Ranger School

It was all true, and then some.

...she lost a member of the platoon. In fact, the missing soldier was so thoroughly separated from the rest of his platoon that the RIs had to shut down the entire mission, telling the platoon to go to sleep where they were while the RIs searched for the missing candidate. The platoon never had the chance even to attempt its assigned mission. But the candidate who had served as platoon sergeant, despite a failure in her performance that ended the mission, received a passing grade.

...

Ranger Instructor 1: Female got a “go” last night. I was out there. She shouldn’t have. But it happened and [redacted]

Ranger Instructor 2: Why did she get a go then?

Ranger Instructor 1: I was out there until actions on [that is, the raid or ambush the platoon was supposed to conduct]. Never happened because they missed their hit time. 1SG recocked them [that is, reset the mission conditions and gave them the chance to start over]. That never happened because she gave abad head count three times. We finally realized their [sic] was a missing student.

Ranger Instructor 1: Had to lock the [platoon] down and find this kid.

Ranger Instructor 3: That’s a definite go haha

...

Ranger Instructor B: It’s all [b*******]. On 8-35 [the mission they were on], they walk [sic] the road back into camp under RI control [that is, RIs took over from the candidate leadership and led the platoon to its destination on an open road rather than through the woods]

Ranger Instructor B: And lost a Ranger

...

An RI with firsthand knowledge of the candidate’s evaluation explains, “During clearance of the [objective], she lost control of her squad, leading to fratricide” (i.e. leading to what would have been a friendly-fire incident if live rounds were being used in a non-training environment.) Understandably, this normally earns a failing grade (an “immediate no-go”). But it didn’t here.

This was, remember, the third attempt for these three would-be Rangers; they'd already failed out twice before. On the third go-round, word came down that they were to be passed even in spite of massive and potentially fatal errors.

The author adds, "It is important to emphasize that those whom I interviewed expressed admiration for the graduating females’ grit and perseverance and were not critical of the female candidates’ character or commitment. The officers and enlisted soldiers I spoke to uniformly respected the female candidates’ efforts and willingness to put themselves through the rigors of Ranger training."

That said, standards were suppressed -- and critics were silenced -- in order to obtain politically correct results. This will have deadly results eventually, which is why the training is so severe. As you will recall, the Marine Corps' study was similarly ignroed, and they were forced to proceed in spite of the clear findings.

An Unfair Criticism from VDH

"What is the alternative to Trump?" he asks. He begins with a very fair criticism -- of Trump, no less.

No president for the past 19 years has sought to offer any remotely sane budget. And with still relatively low interest rates, massive federal spending, a $22 trillion national debt, and an annual deficit of nearly $1 trillion, it is hard to imagine, in extremis, that there remains any notion of “stimulus” or “pump-priming” left.

Yet we hear little about such financial profligacy.

Not a word comes from Trump’s critics about the need for Social Security or Medicare reform to ensure the long-term viability of each — other than the Democrats’ promises to extend such financially shaky programs to millions of new clients well beyond the current retiring Baby Boomer cohorts who are already taxing the limits of the system.

I have occasionally noted in this space that I would like to hear a plan to save the Medicare We Have before we float plans for Medicare For All, but so far none have been forthcoming. I am forced to conclude that our two largest generations, who drive most of our politics, are satisfied with the arc toward failure. The Boomers who are still the frontrunners know there's enough for their generation; and the Millennials just beginning to assume office aren't interested in saving programs they can't imagine surviving long enough to serve them.

Anyway, VDH goes on to this:

To counter every signature Trump issue, there is almost no rational alternative advanced.... Instead of vague socialist bombast and promises, where is the actual detailed progressive version of the Contract with America, so voters can read it, digest it, and then decide whether it is superior or inferior to the status quo since 2017?

There's certainly been plenty of vague bombast, but there is actually a detailed set of plans on offer from Elizabeth Warren. They include the following:

* A wealth tax;

* New taxes on corporations, as well as mandates that would force them to put some of their workers on the boards;

* An 'economic patriotism' plan built around 'corporate citizenship' that is, if we are honest, fascist in Mussolini's specific sense of the term ("Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.");

* Essentially every kind of gun control anyone has thought of as an option;

* A plan to eliminate the Electoral College;

* A housing assistance plan that reads as if it were written to satisfy the criticisms raised by Ta-Nehisi Coates;

* Black reparations;

* Native American reparations;

* Gay reparations;

* Female reparations, these to be extracted from their future employers;

* College student reparations;

* Punishment for hospitals with high maternity death rates ("What could possibly go wrong? Well, the hospitals may have no control over the things that are causing the disparity. Yet hospitals that serve large numbers of black women will lose funding."); also, universal child care;

* A plan to boost immigration by decriminalizing currently-illegal entry;

* A plan to shut down mining and other wealth-extraction from public lands;

* ...and numerous other plans.

In fact, the only thing she seems to have no formal plan to do is reforming health care generally. I'm sure it's on her list of things to do, but it's not something she's explained exactly how she'd do.

She's got a pretty sweeping agenda, and I notice that she hasn't spelled it out at her campaign website in anything like the detail she has done elsewhere. It's at least as transformative as anything Obama imagined.

Military Citizenship

If there's one thing the military needs, it's more paperwork.

"The policy change explains that we will not consider children who live abroad with their parents to be residing in the United States even if their parents are U.S. government employees or U.S. service members stationed outside of the United States, and as a result, these children will no longer be considered to have acquired citizenship automatically," USCIS spokesperson Meredith Parker told Task & Purpose.

"For them to obtain a Certificate of Citizenship, their U.S. citizen parent must apply for citizenship on their behalf."

The process under INA 322 must be completed before the child's 18th birthday.

So are they considered 'natural born' citizens for the purpose of running for President? I suppose there's no actual legal standard for that, since there's 'no controlling legal authority.'

A Brexit Gamble

A surprising constitutional maneuver in the UK has people over there a little stirred up.

Prorogation, which suspends parliament from sitting in a period it might otherwise be expected to sit, is an accepted right of a sitting government. But it has never been applied in a manner such as this: as a means of denying parliamentary action opposed by the government. Johnson denies that this is his intent, but few believe him.

By sending members of parliament back to their constituencies in early September and then returning them on Oct. 14th, Johnson has significantly shortened the time they will have to pass legislative alternatives to his Brexit plan. With a final European Council meeting scheduled for Oct. 17th, unless an emergency follow up meeting is held, European leaders will have to accept Johnson's proposals to avoid a no-deal Brexit, or else accept a no-deal Brexit as is.

Good luck, says I.

'Fastest Woman On Four Wheels' Killed in Land Speed Record Attempt

I don't follow the sport and had never heard of her, but she was apparently something else. Her shakedown run went over 483 miles per hour.

The first absolute land speed record, in case you were curious, was a bit over 39 miles an hour. Things have changed since 1894.

Rest in peace, brave lady.

Gillette: You Know What's Awsome? Traditional Masculinity.

Ride the Rotating Earth

Freezing the position of the Milky Way yields interesting results.

Of Course, Of Course

Footage from the camera outside Epstein's cell is "unusable."

Trump "proposal" to nuke hurricanes is "racist."

Performatively pious Congressperson turns out to be a hypocrite who doesn't want to discuss 'personal life.'

Well, these things are just to be expected.

Nine Diabolic Questions

I found another of Tex's crew. It's not a bad piece, especially once the questions are answered.

Fake News Today

MS: "List: Lines from The Princess Bride that Double as Comments on Freshman Composition Papers."

BB: "Bernie Sanders Arrives In Hong Kong To Lecture Protesters On How Good They Have It Under Communism."

DB: "Guam Finally Capsizes."

TO: "School Administration Reminds Female Students Bulletproof Vests Must Cover Midriff."

Cf. this video:



As The Onion reminds us, there's some female agency involved in all this.

Would You Describe This "Problem" As Sort Of Like A "Burden"?

Headline: "Biden: Racism in US is institutional, ‘white man’s problem’"

Ordo Militaris

Via Douglas, a Catholic 'private military company' with Crusader themes. In principle, the idea of forming an order of knighthood to combat the extensive persecution of Christians worldwide right now seems reasonable to me; and incorporating as a private entity seems rational given that the Church is currently disinclined (especially the Pope!) to anything remotely resembling a real fighting order. Whether or not this particular organization has anything like the capacity to accomplish those goals is not known to me.

They do have a holy rule, which makes them similar to numerous orders of knighthood established during the Crusader period and the period of the Reconquista. Two points that refer to secular realities strike me: that those who held military rank should serve in the Order with the same rank they held in the secular military service; and that those who are wealthy enough to provide their own expenses shall enjoy greater honor than those who depend on the Order to pay their way and/or their salary. Those are the sorts of practicalities that historically bedeviled religious orders, a kind of recognition that the nobility and the wealthy aren't quite prepared to surrender all of their privileges in order to follow God. But the verse says 'if you want to be perfect,' which is more than most of us even want.

Related to our recent discussion, it looks as if they have a Twitter account that was mysteriously temporarily deleted during a Congressional hearing relevant to them.

I'll open the floor to discussion, both of the idea in general and the particular example.

Viking Themed Crosswalk Lights

Via our old friend DL Sly, a whimsical story.

Social Media Building Chinese-Style "Social Credit" System

Well, of course they are. They helped build China's.

Crimes are punished outside the legal system, which means no presumption of innocence, no legal representation, no judge, no jury, and often no appeal. In other words, it’s an alternative legal system where the accused have fewer rights.

Social credit systems are an end-run around the pesky complications of the legal system. Unlike China’s government policy, the social credit system emerging in the U.S. is enforced by private companies. If the public objects to how these laws are enforced, it can’t elect new rule-makers.

An increasing number of societal “privileges” related to transportation, accommodations, communications, and the rates we pay for services (like insurance) are either controlled by technology companies or affected by how we use technology services. And Silicon Valley’s rules for being allowed to use their services are getting stricter.

If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.

In other words, in the future, law enforcement may be determined less by the Constitution and legal code, and more by end-user license agreements.

One way of controlling this is to have the government insist that Americans' rights be in no way limited by corporations, and to establish protections that would void any "license agreement" that abridged such rights. That, however, depends on the government being a limit on corporations rather than aligning with them. The alignment of corporate and government power is quite likely, given the resources corporations have, and the benefit to overweening politicians of being able to have a compliant corporation enforce limits on the citizenry that the Constitution would not allow.

Victims of Journalism

Journalists, of course.

“...using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power,” wrote reporters Jeremy Peters and Kenneth Vogel.

Appalachian Orpheus

Anna and Elizabeth are the two women in the "Old Churchyard" video.  Besides singing, they make these hand-cranked cartoons and puppet shows.  Their art is a river of life.

The Orpheus legend is very old.  His music is so beautiful that the rocks and trees dance around him, and he can raise the dead, but he arouses the jealousy of the gods.  Like most stories about the war between life and death, it comes in versions with both sad and happy endings.  One of the modern versions, "Black Orpheus," has both:

The 1949 Mann Gulch disaster

A Song of a Man Who Died Well

His name was Blaze Foley. He had a strange life; much of it he was homeless. Like many who could not maintain a home, he was unable to trust many, and unable to do the basic things that would have enabled his stability. He was important to the Outlaw music scene in Austin, Texas, but he never attained much success in his life.

All the same he died well. Few do, and perhaps there is nothing in life more worthy than a good death.

Why weep for them who will weep no more

Storm

This weekend my county is engaged in a number of two-year anniversary events marking the still-incomplete recovery from Hurricane Harvey.  I took a screenshot of this radar picture showing the landfall.  It's usually hard to tell what the underlying geography is, so I photoshopped a bit, adding green outlines around the inhabited peninsulas (the southern one being Rockport/Fulton proper, and the northern one being ours, Lamar), and black outlines around the uninhabited peninsulas (including the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, home of whooping cranes in the winter) and the barrier islands.  The "X" is about where our house is.  This picture still gives me goosebumps, remembering the sense of a huge wave about to break over us.  Metaphorically, I mean; we weren't overwashed, but the radar pictures we got before we lost our signal looked like a 40,000-foot atmospheric breaker about to crash.

On Dual, and Multiple, Loyalties

I realize that accusations of 'dual loyalty' have a fraught history for the Jewish community especially, and thus that the remarks earlier this week around 'disloyalty' were upsetting to many. Acknowledging that, however, I want to frame a principle in political philosophy in universal terms: not for Jews, or Jewish-Americans, but for all of us everywhere.

The principle is as follows: It is the mark of a healthy political system that it accepts that its members have many other claims on their loyalty, and can negotiate such claims insofar as they are natural or otherwise legitimate. It is the totalitarian system that demands that children turn in their parents to the state for disloyal thoughts, not the healthy system. It is the totalitarian system that demands that religious orders direly violate their conscience, as informed by centuries of theological arguments and developed doctrine, in order to conform to some new fashion in law.

A natural loyalty to one's parents, as well as to those who have taken special interest in one and helped one along, is right and proper. A healthy state neither needs nor ought to command disloyalty to such things in preference to itself. Loyalty to friends, to community organizations, to principles, these things are not undesirable. It is Mussolini who said that the ideal should be 'everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' The system he was describing literally was fascism; other systems that aim at the same ideal, to include the recently-mentioned People's Republic of China, are actively evil rather than healthy modes of human politics.

To return to the specific case, it is also true that loyalty is a two-way street. I think it is only natural to feel a kind of loyalty -- a degree of loyalty -- to a state that declares itself to exist for the specific purpose of providing you and your kin a safe haven if all else fails; to welcome you whenever you come, and even to welcome you home if you choose; and that has shown a willingness to risk lives in the defense of those like yourself who have fallen into danger. It would be a strange sort of character that did not respond to such a display of loyalty in at least some reciprocal way. I do not suggest that anyone has so responded, and certainly do not name anyone as having such feelings, but I would certainly understand if someone from that particular community did feel that way.

To speak again to the universal, I would say that this is a fit principle for judging the validity of any human state. If it cannot accept natural and otherwise legitimate loyalties that may contravene its designs, the state is overweening. Such a state is suffering from a kind of hubris, which produces tragedy and sometimes a great fall. It is unworthy in spite of whatever other claims it has to glory, as the great Greek tragic heroes were found unworthy in this way in spite of being heroes.

Negotiation may sometimes be necessary in the hardest cases: it is one thing to say that a parent who discovers a beloved child engaged in a great crime might ought to inform the authorities; it is another to say that the parent should not, in that process, hire lawyers to protect the child's interests against the state, or that the parent must disown the child and disavow all sense of natural loyalty to them. These concerns may arise in the hardest cases, I agree. Nevertheless, the principle holds true.

"Hereby" and Orders

As the President should have learned during his attempt to ban trans* servicemembers by Tweet, comments on Twitter do not constitute a lawful order even when you have otherwise lawful authority. On this occasion, I'm not at all clear on the degree of lawful authority that exists via more formal processes. Probably there is some sort of authority, held over from World War II and/or World War I, to issue orders even to privately-held American companies in a time of war. Of course, we are not in fact at war.

Here again, as with the birthright citizenship stuff and for that matter the trans* servicemember ban, the President may be broadly right on the desirable policy. I'm reasonably sanguine about a trade war with China. It will hurt, but it will hurt them more, and they can less afford it. It may expose the structural faults in their economy, which are much more severe than anyone really wants to admit. If so, it may cripple Chinese power designs via mass investment projects like the "New Silk Road." Even if not, it may weaken their hand to undertake new oppression against Hong Kong, and may limit the resources they have for their ongoing cultural genocide against the Uighur in what they like to call their New Frontier ("Xinjiang"). This may be the most we can do for the freedom fighters there, given China's powerful nuclear umbrella. Possibly even some of the longer-term positive effects may come to pass that the President, and some others, have decided can be gained on this road. I'm agnostic about that; but breaking totalitarian China is worth the candle. Humanity may long thank us for once again paying the price to break another totalitarian system of authority that has been creeping out further and further.

President Trump still has to be held to constitutional and legal limits on his power. Even if one trusts him (which not everyone does, to put it mildly), the forms exist to restrain the ones you don't trust who may get their hands on that power later. That might come any day, as health is uncertain for anyone, and he is engendering enemies both wealthy and powerful with these moves.

Fun & Games

Socialist gives new Socialism game a bad review.

Cortez and the Aztecs

As a partial antidote to the NYT's "1619 Project" (which attempts to portray everything exceptional about America as a product of slavery, in order to de-legitimize America as a whole), The Federalist has published an article called "The 1519 Project: How Early Spanish Explorers Took Down A Mass-Murdering Indigenous Cult."

The Aztecs brutal system depended on a steady supply of prisoners of war and human children collected from the empire’s subjects as “taxes.” The scale of the murder one could find in just a single outlying Aztec city was astounding. Abbot relays, “they witnessed the most appalling indications of the horrid atrocities of pagan idolatry. They found, piled in order, as they judged, one hundred thousand skulls of human victims who had been offered in sacrifice to their gods.”...

Cortez ended the grotesque practice of human sacrifice and, according to Abbott, “treated the vanquished natives with great courtesy and kindness.”

Cortez was no saint. He lusted after women, gold, and adventure—so much he missed his first chance at battle due to injuries sustained after falling from a great height trying to sneak into the bedroom of a villager’s daughter. As Abbott concedes, his “love of plunder was a latent motive omnipotent in his soul, and he saw undreamed of wealth lavishly spread before him.”

Cortez will never satisfy a 21st century standard of human rights, and many not even be an exemplary leader. Nor did he set out to liberate anyone. Yet, regardless of his motives in Mexico, the outcome must be conceded: Cortez toppled a mass-murdering cult with the assistance of the oppressed.

Chesterton wrote of this moral conflict in The Everlasting Man.

[T]here are the remains of civilizations in Mexico and South America and other places, some of them apparently so high in civilization as to have reached the most refined forms of devil-worship.

Now it is very right to rebuke our own race or religion for falling short of our own standards and ideals.... There is a very real sense in which the Christian is worse than the heathen, the Spaniard worse than the Red Indian, or even the Roman potentially worse than the Carthaginian. But there is only one sense in which he is worse; and that is not in being positively worse. The Christian is only worse because it is his business to be better.

I wonder how well that idea will hold up to the examination it's being put to today.

The father of her child

I was actually looking for good versions of the Child Ballad "Tam Lin" when I stumbled on "The Dark Island" and got distracted.  But here's an unusual Tam Lin, drastically shortened from the traditional version, leaving out the Queen of Fairies and the wild Halloween ride, and concentrating on the central drama of the unsanctioned pregnancy.  These lyrics get set to a lot of different tunes, this version being close to one of the more common ones.  The "Willie of Winsbury" tune also is common, perhaps because of the similarity in narrative themes; another is the tune that Steeleye Span used.

Something else I stumbled on is a 1970 Ava Gardner movie with an amazingly young and callow Ian McShane called "The Ballad of Tam Lin," which I'll have to watch now.  I assume the movie will concentrate more on the Queen of Fairies and her captive never-aging human lover/ghost.



A more traditional version of the lyrics:

“I forbid you maidens all that wear gold in your hair
To travel to Carterhaugh, for young Tam Lin is there

None that go by Carterhaugh but they leave him a pledge
Either their mantles of green or else their maidenhead”

Janet tied her kirtle green a bit above her knee
And she's gone to Carterhaugh as fast as go can she

She'd not pulled a double rose, a rose but only two
When up then came young Tam Lin, says, “Lady, pull no more”

“And why come you to Carterhaugh without command from me?”
“I'll come and go,” young Janet said, “and ask no leave of thee”

Janet tied her kirtle green a bit above her knee
And she's gone to her father as fast as go can she

Well, up then spoke her father dear and he spoke meek and mild
“Oh, and alas, Janet,” he said, “I think you go with child”

“Well, if that be so,” Janet said, “myself shall bear the blame
There's not a knight in all your hall shall get the baby's name

For if my love were an earthly knight, as he is an elfin grey
I'd not change my own true love for any knight you have”

So Janet tied her kirtle green a bit above her knee
And she's gone to Carterhaugh as fast as go can she

“Oh, tell to me, Tam Lin,” she said, “why came you here to dwell?”
“The Queen of Fairies caught me when from my horse I fell"

And at the end of seven years she pays a tithe to hell
I so fair and full of flesh and fear it be myself

But tonight is Halloween and the fairy folk ride
Those that would let true love win at Mile's Cross they must bide

So first let pass the horses black and then let pass the brown
Quickly run to the white steed and pull the rider down

For I'll ride on the white steed, the nearest to the town
For I was an earthly knight, they give me that renown

Oh, they will turn me in your arms to a newt or a snake
But hold me tight and fear not, I am your baby's father

And they will turn me in your arms into a lion bold
But hold me tight and fear not and you will love your child

And they will turn me in your arms into a naked knight
But cloak me in your mantle and keep me out of sight”

In the middle of the night she heard the bridle ring
She heeded what he did say and young Tam Lin did win

Then up spoke the Fairy Queen, an angry queen was she
Woe betide her ill-far'd face, an ill death may she die

“Oh, had I known, Tam Lin,” she said, “what this night I did see
I'd have looked him in the eyes and turned him to a tree”

The lyrics are said to have been printed in broadsides as early as the 16th century; the story echoes Peleus's capture of Thetis, the mother of Achilles.

Limited Powers of Government

My guess is that an Executive Order is insufficient for this plan.

Speaking outside the White House Wednesday, Trump told reporters he plans to do away with the Constitutional right, which he called “frankly ridiculous,” through an executive order. This isn’t the first time he’s made that claim: In 2018, he told Axios he had plans to issue an executive order preventing automatic citizenship for the children of non-citizens, including undocumented immigrants, but nothing came of it.

“We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land, you walk over the border, have a baby — congratulations, the baby is now a U.S. citizen.”

That's not a terrible idea, but the power of the pen is not unlimited -- and good that it's not.

Dark Island

Apparently everyone knows this beautiful song but me.  I've never heard it before today.

A Primer on Gory Sounds

It turns out that the horrifying noises accompanying some of the goriest video games come from vegetables. Bell peppers are particularly useful.

A lot of non-gamers might not be aware that Mortal Kombat is still being produced. In the early 90s, the game was at the edge of realistic, digitized violence, and the franchise was so controversial that Congress held hearings about it. Believe it or not, the series has only gotten more violent since then....

The unsung heroes of Mortal Kombat might really be the sound designers who sit in a room for hours, trying to smash household objects, fruits, and vegetables together in a way that sounds like a convincing disembowelment.

I find the irony that these horrible sounds are created by perfectly ordinary salad preparations somewhat amusing, although we might have to rethink just how ironic it really is. Trees have feelings, you know.

Merle Haggard is Cool Again

According to Whitey Morgan (and the '78s). He may be right. I heard a live act do this same bit just Friday, although they weren't hipsters. Whitey does it better though.



Mild language warning for those of you watching this from an office, just at the beginning when he's talking about the hipsters of East Nashville. After that, it's just a solid rendition of "Swinging Doors."

Easy Rider

"In honor of Peter, please raise a glass to freedom."

Now that I can do.

Here's the scene that made his career.

Be That America

Once we were that America. I wish we could be again.

On A Book I Will Be Buying

"No Politician in Living Memory has been Treated as Badly as Ilhan Omar"

Even if we restrict the class to American Federal politicians, that's not even close to true. Heck, it's not even true if we restrict "living memory" to the last few years, so as to leave out assassination victims like JFK and RFK. Steve Scalise was shot, as part of a plot to assassinate a whole bunch of Republican Congressmen. Gabby Giffords was shot. Rand Paul was brutally beaten, as was Harry Reid (for reasons that we never really learned, now that I think about it). If we include judges who have to undergo Senate confirmation in the class of 'politicians,' Brett Kavanaugh -- whom RBG describes as a very kind, upstanding man, and credits with the Supreme Court's sudden shift in favor of female clerks -- was publicly savaged as a rapist, gang-rapist, drugger of women, blackout drunk, and these ridiculous charges were broadcast worldwide in front of screaming mobs.

But, OK, 'some people did something' to Omar. Or said something, actually. Nobody's done anything to her, even though she spends enough of her time running down our country that I literally can't recall her ever saying anything else.

Like Omar, I am a Muslim American who also happens to be a person of colour. The combination of hijab and being brown does not always go down well in our predominantly white society. Because of my appearance, I am all too often subjected to judgement. This makes me feel like anything I say, like Omar, has the potential to be taken out of context. It makes me feel that I, like Omar, am also under the magnifying glass. I should not have to fear for my life or that of any other Muslim. If we allow such cruel rhetoric to snowball, we are contributing towards our own demise.

Moving forward, normalizing the hijab would be the first step towards removing stigma and pressure against women like myself and Ilhan. Engaging in dialogue about topics that make us uncomfortable, such as the hijab, can also help to dismantle stereotypes and increase understanding.

Look, I don't know what you mean by 'normalizing,' lady, but you can wear the thing if you want to do. Nobody's going to rip it off your head and beat you up for it. It's not like it's a MAGA hat or something.

If you're ever in my company, you're perfectly safe. I wouldn't hurt you or let anyone else hurt you. But come on, now. Ilhan Omar isn't being hurt. She's being challenged, and that is not because she wears a hijab or because of the color of her skin. It's because she's constantly insulting the nation that took her in and elevated her to power, wealth, and comfort.

As far as I can tell, Ilhan really is an American and really does belong here. She married her brother, after all -- that's American like Jerry Lee Lewis, who married his 13-year-old second-cousin because he wanted to and nobody could stop him. Jerry Lee Lewis did a lot of things like that.



In fact, they're also alike in the 'not actually getting a divorce before marrying again' department.



Speaking of Jerry Lee Lewis and crazy American stuff, here's another story from that series -- Tales from the Tour Bus, the whole first season of which is about Outlaw Country stars.



Maybe it's only America where you can live a life as wild as that, or as wild as the one Ms. Omar seems embarked upon. I don't have a problem with her being here, or with her being in Congress: if that's what the people of MN-5 want representing them, well, that's on them. It's not my business.

But if she wants to be treated with respect and friendship, she might start by showing a little of either or both. Loyalty is a two-way street. She's not shown the first bit of actual loyalty to us, to say nothing of friendship. If she wants a defense, she might defend us once in a while. She's the Congressperson, after all. She is the one with power and access and money, who can literally write laws if she can just write them sane enough to get enough other people to sign off on them. I'm not going to shed tears for her if she has to put up with some hard words once in a while, after her latest rendition of How Awful America Is to the World.

Swinging for the Fences

An assault weapons ban is picking up steam in the House and on the 2020 campaign trail...

And how are we defining 'assault weapons' this time?

...nearly 200 House Democrats have now signed on to legislation... banning semi-automatic firearms and large-capacity magazines. With 198 co-sponsors, the bill is just 20 votes shy of the number needed to push it through the lower chamber.

Oh. All semi-automatic firearms, which includes the most popular pistols and rifles in America.

The Heller standard is that the Second Amendment protects firearms that are in common use for lawful purposes. This approach seems to have adopted the same category that the Supreme Court declared protected to be the first thing to ban. You can call that what you like, but 'common sense' it is not. 'Common sense' means that people have the sense in common. When people differ this sharply, there's no common sense to which to refer.

Waiting for the Facts

Turns out several of Epstein's neck bones were broken. The model on offer is that he tied a bedsheet to a bunk and then knelt down to strangle himself. I'm not sure that's really possible -- it would require a degree of self-discipline that transcends the fight-or-flight instinct, since all you'd have to do to stop it is stand back up. But it doesn't strike me as likely to break several bones.

But hey, as Colonel Kurt points out, why worry about it? Our elite's got this.

This Is What They Think is Legal Now

A 57-year-old man is jailed for "a terroristic threat."

Whom did he threaten? Well, no one exactly; it's more that he was 'threatening.'

Court documents said Marr walked into the Morgan County Public Library last Thursday and asked staff there why the flags were flying at half-staff. An employee replied it was in honor of the victims in the El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio shootings.

The probable cause statement signed by Captain J.D. Williams of the Morgan County Sheriff's Office said Marr replied, "If you ask me Patrick did us a favor." Authorities have accused Patrick Crusius of entering a Walmart in El Paso and shooting and killing 22 people.

Deputies said the librarian who reported the incident told them Marr then logged onto a library computer and searched "exclusively" for the manifesto written by Crusius prior to the shooting and articles related to the incident....

Morgan County Prosecuting Attorney Dustin Dunkley signed off on the charge of second-degree making a terroristic threat. In his complaint, he wrote Marr, "knowingly caused a false fear that a condition involving danger to life existed" by entering the library and asking about the flags, then responding with his comment about Crusius.

Additionally, the complaint stated Marr did this with a "reckless disregard of the risk of causing the evacuation or closure" of the library.

At one point in my youth I worked in a library. We didn't even ask for trespass orders or arrests for the people who came in and searched for internet pornography. This guy was reading a document of legitimate public interest. He's doubtless a jerk with nasty opinions, but that's first amendment stuff. You're allowed freedom of conscience, which includes the freedom not to have much of a conscience.

Joe Bob Briggs: Where's the Apology for the Ghostbusters Remake?

A Chinese director makes the mistake of apologizing.

If this is now a thing, he notes, other apologies are very much due.

Okay, your turn, Marcus Nispel. I didn’t say a word when you remade the greatest movie in the history of the world, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,... [b]ut Conan the Barbarian is a different matter. You should be hauled into court and forced to repay every cent of that $110 million, and Jason Momoa should be required to bring you clean socks every day should you fall behind and get sentenced to Fantasy Remake Jail, but I’ll settle for a lengthy humiliating public apology. This would not include any remarks about what you were trying to do. If you utter the words “the art of Frank Frazetta” at any moment, you will be executed.

It's true that the 2011 Conan was definitely not up to the standards of the 1982 classic, to say nothing of the books.

Gun Control Doesn't Work Anyway

As AVI points out, this is the conclusion of a Washington Post piece citing a 538 author -- but they try to mask it with an attractive, easy to watch video arguing the other way on emotional grounds.

Fake News Today

DB: "I would've joined the military too if I didn't think it was beneath me."

Guns and Black Markets

So yesterday in Philadelphia a man with a long gun held off like 50 police officers for hours -- although, it should be said, this was mostly because of their election of restraint. They certainly could have assaulted his position much sooner had they chosen to do so, and I think the whole department deserves praise for their choice to take the time to bring the matter to an end with no deaths. That was a good, moral choice and I appreciate them for having the discipline to carry it out.

Today the politicians are calling for gun control again, because that's always their answer no matter the question. The gunman in this case, though, had priors that prevented him from legally owning a gun. There are strong laws -- Federal laws -- against him possessing a gun. There are also such laws against possession of the narcotics that the officers showed up at that house to arrest people for possessing and distributing. Turns out they had guns and drugs too.

The big story is not that laws don't work, but just why they don't work. Crowds spent the afternoon jeering at the police officers after they were chased off by gunfire. At least one young man got arrested for mocking and harassing the cops. The ability of the police to stop a black market's operation, always limited, depends on their respect and friendship with the community. Here they clearly do not have such friendship, and thus the black market will be unstoppable even if they can manage the occasional raid on good information. What Mao says of guerrillas is as true of gangsters: the population is the sea in which they swim. If that sea is friendly waters to them, there's no way an occupying army (or police force) can finally root them out.

What the gun control politicians don't see is that the ultimate effect of their actions -- should they be successful -- will be to create a much bigger black market, this time for deadly weapons. They'll convert a much larger part of the population into a friendly sea for that black market. They'll alienate the people from the police, and thus make large parts of the nation hostile to their own authority.

More to the point, the People won't be wrong. The People are the sovereigns, after all, and they are free to decide when the government no longer legitimately represents them. It may well be that the drug war itself represents a kind of violation of popular sovereignty, proven by its unenforceability. The 2nd Amendment is encoded in the Constitution. Violations of your right to do what you want with your body isn't as plainly unconstitutional as infringements on the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

Beware, politicians. Much more than you appreciate is at stake in your lust to take the people's arms.

BB: America Offers to Trade All its Communists for Hong Kong Democracy Protesters

"This is the best deal, maybe ever," said Trump.

Economics & Politics

I honestly doubt that anyone really understands the economy well enough to discuss it. Here's an article on the weak points of the current economy by a Keynesian.

The US economy has not been working for most Americans, whose incomes have been stagnating – or worse – for decades. These adverse trends are reflected in declining life expectancy. The Trump tax bill made matters worse by compounding the problem of decaying infrastructure, weakening the ability of the more progressive states to support education, depriving millions more people of health insurance, and, when fully implemented, leading to an increase in taxes for middle-income Americans, worsening their plight.

Redistribution from the bottom to the top – the hallmark not only of Trump’s presidency, but also of preceding Republican administrations – reduces aggregate demand, because those at the top spend a smaller fraction of their income than those below. This weakens the economy in a way that cannot be offset even by a massive giveaway to corporations and billionaires.

Here's a simple report on conditions:

Monthly reports on the number of new jobs and the unemployment rate can drown out important trends like these two: After four decades of worsening, wage inequality has started shrinking. And in a twist, America’s blue-collar workers are playing the biggest role in driving that reversal.

This may come as a surprise, because education is classically seen as a ladder up the income scale. Despite blue-collar workers often lacking college degrees, their wages have been accelerating faster than those of their white-collar counterparts.

Now, if 'aggregate demand' is the problem, raising taxes on the rich and redistributing to the working class is taken to be the solution. But what about cutting taxes on the rich, combined with raising the wages of the working class? In principle that should lead to inflation, as there will be more dollars across the board. But these dollars aren't chasing the same things, which is what causes price inflation. The richer are going to spend their dollars chasing things they've been putting off; things like building a second home, or re-roofing their first home, or buying a luxury car, or higher-end foods. The working class are going to be spending their increased wealth on better used cars, mid-range foodstuffs, etc.

Meanwhile, the low unemployment levels mean that wages have to keep rising -- at least as long as we can avoid any new globalization agreements, or any amnesty deals that legalize vast sectors of new labor for domestic concerns. In other words, the Trump agenda seems to be arranged around attacking the same basic concern that the first article describes as undermining the economy.

The author of the first piece was "Joseph E. Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate in economics, is University Professor at Columbia University and Chief Economist at the Roosevelt Institute." He's the kind of guy who should understand if anyone does, at least if credentials matter. Economics is so complex, though, I doubt that anyone does. I've touched on just one way in which the fundamentals seem to be shifting in defiance of theory; but that's only one small part of the economy as a whole. Trade wars with China, for example, pose another set of challenges. The national debt poses another, though exactly what sort of challenge it poses is a subject of fundamental disagreement even among theorists. Some seem to think we can print money past Doomsday; others, that debt is going to destroy the whole thing. Both have arguments. Which are right?

SLAM

The big explosion in Russia last week is thought to have been a nuclear-powered rocket. The US developed one in the early Cold War, but never tested it.

SLAM was never built because it was too dangerous to even test. The dangerous levels of radioactivity unleashed by the nuclear engine was a big plus in some apocalyptic wartime scenario, but it couldn't even be tested in the skies over the U.S. SLAM was also overtaken by intercontinental ballistic missile development, which could deliver a thermonuclear warhead against a target in Russia in half an hour.

I did just read an article suggesting that similar rockets could be used in space, though, to allow transit around the solar system in a reasonable period of time. Here's another article on the subject of why such rockets offer advantages over traditional designs.

Ten Thousand Rounds

At first this sounds like a very alarming story.

[H]e went by the name “ArmyOfChrist,” and praised the Oklahoma City bombing, mass shootings and attacks on Planned Parenthood, the FBI says. When the deadly siege in Waco, Tex., came up, he allegedly offered one lesson: “Shoot every federal agent on sight.” “Don’t comply with gun laws, stock up on stuff they could ban,” he allegedly wrote...

And when agents raided a home where the 18-year-old lived earlier this month, they found about 10,000 rounds of ammunition and a vault full of assault-type weapons and shotguns.

Wow! Except, where did an 18 year old get enough money to buy all that stuff?

Oh, actually, he didn't own them. His father owned them, and kept them responsibly locked in a safe.

On Aug. 7, agents swarmed Olsen’s mother’s house, but learned that he’d recently moved to live with his father. Later that day, they found Olsen and arrested him. He soon admitted to making the posts, the FBI says, but claimed the comments were all in jest.

“That’s a hyperbolic conclusion based on the results of the Waco siege,” he said of his instruction to shoot federal agents. He added that the “ATF slaughtered families” in the incident, in which 76 people died as federal agencies raided a religious sect’s compound.

Agents found plenty of firepower in Olsen’s father’s home, though it’s unclear how much of it the 18-year-old could access. There were about 300 rounds of ammunition on a stairway, the FBI says, and thousands of rounds of ammo, camouflage clothing and a gun vault in another bedroom in the house. Agents eventually seized about 15 rifles and shotguns and 10 semiautomatic pistols.

So what we have here is a father who was a responsible gun owner, and a teenager who liked to run his mouth on the internet. Apparently that's enough to justify seizing the father's firearms and ammunition -- permanently? If the boy is jailed for making threats, it's not likely the father is going to shoot anything up if he's reached middle age without doing so.

This is somewhat like the red flag laws under discussion, only it turns out you wouldn't actually have to be the red flag yourself. What's the procedure for recovering your property from FBI seizure if it turns out you didn't do anything wrong, nor even contemplate anything wrong?

Shrieking reported from Epstein's cell the morning of his death

According to the irresponsible conspiracy theory website... CBS News

Real News Today

Tulsi Gabbard really has been called up to active duty, just in time to be kept out of the next Presidential debates. She'll be in Indonesia.

Tulsi Gabbard, Democrat from Hawaii and presidential candidate, will be taking a two-week absence from her campaign Monday to report for active duty with the Hawaiian Army National Guard in Indonesia, she said in an interview with CBSN's Caitlin Huey-Burns.

"I'm stepping off of the campaign trail for a couple of weeks and putting on my army uniform to go on a joint training exercise mission in Indonesia," she said. Gabbard has also taken two weeks off to report for active service in 2017.

"I love our country. I love being able to serve our country in so many ways including as a soldier," she said. "And so while some people are telling me, like gosh this is a terrible time to leave the campaign, can't you find a way out of it? You know that's not what this is about."

Pretty Presidential, if you ask me.

Fake News Today

DB: "Maj. Tulsi Gabbard Receives Surprise Deployment Orders to Antarctica"

Gabbard will be deploying to Antarctica within the week, and is expected to return next summer, shortly after the Democratic National Convention has concluded.

“It’s unfortunate that Congresswoman Gabbard’s presidential aspirations have been thwarted by her upcoming deployment,” said Sen. Kamala Harris.... winking dramatically and making finger guns long after the cameras stopped taking pictures.

Spectator (US): "Titania McGrath’s Edinburgh Fringe show is the most important live event since the Women’s March"

Inevitably, white male critics have entirely misunderstood Mxnifesto. One described it as ‘venomous satire’, another as ‘iconic comedy’. Brian Logan in the Guardian inexplicably awarded the show just one star. This was a crushing blow for me, because Logan is one of my all-time favorite writers and theater practitioners. For over 15years he was co-director of the improvisation troupe Cartoon de Salvo, objectively acclaimed on their own website as ‘storytellers, shape-shifters and theater pioneers’. I mention Logan’s troupe by name only because I know how difficult it must be to maintain a reputation for being a pioneer when no one has actually heard of anything you’ve ever done.

TO: "Nation Informs Body-Positive Advertisers It Ready To Go Back To Staring At Unattainably Attractive People"

"We got the message loud and clear, but if I wanted to see a slightly overweight person with frizzy hair and yellow, crooked teeth, I would look in the mirror."

Mutatis mutandis, I imagine that last is a very common sentiment.

Conspiracy Theories and Fake News

I suppose it's been interesting watching the competing conspiracy theories erupt, and I suppose it represents a kind of challenge to our society that we no longer have a way of determining mutually-agreed facts. Not enough blame is being placed upon the ordinary press for that; as awful as Twitter is, and it is terrible, the fact is that the press cut its own throat through increasingly-partisan activity over decades.

Still, this is not the problem:

[A] grim testament to our deeply poisoned information ecosystem — one that’s built for speed and designed to reward the most incendiary impulses of its worst actors. It has ushered in a parallel reality unrooted in fact and helped to push conspiratorial thinking into the cultural mainstream. And with each news cycle, the system grows more efficient, entrenching its opposing camps....

At the heart of Saturday’s fiasco is Twitter, which has come to largely program the political conversation and much of the press. Twitter is magnetic during massive breaking stories; news junkies flock to it for up-to-the-second information. But early on, there’s often a vast discrepancy between the attention that is directed at the platform and the available information about the developing story. That gap is filled by speculation and, via its worst users, rumor-mongering and conspiracy theories.

The problem is that waiting for better information has not made conspiracy theories seem less plausible. It remains possible that Epstein killed himself, just as we are being told: that he was broken-hearted over the loss of a life of wealth and freedom, and the certain prospect of spending the rest of his days in misery. It's possible that every single system that would have monitored him failed, and that they did so all at the same time, and he spotted his moment and used it.

However, this time, Occam's razor points toward a conspiracy to commit murder. Corruption happens to be the simplest explanation for the cascade failure of obvious protections against the death of the most valuable prisoner in the entire system. It is much easier to believe that one of the many extremely rich and powerful people to whom he posed a threat called in a favor from the mafia, and that the mafia called in a series of favors (or extended offers of new ones) to its extensive set of contacts within the prison system in New York. If all the payoffs were favors, there will be no money trail, and we'll likely never find out which billionaire or millionaire made the request.

That may not be true, but its plausibility doesn't hang on people being participants in a poisoned information stream. It's more plausible even today than it was two days ago: new details have emerged that he was just recently taken off suicide watch; that his cellmate was just removed, unusually leaving him completely alone; that he happened to have been moved from cells that were constantly monitored by CCTV to cells without any such monitoring; that guards left him alone and unsupervised for hours at a stretch, in spite of procedures calling for 30 minute checks....

This is a problem that is akin to the one that happened when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot down by Jack Ruby, in full view of everyone and while under the direct protection of US officers. We've waited a long time now for better information, but ultimately no better explanation has emerged. It's possible he was really not part of any sort of conspiracy, and there was just a cascade failure of systems in which we had unreasonable confidence. If people choose to believe the simpler explanation, though, it's not irrational to do so. It's an application of a usually-reliable heuristic.

It's just that there are huge consequences to adopting the mental model that follows from the conclusion. Perhaps the best thing is to remain open to both possibilities, as both remain possible. Then you don't have to come to any uncomfortable conclusions with dangerous consequences. You just have to accept an obvious truth, which is that we all live in much greater ignorance than we'd like to think. Ultimately the truth of much of the world is outside our grasp, now and forever.

Can Ethics Be Taught?

Peter Singer asks an old question.

In The Righteous Mind, Haidt draws support for his views from research by the philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel of the University of California, Riverside, and Joshua Rust of Stetson University. On a range of ethical issues, Schwitzgebel and Rust show, philosophy professors specializing in ethics behave no better than professors working in other areas of philosophy; nor are they more ethical than professors who don’t work in philosophy at all. If even professors working in ethics are no more ethical than their peers in other disciplines, doesn’t that support the belief that ethical reasoning is powerless to make people behave more ethically?

Perhaps. Yet, despite the evidence, I am not entirely convinced. I have had a lot of anecdotal evidence that my classes in practical ethics changed the lives of at least some students, and in quite fundamental ways. Some became vegetarian or vegan. Others began donating to help people in extreme poverty in low-income countries, and a few changed their career plans so that they could do more to make the world a better place.

This is a question that Socrates asked with some desperation, according to Plato; he seems to have died without answering it. Plato tried to answer it himself, but ended up with significant problems. In the Protagoras, for example, he has Socrates defending the weird proposition that ethics is a kind of knowledge but that it can't be taught (teachability being an ordinary characteristic of knowledge). He is debating Protagoras, who is defending the equally weird proposition that he can teach the virtues, but that they are not a kind of knowledge.

Not to steal Tom's thunder, but Aristotle's ethics is the place where the question really gets answered. Aristotle bridges the gap by showing that virtue is taught by habituation. So it's not knowing what is right that constitutes 'teaching ethics,' but practicing doing what is right. In doing that, one develops a character that does right by habit, and thus crosses the gap that Socrates and Plato and Haidt and Singer are worrying about.

To practice what is right, it is helpful first to know what is right. Ethical theory has a place, even if it isn't the place Socrates and Plato hoped it would hold.

BB Opinion: Why Can't We Return to How Peaceful the World Was Before Guns?

In the long, long ago, people lived in harmony. They had no choice but to, as they had nothing to shoot each other with. Theoretically, they had bows and arrows, but if you’ve ever actually tried to use one, they’re basically impossible to hit anything with. So if they had a problem, they just talked things out. If things got really heated, they’d settle things with a riddle competition. And men were respectful to women, as there were no guns to enhance toxic masculinity....

This all changed, though, when the inventor of guns (Bob Gun, I believe) created guns in his racism laboratory while trying to find ways to enhance racism. Since then, gun deaths have increased infinity-fold, from zero to more than zero.

The Freedom Caucus on Gun Rights and Safety

I have an official letter today from Rep. Mark Meadows, the head of the House Freedom Caucus, on the issue of the day. Since such a letter is a public record, I'll reproduce it here as I would not with genuinely private correspondence. I omit the opening and closing courtesies, though his office did not.

On August 3, 2019, a gunman cowardly took the lives of 22 innocent people in El Paso, Texas. Sadly, another gunman murdered 9 individuals in Dayton, Ohio. I continue to pray for the victims and their families, who are undergoing terrible, unexpected loss. I am thankful for the brave men and women of law enforcement that selflessly responded to these tragedies.

Violence committed with firearms is a serious problem in our nation, and it must be addressed with common sense solutions that ensure firearms are used according to our founders’ intentions: self-defense and freedom, not murder and terror.

I agree with President Trump when he said, “In one voice, our nation must condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy. These sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America.” As Americans, we must stand up against acts of hatred and violence anywhere. The President also tasked the FBI to identify all resources they need to investigate and disrupt hate crimes and domestic terrorism. Earlier this year, the FBI established the Domestic Terrorism-Hate Crimes Fusion Cell to target domestic terrorism influenced by hate. The Department of Justice has launched a centralized website to educate the public on hate crimes and encourage reporting. You may view this website here.

I support proper enforcement of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which licensed gun dealers are required to contact, either directly through the FBI or indirectly through state and local law enforcement, before selling or transferring a firearm. Since its implementation in the 1990s, NICS has stopped over three million-gun sales or transfers from licensed dealers. I have also supported the FIX NICS Act, which improved the federal background checks system. This law requires federal agencies to make annual reports and certifications of compliance regarding the NICS system and it penalizes agencies that fail to comply. It also reauthorized the NICS Improvement Act and increased assistance to states to help them submit complete and accurate records to make the NICS system more thorough. This legislation was signed into law by President Trump on March 23, 2018.

For my part, I have introduced two measures to specifically protect schools in the United States. The Protect America’s Schools Act, which would provide adequate funding to the Community Oriented Policing Services’ School Resource Officer program; and the Veterans Securing Schools Act, which would allow Veterans hired by a state or local agency to serve as School Resource Officer – giving state and local law enforcement agencies greater flexibility in hiring Veterans to protect school campuses. These two bills are the direct results of input from sheriffs and law enforcement officers across Western North Carolina. You can read more about these bills here: https://meadows.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=857.

Additionally, I am a current cosponsor of H.R.1339, the Mass Violence Prevention (MVP) Act of 2019. This bill would establish a Fusion Center at the Department of Justice (DOJ) to better share critical information and intelligence across federal, state, and local channels. The authorities failed to share information about threats at Columbine, Charleston, and Parkland for example. The MVP Act would also strengthen the penalty for a burglary of a Federal Firearms Licensee and authorizes the DOJ to hire attorneys to prosecute cases of violence committed with firearms under Project Safe Neighborhoods. These efforts will give law enforcement additional tools to protect schools and communities and will dismantle gangs and other criminal organizations that trade in violent crime.

Great Moments in American Rhetoric

And that wasn't even the craziest moment that happened in our political discourse today.

As for yesterday, it turns out that "#MassacreMitchMcConnell" is supposed to be a nickname rather than a set of instructions. Like "Cocaine Mitch," only "Massacre Mitch." If you thought they were actually inciting violence instead, you were mistaken (although the one protester at his house calling for him to be stabbed in the heart may have aided your confusion).

I thought the Kavanaugh hearings were going to be a high-water mark for wild-eyed craziness. Apparently they were just getting warmed up.

Correlation

But causation?

Venker goes on to explain that of CNN’s list of the “27 Deadliest Mass Shootings In U.S. History, only one was raised by his biological father since childhood.

“Indeed, there is a direct correlation between boys who grow up with absent fathers and boys who drop out of school, who drink, who do drugs, who become delinquent and who wind up in prison,” she writes. “And who kill their classmates.”

It's bad news if so. We've been talking about fixing failing families since I've been alive, and the problem has not improved outside of those wealthy and stable elements who were in the least danger to begin. Our culture has turned aside from family, even though family is the source of much of -- and much of the best -- human meaning.

Curiosity

The famous Mars rover has been in place for seven years. Here are some things it's found.

NYT Accidentally Does Journalism, Repents

New York Times releases a second edition with a different headline after Twitter backlash and liberals announce they’re canceling subscriptions. pic.twitter.com/fxLav5pQHP

— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 6, 2019

Involuntary Commitment

I think I'd like to get AVI's opinion on this issue.

It's hard for me to imagine trusting the government with the power to involuntarily commit people for "mental issues," given that there's no lab test for mental health and our opponents are eager to assign diagnoses to things like conservatism (or reasoning from principles, rather than from feelings). The potential for abuse is obvious and huge.

On the other hand, I hear AVI saying things periodically that suggest that there are clear-cut cases with no vagueness that might be usefully addressed in this way. Whether these kids who engage in shooting up the world are such cases is another question.

Hold the Line

I sent the following letter to my Congressmen:

While recent mass shootings receive tremendous media attention, they are statistically a small fraction of gun violence, which is itself a fraction of criminal violence. It would be irrational to react to the spectacle instead of moving in a reasoned way toward the whole spectrum of criminal violence.

The fact is that the 2nd Amendment protects a free state in a crucial manner. International comparisons cherry pick mono-ethnic states with strong central cultures like Iceland or Japan, where violence is relatively uncommon with or without guns. The proper comparisons are to diverse American nations with a similarly troubled history to our own. Mexico has strict gun control, but is overrun by cartel violence. Brazil has until recently strictly forbid private ownership of firearms, but has recently begun re-introducing private arms as a way of addressing similar criminal violence. These states have found that even a large police force can be dominated by criminal organizations; resisting them requires a distributed capacity for defense of liberty among the citizenry as a whole.

Similarly, a free citizenry can protect itself against tyrannical government if it is properly armed. The people of the Philippines endure extrajudicial killings; the Uighur population in China is undergoing ethnic cleansing and "re-education" because they cannot resist. The people of Hong Kong, though engaged in a noble and enviable defense of their liberty, are likely soon to feel the weight of the People's "Liberation" Army. If they had rifles, they would have less to fear.

The Founders were correct. The militia, meaning the ordinary citizenry's capacity to defend its liberty, is the first and best defense of a free state. I mean to pass every single liberty to my children that was passed to me by our fathers. Hold the line.

After I wrote that, I found out that the folks in Hong Kong agree.

OODA Loops

Instapundit today carries a piece from Shooting Illustrated, which describes a five-step attack cycle. As the title of this post is meant to suggest, that's too many steps. John Boyd's OODA loop only needs four: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. The SI piece collapses "orient" into "observe," and then adds two more steps: stalk and close.

The SI piece isn't terrible, but bear in mind that it's about a subset of criminal violence. You don't have to stalk a victim, or take care in choosing a victim, if you are merely interested in chaotic violence. If you want to get inside an attacker's OODA loop, you have to get inside the first three steps. Once they've made their decision, action follows.

It's important to remember, in these moments of heightened emotion, that mass shootings are a tiny fraction of gun homicides; and that most of America is perfectly safe, with a county-level homicide rate that is most likely (54%) exactly zero. Not 'near zero,' not 'zero percent rounded down,' but zero: no murders whatsoever.

Make decisions about how to respond to threats advisedly, and rationally: 'stop feeling, start thinking.' If you decide to carry a weapon and be prepared to respond to threats, do that rationally too.

On the Wrongness of Prosecutors

Cato has an article that, apropos of the recent dust-up between Tulsi Gabbard and Kamala Harris, explores several ways in which prosecutors can go wrong. "While these practices are legal and widespread, they are also immoral."

Students Crave Ethics

A teacher observes that his students have no moral compass -- but that they passionately want one, and are easily engaged in discussions on the subject.

Of course. As Tom was explaining to us, Aristotle teaches you to be happy. Virtue is the road. If you have no moral compass, you don't know the way to becoming happy.

Wish They'd Come Up With "Don't Mess With It" Before Their Last Attempt

Vox asks, "Should fixing healthcare be a top priority for Democrats?"

In 1993, newly elected President Bill Clinton made an ambitious overhaul of the national health care system his top priority. It ended up getting bogged down in complicated congressional negotiations over the many details of the proposal, became unpopular, and didn’t pass, and Democrats got hammered in the 1994 midterms.

Then in 2009, newly elected President Barack Obama made an ambitious overhaul of the national health care system his top priority. It ended up getting bogged down in complicated congressional negotiations over the many details of the proposal, became unpopular, did pass despite poor polling, and Democrats got hammered in the 2010 midterms.

But then in 2017, newly elected President Donald Trump made an ambitious overhaul of the national health care system his top priority.... Not coincidentally, Republicans got hammered in the 2018 midterms.

The failures were less expensive than the success. My #1 expense month-to-month is now health insurance, purchased on the Exchanges, but I haven't been to a doctor since 2014 because I now have a $13,000 deductible. At least Donald Trump didn't cost me any more. The Republicans just failed to completely repeal the mess that Obama's team put into place.

When people ask me why I don't favor this or that Democratic plan to fix some social problem using the government, they don't really like that my answer tuns on how much worse my problems got after their last attempt to fix my problems. Thanks, but no thanks.

Today in Fake News

DB: Thousands of officers with Bronze Stars suddenly concerned about President's attention to BS awards.

BB: Feminist church debuts anti-manspreading pews.

Tulsi Hits Hard

Far and away my least-favored candidate in this election is Kamala Harris, for exactly the reasons that Tulsi Gabbard brings to bear. Senator Harris is manifestly willing to abuse police powers and robustly violate the rights of American citizens. No one should be willing to entrust her with command of the vast array of police powers that would be available to her as President.

Good for Tulsi. She had a good night some of the time, but keeps tripping up on foreign policy -- her allegedly strong suit. It's a known issue that she's friendly with Assad, but last night she also made a wild claim that President Trump somehow 'supports al Qaeda.' You'd have to be reaching for a pretty metaphorical sort of 'support' for that to be true, e.g., he 'supports' them by being such a bugbear that he's useful as a recruiting tool. Even if so, we've heard that argument before from Barack "Hussein" Obama's team, and his shining example of American tolerance did not in fact serve to reduce al Qaeda or ISIS recruiting power. Obama did kill a lot of people, though; I'm not accusing him of being 'an al Qaeda supporter' either. I'm just pointing out that even the most generous reading of this argument is silly, at this point, given the empirical evidence.

But crushing Sen. Harris? Magnificent.

Wow, Talk About Toxic

Gillette lost $8 Billion following last year's ad campaign. Apparently customers don't like being told that they don't measure up to the moral vision of international mega-corporations.

Court Orders Are For Little People

Among the ways in which the 'Russia collusion' theory has collapsed is that a Federal judge recently ordered the government to stop claiming it had shown that the Russian government was behind the activities by the cyber firms that ran Facebook ads in 2016. Those firms are private, and the government didn't actually bother to establish a connection in the Mueller report -- nor did it file any indictments against Russian government officials, nor against any American citizens for working with the Russian government.

On July 1, 2019, Judge Dabney L. Friedrich issued an order (to which the government agreed) prohibiting further public statements by the government about the Concord and IRA case, particularly statements alleging that Concord and IRA worked on behalf of the Russian government. A more detailed discussion of this train wreck can be read here.

But Mueller Just Did It Again
This takes us to the Mueller testimony before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees last week. On live television in front of an audience of millions, former special counsel Robert Mueller carefully skirted speculating on the guilt or innocence of Roger Stone due to his ongoing criminal prosecution. But nobody apparently reminded Mueller that Judge Friedrich had ordered Mueller’s team to stop saying Concord and IRA worked for the Russian government.

The government hasn’t alleged that, can’t prove it, and abandoned those allegations in open court. The government had only just barely escaped a criminal contempt citation because Mueller’s report and Barr’s press conference seemed to allege that the Russians (the Russians, as in the Russian government) were behind the troll farms. And that’s not true, according to the government’s own admissions.

It's amazing how weak the Russia case is, given that House Democrats continue to fulminate around impeachment over it. Carter Page, against whom the FISA warrant was issued and renewed multiple times, faces zero charges. The government will have collected all of his communications and those of those with whom he spoke, but he faces no charges -- especially not for being a Russian spy, but actually not for anything whatsoever.

No Americans were indicted, let alone convicted, for working with any Russians -- government or private citizen.

No Russians were indicted who worked for the Russian government. The Federal government has agreed to stop claiming it established any connections to the Russian government even among Russian nationals working on 2016.

The SDNY investigation into the Trump organization is done, and came up empty on Russia.

Even in the case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who is widely believed to be working for Russia, no indictments have been lain against him for anything to do with Russian interference in the 2016 elections.

Some within the government, even Mueller, continue to talk as if they had something. Every time there's an acid test, though, where they might have to provide actual proof of these claims -- every time, they don't put up, and yet they also don't shut up.

Maybe it's all true, and our intelligence agencies are sitting on the proof because they don't want to expose sources and methods to discovery. That's now how our justice system works, though. You cannot use power against an American citizen without the consent of a jury of his or her peers. You've got to put up to us, or else shut up. If it's true, if any of it is true, the cards have been called.

Fairy Tales vs. the Good Witch of the West

Last night's debate featured both, apparently. Ironically the Good Witch is not the one peddling the fairy tales.

The criticism that these things are impossible is of course accurate: we can't pay for the Social Security and Medicare we have now, let alone this ever-growing raft of additional plans we keep hearing about. Adding another plan to the pile just means more taxes, more debt, and less liberty to live the way I might prefer than the way she and hers might prefer I do instead.

At least we can contest 'dark psychic forces' without a spending program.

Viral charm

A little 8-year-old girl and her musical family are having one of those YouTube explosions that happen when nearly everyone who watches a video clip feels an irresistible urge to share it. I first saw it without any explanatory comments and couldn't figure out her accent. At first it seemed it might be European Spanish, not the New World variant I'm more familiar with, but the family looked Indian. But then they were dressed so warmly, and the hint of architecture in the background was European. That made me think the mountains of South America.

It turns out the family are French, with a dad who was born in South Korea, so that explains the Asian look as well as the accent that online Spanish-speaking fans describe as "exotic." She gets going on a trilled R and just doesn't stop. They're appearing at festivals now, under the name "Isaac et Nora," and cutting a CD.

Veinte Años is a Cuban torch song from the 1930s.

What's it matter if I love you
If you don't want me any more
A love that's over
Should be forgotten

If what one wants
Could be won
You'd want me the same
As twenty years ago


 

 Veinte Años

¿Qué te importa que te ame
Si tú no me quieres ya?
El amor que ya ha pasado
No se debe recordar

Fui la ilusión de tu vida
Un día lejano ya
Hoy represento el pasado
No me puedo conformar

Si las cosas que uno quiere
Se pudieran alcanzar
Tú me quisieras lo mismo
Que veinte años atrás

Con qué tristeza miramos
Un amor que se nos va
Es un pedazo del alma
Que se arranca sin piedad

Good for IBM

It's not what I expect a corporation to do, but IBM just made its cancer-fighting AIs open source.

That is deeply humane, although one wonders how you fund continued future AI development without profit.

La Guerre en France

The police are losing control against the mob, by which I mean the citizenry.

See this on the news? Or just nonsense about Trump tweets?

EU: Motorcycles "Most Antisocial" Means of Transportation, Should Probably Be Banned

UPDATE: They don't like your cars, either.

So motorcycles are small, easy to park even in urban conditions, and quite fuel-efficient which is supposedly a virtue in these carbon-sensitive times. 'What's the issue?', you might ask.

Socialism. It's socialism that means you can't ride motorcycles.

Since every European Union country has socialized medicine, it’s clear that the cost of traffic accidents is borne by society, not by individual drivers or riders. In absolute terms, cars are responsible for 10 times the accident costs of motorcycles, €210 billion for cars versus €21 billion for bikes. But, on a passenger-kilometer basis, bikes incur triple the accident costs of cars (€0.127 for motorcycles versus €0.045 for cars).

Seems easy enough to fix: don't pay out if I get hurt riding my bike, leave me to sort that via private insurance. That's what we do here in the good old USA, right?

But no: they will answer that they have a moral duty to care for me if I'm hurt, so they therefore have a corresponding moral duty to prevent me from doing things that might get me hurt. Freedom? That's just another word for not accepting my duty to the state and society.

It's worth watching this old Hells Angels documentary from the early 1980s all the way through. Read it with the post below about how the establishment has moved gangsters from anti-heroes to heroes. That's not completely true, but it's not completely wrong either. At one point their lawyers suggest that they're basically Goldwater Republicans, philosophically. At another, they themselves declare that they're quintessentially American, because America is the only place that would take them. Of course there's plenty of rough edges, which to their credit they don't try to hide.



At some point it's going to be us against the bureaucrats and technocrats who want to govern every inch of our lives. I know which side I'm on.

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I went to see the thing today. If any of you saw it too, and want to discuss it, the comments will be a good place for that.

If you didn't see it, avoid the comments. Definitely go see it, especially if Tarantino's approach has worked for you before.