Clear as mud

I usually like to put the effort into teasing apart the confusing accounts of U.S. Congressional parliamentary squabbles, but I've about had it with the "bipartisan" $1.5T Spendapalooza Classic vs. the "Build Back Bolshevik" $3.5T(-ish) Spendapalooza on Stilts, and the daily drama over whether one can be done without the other, or whether the national monetary system will crash if we don't do both, or if we don't raise the debt ceiling, adopt more continuing spending resolutions, or pack the Supreme Court, or admit ten new states, or abolish the Electoral College, or put the final stake through the heart of the filibuster. These people have all lost their minds.

HotAir ran a piece that explains a bit about whatever today's possible world-saving pseudo-deal may be. My simplistic take, all I could figure out before exasperation set in, is: reconciliation is a way to get out from under the filibuster without actually abolishing the filibuster. We can do only one (?) reconciliation gambit per year. Reconciliation is unattractive, however, because if you pretend something is a budget bill, people can try to attach endless amendments to it, and U.S. Senators have to vote on each amendment, without any ability to pretend they don't know what their positions are or what's in the bill. Also, it eats up time and patience, hence its nickname Vote-a-Rama. That is, it's OK to eat up the common people's time and patience, but for Vote-a-Rama the Senators actually have to sit through it and cast all those tiresome votes in person when they have better things to do.

So Mitch McConnell agreed to some kind of deadline extension, but threatened to drag the Senate through Vote-a-Rama later, whereas the Democrats have no intention to doing any such thing now or later. In the meantime, we still don't know whether the Dems can resolve their internal dissent long enough to salvage one bad bill, Classic, as the risk of losing their shot at an even worse one, Stilts, absent which no agenda worth having can possibly be shoved down the country's throat before they're all ejected bodily from office. As usual, it's all the GOP's fault for failing to support the Dems' dreams of a perfect world.

Locust Update

The first night I fed our guests protein-plus pasta, topped with home-canned sauces made from my garden. One of the sauces was a rich sausage sauce, partly Italian sausage and partly Andouille. Of course their daughter is an ethical vegetarian -- isn't everyone her age? -- and so separate elements of meals have to be prepared for her. She is nevertheless the least irritating member of the family, so it's fine. I made a sweet basil and tomato sauce that was meatless just by good fortune, so that was easily done the first night. 

The second night I decided to do cowboy cooking. They went off to Asheville with my wife, so I had a quiet day to prepare. I had not intended to make chili, because these people are from Indiana. My wife asked if I was going to make chili, in fact, and I said, "Of course not. These Indiana people can't eat my chili." 

"That's true," she replied at once. 

Nevertheless while they were off for the day I realized I had some hamburger that was getting old, so I decided to make chili for myself for lunch. Since I had it on hand, then, I offered it at supper as well. 

When I do cowboy or 'chuck wagon' cooking, the rule is that everything has to be the kind of thing you could either carry on a chuck wagon or source along the trail. You can incorporate some fresh peppers, since you could pick peppers on the trail, and fresh onions travel well in a chuck wagon. Of course you could kill a steer or pluck some trout out of a stream. Butter travels well if packed in flour, as does bacon. Otherwise everything has to be dry goods: dried peppers and chilies, spices, powdered buttermilk biscuits, dried beans, and so forth. 

So I ended up serving a bone-in chuck roast, cowboy beans, bacon, biscuits, trout for the ethical vegetarian (who will eat fish 'because it isn't raised in horrible factory farms'), and chili because I had it. 

Served all of this, my brother-in-law immediately asked, "Is there some sort of sauce for the meat?" 

"Yes," I said pleasantly. "There's this chili con carne I made. You probably won't want to eat it straight, but it would be an excellent dipping sauce for the meat." 

(That meat was delicious plain, but there's no accounting for bad taste.)

So he dipped his beef in the chili, and shortly thereafter commenced to making gasping sounds and drinking lots of water. Still, I'll give him credit -- he kept going back and trying it again, even though each time he went on about how it had a lot of bite and burn ("About seven seconds in"). 

My wife told me that after I left the room for the evening he allowed that it was the best chili he'd ever tasted, even though he couldn't really eat it. I notice he didn't bring his family by for dinner tonight, though. 

Modeling human action is hard

Powerline linked to an article that tries to think sensibly about what kinds of lockdowns do more good than harm, and why predictive lockdown models failed so miserably.

Still More Truckin' Songs

In the most famous of them all, the truck-driving singer proclaims, "I could have a lot of women, but I'm not like some of the guys." Red Sovine was singing about being one of those guys.

That tune -- which you may recognize from Sesame Street -- is not the original tune for the Motorcycle Song, but Arlo adopted it in some later renditions. (You can scroll back in this video if you want to hear amusing stories.)

Dick Curless sang about being 'one of those guys' too.

I guess there's a sense in which truckers were like the sailors of an earlier era, with 'a wife in every port.' There are a lot of songs about that too.

Still moving in the right direction

Believe These Scientists?

Project Veritas nails Pfizer with multiple interviews from their scientists. Short findings: the vaccines are not as effective as natural immunity; the money is so huge as to be corrupting to the culture in Pfizer; and vax-induced heart attacks are a big enough concern that they're conducting an internal study that might result in the vaccine being pulled from the market. 

FBI Ordered to Mobilize Against Parents

 Oppose critical race theory? You’re a terrorist. 

Oz loses it

New South Wales's government rattles itself to pieces.

In the United States, we tend to think of the Aussies as rugged individualists with little tolerance for government oppression. In that sense, we probably see some similarities between our two peoples. But as one Aussie analyst recently quipped during the evening news, the problem isn’t that Australia is peopled by folks who are the descendants of criminals and prisoners. The problem is that it’s being ruled by the descendants of jailors.

Hamstringing your own IQ

Thoughts about reality testing, or what I would call the ostensible crime of "sowing seeds of doubt," from Jonathan Haidt at Persuasion:

In 1859, John Stuart Mill laid out the case that we need critics to make us smarter, and that we should have no confidence in our beliefs until we have exposed them to intense challenge and have considered alternative views:

[T]he only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner. The steady habit of correcting and completing his own opinion by collating it with those of others, so far from causing doubt and hesitation in carrying it into practice, is the only stable foundation for a just reliance on it.

* * * 

By abolishing the right to question, a monomaniacal group condemns itself to holding beliefs that are never tested, verified, or improved. We might even say that monomaniacal groups are likely to be wrong on most of their factual beliefs and their diagnoses of the problems that concern them. And if they are wrong on basic facts and diagnoses, then whatever reforms they propose to an institution are more likely to backfire than to achieve the goals of the reformers.

Maintaining a healthy skepticism is not the same as nihilism.  We can remain open to information and ideas even while adopting temporary, tentative conclusions that aid whatever decisions cannot rightfully be postponed.  There will even be times when a potentially temporary conclusion seems so obvious that we feel entitled, not only to adopt it for our own behavior, but to impose it on others by force.  On those occasions, however, our willingness to tolerate seeds of doubt in ourselves and others is heightened, not relieved.  As compelling as is our duty to use discernment and judgment in reaching conclusions that guide our own behavior, we'd better be all that much more rigorous in our discernment and judgment about people to whom we delegate power, or whose crusades we enlist in, because when we act in concert, we multiply both our power and our blameworthiness if we get it wrong.

We should be fastidious in action and the use of force, but generous in entertaining new data and counterintuitive notions.  What I'm seeing increasingly in my country's culture is the opposite:  careless abandon in imposing wild new schemes of mandatory behavior or commandeering of resources, combined with rigid control over the discussion and dissemination of contrarian ideas and puzzling information.

Rank Betrayal by the 82nd Airborne Commander

The 82nd is a storied unit, and one of the front line forces of the United States because of their rapid deployment capability. They take pride in this difficult duty, and as an Airborne unit their members are authorized distinctive maroon berets. 

Most recently they were rapidly deployed to Kabul to shore up the airhead at HKIA during the military collapse in Afghanistan. For the most part these paratroopers behaved honorably during a difficult and sudden duty. 

Their commander did not. 

During the last hours of the evacuation, according to troops under his command and as documented by photographs and witness statements, Donahue ordered all of the passengers aboard a C-17 transport plane to disembark so he could have a souvenir loaded onto the plane. That souvenir, or “war trophy,” was an inoperable Taliban-owned Toyota Hilux with a fully operational Russian ZU-23 anti-aircraft autocannon mounted in the bed. Once the Hilux was loaded passengers were allowed back on the plane, but, of course, there wasn’t room for all of them. According to troops on the scene, at least 50 people and perhaps as many as 100 people were left at Kabul to make room for the Hilux.

It is believed that many of those left behind have been or will be killed by the Taliban, in part because of information allegedly provided to Taliban commanders by Donahue himself....

One military intelligence source, who requested anonymity, told RedState:

“Some of those on the last planes out were key HUMINT assets. At least 50, likely as many as 100 were left behind after being removed from the flight. But the 50 were bonafide personnel that should have been evacuated. They will likely never be heard from again. The Taliban was given literally everything that would prevent any of those people from hiding or escape and evasion, and we know that there are a lot of ‘disappearings’ going on.”

Nor was that the only failure that the RedState report reveals. The commander did not apparently obey US laws governing war trophies. 

He also failed to destroy sensitive equipment left behind, which can be reverse engineered by the Chinese military now operating in Afghanistan.  Learning to defeat this counter-rocket-and-mortar technology endangers every ship in the US navy, should the Chinese go to war with us. 

So far no accountability has occurred for senior leaders, though; only for the one guy brave enough to put his rank on the line and demand it. He's still in jail. Several Congressmen have demanded his release, so far fruitlessly.

The Fall of Númenor

I saw this at Dad29's place, and it's quite an essay. I won't excerpt it, but I will add that the king who captured Sauron and was later ensnared by him was Ar-Pharazôn the Golden. Probably there are few enough of us who would know that off the top of our heads.

Sent by a Friend

I did verify that these articles are real; you can read them (clockwise from top left) here, here, here, and here.

An Impeachable Offense

Dishonorably discharging those who have served honorably is malfeasance as Commander in Chief. This is a disgrace; forcing out servicemembers who won't take the vaccine is one thing, but treating them as felons and denying them the benefits they have earned at war is monstrous. 

Potential consequences for non-compliance with Pentagon vaccine mandate are dire, including loss of eligibility for a range of important benefits, opportunities, honors and rights. A United States Marine corporal who served in Afghanistan during Operation Freedom Sentinel and Operation Southern Vigilance is facing dishonorable discharge for refusing to take the COVID-19 shots as required by the secretary of defense. 

Having been diagnosed with two heart conditions, arrhythmia and right bundle branch blockage, taking an experimental drug with unknown long-term side effects isn't a medical option for him, he says, especially since the shots have already been proven to cause blood clots and heart inflammation. However, he was informed that the only medical waiver he could receive was if he was diagnosed with congenital heart failure. 

In terms of correlation-not-causation, anecdotal evidence, my blood pressure has shot from 120/80 before the vax into ranges that are causing the nurse practitioner I recently sought out for a physical to demand that I start taking medication. There's no obvious other explanation for why my blood pressure would shoot up tens of points on both scales in months; but if clots are thickening my blood, I might have all kinds of medical problems resulting from it. You can't ask a guy with known heart conditions to take the thing if a previously healthy guy like me develops serious conditions at least correlated with it and with no obvious other cause. 

Likewise, in the UK there is a mysterious rise in heart attacks from blocked arteries. Correlation, not proven causation; but that doesn't make people less dead. 

Using the weapon of dishonorable discharges -- a species worse than 'bad conduct' or 'other than honorable' discharges -- is evil and wrong. This guy deserves an honorable discharge, even if you parted ways with him on this contentious issue. Other case may be otherwise, but 'dishonorable' is almost certainly out of order. It denies you civil rights, including the right to own or bear arms. It's another weapon our enemies in our own government are using against all of us, any of us whom they can.

The Reverend on a Saturday Night

You'll doubtless get a different one on Sunday morning.

And because this is Grim's Hall, here's the Rev doing Johnny Cash.

Old Days Gone

Much of this has to do with the fact that the ‘Old’ left was young, and consequently lacked power; whereas the ‘Modern’ left is old, and has become possessed of all the power of the institutions. 

A Plague of Locusts

Unfortunately my brother-in-law, my wife's brother, will be visiting all next week. I may be called upon to play host, or possibly may be in jail, so I might not be around as much this coming week. 

Own goal

 "If I ever run for office, will you guys please make a video like this about me?"

Report: FBI Running Dragnet Against 200,000 Conservatives

The subject of the dragnet is reportedly Protonmail, which many of you may know. It's based in Switzerland, and is an encrypted email system that I've used for more than a decade. Of course it's not really secure; email is forever, and can never be really deleted. The FBI is asking for formal cooperation, but the NSA can definitely read it. So they already know what they're allegedly looking for; they just need a legal construction they can take before the courts. 

There's not really a good way to communicate via encryption if you really want the government not to see the stuff. Here as elsewhere, you'd need to go lo-fi -- written letters, transmitted through trusted couriers. Cash payments instead of credit cards. Movement via vehicles that don't have electronics onboard, like old fashioned muscle cars or motorcycles. 

If they couldn't beat the Taliban, they can't beat you. Not that any of you would consider doing anything they'd need to worry about anyway, not a fine upstanding lot like yourselves. 

UPDATE: More on Protonmail being used by governments to prosecute activists. 

An Actual Conspiracy

So, AVI is hosting a useful set of reposts about the dangers of paranoia and conspiracy theories. He and his commenters all have good points, and these things are worth keeping in mind.

At the same time, consider the Durham investigation (link is to an Andy McCarthy piece, whom I assume we all think of as a non-conspiracy theorist but rather a reasonably fair former prosecutor). This investigation is looking into what looks increasingly like a very successful conspiracy by the Clinton faction to suborn the national security state, paint Donald Trump falsely as a Russian spy, and obtain (a) FBI investigations that destroyed the lives of several citizens associated with him, none of whom proved to be working with Russia; (b) a Special Counsel investigation, accompanied by loud media coverage of how plausible it supposedly was that these were Russian spies; (c) two impeachments; and (d) the deposing and arrest of a National Security Adviser of the United States, who happened to be a retired three-star general who'd held security clearances his whole adult life (and was therefore regularly, rigorously investigated). Flynn was almost sent to prison, requiring a Presidential pardon to keep a Federal judge who'd bought into all of this from finding a way to put him behind bars.

Indeed, the Presidential election of last year -- one faction of which self-described as a 'conspiracy' -- was largely constructed around Biden's rhetorical painting of Trump as somehow a friend of Putin. This was never plausible; in fact, Biden's decisions e.g. on Russian pipelines have benefitted Putin's strategic position far more than anything Trump ever did. Yet people believed it, and still do believe it, because a vast number of respected professionals across government and the media all told them so.

Ask the same questions about that. How many people had to know? How many people participated without having to know, because they were willing to do just do what their faction asked? How many leaks were there over the years? How much did it matter, given that the media was aligned politically with the faction running the operation and therefore willing to play up the false stories and suppress the true ones? Did anyone have to ask, say, Rachael Maddow to take the latest Trump-Russia leak super seriously and trumpet it to her audience? Did she need to be in the know, or was she functionally a part of the conspiracy who didn't have 'need to know'? 

I suppose I've been in a few conspiracies myself, some of them successful. It's not as hard to believe once you've seen it done, and once you've done it. 

That said, paranoia really is dangerous, and many conspiracy theories really are false. I don't mean this as a counterargument so much as a counter-example; something to consider as leavening what are also important lessons.

Angry Parents are Domestic Terrorists

So says an organization representing school boards around the nation, calling for the PATRIOT Act to be used to quell parental uprisings. 

UPDATE: President Biden's Education secretary says, 'Parents should not be "the primary stakeholder" in their children's education.' 

Former* Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe says that parents shouldn't be telling schools what to teach.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, but three times is enemy action. 

* See comments.

Science Deniers

Economics is a science, right? A dismal one, but a science all the same?

Related: An article in the Washington Post today discusses the need for a better sense of mathematics among Americans, to lead to a less stupid politics. Of course they want to stat with vaccines, because they want to get buy-in from their readers who largely agree that only dumb people resist vaccines; but then they move to Federal spending. 

Last year [the Federal Government] spent $6.6 trillion. How much is that? Well, if you spent a dollar a second, you would finally spend $6.6 trillion by about 6 p.m. (as of writing) on April 30. Of the year 112,932. (It will be Wednesday, presuming the heat death of the universe has not yet occurred.)

Somehow this ends up being a justification for spending even more money, because we already spend so much that the 'much more' isn't so much by comparison. 

"Super Speeder"

I was talking with an old Georgia friend, and she was telling me a fun story about a teenager she knew who got arrested last weekend. He'd been pulled over running a red light, and when they ran his license they found he had an unpaid "super speeder" ticket -- so they took him to jail.

"What," I asked, "constitutes a 'super' speeder?" She sent me the description of the new law.

I laughed, and told her "When we were kids, we just called that 'Friday night.'"

Manchin Talking Sense

Nice to see that one of the more sensible Democrats has the whip hand with the party.

The Republicans, as far as I can tell, are non-entities. 

A Definite "No" From Me

Of course they were always going to decide that coronavirus response was the new model for government intervention in other areas our lives where they'd like control.

CDC implements study on "gun violence" after labeling it a "public health threat," aiming to "craft swift interventions, as they have done to contain the coronavirus pandemic and other national health emergencies." (NPR)

"Swift interventions" using "health and safety" to implement unconstitutional, tyrannical measures -- exactly as expected. 

That's the problem with the slippery slope fallacy: people assume that because it's a fallacy, it won't happen. In fact, all that a fallacy means is that logic can't guarantee that it will happen. It very often happens exactly that way, because why shouldn't it? That's the way we did it last time. 

A Visionary

I don’t always get modern art, but I really feel like I understand what this artist is trying to convey. 

US Govt Blocks American Citizens’ Flight Home

This one isn’t my group, but an allied organization flying through Ethiopia. They have US citizens and green card holders, but Homeland Security says they can’t land anywhere in the USA. 

Guess they should fly to Mexico and walk in like everybody else. 

UPDATE: The organizers tell me they’ve actually discussed that option. There’s a logic to it: set one massive breakdown of the US government against another one, and maybe they’d cancel out. 

Hot Rod Race

You've probably heard Hot Rod Lincoln many times over the years, and not just yesterday when we were mourning Commander Cody. But did you know that it was a reply to an earlier song? The older song, here, is figured in the opening lines: "Let me tell you a story about a hot rod race where the Fords and the Lincolns were setting the pace; that story is true, I'm here to say; I was driving that Model A."

You'll hear of that Model A again in this bit. It's not as good as the later song, but it's rock and roll history. 

There's a follow-up piece. 

There's a third one, as well, about the legal consequences.

And a fourth one, from the perspective of the Mercury.

So you can see how it was easy for another party to apply a reply to this tradition.  Nor did it stop there; the Reverend Horton Heat added to the tradition many years later.

The Times of London: Trump Was Right, It Was Rigged

A small but noteworthy moment on our current path, wherever it leads.

And people say he's senile

 I appreciate the mental agility that allows someone to argue that reducing taxes is spending money, but spending money doesn't cost anything.

Faded Gloryville

Some parts of the place do seem to be getting run down, and I think we all know whose fault that is. There nevertheless remain good things, including this cheerful bit from an album that is all about American decline.

Maybe we can fix it; but even if we can't, at least we can defy our enemies by finding ways to still be happy while we try.

And if you liked that one, here's another one by her. It's neither cheerful nor fun, but it's really pretty good.

Hope You Like Eating Bugs

The $3.5 Trillion "infrastructure" bill under consideration will impose costs on beef cattle at $2,600/head, making meat unaffordable for all but the wealthiest. For dairy cows it's $6,500, so I hope you also like almond milk. 

Only Courageous Officer in USMC Now in Brig

The only officer to demand accountability from senior leaders in the Marine Corps for the Afghanistan debacles is also the only officer punished, being first relieved of command and now arrested. 

RIP Commander Cody

Another one of our favorites has gone to rest.

“In about 1966 I found a Bob Wills album and marijuana," [he] told No Depression in 2018. "I’m pretty sure those guys were stoned most of the time. I started listening to Jerry Lee Lewis’ album that had 'Crazy Arms' and Buck Owens’ greatest hits. We did [Owens'] 'Tiger by the Tail' regularly. What country music afforded for us was there was no rehearsal, we listened to the record, we drank a bunch of whiskey and coke, and played. Country music is easy to do if someone knows the lyrics and the song, you can follow along relatively easily.”

One of their most famous bits was a cover of Hot Rod Lincoln, a favorite of my father's.

Dad loved the song as a young man, when it reminded him of his youth drag racing along the mountain roads of Tennessee. He grew, I am sorry to say, to understand the father's perspective as well as he experienced my own period of drag racing through the mountains of north Georgia. 

Somehow we both survived. 

FBI Busting A Terror Plot

 

Referenda on Immigration

France's Le Pen is proposing a referendum on immigration if she is elected. She probably won't be elected, but there's a good chance this kind of thing will become more common regardless.

Hers is pretty tame stuff, arguing for limits and regulations about who can come as well as favoritism for actual French citizens when obtaining government benefits. The real deal will be when groups start revoking the immigration status of those who have already been admitted. Germany admitted a million refugees from Syria and the Middle East; France is awash with immigrants from North Africa; the Scandinavian countries are having significant epidemics of bombings and rapes from their own migrant communities. 

At some point people are going to start wanting to rethink the admission of groups that don't fit in and cause significant problems. Democratic means can be used for any popular end, not only for globalistic or left-leaning priorities; and if democracy alone justifies the right, then it's just as right to vote for a government to expel the unwanted as for a democratically-elected government to vote to let people in. 

Now if there are deeper principles of justice at work, that might not be true. It is not clear to me, however, that Europe has many remaining sources of deep philosophical principles; their governments didn't like the ones they inherited, and so they have worked to abandon them. 

Some Concerns About Policing

Over the last year the 'Defund the Police' crowd's significant success in raising concerns about policing resulted in a loss of funding and support for the police in many places. This correlated with a rise in American murder rates of nearly thirty percent, suggesting that at least in urban areas police do in fact perform a service to the ordinary public. 

Likewise, the ongoing fiasco of lies being foisted especially by the White House against the Border Patrol is clearly aimed at furthering two of their agenda items: 1) Paint America, and the police, as secret white supremacists; 2) Flood the country with illegal immigrants. 

So there is reason to believe that the police are being unfairly treated by politicians and activists. That said, there are also reasons to be concerned about policing and its violence. I have tried to present this argument fairly in this space, but these concerns about violent organized criminality among police are significant enough even to name-brand 'conservatives' to now appear in National Review. The follow-up piece is even worse. (h/t Instapundit).

Meanwhile, in Australia, police are responding to protests against COVID measures with severe violence. (Warning: that link is graphic.) They are shooting at unarmed crowds with what must be nonlethal munitions given the apparent absence of many bodies, but even so are significant violations of the right to peacefully protest. 

These findings suggest that police officers cannot be assumed to be reliable, upstanding figures who enforce the moral order. They frequently form internal criminal gangs -- when I was a young man, District Attorneys in Georgia referred to the county sheriff's departments as "the Dixie Mafia" -- and can turn on a disarmed population with tyrannical brutality. 

And that's the relatively-safe uniformed police. The secret police are an obvious problem. 

There has to be a middle ground here between defunding/eliminating police in urban areas where crime rates will spike without them, or spreading lies about police in order to further a political agenda on the one hand; and, on the other, supporting police in spite of these significant problems. Reforms are and remain necessary, though in some city-based communities those reforms probably cannot go as far as the outright abolition of policing. We need a better approach to this than the one our politicians and activists are pursuing, both parties and all factions. 

"Climate Change Started Those Wildfires"

In a way, that turns out to be true. That madness inspired by being taught to believe in catastrophic climate change was in fact responsible. 

A former forestry student-turned-shaman and yoga teacher has been charged with starting a huge California wildfire that has destroyed 41 homes - and was being investigated in connection with other fires - after claiming the blaze was triggered accidentally while she tried to boil bear urine so she could drink it.  

Now if you think that sounds like a reasonable explanation, hang with us here folks.

During questioning by investigators, Souverneva... claimed that she had been thirsty whilst out hiking and found a puddle in a dry creek bed which contained bear urine. 

She then claims she attempted to filter the water using a tea bag but when that failed tried to start a fire to boil the water. Souverneva said that it was too wet to start a fire so she drank the water and continued walking. 

Boiling urine does not improve it, but she wasn't even actually able to boil it, so she drank it anyway. 

Souverneva is known to be a graduate of the California Institute of Technology and former Bay Area biotech employee. 

She has also worked as a yoga teacher and describes herself as a shaman - a person who claims to have a direct connection with the world's good and evil spirits. 

Now, just on the off-chance that any of you out there reading this should think that you're a shaman in contact with good and/or evil spirits, let us have a short safety briefing. 

1) Do not drink urine, boiled or otherwise.

2) Do not start forest fires. 

That is all.

Riding with the Peshmerga

An American "embedded" with the Peshmerga encounters a suicide bomber in a car bomb ("SVBIED" in the post). Language warning, but he's having fun.

FBI Investigating Vet-Led Afghan Rescue Efforts

The few State Department officials who'd been willing to work with any of us are starting to peel off, citing pressure from on high. Now the FBI is showing up at people's door.

In one instance, agency officials showed up at the home of Scott Mann, founder of Task Force Pineapple, said Tim Parlatore, the group’s legal counsel. Such a visit is normal for the FBI, and the group cooperated fully, Parlatore said.

Some of the people described the outreach as nothing out of the ordinary and part of the growing public-private partnership on evacuations. “In my mind, the FBI was trying to be helpful, not intimidating,” a person familiar with the outreach said.

Others saw it differently.

Yeah, ask LTG(R) Michael Flynn how that friendly, helpful FBI visit 'just to clear things up' worked out for him. 

Related: FBI Admits its Really Hard to Solve Crimes They Didn't Make Up Themselves. 

The Mountain Heritage Festival

Mule Train! The Mountain Heritage Festival occurs annually (except in the annus horribilis of 2020) at Western Carolina University. It features mountain crafts, singing, dancing, and general good fun.

A team of Cherokee from the nearby reservation play a spirited game of stickball, "the little brother of war." It involves wrestling as well as running, tossing the ball with the stick, and so forth. 

If you enlarge the signs in this photo, you'll find that it is a blacksmith next to and working with a Cherokee coppersmith. The blacksmith produced traditional Scottish arts, including knives, swords, hammers, and chain mail armor. The collaboration between them mirrors that of the Scots immigrants and the Cherokee on the frontier, where the two communities were very close. 

Naturally there was bluegrass, gospel, and other mountain music.

Finishing the day with chicken grilled over the coals.

Redrum MC

There were a lot of these guys at the recent bike rally I went to, I think because they're a "First Nations" motorcycle club and it was held on the Cherokee Reservation. They're the only MC to ever address the United Nations; and apparently actor (and one time Conan the Cimmerian actor) Jason Momoa is a patched member. 

Momoa, if we take the whole 'nobody from the wrong ethnic group should ever play a character from another,' is definitely not a Cimmerian -- they're, according to Robert E. Howard who created Conan, the ancestors of the Celts and the Gaels and Highlanders. That said, Momoa is apparently a pretty cool guy and I am not in any way bothered that he played the character. It wasn't a great rendition, but that is more the director's and writer's fault. I thought he was great in Road to Paloma, and I'm looking forward to seeing him and others in the new Dune.

All the members I met or interacted with were honorable and upstanding. They say they're about positive images and respect for their traditions, and I notice that they aren't unwilling to take on non-Natives who happen to share their views. In that way they're inclusive beyond the ethnic lines they represent, which is nice to see going the other way as it often does not. 

Arizona Audit

The report was published today, and apparently has found issues with ballots at five times the margin of victory. I have not yet had a chance to read it, listen to the hearing, or review the findings. Nevertheless it is important to note.

The margin of victory was only about ten thousand, and normally in an audit of 2.1 million votes a difference of 50,000 wouldn't necessarily be out of line with expectations. It might change the result, but a certain amount of user error and mistakes are to be expected in a large election.

In this case, though, they knew how many extra votes they needed and had extra days to generate them. Sure enough, Wendy Rogers reports, 96% of the duplicate votes that were counted in the audit arrived after election day. The fact that the total numbers are relatively small doesn't mean that this wasn't a fraudulent outcome, because they had the opportunity to know exactly the target they needed to hit. 

I'll look at it as I'm able. I hope some of you will as well. 

UPDATE: I think she might have misunderstood what he said, but the spike is obvious and significant. 

UPDATE: The Federalist has a piece analyzing the results. 

Hospitalizations down again

 The numbers continue to go in the right direction.

A Lamb

He spoke very gently to her when they were first together.

For example, she once asked him if he had ever seen a lamb.

"I saw a lamb this morning," he said. "I looked in his eyes."

Then he stopped speaking, and she knew he was not happy.

...And If You Don't Like Me, Then Leave Me Alone

That advice is widely quoted in old folk songs, and it's good advice for these people. (By the way, having old folk songs is evidence of having a culture, though "whiteness" is not what it's properly called.)

Here's one of those old songs, as a matter of fact. 

Actually Charlie Daniels says about the same thing in "Long Haired Country Boy." 

It's very fine advice. It goes well with the two rules of business: mind yours, and stay out of mine.

UPDATE: Here's a folk song called "Fisherman's Son," which looks to be sung to the same tune as "Moonshiner." 

The sea is my lifeline the shore is my home

I've been to your cities I didn't stay long

I stared at the bright lights the dark city ways

I'll tell you that's not for me, no I couldn't stay....

I'm a fisherman's son got fisherman's blood

Just hauling the lobster and jigging the cod

And if you don't like me then leave me alone

And I'll go on singing my fisherman's song.

The Barrow Downs

Barrows are rising in popularity in the United Kingdom as a burial option. 

From the outside, they typically look just like small grassy hills, perhaps buttressed by some jagged, upright slabs that could’ve been nicked off of Stonehenge. But, each one also has a doorway literally into the hill, and some feature shelves lined with human remains, like a public mausoleum built into the earth....

Angel, whose company, Sacred Stones, has built three barrows since 2015 and is exploring building another six, recalls a visit to an ancient barrow.... the Cairn Holy tomb, which dates back to the fourth millennium B.C. The identities of those interred there are long lost, but something caught the eye of Angel and his daughter: fresh flowers recently left inside. “This is thousands of years old,” says Angel. In the intervening millennia, burial practices changed countless times. And yet, he says, he makes a point of returning to this same ancient barrow on every Scottish holiday he takes. Each time, without fail, he finds fresh flowers. The identity of those interred seems less important than celebrating their time on Earth, and the ancient barrow’s permanence made that possible thousands of years later.

Here is another article on the subject. 

Who Needs Industries?

The FDA decides to kill vaping. I always thought vaping was silly, but it's no worse than smoking (some argue better) and employed a lot of people. You'd think with the economy like it is that employment issue would be a concern.

It would be paranoid to think that the government was actively trying to destroy small businesses, but this has been a devastating year for small businesses of all sorts thanks to government actions. You might believe that some of those actions were necessary and justified. Even if so, why make it worse?

Equinox

 

Autumn arrives. 

Australian Horror Show

Mobs of police open fire on fleeing, unarmed protesters. For their safety, I suppose. 

Ghosts and Barracuda

 Hard blues for the last day of Summer. 

What Just Happened Here?

White House staff suddenly freaks out and expels the media during the middle of a conference with Biden and Boris Johnson. Johnson was mid-sentence when they suddenly push the press out of the room.

UPDATE: The White House explains that Johnson didn't have permission. 

"Our relationship with the United Kingdom and with Boris Johnson is so strong that we will be able to move beyond this, but he called on individuals from his press corps without alerting us to that intention in advance."

So it's a diplomatic affront that an allied head of government took questions from the press, at a press conference, without seeking permission. Fortunately, though we are understandably upset by this, our relationship is strong enough to survive it. 

Hey Oney!

This woman was tired of working at Walmart, and decided to tell the world.

After letting out a deep exhale, Mcgrath began by saying, “attention Walmart shoppers and associates, my name is Beth from electronics. I’ve been working at Walmart for almost five years and I can say that everyone here is overworked and underpaid.”

She continued to express her frustrations by calling out the store’s policies and management. “The attendant policy is b*******,” she continued. “We are treated from management and customers poorly every day. Whenever we have a problem with it we are told we are replaceable. I’m tired of the constant gaslighting. This company treats their elderly associates like s***.”

Mcgrath then got personal with her criticism of the store’s management. “To Jared, our store manager, you’re a pervert. Greta and Kathy, shame all y’all for treating your associates the way you do. I hope you don’t speak to your families the way you speak to us,” she declared. Mcgrath ended the video by exclaiming, “F*** management and f*** this job. I quit!”

In honor of that, a song from Johnny Cash.

 

More from Wuhan

This sounds like a great idea whose time has come. 

New documents show that just 18 months before the first Covid-19 cases appeared, researchers had submitted plans to release skin-penetrating nanoparticles containing “novel chimeric spike proteins” of bat coronaviruses into cave bats in Yunnan, China.

They also planned to create chimeric viruses, genetically enhanced to infect humans more easily, and requested $14million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) to fund the work.

Papers, confirmed as genuine by a former member of the Trump administration, show they were hoping to introduce “human-specific cleavage sites” to bat coronaviruses which would make it easier for the virus to enter human cells. 

So, they told us they were going to do this. DARPA has been one of the leading agencies on preparing for coronavirus and other pandemics, and in fairness they have had notable successes in preparatory work. All the same, "let's engineer new spike proteins and release them to the wild" is not the kind of plan I would expect from anyone other than a James Bond villain. 

VP Harris: Biden Administration's Handling of Border Must Be Investigated

I seem to recall that she was named 'Border Czar,' but I suppose she means to say that she supports the investigation of and accountability for underlings, not the person in charge. 

Adventures in Headline Writing

The headline here is:

"Less than Half the Country Believes Biden Lacks 'Mental Soundness' To Be President: Poll."

The poll's actual finding: 48% believe he lacks the mental soundness, and 49% think he has it. 

So you could just as easily have headlined this:

"Less than Half the Country Believe Biden Has 'Mental Soundness' to be President." 

Or, since 3% said they weren't sure, giving you 51% who are sure he isn't fit or not sure he is:

"More than Half the Country Unsure of Biden's Mental Soundness as President." 

His speech today at the UN was pretty awful, but the UN itself is pretty awful. Anyone who commits to taking it seriously is already on the wrong track. 

#TraitorCawthorn

Some group called "Really American" is targeting my Congressman, Madison Cawthorn, with this ridiculous video. They are apparently trying to convince Pelosi and the House leadership to expel him from Congress over his rhetoric. 

The video intends to make him look like some kind of militant, but it is carefully edited to leave out the fact that he is in a wheelchair. It uses all the normal tricks of political ads -- slow motion, washed out colors, violent language and the like -- plus footage arising from Cawthorn's own choice to appear often with firearms in order to appeal to Second Amendment voters who are a big part of his constituency in Western North Carolina. 

This kind of thing is ridiculous and offensive. I have no brief for Cawthorn, who as far as I can tell from observing him is completely useless. Nevertheless he was chosen by our voters, and it is none of their business to deny us representation according to the choices our voters made. I'd rather see a better man in the office, but whichever representative occupies the space is our choice and not theirs. 

Meddling strangers are not welcome in these mountains.

Requiescant in Pace

Two men who were each significant thinkers have passed on in the last day, one from each side of the political spectrum.

Professor Emeritus Angelo Codevilla should be known to all of you. His most famous essay is here, and is as worth reading today as when he wrote it. Here is his final work, on the rescuing of America. In addition to being deeply insightful on the course and fate of the nation he loved, he was a scholar of and participant in intelligence operations. The nation loses one who was both a patriot and a serious thinker, either a sad loss and the combination a tragedy. 

Professor Charles Mills was a scholar from Trinidad who wrote chiefly about philosophy of race but also in Marxist thought. Unlike most people in that field, he was a man of extraordinary courtesy, one who undertook to discuss the issues of race in ways that were designed to illuminate the genuine problems and identify solutions that were acceptable. His death leaves the field much poorer intellectually at a time when it has grown in importance, and now affects major decisions at many institutions both government and corporate. Those decisions, already often terrible, will be worse because of the loss of his thoughtful and graceful participation. 

Losing the blue collars

 Oz gets feisty.

One Quarter to a Third of Navy SEALs Reject Vaccine

Hundreds of Special Operators will be disqualified from service over this, having a tremendous effect on the military's ability to carry out clandestine and covert operations. 

Younts said the Pentagon has put its threat in writing that unvaccinated SEALs, including those who get a religious exemption or already have natural immunity, will be forbidden from deploying with their teams, all but ending their special operator careers. Some were given a deadline of this week, he said....

Tim Parlatore, a lawyer who helped win the acquittal of Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher in the alleged death of an ISIS prisoner, said he has confirmed large numbers of SEALS are declining to get the vaccine right now.

"It's in the hundreds. And it's not the senior leadership. It's all the shooters and it is going to have a huge impact," Parlatore said. "If they continue to with this asinine police you are going to have the complete decimation if the SEAL teams," he said.

It's a bit more than a decimation if it eliminates a quarter to a third of the force. That's on the order of two or three Roman decimations in a row.

The article talks quite a lot about people seeking a religious exemption from the vaccine, but they never bother to explain what the religious objection happens to be. I assume it has something to do with fetal tissue from cell lines drawn from abortions being used in the testing process, but it is never spelled out. 

SEALs take a long time to train, and it is difficult to recruit extra people who can pass the selection course anyway, so replacements will not quickly be forthcoming. 

An Amazing Display

Tex left a comment on the border post below that establishes a source for these 15,000 Haitians who suddenly turned up in Del Rio. It was another diplomatic failure by the Biden administration. 

[I]n January, the Biden administration began to  pressure Mexico to maintain and use its National Guard and immigration bureaucracy to slow the flow of expected caravans and of tens of thousands of Haitians and other migrants coming in from all over the world. This was a fairly quiet diplomatic campaign, and it coincided with billions in promised U.S. aid and other benefits such as covid vaccines. 

Instead of transferring the cash and vaccines, the Biden administration delayed -- and openly plotted to use the vaccine stockpiles for boosters instead, which drew resignations in protest at the FDA and a rebuke vote last week. Mexico decided to remind the US Government that it can always open the flood gates. 

The migrant interviews comport with the arrivals of bus after bus here in Acuna, about every 15 minutes all day long every day for a week, local business owners said. At the main city station, CIS witnessed buses pull in and empty out passengers who all appeared to be migrants....

A casual move such as suspending deterring strategies under cover of a holiday, or perhaps for the express purpose of transferring a humanitarian burden to the United States, indicates a diplomatic failure by the Biden administration in choosing carrots rather than Trump’s stick in dealing with Mexico. The move hints at how Mexico’s leadership regards the Biden administration’s quid pro quo arrangements of aid for help with illegal immigration from Guatemala.

This has led to astonishing visuals for a Democratic administration of Border Patrol Agents removing black Haitians using horses and whips. 

How can they be so bad at everything? This all happened the same week as the French recalling their ambassador over the submarine fleet being snaked out from under them. In addition to disrupting a major alliance, D29 points out in the comments to that post that the SSN fleet won't be available until 2040 -- thirteen years after the French fleet would have been fully operational. That means that this fleet won't come into service until after China's demographic collapse; during the full time that China has the manpower to wage expansionistic wars, Team Biden has ensured we'll be on the sidelines. 

It is an amazing display. I've never seen its like. 

UPDATE: The Vice report notwithstanding, I've yet to see any photographs or video of the "whips" they claim are being used. There is a good chance that these are just split reins that are being mistaken for whips by journalists; but the White House spokeswoman didn't push back against the claim that they were whips when asked about it. Of course, she's probably never sat on a horse outfitted with Western tack in her life. 

Just a Coincidence, Of Course

The judge in the Sussman case is married to Lisa Page's attorney. How is it that in a nation of 300,000,000 people the same few names turn up? 

Low profiles

 

Arizona Upcoming

The Arizona Audit is nearly complete, and is planning to release findings in the coming days. In the meantime, Gateway Pundit claims to have data that Arizona has run hundreds of thousands of voter identities past the Social Security Administration in recent months -- with over half finding 'no match.' 

The Gateway Pundit post also notes that Maricopa County has its own voter registration system, different from and independent of the ones the rest of the state uses.

Down on the Border

A significant escalation in what was already a crisis prompts the deployment of Texas state police. The Federal police, whose job this actually happens to be, are not stopping the invasion.

Followup on Imperial Pints

Back in May, I had a post that several of you enjoyed on the subject of American versus Imperial pints. Today I learned that the UK government, post-Brexit, is bringing back Imperial pint glasses marked with a crown stamp as assurance of proper measurement. We shall have to keep an eye out to see if those can be ordered for shipment to the United States. 

Non-monoculture

 My septic drainfield:  what we do instead of a lawn.  This year's very wet summer made everything especially happy, but the extra moisture from the drainfield is welcome, too.

Jasmine Cain sings Bobby McGee

The song opens with a long bit about how she got from a girl folding t-shirts at biker events to playing them as a headlining rocker. In some ways it's a simple dream: but it's an honest one.

Keep Hauling

I would have posted a trailer for the movie Rat Race with John Cleese and every other living comedian, but they all have too many spoilers. Pretty funny movie.

Instead, here's a trailer for Harry Brown, a very good movie that says a lot of wrong thinks about society.

Happy Saturday, y'all!

Glad they're working on the important stuff

 

Scenes From the DC Entrapment Festival

Apparently there was a demonstration, by someone or other, allegedly in support of J6 detainees. I had to ask a left wing friend for details, because no one I know on the right told me anything about it. Apparently it got big play in the media, though, and the Capitol police put the Wall back up and came in riot gear. 

There are some amusing photos and memes, though. 

UPDATE: The only person arrested appears to have been an undercover cop. 

UPDATE: Another good meme.

UPDATE: And another. One commenter asks, "How out of touch is the FBI if they think this is how we dress?"

LTG(R) Kellogg: Milley Must Go

Retired officers' opinions are worth whatever they're worth, but for whatever it is worth, he served with Milley and respects most of Milley's career. Neverthless, pointing out that Milley has not denied the allegations against him: 

Any action on the part of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs that gives the impression that he has traveled outside his lane, however slight, should be met with swift and severe recourse. This is not political; this is about the preservation of our democracy....

Unauthorized military discussions with a growing adversary about potential action sends a negative signal to an enemy. It conveys confusion, weakness, and calls into question our ability to control our military forces. It also implies that the military, in fact, calls the shots — not the commander in chief. Any undermining of the civilian control of the military is problematic; this was dangerous.

There is more if you'd like to read it. 

Where'd I put my magic wand?

A Bloomberg analysis reports the startling fact that wage increases have been outpaced recently by inflation, rendering the new minimum wage an illusory benefit. Who'da thunk? The Bloomberg author bemoans the fact that "the U.S. economy has no system for making sure that wages keep up with inflation."

The fact is, though, that the U.S. economy has a fine way of making sure that wages keep up with inflation: keep increasing productivity and quit trying to control prices. The only way for the real value of wages to increase is for the real value of wage-earners' production to increase. Shutting down workplaces and printing money for stimulus checks isn't the same thing as production.

One Step Away from War... with France?

The French recalled their ambassador to the United States today. Traditionally, this was the step immediately preceding the commencement of hostilities to include acts of war such as blockades. I don't imagine the French intend to attack us, and are merely expressing their anger in the strongest peaceful terms; but it is an amazing place to find ourselves. 

You can tell they're angry and want to hurt the Biden administration, because their official public statement is that this reminds them of the sort of thing that Trump would have done. In truth, though, Trump never did anything that caused a major ally to recall its ambassador.

Killing Children

A long time ago, I wrote an infamous piece at BLACKFIVE called "On the Virtues of Killing Children." The virtue was, specifically, that if you allowed the enemy to use children as human shields they'd keep doing it; whereas if you struck them regardless of their use of children as shields, taking all care you could to avoid killing the children but not letting their presence prevent the strike, you would quickly convince militant groups not to use the children in this way. It would provide them no benefit, and all the difficulties that are entailed by having lots of children around when you're trying to work. That piece was referenced by my friend Marc Danzinger, known in the old days as "Armed Liberal" of the Winds of Change blog, at this discussion of a similar scene in the Iliad.

Today, the United States military announced that it recently killed a lot of children -- and none of its enemies -- in that drone strike following the ISIS-K attack on the airport in Kabul. No disciplinary action is expected, per CDRUSCENTCOM, and the US stands by its intelligence. 

General Milley says that this strike featured "the same level of rigor" as our other drone strikes. It is more terrifying to consider that he might be speaking the truth about that than otherwise. 

What has become of the fighting force in which I once reposed such faith, and whose cause I so gladly joined in my youth? What has become of the virtuous nation whom I thought, once, could be trusted even to strike under such perilous circumstances as when the enemy was willfully using human shields? Was I blind when I was young, as the young often are? Or is it true, as I would rather believe, that corruption has tainted and destroyed what was once a noble force of honor and purpose? 

The end of that infamous piece closes with a prayer for mercy and forgiveness for what we have done. That much, at least, remains right. 

Fake News Today

DB: Veggie Omelet MRE Came From Lab, Not Wet Market

BB: White House: 'We Must Continue Admitting Unvaccinated Immigrants To Replace All The Workers Who Got Fired For Being Unvaccinated'

BB: CDC Cautions Against Taking the Red Pill

HT: "I Can Fix Him," Says Woman who is Worse

TO: Taliban Takes Lower Manhattan After Biden Administration Leaves NYC 9/11 Commemoration

Buh-bye

 Anthony Gonzalez (R-ish-Ohio) won't run for re-election.  Trump supporters give him the sadz.

If you didn't already know

 Durham finally produced an indictment yesterday.  The New York Post characterizes it accurately as fresh proof that the Clinton campaign bought and paid for the Russia hoax.

I assume Durham will now try to put pressure on criminal defendant Michael Sussman, a Perkins Coie partner, to implicate others.  There will be questions of attorney-client privilege, which crumbles in the context of a criminal conspiracy.

FISA Court: The Government Lied To Us About Everything

This seems like it ought to be a bigger story.

A newly declassified ruling from a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court in June demonstrates that the government lied about its legal basis for spying on former Trump campaign official Carter Page.

The ruling states that the information produced by the FBI’s unlawful investigation into Page was illegally obtained and that it “found violations of the government’s duty of candor in all four applications.” 

So, the government lied in every application, in an unlawful investigation based on illegally obtained information. Great. That's the hat trick, then.  

AUKUS

The abandonment of Afghanistan and the surrender of Europe to Russian influence via pipeline diplomacy suggested that the Biden administration was planning to focus all of its foreign policy efforts on China. Today we saw the fruit of such moves.

Partly this new alliance is noteworthy for who it leaves out: Canada and New Zealand, the other two of the 'Five Eyes' system. Partly it's noteworthy because we snaked the submarine fleet building contract out from under France, who will be angry. We may be damaging two different core alliances to set up this new front. 

Wretchard notes that it looks like we're drawing lines that will exclude some other allies:

[A]s a practical matter the Philippines, Formosa — as Taiwan was once known — and Korea will be hard to defend in the first onslaught of a Pacific War. They will be defended if possible but not to the end. In the event of such a loss, Australia and Japan will be to the US what Britain was in 1940: the last line.

We could approach China more aggressively, and in a plausibly deniable fashion that would force them to fight wars we could stay out of ourselves.  It should be noted that we almost did one of the things suggested there: 

At the same time, as we are withdrawing from Afghanistan, the President could order the transfer of large amounts of small arms and ammunition stored there to the Uighur tribes who live in Afghanistan.

Missed it by that much. Maybe the Taliban will take up the jihad for their Islamic brethren under PRC oppression.

Biden HHS Limits Monoclonal Antibodies to the South

Tex has been talking about this treatment and wondering why we don't hear more about it. Well, here's more.

The move to limit shipments of these treatments appears to focus on the South. The HHS spokesperson interviewed describes this as "asking" the states to cut their orders by 30%. The state officials describe it as HHS "allocating" them fewer resources. 

These seven states, which the official could not immediately name but said are located along the Gulf Coast, are facing some of the U.S.’s most severe Covid-19 outbreaks and have been utilizing about 70% of the nation’s distribution of monoclonal antibodies...

Alabama’s State Health Officer Dr. Scott Harris confirmed that his was one of the health department’s contacted by the HHS, saying he was alerted “Alabama and some other states are going to be on an allocation,” as reported by the Alabama Political Reporter.  

Though the agency has explicitly outlined cutbacks with the group of seven states, the changes will impact the entire country as the HHS will more thoroughly review order requests and utilization rates, and work with state health departments to optimize the distribution of the treatment.

The HHS official highlighted that the seven states asked to reduce their orders can ask for more if they need it, but noted the federal government “probably” wouldn’t be able to fulfill the request.

That last paragraph definitely sounds like "we're asking them" doesn't mean that the reduction is voluntary. 

No surprise that a DC-based official can't name the seven Southern states on the Gulf Coast because there are only six five: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida. 

UPDATE: Heh. You'd think I'd know Georgia's southern border doesn't reach the Gulf, being cut off by the Florida panhandle; but in fairness, I grew up in the North Georgia mountains, not the swampy southern parts of the state. 

Unconstitutional Orders

This report illustrates a clear-cut case of an illegal order that it is the duty of any military officer to refuse.

Two days after the January 6th riot at the United States Capitol, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley secretly took action to keep President Donald Trump from ordering the use of nuclear weapons....

“No matter what you are told, you do the procedure. You do the process. And I’m part of that procedure,” Milley said, according to the book.

“Got it?” asked Milley.

“Yes, sir,” replied his senior staff.

No general has legitimate power to override the orders of the elected commander-in-chief. This is effectively a military coup over control of the nuclear arsenal. Everyone who said 'Yes, sir' violated their oaths and their duty. Milley himself should be arrested if this report is true.

Or if this one is.

In a pair of secret phone calls, Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, assured his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People's Liberation Army, that the United States would not strike, according to a new book by Washington Post associate editor Bob Woodward[,]

"We have seized control of the military assets of the United States and guarantee the elected government will not be allowed to use them against you, Comrade Zuocheng." 

Unfortunately the military justice system is helpless here, because Milley doesn't have a chain of command except for the President -- and the current President, to whatever degree he is actually making decisions, approves of the coup to seize power from his political opponent. The elected government will not even fight for the prerogatives of the elected government in our constitutional system. It is now purely about loyalty to political faction.

Hospitalizations are not all unhappy in the same way

I was pleasantly surprised by this Atlantic article about recent attempts to figure out what COVID hospitalization rates are telling us. It avoids hyperbole and rigid black-or-white thinking, instead focusing on a spectrum of results that are influenced by age and immunological status (natural or vaccine-induced). The author notes that case counts are of little use without a way to distinguish asymptomatic cases from symptomatic or serious ones, and that death rates are a lagging indicator besides often failing to distinguish between deaths from or with COVID. Hospitalization rates suffer from some of these same problems, but studies that focus on oxygenation rates can be very helpful.

The studies cited in the article confirm the news from other sources that perhaps half of "COVID admissions" really are admissions for other reasons where a routine COVID test reveals a previously unsuspected infection. By looking at oxygenation rates, the studies provide more insight into how many people are still being hospitalized specifically for COVID complications, how intensively they have to be treated, and how quickly they can be released.

The article quotes a doctor who says he has patients who complain, "Why did I bother with the vaccine if I'm still in the hospital?" to which he answers, "But you're going to leave the hospital alive." A brief supportive stay in the hospital may not be a huge deal, much as we'd like to avoid it. A bad COVID hospital stay can be a real nightmare even if you survive it. The case that spooked me early on was a fellow in his 20s from my county, the son of a co-worker, who came down with a severely unlucky case, hugely complicated for no obvious reason, which kept him in an Austin hospital for months teetering between life and death. He was so young and otherwise healthy that they really pulled out all the stops for him, using convalescent serum and all kinds of treatments that were quite experimental in early 2020. He did survive, but lost some toes to sepsis. Although I know that's an extreme outlier, a sort of auto-immune storm that's almost impossible to predict, it still made me a lot less likely to go out into public unnecessarily until the vaccine came along.

There are some protective measures that aren't 100% effective but are still worth the effort. Masks may be among them, though I'm not entirely convinced of it, and not at all convinced in the case of casual cloth masks, particularly for asymptomatic people (symptomatic ones should be home anyway). Staying out of public surely helps even though it's not observed rigidly. As I read the data, vaccination is very, very helpful even though it's not a panacea. These are all things I'm happy to see people voluntarily put into practice; I've practiced many of them myself and often recommend them, not counting masks.

The lack of attention to monoclonal antibodies is puzzling and frustrating, so I tout this treatment whenever I get a chance, especially because you have to be ready to move fast once symptoms declare themselves, so you need to have figured out where they're available and what hoops you'll have to jump through to get access to them. If we really want to avoid clogging up hospitals, we should stop downplaying antibody infusion centers, which can administer their treatments in a 2-hour outpatient procedure that needn't even be administered anywhere near a hospital. But I swear I tell people about them all the time and get blank stares: all the oxygen in the room is taken up by fights over whether 2-year-olds need to be forcibly masked and massive numbers of people need to be driven out of their jobs by vaccine mandates.

My society has simply lost its mind. All I can conclude is that we're very bad at assessing and responding to brand new types of risk, so we revert to primitive thinking and superstition.

Unity

Woke failure

Via Powerline: "The Charlottesville city council played with fire. It got burned. I hope its response won’t be to set the flame at a lower temperature." I hope the same about the voters in 2022.