men would have worn what was known as Transitional armour, with iron or steel plates over vital areas and joints over a full suit of chain mail. They were led by Valdemar IV of Denmark. Against them was an army of Gutes, mainly freemen and minor nobles. The ordinary freemen appear to have worn more limited but still effective protection, with many skeletons that were excavated wearing a chain-mail shirt or a coat of plates to protect the torso. Some warriors may have worn a padded Gambeson or a leather jerkin or coat[.]The battle is contemporaneous with the Hundred Years War, which is why this array of armor is said to be 'transitional.' The early battles of the Hundred Years War were fought mostly in mail armor; by the end of the war, articulated plate armor was common not just for nobles but for knights and men at arms. This occurred somewhere in the middle, and less centrally to Europe than were England and France at that time.
Yeah, it's just like that
USA Today explains that the barbed wire at the U.S.'s southern border evokes troubling images of the Iron Curtain. It brings back memories, doesn't it? East Germany frantically pushing its refugees towards West Germany, where they hope to build better lives for themselves, and West Germany callously manning the wall with tear-gas-wielding jackbooted cops.
In other news, apparently tear gas is not a violation of the Geneva Convention when Macron uses it against French protesters. Speaking of the effect of tear gas, at least one would-be U.S. border-hopper understands what it's for: “If they’re launching tear gas,” Castillo said, “it’s better to head somewhere else.”
In other news, apparently tear gas is not a violation of the Geneva Convention when Macron uses it against French protesters. Speaking of the effect of tear gas, at least one would-be U.S. border-hopper understands what it's for: “If they’re launching tear gas,” Castillo said, “it’s better to head somewhere else.”
"Murphy v. Carpenter" & Tribal Sovereignty
The Supreme Court is hearing an interesting case. From NewsOK.com:
The population of Oklahoma is about 3.9 million people, so this affects a large percentage of them in some way.
The Trump administration sided with the state of Oklahoma:
If you are interested, Mvskoke News, the newspaper of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides some historical background to the case.
They also give some details on 6 amicus briefs filed in the case.
The question before the court in Carpenter v. Murphy is whether Congress disestablished the reservation of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in the early 20th century. If not, that reservation created in 1866 still exists and major crimes involving tribal members in that region of eastern Oklahoma must be prosecuted in federal courts, not state courts.
...
Much of Tuesday's hour of arguments focused on the practical implications of a ruling in favor of the tribe. Several justices showed deep concern about the ramifications of a ruling in favor of the Creeks.
“There are 1.8 million people living in this area,” said Justice Stephen Breyer. “They have built their lives not necessarily on criminal law but on municipal regulations, property law, dog-related law, thousands of details. And now, if we say really this land ... belongs to the tribe, what happens to all those people? What happens to all those laws?”
...
Justice Neil Gorsuch, a President Donald Trump appointee, did not participate in Tuesday's arguments and will not take a side in an eventual opinion because he was on the 10th Circuit last year when it ruled that the Creek reservation still exists.
The population of Oklahoma is about 3.9 million people, so this affects a large percentage of them in some way.
The Trump administration sided with the state of Oklahoma:
Last August, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the murder conviction and death sentence of Patrick Murphy, who was convicted in state court of mutilating and murdering George Jacobs in 1999. The court ruled the Creek reservation still exists and Murphy therefore must be tried in federal court for the murder on reservation land.
The Justice Department's arguments were three-pronged: Congress abolished the Creek reservation, the 10th Circuit erroneously cherry-picked historical documents to conclude it didn't, and Oklahoma had jurisdiction in the Murphy case regardless.
“Congress granted the state jurisdiction to prosecute crimes involving Indians in the former Indian Territory as part of the series of acts leading to Oklahoma statehood,” Francisco wrote.
...
The states of Nebraska, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Montana, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Wyoming filed a brief Monday asking the Supreme Court to side with Oklahoma, concerned tribal lands in their states could also be affected.
If you are interested, Mvskoke News, the newspaper of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, provides some historical background to the case.
They also give some details on 6 amicus briefs filed in the case.
The Nation on Economics
Laissez-faire for China, Iran, Russia, and Turkey -- but the regulatory state at home!
I suppose that will make for a "fairer world economy," if by "fairer" you mean "the US is no longer far out in front."
I suppose that will make for a "fairer world economy," if by "fairer" you mean "the US is no longer far out in front."
The Nation of Islam and Scientology
This is not a topic of interest to me, but it might be to some of you, and I know one of the co-authors.
The Chicago Principles of Free Speech
Apparently the University of Chicago's statement on freedom of speech is now being considered by Australia. The author of this piece doesn't think they need it, which probably means that they need it. If it's purely redundant, there's no harm; it's good to have redundant safeguards for really important things. To whatever degree it isn't redundant, well, that's why you need it.
In 2014, the President (equivalent to the Vice Chancellor of an Australian university) of the University of Chicago convened a committee, chaired by highly acclaimed free speech scholar Professor Geoffrey Stone, to draft a statement that would articulate the university’s commitment to “free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation”."Possibly," at least in some cases. However, in other cases, it is clear that that they don't want these principles because they have others.
The university took this step in response to free speech controversies on university campuses in the United States. Examples include disinviting controversial speakers, pressure on faculty to make public apologies for statements some considered offensive, demands for the removal of historic statues or monuments, and the existence of campus speech codes which prohibit students from engaging in hate speech on the ground of race, sexuality, or gender.
The Chicago statement recognises free speech on campus as an issue that goes to the core mission of the university as a place of learning. It defends free and open inquiry in all matters, and guarantees the broadest possible latitude to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn.
It also recognises that freedom of speech does not mean people can say whatever they want, wherever they want. It permits restrictions on speech that violates the law, is defamatory, threatens or harasses, invades privacy or confidentiality, or is incompatible with the functioning of a university.
The statement is a well-articulated and clear enunciation of three things:
1) the importance of freedom of speech to learning
2) the recognition that free speech must have limits
3) the articulation that any such limits must be carefully and narrowly circumscribed.
As of February 2018 the Chicago statement had been adopted by 34 other universities in the US. But this still leaves around 1,600 universities that have not signed up, possibly because their existing policies already support the same views.
"Legally Barred"
I suppose the Eighth Amendment probably forbids the court from taking the appropriate measures here.
The court is so far going along with this idiocy, if I am correct to believe that 'legally barred' means that some previous court proceeding is the source of this restriction.
A Texas father is fighting for his son in court after pushing back on his ex-wife's claim that their six-year-old is a transgender girl.This poor kid. Mommy and daddy are fighting; mommy really wishes he weren't a boy. He's six. No adult should be doing this to him.
According to court documents, the young boy only dresses as a girl when he's with his mother, who has enrolled him in first-grade as a female named "Luna." The father, however, contends that his son consistently chooses to wear boys' clothes, "violently refuses to wear girl’s clothes at my home," and identifies as a boy when he is with him.
The Federalist reports that the mother has accused the father of child abuse in their divorce proceedings "for not affirming James as transgender" and is looking to strip the dad of his parental rights. "She is also seeking to require him to pay for the child’s visits to a transgender-affirming therapist and transgender medical alterations, which may include hormonal sterilization starting at age eight," the report adds.
The father has been legally barred from speaking to his child about sexuality and gender from a scientific or religious perspective and from dressing his son in boys' clothes; instead, he has to offer both girls' and boys' outfits. The boy consistently refuses to wear dresses, according to the father.
The boy was diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a gender transition therapist the mother, a pediatrician, chose for her son to see. According to the therapist's notes, the boy chose to identify as a girl when he was in sessions alone with his mother; alternatively, he chose to identify as a boy when he was in sessions alone with his father.
The court is so far going along with this idiocy, if I am correct to believe that 'legally barred' means that some previous court proceeding is the source of this restriction.
An Aristotelian Proof
I'm posting this here because I want to watch it, but I don't have an hour right now to devote to it. If any of you get to it before I have time, feel free to post thoughts (or questions -- I do have some training here if you're not familiar with Aristotelian thinking and want to walk through it).
Wretchard on the Coming Storm
If it sounds a lot like shadow banning and blacklisting its because it is. As Tyler Grant notes in the Hill the basic algorithms behind the Chinese social scoring system and Western hate speech systems are essentially the same. "It’s tempting to think this government overreach is purely reserved to China, after all they did just forfeit significant freedom by electing Xi Jinping president for life. This is incorrect thinking. The rest of the world is steps away from trailing the Chinese into a surveillance state."Read that last with Thomas' bit, just below.The U.K. fines and even imprisons people for hate speech or speech deemed abhorrent to the prevailing norms of society. The U.S. is not far behind. Last week, a Manhattan judge ruled a bar can toss Trump supporters for their political viewpoints. A recent proliferation of politically motivated boycotts seeks to punish "bad" viewpoints; protesters are eager to shout down incorrect speech. In this political climate, it’s not difficult to imagine businesses or the government assessing social benefit or worth based upon a variety of factors including political speech.With incredible data collection, the plumbing is already in place for such a system to take hold. Our tech companies catalogue large quantities of data on everyone. As we saw with Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 election, this data can be used to steer particular viewpoints; it’s not a far cry to imagine information being used to control viewpoints.
Tricking People Into Changing Their Political Opinions?
Choice blindness, eh?
The experiment relies on a phenomenon known as choice blindness. Choice blindness was discovered in 2005 by a team of Swedish researchers. They presented participants with two photos of faces and asked participants to choose the photo they thought was more attractive, and then handed participants that photo. Using a clever trick inspired by stage magic, when participants received the photo it had been switched to the person not chosen by the participant—the less attractive photo. Remarkably, most participants accepted this card as their own choice and then proceeded to give arguments for why they had chosen that face in the first place. This revealed a striking mismatch between our choices and our ability to rationalize outcomes. This same finding has since been replicated in various domains including taste for jam, financial decisions, and eye-witness testimony.While it is remarkable that people can be fooled into picking an attractive photo or a sweet jam in the moment, we wondered whether it would be possible to use this false-feedback to alter political beliefs in a way that would stand the test of time.In our experiment, we first gave false-feedback about their choices, but this time concerning actual political questions (e.g., climate taxes on consumer goods). Participants were then asked to state their views a second time that same day, and again one week later. The results were striking. Participants’ responses were shifted considerably in the direction of the manipulation. For instance, those who originally had favoured higher taxes were more likely to be undecided or even opposed to it.
Norse Arts and Crafts
A History piece on a find at Ribe, including wooden "'solid houses'" dating back no later than the 720s," and "telling discoveries that include jewelry, coins, and a lyre, a stringed musical instrument."
The journalist who wrote the piece is no scholar, though.
The journalist who wrote the piece is no scholar, though.
How the Vikings went from building a complex and seemingly stable society to gaining their status as brash and hostile warriors is still unknown.It's not at all unknown. P. H. Sawyer's Kings and Vikings gives an account of how it happened. The stabilizing society gave rise to stronger kings who pushed out the wilder elements, so that the original 'Vikings' were the bandits and warlords that these stronger kings were driving out of Norway and Denmark and Sweden. The success these raiders found in places like England and France provided the fodder for the later, larger-scale "Viking" raids by later generations of such kings. The story is fairly well known, and evident in sources from the sagas to the Heimskringla.
"Permanently (If Need Be)"
I can't imagine it's more than just words, this threat to close the Mexican border "permanently." I assume it means "for as long as necessary to make the economic pain effective." There's too much money to be made for Americans trading across that border for the closure to really be even long-lasting.
Trump's extravagant threat doesn't even place at the top of the rankings for extravagant border-closing threats. The silver standard for these border threats, is Saudi Arabia's.
Oh, by the way, the Border Patrol used pepper spray / tear gas under Obama too. I mean, it's literally their job to stop things like this. It's the whole reason we pay for them to exist year after year.
Trump's extravagant threat doesn't even place at the top of the rankings for extravagant border-closing threats. The silver standard for these border threats, is Saudi Arabia's.
Saudi Arabia could consider a proposal to dig a maritime canal along the kingdom’s border with Qatar, turning the peninsula-nation into an island and transforming its only land border into a military zone and nuclear waste site, state-linked Saudi newspapers reported Monday.The gold standard remains McArthur's DPRK/ROK border creation proposal. It started with 30-50 nuclear bombs, followed by a pincer movement invasion to sow a belt of radioactive Cobalt, creating a very firm border indeed.
Oh, by the way, the Border Patrol used pepper spray / tear gas under Obama too. I mean, it's literally their job to stop things like this. It's the whole reason we pay for them to exist year after year.
Cultural appropriation
One thing the pompous can't stand is ridicule.
Not superheroes, really, just people in funny costumes. You could as easily take it as a joke about the relentless march of tawdry American culture. But the important thing is that IT'S NOT FUNNY.
Not superheroes, really, just people in funny costumes. You could as easily take it as a joke about the relentless march of tawdry American culture. But the important thing is that IT'S NOT FUNNY.
"Did you hear what he said?"
The news this week is sounding more and more like a junior-high rumor mill. I'd heard that former president Obama made a crack about "mommy issues" and wondered what that might be referring to. Once again, a Google search of recent articles about what sounded like a hot topic left me scratching my head. Mr. Obama uttered the phrase, the consensus seems to be that the audience laughed knowingly (or tittered nervously?), and a few people are asking whether it's obvious whether he was taking a jab at President Trump's relationship with his mother.
I had not previously been aware of the minor cottage industry in analyzing Mr. Trump's supposed failure to bond with a primary caregiver in infancy. In any case, some reports of Mr. Obama's curious remark are skeptical that he was even referring to Mr. Trump at all, though quite a few analyzed the strategy of throwing out comments without mentioning the sitting president by name. If the press were a little more curious and evenhanded, at least a few of the articles might have adopted an attitude of wonder that the former president was making such inscrutable remarks to apparently appreciative audiences. There would be talk of dog whistles. If President Trump had tweeted about "mommy issues," I suspect there'd be more 25th Amendment chatter this week.
For my own part, I wouldn't assume the remark referred to Mr. Trump at all. I'd assume it was a crack about what keeps people from voting for wonderful candidates like Hillary Clinton (or even Angela Merkel?). It was perhaps a less incendiary version of the "ex-wife issues" excuse for Clinton's perceived loathsomeness.
But it's a sign of the state of the press that people are grasping at these pieces of fluff instead of discussing anything concrete that someone currently in power is actually doing. "I heard Mary didn't sit next to Susie at lunch today."
I had not previously been aware of the minor cottage industry in analyzing Mr. Trump's supposed failure to bond with a primary caregiver in infancy. In any case, some reports of Mr. Obama's curious remark are skeptical that he was even referring to Mr. Trump at all, though quite a few analyzed the strategy of throwing out comments without mentioning the sitting president by name. If the press were a little more curious and evenhanded, at least a few of the articles might have adopted an attitude of wonder that the former president was making such inscrutable remarks to apparently appreciative audiences. There would be talk of dog whistles. If President Trump had tweeted about "mommy issues," I suspect there'd be more 25th Amendment chatter this week.
For my own part, I wouldn't assume the remark referred to Mr. Trump at all. I'd assume it was a crack about what keeps people from voting for wonderful candidates like Hillary Clinton (or even Angela Merkel?). It was perhaps a less incendiary version of the "ex-wife issues" excuse for Clinton's perceived loathsomeness.
But it's a sign of the state of the press that people are grasping at these pieces of fluff instead of discussing anything concrete that someone currently in power is actually doing. "I heard Mary didn't sit next to Susie at lunch today."
Thanksgiving menus
Neighbors are joining us for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, which also happens to be my husband's birthday. That means he gets to choose the menu and no static of any kind from me. He's going to try an oyster-bread-cornbread stuffing this year, while reprising a number of brined-turkey and brussels-sprouts dishes that he likes, and probably a wonderful little seafood-in-bordellaise thing in puff pastries.
He doesn't care about cranberry relish, but I decided to think of the others. My own favorite recipe has a lot of peppers and grapefruit chunks and jicama and nuts and sambal oelek and Chinese five-spice; unfortunately no one but me much likes it, though I can eat it with every meal for a week. Instead I tried an Anthony Bourdain uncooked relish that's simply raw cranberries and an orange pulsed in a food processor, with sugar added to taste. Three ingredients, no cooking. five minutes, delicious. I'm sold.
I was also planning a Caesar salad until I found that the grocery store has combed its shelves and removed every trace of Romaine, answering the frantic call of the CDC this week. I was prepared to buy up a lot of Romaine packages marked with skulls-and-crossbones and 90%-off stickers, but the store chain's managers weren't born yesterday: cheaper to put the product on a bonfire than contend with lawsuits in the face of an unambiguous (indeed hysterical) recall notice. We switched on the fly to an old favorite with spinach leaves, oranges, green olives, and candied toasted pecans.
We've been lazy this fall and haven't put in our usual winter greens crops. Time to get moving on that, before the CDC loses its mind completely.
He doesn't care about cranberry relish, but I decided to think of the others. My own favorite recipe has a lot of peppers and grapefruit chunks and jicama and nuts and sambal oelek and Chinese five-spice; unfortunately no one but me much likes it, though I can eat it with every meal for a week. Instead I tried an Anthony Bourdain uncooked relish that's simply raw cranberries and an orange pulsed in a food processor, with sugar added to taste. Three ingredients, no cooking. five minutes, delicious. I'm sold.
I was also planning a Caesar salad until I found that the grocery store has combed its shelves and removed every trace of Romaine, answering the frantic call of the CDC this week. I was prepared to buy up a lot of Romaine packages marked with skulls-and-crossbones and 90%-off stickers, but the store chain's managers weren't born yesterday: cheaper to put the product on a bonfire than contend with lawsuits in the face of an unambiguous (indeed hysterical) recall notice. We switched on the fly to an old favorite with spinach leaves, oranges, green olives, and candied toasted pecans.
We've been lazy this fall and haven't put in our usual winter greens crops. Time to get moving on that, before the CDC loses its mind completely.
Now I'm fascinated
It's become my settled habit to click on articles about Facebook to see if anyone, anywhere will mention what Facebook has done wrong. Today's catch is a New York Magazine article explaining that it's looking pretty grim for the embattled giant. It seems that Zuckerberg failed to attend properly assembled corporate meetings to discuss Morally Complex Decisions. Also, FB allowed itself to function as a Vector for bad things. Those stories you heard about censorship of conservative views, though? Those were spurious, though they may help us construct the Growing Bipartisan Consensus. And anyway we're not talking about censorship. Stop talking about censorship. We're not even talking about destroying the company, but these issues Aren't Going Away. There are a few specifics in today's article, in the form of statistics on how FB employees feel about the future of the company, which demonstrate conclusively that FB is on the wrong side of history.
It's becoming standard for the author of such an article to explain that nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded. I guess some people still go there, though, which is a Bad Thing, because of the vector and stuff. The people who don't know enough to quit logging in are still being inoculated with improperly curated views.
All I'm getting out of this flap is "nice business, wouldn't want to see anything happen to it." How is it that FB can't figure out how to be the victim instead of the villain in this fuzzy drama? Does Zuckerberg not have someone on staff who tells him how big a check to write and to whom to write it?
I continue to use Facebook for the simplest of practical reasons: it's the easiest way to keep an eye on news and opinion in my little county. I mute all the national nonsense as quickly as I can figure out how. It doesn't matter in the least whether I like the platform: I'll use whatever platform a majority of my neighbors use, because their presence is the only important thing. They're the ones I'm trying to talk to conveniently. I notice, however, that my "blogging," as the current county leadership describes my activity, arouses significant hostility in the powers that be, particularly as it so clearly got me elected at about 5% of the cost that most of them are used to spending on a campaign. I guess that means I'm a "vector" too.
It's becoming standard for the author of such an article to explain that nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded. I guess some people still go there, though, which is a Bad Thing, because of the vector and stuff. The people who don't know enough to quit logging in are still being inoculated with improperly curated views.
All I'm getting out of this flap is "nice business, wouldn't want to see anything happen to it." How is it that FB can't figure out how to be the victim instead of the villain in this fuzzy drama? Does Zuckerberg not have someone on staff who tells him how big a check to write and to whom to write it?
I continue to use Facebook for the simplest of practical reasons: it's the easiest way to keep an eye on news and opinion in my little county. I mute all the national nonsense as quickly as I can figure out how. It doesn't matter in the least whether I like the platform: I'll use whatever platform a majority of my neighbors use, because their presence is the only important thing. They're the ones I'm trying to talk to conveniently. I notice, however, that my "blogging," as the current county leadership describes my activity, arouses significant hostility in the powers that be, particularly as it so clearly got me elected at about 5% of the cost that most of them are used to spending on a campaign. I guess that means I'm a "vector" too.
A Blog on Runes in Orkney
A grad student working on runic inscriptions there has put together a fun blog out of the things that she isn't putting into her dissertation. Those of you interested in such things may enjoy it.
Public services
Powerline records the exact moment when the serpent finished consuming itself:
I was reading an old lecture on Aristophanes by Leo Strauss when I came across these very usable sentences:As an unwoke ciswoman, I denounce myself.
When about to enter a place at at which we are meant to laugh and to enjoy ourselves, we must first cross a picket line of black-coated ushers exuding deadly and deadening seriousness. No doubt they unwittingly contribute to the effect of the comedies.Strauss had in mind of course the typical college professoriate of our time. These lines came springing back to mind when you come across a story like this:
MICHIGAN COLLEGE CANCELS ‘THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES’ BECAUSE ‘NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE VAGINAS’
Schumpeter Thought Otherwise
Pointing out a UC Berkeley class on destroying Israel and erasing its Jewish history (and, presumably, population), a hopeful author writes:
We seem to me to be closer to Schumpeter's vision with every generation. Indeed, in Schumpeter's day Marx was recognized as disproven; now the Marxists are resurgent, and whole fields that are utterly Marxist in their frames of interpretation and criticism often do not even realize how wholly they have been subsumed.
But good will come of this. Since there are no constraints on what universities do, they are increasingly moving toward the extremes. In doing this, they undermine their own legitimacy and their bogus claims of serving a societal good or promoting civic virtue.The great economist Joesph Schumpeter thought the opposite. He believed that this very feature of the university's education of the rising elite would eventually destroy the West and capitalism itself.
Eventually, such a system will collapse because the larger society will recognize that it is paying for its own delegitimation and destruction through courses that view America and Western Civilization as the roots of all evil in the world.
We seem to me to be closer to Schumpeter's vision with every generation. Indeed, in Schumpeter's day Marx was recognized as disproven; now the Marxists are resurgent, and whole fields that are utterly Marxist in their frames of interpretation and criticism often do not even realize how wholly they have been subsumed.
The Second Must Not Be A Second Class Right
A piece at National Review by John Yoo, part of a series on restoring constitutional order, addresses the issue.
Everyone here knows my position, which I see no need to repeat after 15 years of blogging. If you don't know what I think about it, or just about anything else, it's in the archives. As a matter of fact, I could probably stop writing this blog just anytime, returning to it only when I change an older opinion for some reason. My opinion on the 2nd has not changed at all.
Everyone here knows my position, which I see no need to repeat after 15 years of blogging. If you don't know what I think about it, or just about anything else, it's in the archives. As a matter of fact, I could probably stop writing this blog just anytime, returning to it only when I change an older opinion for some reason. My opinion on the 2nd has not changed at all.
Good Advice Democrats Will Ignore
Joan C. Williams more-or-less accurately explains what Democrats need to know about attracting non-elite votes. To whit, stop treating economic concerns as pure racism; stop playing up race and gender issues, and focus on helping ordinary people; stop thinking that you and your fellow elites are so much less racist than ordinary people anyway. (Williams doesn't quite have the courage to go beyond 'ordinary white people,' and explain that racism is more or less universal and just as unhelpful in every demographic; but maybe The Atlantic isn't ready for that yet.)
Stop, in other words, focusing on demographic change as a solution. Quit telling white working class voters that you plan is for them to die so they stop being a problem for your agenda.
Stop, in other words, focusing on demographic change as a solution. Quit telling white working class voters that you plan is for them to die so they stop being a problem for your agenda.
[P]eople on Twitter ask whether I’m finally ready to admit that the white working class is simply racist. What my Twitter friends don’t seem to recognize is their own privilege. If elites cling to the idea that working-class whites are perpetrators of inequality, rather than both perpetrators and victims, perhaps it’s because they want to believe that they are where they are because they’ve worked hard and they’re the smartest people around. Once you start a conversation about class, elite white people have to admit they have not only racial privilege but class privilege, too.Needless to say, she is being totally ignored.
Acknowledging this also requires elites to cede yet another advantage: the extent to which they have controlled Democrats’ priorities. Political scientists have documented the party’s shift over the past 50 years from a coalition focused on blue-collar issues to one dominated by environmentalism and other issues elites cherish.
I’m one of those activists; environmentalism and concerns related to gender, race, and sexuality define my scholarship and my identity. But the working class has been asked to endure a lot of economic pain while Democrats focus on other problems. It’s time to listen up. The only effective antidote to a populism interlaced with racism is a populism that isn’t.
Democrats thinking about running for president in 2020 are dramatically changing the way the party talks about race in Donald Trump’s America: Get ready to hear a lot more about intersectionality, allyship, inclusivity and POC.I'm pretty sure that ordinary people -- and not just white people -- will be very impressed by intersectionality. Negatively impressed, but deeply impressed all the same.
White and nonwhite Democratic hopefuls are talking more explicitly about race than the party’s White House aspirants ever have — and shrugging off warnings that embracing so-called identity politics could distract from the party’s economic message and push white voters further into Donald Trump’s arms.
Biker In Chief Stares Down Putin
The President is a little soft-hearted for my tastes, but for whatever it is worth, our VP is solid.
Men of the North
A longstanding question of the Hall, posed rhetorically but meaningfully, has been 'where are our Wagners, our Beethovens, today?' One of them is Jeremy Soule.
Soule writes for Bethesda Softworks, and produced some few years ago one of the greatest orchestral pieces since Wagner.
If you have the nearly-four-hours, it is well worth your time throughout. The songs, echoing Tolkien, are in an invented language originally belonging to dragons. Although the game is an adventure, most of the music is peaceful rather than stressful: mostly it focuses on the beauty and wonder of creation, rather than the strife between creatures. But when it does consider conflict, it rises into the epic scale.
He has a new album out this year, which is symphonic sketches on the same scheme. It does not aspire to epic, and so it is not quite as powerful, but it is also well constructed.
Soule writes for Bethesda Softworks, and produced some few years ago one of the greatest orchestral pieces since Wagner.
If you have the nearly-four-hours, it is well worth your time throughout. The songs, echoing Tolkien, are in an invented language originally belonging to dragons. Although the game is an adventure, most of the music is peaceful rather than stressful: mostly it focuses on the beauty and wonder of creation, rather than the strife between creatures. But when it does consider conflict, it rises into the epic scale.
He has a new album out this year, which is symphonic sketches on the same scheme. It does not aspire to epic, and so it is not quite as powerful, but it is also well constructed.
An Interview with Paglia
Definitely the most interesting voice currently participating in that movement broadly called 'feminism,' Camile Paglia has given one of her periodic long and wide-ranging interviews. They are usually worth reading, and this one is no exception. For me there is always much to disagree with, but surprising points of commonality. For an example of the latter:
Claire Lehmann: You seem to be one of the only scholars of the humanities who are willing to challenge the post-structuralist status quo. Why have other humanities academics been so spineless in preserving the integrity of their fields?It's hard to find anyone in academia now who will openly proclaim that the Western canon represents something categorically superior to, well, anything else. Western philosophers will still quietly murmur to each other their recognition that what they are doing is both categorically different from, and better than, what goes by the name of "Eastern philosophy." But they won't say it in public, and in private only among trusted friends.
Camille Paglia: The silence of the academic establishment about the corruption of Western universities by postmodernism and post-structuralism has been an absolute disgrace.... Most established professors in the 1970s probably believed that the new theory trend was a fad that would blow away like autumn leaves. The greatness of the complex and continuous Western tradition seemed self-evident: the canon would surely stand, even if supplemented by new names. Well, guess what? Helped along by a swelling horde of officious, overpaid administrators, North American universities became, decade by decade, political correctness camps. Out went half the classics, as well as pedagogically useful survey courses demonstrating sequential patterns in history (now dismissed as a “false narrative” by callow theorists). Bookish, introverted old-school professors were not prepared for guerrilla warfare to defend basic scholarly principles or to withstand waves of defamation and harassment.
"Fix it, Facebook"
I've been following the most recent flap over Facebook in a desultory way. I assumed if I clicked on a few articles I'd find one that explained what FB was supposed to have done wrong this time. Instead, I found article after article that assumed I understood the obvious crime(s), and lots of increasingly desperate acknowledgements by FB that it can and should "do more."
Particularly interesting were the sprinkling of references to FB's failure to "do more" to stem ethnic violence in Myanmar. Wait, what? Did something just happen in Myanmar? When I click through on the Myanmar references I get more comments about "doing more," but no dates or particulars. Even FB's 60-page white paper on "doing more" fails to explain what happened in Myanmar before it drifts off into an extended discussion of the history of censorship and repression in that country. Finally a general search for "Myanmar Facebook" took me to reports of a violent flare in 2014 said to be connected to someone's publishing a deliberately false rape report in a FB post in an apparently successful attempt to stoke racial violence in that benighted country. It seems that FB did not already have Burmese-speaking moderators in place on the night the false allegations were made, despite its clear responsibility for understanding how dangerous communication can be in a country with a history of such iron repression. After failing to reach FB executives in the first few hours of the crisis, Myanmar officials simply disabled FB in their country, which apparently caused things to calm down by morning. Those terrible people at FB, however, took more than a year to put its Burmese-speaking moderation operation into place, complete with operatives well-versed in the entire social and culture quagmire that is Myanmar. And in the meantime FB callously allowed the Myanmar people to continue communicating with each other.
So why the sudden interest in FB late in 2018? The New York Times apparently is investigating again, and--as helpfully summarized by the San Francisco Chronicle editorial page--this time has discovered that FB is engaged in denial and deflection. It hired consultants to discredit its critics, mostly in the context of the Russian influence on our 2016 election, but Myanmar keeps getting thrown in the mix, too. FB downplayed the seriousness of reports from its own executives about something apparently related to these concerns. It deflected blame onto its rivals. It sought special favors from politicians. (These are nearly direct quotations; I'm not removing any references to specifics.) And it took these unprecedentedly vile measures to escape blame for--what, exactly?
Well, it seems FB isn't taking its trust, transparency, and privacy problems seriously. FB is not doing enough to combat false news and information on its platform. Its failure in Myanmar four years ago shows that it's not willing to be an aggressive defender of human rights. Its shaky steps to improve transparency haven't been thorough or consistent. It uses contractors to hit back at critics. Social media platforms are being used to sway and divide people, and the new House Democrats are thinking of doing something about it, so FB had better get with the program.
I feel an unwilling sympathy for Zuckerberg, trying to punch back against this amoeba. I can't wait to see what the incoming class of representatives are drafting up. It shall be a federal crime to operate a social media platform when your head isn't in the right place?
Way back in 2014, someone apparently had the bright idea of pursuing a successful criminal prosecution against the woman who first published the deliberately false rape claim in Myanmar.
Particularly interesting were the sprinkling of references to FB's failure to "do more" to stem ethnic violence in Myanmar. Wait, what? Did something just happen in Myanmar? When I click through on the Myanmar references I get more comments about "doing more," but no dates or particulars. Even FB's 60-page white paper on "doing more" fails to explain what happened in Myanmar before it drifts off into an extended discussion of the history of censorship and repression in that country. Finally a general search for "Myanmar Facebook" took me to reports of a violent flare in 2014 said to be connected to someone's publishing a deliberately false rape report in a FB post in an apparently successful attempt to stoke racial violence in that benighted country. It seems that FB did not already have Burmese-speaking moderators in place on the night the false allegations were made, despite its clear responsibility for understanding how dangerous communication can be in a country with a history of such iron repression. After failing to reach FB executives in the first few hours of the crisis, Myanmar officials simply disabled FB in their country, which apparently caused things to calm down by morning. Those terrible people at FB, however, took more than a year to put its Burmese-speaking moderation operation into place, complete with operatives well-versed in the entire social and culture quagmire that is Myanmar. And in the meantime FB callously allowed the Myanmar people to continue communicating with each other.
So why the sudden interest in FB late in 2018? The New York Times apparently is investigating again, and--as helpfully summarized by the San Francisco Chronicle editorial page--this time has discovered that FB is engaged in denial and deflection. It hired consultants to discredit its critics, mostly in the context of the Russian influence on our 2016 election, but Myanmar keeps getting thrown in the mix, too. FB downplayed the seriousness of reports from its own executives about something apparently related to these concerns. It deflected blame onto its rivals. It sought special favors from politicians. (These are nearly direct quotations; I'm not removing any references to specifics.) And it took these unprecedentedly vile measures to escape blame for--what, exactly?
Well, it seems FB isn't taking its trust, transparency, and privacy problems seriously. FB is not doing enough to combat false news and information on its platform. Its failure in Myanmar four years ago shows that it's not willing to be an aggressive defender of human rights. Its shaky steps to improve transparency haven't been thorough or consistent. It uses contractors to hit back at critics. Social media platforms are being used to sway and divide people, and the new House Democrats are thinking of doing something about it, so FB had better get with the program.
I feel an unwilling sympathy for Zuckerberg, trying to punch back against this amoeba. I can't wait to see what the incoming class of representatives are drafting up. It shall be a federal crime to operate a social media platform when your head isn't in the right place?
Way back in 2014, someone apparently had the bright idea of pursuing a successful criminal prosecution against the woman who first published the deliberately false rape claim in Myanmar.
Obsession
I'm not sure it's healthy for someone like me to watch a video like this. It's like dangling heroin in front of an addict.
"Democracy Failed Georgia"
So says Ms. Abrams, as she admits defeat.
You made a good bargain, Georgia. You don't want to be governed by someone with this much anger inside them. Kemp's a scoundrel, and you'll need to keep a watch on him. But he'll only cheat you. He won't set out to punish you.
She did, however, announce plans for a "major federal lawsuit against the state of Georgia for the gross mismanagement of this election and to protect future elections from unconstitutional actions."So no hard feelings, then. We'll just shake hands and carry on.
Even in acknowledging defeat, Abrams insisted her speech was not giving a concession and instead delivered a series of sharp criticisms of Kemp....
"Under the watch of the now former secretary of state, democracy failed Georgia," Abrams said of Kemp, who served as the state's chief elections officer for nearly a decade before resigning after overseeing his own contest.
"Make no mistake, the former secretary of state was deliberate and intentional in his actions," Abrams said. "I know that eight years of systemic disenfranchisement, disinvestment and incompetence had its desired affect on the electoral process in Georgia."
You made a good bargain, Georgia. You don't want to be governed by someone with this much anger inside them. Kemp's a scoundrel, and you'll need to keep a watch on him. But he'll only cheat you. He won't set out to punish you.
One Afternoon on Twitter
In which a sitting Congressman threatens to nuke the territorial United States if citizens don't peacefully surrender their firearms.
Democrats Always Win Recounts That Change Election Results
It's a statistically insignificant number, though: three, out of all the thousands of statewide elections between 2000 and 2015.
Joe Bob Briggs: Resist the Campus Speech Nazis
He's happy because a group from Colorado State came down to one of his recent shows.
Colorado State may not be high on your list of trendsetting institutions, but anyone who follows political-correctness battles is well aware of it. To use just one example, the “Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Associated Students of Colorado State University” (yes, that’s a thing) recently said that students shouldn’t use the phrase “Long time, no see,” because it’s offensive to Asians....There's a lot more at the link, including some hilarious examples.
That’s why the Colorado State students and professors and ex-students who came to my show mean so much to me. You don’t come to one of my shows if you believe in any of the “diversity and inclusion” rules. You don’t come to one of my shows if you believe in censoring social media or kicking people out of school because they hold unpopular views. You don’t come to one of my shows if you believe that anytime someone says, “You triggered me,” we should all stop talking and hug the complainer. This makes me think that much of the campus political-correctness movement is just intimidation of people trying to get through college without getting called out. It makes me think they all know it’s bullshit and just ignore it like you ignore a loud preacher on the subway. It makes me think that most people still believe in letting every American say whatever the heck every American wants to say, using whatever words he wants to use, and to hell with the public scolding.
Sore Losers are Still Losers
The Abrams campaign prepares a very novel lawsuit to try to force Georgia to hold an entirely new election, since she now appears to have lost the last one.
She's alleging massive voter suppression efforts, but frankly those are not in evidence. Kemp set up a system that could be easily cheated, which is why I've been very critical of his performance as Secretary of State. But if he were going to cheat, he'd have given himself a comfortable margin of victory that would have forestalled this recount/lawsuit approach. He could have cheated, certainly. The evidence strongly suggests that he did not, though he remains at fault for having set up a system in which we can have so little confidence.
Georgia should fix its systems for the next election. All the same, it's time to call this one. He's almost twenty thousand votes ahead of the runoff number, and more than fifty thousand votes ahead of her. That's ballgame.
UPDATE: 'Georgia's governor's race "stolen,"' according to Democrats. The Post author explicitly treats similar Republican claims as "baseless" and "without evidence," while saying these claims are being made on much stronger grounds. I concede Kemp's dubiousness; but I notice that "without evidence" is a stick that the press is increasingly using against conservatives, frequently in error (or often, I suspect, maliciously).
She's alleging massive voter suppression efforts, but frankly those are not in evidence. Kemp set up a system that could be easily cheated, which is why I've been very critical of his performance as Secretary of State. But if he were going to cheat, he'd have given himself a comfortable margin of victory that would have forestalled this recount/lawsuit approach. He could have cheated, certainly. The evidence strongly suggests that he did not, though he remains at fault for having set up a system in which we can have so little confidence.
Georgia should fix its systems for the next election. All the same, it's time to call this one. He's almost twenty thousand votes ahead of the runoff number, and more than fifty thousand votes ahead of her. That's ballgame.
UPDATE: 'Georgia's governor's race "stolen,"' according to Democrats. The Post author explicitly treats similar Republican claims as "baseless" and "without evidence," while saying these claims are being made on much stronger grounds. I concede Kemp's dubiousness; but I notice that "without evidence" is a stick that the press is increasingly using against conservatives, frequently in error (or often, I suspect, maliciously).
Trump-Appointed Judge Sides CNN
It's just the temporary restraining order, but I find the logic amazing all the same.
Nor do I buy that it does 'irreparable harm' to a journalist to be reassigned, which is all that would result if this one permanently lost access to the President. OK, go cover the UK Prime Minister instead. CNN does both, and having been kicked out by Trump would only improve Acosta's standing in the eyes of European leaders he might be assigned to cover instead. What's the harm?
Supposedly there's some due process issue, but I can't think what it would be. Secure facilities have a right to refuse entry to anyone, or to remove anyone, prior to whatever process of review there is for that decision.
The judge isn't a partisan against Trump, being a Trump appointee. I make no such accusation; but what an amazing decision to have reached, even on the temporary order. He has to make a judgment that success in the main suit is likely, and I can't see any basis for thinking it at all likely.
The judge also found that Acosta suffered “irreparable harm,” dismissing the government’s argument that CNN could simply send other reporters to cover the White House in Acosta’s place.Having spent a fair part of my life going into and out of secure facilities, I find it stunning that a judge would rule that someone has a Constitutional right not to be forbidden from one. Revocation of a prior clearance to enter falls, surely, under the authority of the executive branch. Article II of the Constitution says "[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." If Trump were to give the order personally, I can't see how it could be outside the scope of the President's authority; but were he to delegate it, well, that's how all executive authority works. If a base commander can revoke your clearance to enter his base, whoever is delegated similar authority over journalists can do it.
The suit by CNN alleges that Acosta’s First and Fifth Amendment rights were violated by suspending his hard pass. While the judge didn’t rule on the underlying case, he signaled they were likely to prevail in their claims.
Nor do I buy that it does 'irreparable harm' to a journalist to be reassigned, which is all that would result if this one permanently lost access to the President. OK, go cover the UK Prime Minister instead. CNN does both, and having been kicked out by Trump would only improve Acosta's standing in the eyes of European leaders he might be assigned to cover instead. What's the harm?
Supposedly there's some due process issue, but I can't think what it would be. Secure facilities have a right to refuse entry to anyone, or to remove anyone, prior to whatever process of review there is for that decision.
The judge isn't a partisan against Trump, being a Trump appointee. I make no such accusation; but what an amazing decision to have reached, even on the temporary order. He has to make a judgment that success in the main suit is likely, and I can't see any basis for thinking it at all likely.
Changing the Rules
Florida keeps rolling in scandal.
Aristotle tried to warn us about that.
A day after Florida's election left top state races too close to call, a Democratic party leader directed staffers and volunteers to share altered election forms with voters to fix signature problems on absentee ballots after the state's deadline.I guess it's fine to set aside the rules established by the state legislature if some judge says so. Until some other judge says otherwise. Why do we have laws at all? We could just ask a judge to rule on any conflicts that occur, since they're apparently going to set the laws aside whenever they feel like it.
The altered forms surfaced in Broward, Santa Rosa, Citrus and Okaloosa counties and were reported to federal prosecutors to review for possible election fraud as Florida counties complete a required recount in three top races.
But an email obtained by the USA TODAY NETWORK-Florida shows that Florida Democrats were organizing a broader statewide effort beyond those counties to give voters the altered forms to fix improper absentee ballots after the Nov. 5 deadline. Democratic party leaders provided staffers with copies of a form, known as a "cure affidavit," that had been modified to include an inaccurate Nov. 8 deadline.
One Palm Beach Democrat said in an interview the idea was to have voters fix and submit as many absentee ballots as possible with the altered forms in hopes of later including them in vote totals if a judge ruled such ballots were allowed.
U.S. Chief Judge Mark Walker ruled Thursday that voters should have until Saturday to correct signatures on ballots, a move that could open the door for these ballots returned with altered forms to be counted.
Aristotle tried to warn us about that.
Now, it is of great moment that well-drawn laws should themselves define all the points they possibly can and leave as few as may be to the decision of the judges; and this for several reasons. First, to find one man, or a few men, who are sensible persons and capable of legislating and administering justice is easier than to find a large number. Next, laws are made after long consideration, whereas decisions in the courts are given at short notice, which makes it hard for those who try the case to satisfy the claims of justice and expediency. The weightiest reason of all is that the decision of the lawgiver is not particular but prospective and general, whereas members of the assembly and the jury find it their duty to decide on definite cases brought before them. They will often have allowed themselves to be so much influenced by feelings of friendship or hatred or self-interest that they lose any clear vision of the truth and have their judgement obscured by considerations of personal pleasure or pain. In general, then, the judge should, we say, be allowed to decide as few things as possible.
SEAL Accused of Various Improprieties
According to the newly unearthed charge sheet, dated Oct. 2, Gallagher faces charges of premeditated murder for allegedly stabbing the wounded ISIS fighter "in the neck and body with a knife" on May 3, 2017. He's charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon for shooting two noncombatants, one male, one female, with his firearm on separate occasions in June and July of that year.This is one of those occasions when the military justice system is quite different than the civilian one. If he were entitled to a trial by his peers -- meaning by other special operators -- I suspect that the 'shooting at noncombatants' charge wouldn't have a chance. You just don't know who the combatants are in places like Iraq.
In three charges of novel specification, Gallagher is accused of posing for a picture with a human corpse, completing his reenlistment ceremony next to the corpse and operating a drone over it, according to the charge sheet.
These alleged crimes are charged the same day he is accused of killing the detainee; Task and Purpose reported that evidence introduced by the prosecution includes photos appearing to show Gallagher posing with the murdered man and the knife he allegedly used to kill him.
Gallagher also allegedly used Tramadol Hydrochloride, a prescription-only pain reliever, and possessed Sustanon-250, an injectable testosterone, according to the charge sheet.
The murder charge? I'm not sure that one would fly either. If it can make sense to put a 'security round' in a fighter to make sure he doesn't blow a hidden suicide vest, or come at you from behind once you've moved past him, it could make sense to knife him down too. Depending on the circumstances, that could be an appropriate thing to do. It would be wrong to torture a wounded man to death once the area was secure; it might be right to finish him off while the area was not secure and the operation was ongoing, especially if stealth was a concern.
Discipline is the soul of an army, as Washington said, and it's important to hold people to standards. It could be that on a full account of the circumstances his fellows would convict him. There are at least some readings of the most serious charges, though, that I could see a jury of peers accepting under some circumstances.
That isn't how the military system works, though.
"Facebook Betrayed America"
The New Republic is not happy with Team Zuck. And they are swinging for the fences: the allegations don't stop at treason, but include also complicity in genocide.
Bikers and Fake Ballots
The source for this story is Gateway Pundit, which Wikipedia's community has decided to call "a far right fake news site." Still, they're also a very plausible source for a story that originates with Bikers for Trump. I'm going to bold what I take to be the crucial facts alleged.
If it's a completely false report, that should also be immediately obvious to prosecutors.
There's middle ground, I guess, where you could have taken note of the tags used on election day, and then made up a report about having found those tags in the loading dock area. Then the prosecutors would quickly discover that the tag numbers were legitimate, but might find that tags corresponding to those numbers were accounted for at the end facility. Then you'd have a big problem, as you'd have to try to investigate a false theory that fake tags had replaced the real tags, and that would be impossible to disprove. It's the kind of thing that could ground a conspiracy theory that the election was stolen.
Of course, it could be true that there's a ploy to counterfeit these tags. The fact that you couldn't prove it wasn't true wouldn't prove that it was, but you might possibly prove that it really was true. Then people should be going to prison.
Well, keep an ear out, and remember the source.
UPDATE: Some of you have been suggesting that Florida needs a Battle of Athens moment. It occurs to me that there are some similarities in having Bikers for Trump staking out this voting area.
By the way, the Washington Times has confirmed the story, and has a photo of the tags.
According to the letter sent by [Bikers for Trump leader] Cox’s lawyer Derek A. Schwartz, while outside the Broward Supervisor of Elections main office, Cox and other members of Bikers for Trump learned of twelve colored plastic zip tie tags that were each stamped with a seven digit serial code.What's of interest to me is the specificity of the claim. Assuming GP is accurately reporting a real letter, then the claims being made are quite actionable. There should be a list of serial numbered tags assigned to various sites, so it should be possible to determine relatively quickly whether tags with those numbers were in fact assigned to this county.
“The tags were discovered by other citizens on the ground near the loading dock area outside the BSOE building,” the letter explains. He then went on to provide the serial numbers and the color of the tags.
“It is my client’s understanding and belief that these tags may have been used by the BSOE to secure and seal ballot boxes and/or bags on the night of the election prior to transporting the ballots to the BSOE office. Based on where these tags were found, my client believes these tags were likely illegally removed from the ballot boxes and bags prior to being delivered to the BSOE’s office,” the letter continues.
Schwartz goes on to state that “if these tags were used to seal ballot boxes and bags and improperly removed, then the chain of custody of the ballots in the boxes and bags was broken and the ballots were subject to tampering and manipulation.”
It goes on to request that Bondi’s office immediately determine if any of the tags were used to secure ballot containers, that they find out who removed them, as well as who authorized the removal. The letter additionally requests information about how many ballots were related to the tags, what the serial numbers correspond with and which polling locations they came from.
“My client believes that each ballot box or bag can hold up to 2,500 ballots. Based on having 15 tags, that could mean that approximately 37,500 ballots have been tampered with,” the letter states.
If it's a completely false report, that should also be immediately obvious to prosecutors.
There's middle ground, I guess, where you could have taken note of the tags used on election day, and then made up a report about having found those tags in the loading dock area. Then the prosecutors would quickly discover that the tag numbers were legitimate, but might find that tags corresponding to those numbers were accounted for at the end facility. Then you'd have a big problem, as you'd have to try to investigate a false theory that fake tags had replaced the real tags, and that would be impossible to disprove. It's the kind of thing that could ground a conspiracy theory that the election was stolen.
Of course, it could be true that there's a ploy to counterfeit these tags. The fact that you couldn't prove it wasn't true wouldn't prove that it was, but you might possibly prove that it really was true. Then people should be going to prison.
Well, keep an ear out, and remember the source.
UPDATE: Some of you have been suggesting that Florida needs a Battle of Athens moment. It occurs to me that there are some similarities in having Bikers for Trump staking out this voting area.
By the way, the Washington Times has confirmed the story, and has a photo of the tags.
Another "Break Up America" Story
While reading this I was thinking about the WWI videos that Tom posted below, which (like last weekend's WR Mead article) reminds that in Eastern Europe the breakup of the old empires into nation states was a liberation. Just as Huns or Poles might have viewed the end of the old empire as a kind of liberty, so too might Californians appreciate being freed from the tyrannies of a disproportionately-rural US Senate. So too might Alabama's residents enjoy being cut loose from the kind of liberal courts that impose such strange rules upon it all the time.
There are definitely things I would miss, especially the ease of travel and the freedom to move anywhere in what is now America. But it might be that at least some of those things could be retained in a new arrangement.
There are definitely things I would miss, especially the ease of travel and the freedom to move anywhere in what is now America. But it might be that at least some of those things could be retained in a new arrangement.
Strange Days, II
A school district punishes a teacher for what we used to call 'doing the right thing.'
A Florida school district allowed a self-described transgender female student regular access to the boys’ locker room, with no advance warning to the boys or their parents. The first time she walked in, she caught “boys (literally) with their pants down, causing them embarrassment and concern by the fact that they had been observed changing by an obvious girl,” says a complaint letter to Pasco County School District from Liberty Counsel, a pro-bono constitutional law firm.I note that the law firm mentioned has been placed on the SPLC's list of hate groups. I checked because they used the phrase "an obvious girl," which is so big a violation of PC-speak that I figured they'd be there, and they are.
With a “gag order,” school administrators forbade teachers from talking about the change, and ordered a male P.E. teacher to supervise the potentially undressed girl in the Chasco Middle School locker room, the letter says. When he refused to “knowingly place himself in a position to observe a minor female in the nude or otherwise in a state of undress,” administrators told him “he will be transferred to another school as discipline for ‘not doing your job in the locker room.'”
Strange Days
A judge at a Naturalization ceremony tells the new citizens to boycott the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of the nation they just elected to join.
Her speech to the new citizens, to the extent that I could hear it, was appalling. Sounding like a Democratic Party ward boss, she urged the new citizens to vote as soon as humanly possible. She made voting sound like a tremulous act of self-defense against the country they had just joined. The exhortation, needless to say, gave off a strong anti-Republican, anti-Trump whiff.Congress will have a lame-duck session before that becomes impossible.
Then she started in on some ludicrous riff about the First Amendment, encouraging the new Americans to exercise that right as robustly as possible, including by “taking a knee.” Huh?
So here we have a federal court judge, who just turned a room full of foreigners into American citizens, and her first piece of advice to them is: boycott the American flag you have just been handed. It was depressing and infuriating as hell.
In the past, a judge who dispensed such nihilistic advice to new Americans would be impeached.
Against Sins of Openness
The American Mind proposes an interesting reading:
The postwar era has been characterized by a de-regulatory consensus. This has a cultural dimension. In the 1950s, mainstream liberal writers bemoaned “organizational man” and wrote about the “lonely crowd.” More and more people came to reject legally (and socially) enforced racism—the epitome of bad cultural regulation. These concerns about intrusive and unsustainable regulation intensified in the 1960s.... Sexual liberation was but one part of a much larger project of cultural de-regulation, championed mostly by the center-left, but often with the center-right’s cooperation. (See the history of no-fault divorce....I would have said that political correctness was the police arm of a regulatory project: it doesn't intend to stop people from judging, but to pass judgments (sometimes quite harsh ones, which can destroy careers or ruin lives). Still, there's a point to be made here:
The de-regulatory consensus also had an economic dimension. In 1945, sixty-five percent of American GDP went to the war effort. Our economy was regulated by production goals, price controls, and all manner of central planning. From the time Truman released Detroit from military production quotas, the American economy has been on a trajectory of de-regulation.... As the Soviet empire was crumbling in 1990, George H. W. Bush addressed the United Nations. He urged a global effort to create a future of “open borders, open trade, and, most importantly, open minds.” This formulation could well serve as the postwar era’s catechism, which, again, I must emphasize rested upon a center-right and center-left consensus. By the time Barack Obama had become president, Bush’s formulation was thought to express a metaphysical truth...
Today’s populism rejects the de-regulatory, “openness” consensus. Building the “beautiful wall” was one of Trump’s most effective campaign slogans. It is the image of closure, not openness. Trump backed this up not only with promises to combat illegal immigration, but to also rip up free trade agreements and build a wall of economic protectionism. All of this was laced with un-nuanced, pro-American rhetoric. Meanwhile, Trump addressed social conservatives with blunt directness. He did not reiterate conservative pieties about appointing judges who will “respect the constitution.” Instead, he said he would appoint pro-life judges. He did not promise to protect religious freedom; he promised to say “Merry Christmas.” He repeatedly, pungently, and unapologetically violated the canons of political correctness, which is the police arm of the cultural de-regulation project.
Conservatives like the word “freedom.” That’s a better word than “open,” which has utopian connotations of limitless and borderless existence: we are the world! But we need to learn from Trumpian populism. At the end of the postwar era, the meaning of “freedom” has become libertarian and de-regulatory, almost a synonym for “open.” As a consequence, conservative voters — voters who want to renew and restore something solid and enduring in America — no longer thrill to our rhetoric of freedom....
The postwar era is ending. The center-left politics of cultural de-regulation no longer commands widespread support, which is why it has to rely on a punitive, hectoring political correctness. The center-right project of economic de-regulation is losing its appeal, especially in its global aspects. Voters are rebelling. They want national reconsolidation, cultural stability, and relief from ever-intensifying economic competition. We see it in Europe. It’s happening in the United States. I say, thank goodness.
A Lost City of Trojans
Following the Trojan War, the victors forced captured Trojans to build themselves a new home south of Corinth. It prospered, but was lost sometime after Rome destroyed Corinth during its capture of Greece. Now it has been found:
On Tuesday, the Greek culture ministry announced Korka's team had found "proof of the existence of the ancient city" of Tenea. An image of the excavation site released by the ministry depict stone walls, the remains of what were likely houses from the settlement nearly 3,000 years ago.More at the link.
An Almost Nuclear Iran
The seized Iranian intelligence cache proves to contain some explosive details (pun intended, though I suppose this is no laughing matter).
“The U.S. was issuing statements that it would take a year at least, perhaps two years, to build a deliverable weapon. The information in the archive makes it clear they could have done it a lot quicker,” said Albright. He added that the French government, which was then saying Iran could achieve a weapon in three months, was much closer in its estimates.If Iran goes nuclear, we'll finally find out if that "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" stuff was just rhetoric, I suppose.
A Message from Tracey Ullman
Ullman's message is brought to you, on this occasion, by Jessica Valenti.
WW1 Oversimplified
This fellow has a series of videos that are mostly educational but also comically oversimplified. In commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the end of WW1, here's his take on that:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 1
Part 2
Nationalism and WWI
Wretchard is discussing the question of whether nationalism or internationalism was responsible for the First World War. I'm old enough to have been educated by confident teachers in both propositions. 'Nationalism caused WWI' was taken to be the definitive argument some decades ago; as Wretchard points out, we understand a little more about it now.
Imperialism, another Soviet bugaboo, is a better candidate for blame than nationalism. The British people could sit out a world war, but the British Empire couldn't.
In any case, Wretchard points out (as our Eric Blair has long argued) that WWI destroyed the foundations of Western civilization; we may yet die of it. I saw someone post something yesterday to the effect of, 'if we don't have nations, if we don't have children, if we don't have borders: they all died for nothing.' Maybe that's right, as Wretchard notes:
It might be argued it was the international system with its entangling alliances and secret treaties that dragged the world kicking and screaming to slaughter of the trenches.... a world without firebreaks can internationalize a local incident that might otherwise have remained isolated. It was precisely the telegraph, railroad and even the invention of corned beef that made "some damned fool thing in the Balkans" able spread like wildfire. Once the finger of Serbia had been caught in the mangle the entire European arm was pulled into the meat grinder, inevitably and inexorably.The focus on nationalism as an evil was made more plausible to teachers as the educational establishment moved left, for the great Soviet cause was internationalism. Nationalism, in the absence of entangling alliances and mobilization plans that thrust British troops to the German front, might well have turned there as here into isolationism. It might have inclined the Brits as the Swiss to avoid the war, because it wasn't their people's business and they would prefer to be left alone.
Imperialism, another Soviet bugaboo, is a better candidate for blame than nationalism. The British people could sit out a world war, but the British Empire couldn't.
In any case, Wretchard points out (as our Eric Blair has long argued) that WWI destroyed the foundations of Western civilization; we may yet die of it. I saw someone post something yesterday to the effect of, 'if we don't have nations, if we don't have children, if we don't have borders: they all died for nothing.' Maybe that's right, as Wretchard notes:
It's instructive to note that even a century has not proved enough time for Macron's EU to recover its religious, national and erotic confidence. In the quartet of leaders formed by May, Macron, Merkel and Trump only the Donald has children. To Macron at least, national ideals have become demons. And as for religion -- perhaps that is a subject best left untouched for the present.
Advice For House-Breakers
From the Saga of Burnt Njal, when some house-breakers decide to go after Gunnar:
Now when they were come near to the house they knew not whether Gunnar were at home, and bade that some one would go straight up to the house and see if he could find out. But the rest sat them down on the ground.(I substitute 'halberd' for 'bill,' both of which are English weapon-names that are sometimes used for the atgeirr, and neither of which is quite right: see this article. My guess is that it was somewhat like the Lochaber Axe, which is another weapon similar to a halberd but not quite, and which may be descended from the atgeirr.)
Thorgrim the Easterling went and began to climb up on the hall; Gunnar sees that a red kirtle passed before the window-slit, and thrusts out the halberd, and smote him on the middle. Thorgrim's feet slipped from under him, and he dropped his shield, and down he toppled from the roof.
Then he goes to Gizur and his band as they sat on the ground.
Gizur looked at him and said—
“Well, is Gunnar at home?”
“Find that out for yourselves,” said Thorgrim; “but this I am sure of, that his halberd is at home,” and with that he fell down dead.
It's worth noting that, though the house-breakers did finally kill Gunnar, they didn't get him until his bowstring broke. House-breakers facing more reliable artillery may want to rethink their whole approach to life.
Toleration Doesn't Work That Way
Arabic-language 'vloggers' go around mocking LBGTQ culture in the West. Vocativ wonders why a people of a faith potentially subject to discrimination wouldn't be more tolerant.
That's not how toleration works. Toleration is a decision to accept something you dislike in order to obtain benefits, especially peaceful co-existence. That is why religious toleration came to be. It came to be in order to end the religious wars.
If there's no penalty for intolerance, there is no reason to tolerate things that you despise. These folks know they're already protected by the PC culture they're mocking. They know it can't really turn on them. It just has to hope they'll someday agree to be the allies the PC hope they'll become.
Allies against me and you, of course. That's ironic, since I long ago adopted Hondo's rule:
Problem we've got is that nobody is willing to let people suffer the consequences of doing what they decided they wanted to do.
That's not how toleration works. Toleration is a decision to accept something you dislike in order to obtain benefits, especially peaceful co-existence. That is why religious toleration came to be. It came to be in order to end the religious wars.
If there's no penalty for intolerance, there is no reason to tolerate things that you despise. These folks know they're already protected by the PC culture they're mocking. They know it can't really turn on them. It just has to hope they'll someday agree to be the allies the PC hope they'll become.
Allies against me and you, of course. That's ironic, since I long ago adopted Hondo's rule:
"[A] long time ago, I made me a rule. I let people do what they want to do."You might think that this rule opens you to abuse from the abusive, but as you can see it tends to work out if backed up with the right spirit.
Problem we've got is that nobody is willing to let people suffer the consequences of doing what they decided they wanted to do.
No Confidence
Corruption in the "counting of votes" sounds highly likely down Florida way, especially given the history of that particular official who is overseeing it.
Georgia and Arizona remain in similar places, with Democratic parts of the states continuing to "find" new votes. We used to say "If it's not close, they can't cheat." The corollary to that is that, when it is close, they certainly can try.
Georgia and Arizona remain in similar places, with Democratic parts of the states continuing to "find" new votes. We used to say "If it's not close, they can't cheat." The corollary to that is that, when it is close, they certainly can try.
Empathy is Overrated
Matt Y says he 'cannot empathize' with Tucker Carlson's wife, who was frightened last night when Antifa's DC chapter "Smash Racism" busted in her front door after surrounding her house. The move wasn't 'tactically' wise, he says, but it doesn't affect him on a human level.
Empathy in politics is generally unhealthy; it leads to injustice fairly reliably, as it makes the person we feel for more into a victim who deserves redress, or the person they're accusing into a villain who deserves utter destruction. Or, if we should happen to feel for the violator, it makes his crimes minor things that should be brushed away, and his victims persons of no special account. Whenever people tell me they wish there was more empathy in politics, I assume that means they are the sort of person who should be humored rather than heeded.
That said, Matt raises another good point about empathy by his lack of it. We can't rely on people to have empathy for those that they think of as enemies, and Carlson's wife -- whose name he probably doesn't even know, and who has done nothing other than be married to a guy whom he hates -- is going to get tossed in that camp. Whatever happens to her, eh, that kind of thing happens to bad people. They have it coming. Divine justice, he'd have said back before the Party mandated that people stop talking unironically about God (with a few specific exceptions).
An appeal to empathy is overrated. Patrick Henry knew where to appeal in such cases:
Empathy in politics is generally unhealthy; it leads to injustice fairly reliably, as it makes the person we feel for more into a victim who deserves redress, or the person they're accusing into a villain who deserves utter destruction. Or, if we should happen to feel for the violator, it makes his crimes minor things that should be brushed away, and his victims persons of no special account. Whenever people tell me they wish there was more empathy in politics, I assume that means they are the sort of person who should be humored rather than heeded.
That said, Matt raises another good point about empathy by his lack of it. We can't rely on people to have empathy for those that they think of as enemies, and Carlson's wife -- whose name he probably doesn't even know, and who has done nothing other than be married to a guy whom he hates -- is going to get tossed in that camp. Whatever happens to her, eh, that kind of thing happens to bad people. They have it coming. Divine justice, he'd have said back before the Party mandated that people stop talking unironically about God (with a few specific exceptions).
An appeal to empathy is overrated. Patrick Henry knew where to appeal in such cases:
Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne. In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope.Henry was right. It might be your house, next.
If we wish to be free... we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is left us!
Forcing Another Bite at the Apple
In Georgia, the Abrams campaign continues to refuse to concede defeat; the candidate says that, if only counting the provisional ballots can lower the margin of victory of her opponent's below 50%, she'll be entitled to a new election under state law. In Florida, a recount is already being required in spite of some highly irregular activity in Boward County, which is "still counting" and refuses to disclose how many more votes they still have to count (as many as necessary, one assumes). Marco Rubio is on the latter case.
"Orange Man Bad"
Molly Hemmingway apparently said on FOX last night that Democrats and Never-Trumpers were united around their idea that "Orange Man Bad."
Turns out that's a frame from the NPC meme we were discussing not long ago.
Speaking of NPC Conan, he's back on today -- with an orange theme, even.
It's not true that 'few would call Conan smart,' by the way; in Howard's stories he is respected as an intelligent and savvy tactician even by his worst enemies.
Turns out that's a frame from the NPC meme we were discussing not long ago.
Speaking of NPC Conan, he's back on today -- with an orange theme, even.
It's not true that 'few would call Conan smart,' by the way; in Howard's stories he is respected as an intelligent and savvy tactician even by his worst enemies.
The Results Come In
This post’s comments thread is the place for election discussion, if anyone is interested in that.
Come down now they'll say
Last night I watched "Homecoming," a Julia Roberts production on Amazon Prime. Typical antiwar, anticapitalist politics aside, it was an affecting story about the death of identity we court when we numb a painful memory. The soundtrack to the final scene was this song "The Trapeze Swinger," with its insistent chorus of "Remember Me." In tracking it down I found I also liked "Such Great Heights," a cover from the same artist. Actually most of his songs are pretty similar, but dreamy and effective.
In Parting: Georgia Governor's Campaign
As I was saying at AVI's place, I think that Republican candidate Brian Kemp has performed disgracefully in his current role, and I don't trust him nor think that you should either. I don't repose any trust in the voting system he has built, and I can't see why anyone would. His insisting on sitting atop that warped system while the vote is counted -- even saying he'd preside over his own recount, if necessary -- could hardly be more well-designed at destroying whatever confidence remains that Georgia will have a fair vote according to democratic norms.
No, wait... he's found a way to make it worse.
That said, it is a noteworthy irony that his Democratic opponent is talking about door-to-door confiscation of 'assault weapons' on the same day that her New Black Panther Party allies are posing with her signs -- and such weapons.
As of the move last spring I am no longer a citizen of Georgia. I will not return but to visit, though it was the beloved nest of my childhood and young adulthood, and the place where I was educated. I cannot but wish Georgia well, and there are some parts of her that will always be parts of me too. Still, her destiny and mine must now diverge, and her new citizens will have to decide what to do with her and her painful heritage.
As a parting gift, I might endorse a path, as final advice to Georgia from one who loves her. I wish I could do so in earnest. Neither of these characters deserves the office: the one because he is an insincere scoundrel, and the other because she is completely sincere.
The scoundrel will likely do less harm. He'll feather his pockets, he'll abuse his power, but he won't take hammer and tongs to the foundations.
That's the best I can offer. Do what you will.
No, wait... he's found a way to make it worse.
That said, it is a noteworthy irony that his Democratic opponent is talking about door-to-door confiscation of 'assault weapons' on the same day that her New Black Panther Party allies are posing with her signs -- and such weapons.
As of the move last spring I am no longer a citizen of Georgia. I will not return but to visit, though it was the beloved nest of my childhood and young adulthood, and the place where I was educated. I cannot but wish Georgia well, and there are some parts of her that will always be parts of me too. Still, her destiny and mine must now diverge, and her new citizens will have to decide what to do with her and her painful heritage.
As a parting gift, I might endorse a path, as final advice to Georgia from one who loves her. I wish I could do so in earnest. Neither of these characters deserves the office: the one because he is an insincere scoundrel, and the other because she is completely sincere.
The scoundrel will likely do less harm. He'll feather his pockets, he'll abuse his power, but he won't take hammer and tongs to the foundations.
That's the best I can offer. Do what you will.
Coalitions
It may not be in time for Tuesday, but the NYT allows a rare conservative voice to point out that Donald Trump has put the band back together.
[T]he party that President Trump has remade in his image is arguably less divided and in a better position to keep winning the White House than it has been at any time since the 1980s. What Mr. Trump has done is to rediscover the formula that made the landslide Republican Electoral College victories of the Nixon and Reagan years possible. Mr. Trump’s signature themes of economic nationalism and immigration restriction are only 21st-century updates to the issues that brought the Republican Party triumph in all but one of the six presidential elections between 1968 and 1988.Heck, who knows about Tuesday? But should the left spend the next two years flogging for open borders and socialism, 2020 should look to rebuke them.
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