Tanassee Gap

South into Transylvania County.

North towards the Parkway. 

A brief break at a taproom on the south end of NC 215.

UPDATE: Afterwards I rode up 215 to the top where the Blue Ridge Parkway crosses it. I there encountered a stranded motorcyclist. Part of the unwritten Biker Code is to always assist motorcyclists who are having mechanical trouble and never to leave one stranded. (A helmet positioned behind a bike on the side of the road is a sign of distress.) Fortunately, between my toolkit and my Kabar we were able to get him back underway.

View from the top of the rock. 

Outrageous 'Justice'

 Via Raven, an outrageous story. It's in Reason magazine, not a particularly hot-headed place.

The prosecutors, who were found to have committed substantial misconduct throughout the case... held [defendant Esformes] without bond in the years leading up to his trial, placing him in solitary.... [He] was not convicted of the most serious charges leveled against him.... [s]o his 20-year sentence—handed down by U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola of the Southern District of Florida—may appear grossly disproportionate to his convictions. 

Until you realize the judge explicitly punished Esformes for charges on which the jury hung.

That is not an error. "When somebody gets sentenced [at the federal level]…they get sentenced on all charges, even the ones they're acquitted on, [as long as] they get convicted on one count," says Brett Tolman, the former U.S. Attorney for the District of Utah who is now the executive director of Right on Crime. It is a little-known, jaw-dropping part of the legal system: Federal judges are, in effect, not obligated to abide by a jury's verdict at sentencing. 

His sentence was commuted by the Trump administration after he had served four and a half years in prison. But!

Esformes... is facing an even stranger ordeal: someone whose sentence was commuted and will soon go back on trial—for charges on which he was already punished. 

Central to the most rudimentary understanding of the U.S. legal system is the protection defendants are promised against double jeopardy—the safeguard that prohibits prosecutors from trying and punishing you multiple times for the same crime. 

Esformes' second prosecution "directly violates the double jeopardy clause," says Tolman.... Jackson agrees. "If you walk through the facts, it's clearly double jeopardy," she says. "The judge on the record at sentencing used the hung conduct as part of his sentence…. That sentence was then commuted by President Trump."...

s presents a question for the Department of Justice: How can it proceed with the prosecution against him when he was already sentenced, and had that sentence commuted, for the charges it wants to retry?

Some in the government are trying to answer that. "I [am inquiring] as to how the United States Department of Justice could believe that any further prosecution of Mr. Esformes on charges for which he was already tried, sentenced and granted clemency by the President of the United States could possibly be constitutionally permitted, and in all events a proper use of United States government resources?" asked Sen. Mike Lee (R–Utah) in a recent letter to Attorney General Garland.

The query has yet to receive a response. 

Is there any part of this system that still works remotely the way it was supposed to work? Are there any Constitutional principles left that still function?  

More Geneaology

The discussion of genealogy interested several of you, so here's a piece Dad29 sent me yesterday on the Celtic influence on the American South in the early period. The link with the Highland Charge is a frequent claim I have always found persuasive, although that link -- like all of this stuff -- is debatable and subject to alternative explanations.

The Irish did very well in the South compared to the majority of them who migrated north; the South welcomed them as white men, because the deadly threat posed by slavery meant that only the black/white division mattered. In the North, they were often not as readily accepted into the general population.

My ancestors were all in what became the United States before the Revolution, and passed into Tennessee in the first generation of Americans to do so. Most of them came from Scotland, but the names include Welsh, obviously Norse derived names like Thurman, as well as plenty of Duncans and others with obviously Scottish names. Very Celtic, if one accepts that the Scottish Vikings were also strongly Celtic. 

The article also admits Joel's consideration that at least part of the Scottish Borders were strongly Anglo-Saxon, which made an additional admixture.

Bipartisanship

The son of a Communist endorses defunding the FBI, which ruined his father’s life. 

Lefty Frizzell

I don't think I've seen Lefty here before, though maybe I've missed him or forgotten. In the early 1950s he was probably as popular as Hank Williams, but that doesn't seem to have lasted.

He wrote this first one, which I'm sure you've heard covered by others:

According to Wikipedia, Lefty toured with Hank and later pulled a teenaged Merle Haggard on stage and handed him his custom Gibson J-200 guitar. Merle says that was the first guitar he played on a professional stage. Many years later, after Lefty passed away and the guitar had been displayed for some time at the Country Music Hall of Fame, it was auctioned off and Merle Haggard bought it. Roy Orbison was also a big fan.

More tunes below the fold. 

Six Billion Dollars

It's only market capitalization. That stuff is fairy gold. The real problem is they aren't selling beer, either. 

Comedians used to make fun of Donald Trump because he lost money running a casino. I agree, that's funny stuff. It'd be like losing money running an insurance company or a government. Losing money running one of the world's biggest beer companies, though? That's above and beyond.

Two Surprising Stories

It's been a while since I posted anything from Sose the Ghost, but this piece struck me. It compares the stories of David Allan Coe and Danny Trejo. I had not realized that both were at one point slated for the death penalty. 

You don't necessarily want to reason from outliers like these: most people who end up being nominated for the death penalty are unlikely to reform themselves and turn out to be great artists. Nevertheless both of these are cases in which the genetic background looks stacked against them: they came from poor backgrounds with early exposure to crime as a way of making a living, ended up in serious and repeated trouble with the law, and yet turned their lives around and became something grand. David Allan Coe is regularly featured here for his music. Trejo also appears occasionally, especially for his good heart and patriotic outlook.

'The race isn't always to the swift, but that's the way to bet.' Still, it's good to remember that sometimes the door swings the other way too.

How Long?

In the last post, I mentioned that enmity has lingered since at least the 90s. I was thinking of active government enmity, but the cultural enmity is older. Joe Bob Briggs dates the cultural issue to the shift in Hollywood from using as de facto enemies either Native Americans or Nazis, to using rednecks because everyone else could agree to hate them.

An obvious example of that is in 1969's Easy Rider, a transformational year in Hollywood. (Little Big Man, one of the strongest examples of Hollywood rethinking its position on the US cavalry vs. the Native Americans, was being filmed that year; it came out in 1970.) Florida rednecks (they usually call themselves "crackers" in Florida) foolishly stunt with a shotgun, accidentally killing a biker they just meant to scare. They then intentionally murder the second one to avoid being caught.

This distances itself from the treatment similar folks had received in Thunder Road (1958), where they were heroic rascals dodging revenuers. (This treatment would reappear during the later 1970s, when countercultural forces acknowledged the Duke Boys, the Convoy, and the Bandit as obvious cultural allies.) If you saw a character in a movie who was Southern, country, Conservative, or obviously Christian, they were most likely going to be a bad guy. 

Nevertheless it wasn't until the Clinton administration that I think this new class that came of age in 1969 felt comfortable going all-in on destroying the traditional American culture. There had been outspoken feminists suing to prevent private clubs from being all-male, successfully insofar as they could show that there were potential business advantages to be had from membership, for quite some time. Bill Clinton had run, however, as a man who could bring the Reagan Democrats home to the Democratic Party -- which he did, winning Georgia in 1992, and then sold all their blue-collar jobs to NAFTA. Hostility to Reagan among the Wise had been intense, but the ordinary American was respected because his or her vote was needed. 

The shift to center-left politics under Clinton hardened substantially during the Bush administration, but even by the 1990s Married with Children regularly showcased the ways in which a blue-collar white male was being run down by every sort of powerful actor in society. Waylon Jennings, who was the troubadour playing the guitar in Dukes of Hazzard, appeared in one episode (available on YT in German or Spanish, but not English) to explain to Al Bundy that "nothing" could be done about the destruction of his way of life, but to enjoy his remaining time on earth: "The only thing wrong with being a dinosaur is there ain't a future in it." 

All this intensified culturally during the Bush administration, and sprang into outright governmental hostility towards ordinary Americans in the Obama administration. The Trump administration didn't even provide a break: the President spoke kindly of ordinary Americans, but "The Resistance" began treating Americans of that ilk as the chiefest danger facing the government. Under the Biden regime, it has only intensified -- spies in church, as we were discussing. 

Keeping Enemies

This is an observation that sounds like a reliable indicator of genuine privilege.

…the observation from William Dean Howells that the problem for a critic isn’t making enemies but keeping them...

I get the point, but none of us have trouble keeping enemies. We have been the declared enemies of the powerful since at least the 90s. I mean that they declared enmity for us; and they have never wavered. 

From a piece on the expansion of the surveillance state, in which the American government proves to have turned its formidable intelligence and influence apparatus against its own people. 

Joe Biden Praises the Scots-Irish

You probably won’t read this in an American paper, and the speech was carefully given overseas. Specifically, in Ulster. 

The family ties the pride in those Ulster Scots immigrants, those those Ulster Scots immigrants who helped found and build my country, they run very deep, very deep. 

Men born in Ulster are among those who signed the Declaration of Independence in the United States pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honour for freedom’s cause. 

The man who printed the revolutionary document was John Dunlap. He hailed from County Tyrone. And countless, countless others established new lives of opportunity across the Atlantic. Planting farms, founding communities, starting businesses, never forgetting their connection to this island. 

As a matter of fact as you walk into my office, the Oval Office, in the US capital, guess what? You know who founded and designed and built the White House? An Irishman. That’s not a joke. Not a joke. Passing it down generation after generation. 

Your history is our history. But even more importantly your future is America’s future. 

7 Revelations in the US Intelligence Leak

An insider I talked to this week characterized this as "worse than Manning," a locution that I notice avoids assigning a first name to the infamous traitor.  

(My personal opinion is that he shall always be Bradley Manning, precisely because a traitor like him doesn't deserve to have his preferences respected. In this I suppose I reprise Kant's opinions, expressed in Metaphysics of Morals 6:334, in which he discussed two Jacobites one of whose preferences about punishment deserves respect, and the other not, because the better man was "acquainted with something that he values more highly than life, namely honor, while the scoundrel considers it better to live in shame than not at all." Ironically this meant assigning death to both men, also an appropriate punishment for Manning. But I digress.)

Of these, the most significant in terms of the outcome in Ukraine is that their air defenses are about to be exhausted.  Russia would have won this war on the first stroke if they had been able to establish air superiority in the American way. They reportedly lost two companies of paratroopers to having their planes shot down en route to the drop zone, and their advance was on all sides bedeviled by not being in control of the skies. If that changes, Ukraine is not going to win -- regardless of the outcome of their spring offensive, which now has to be reshuffled at the last minute because the details were exposed.

The skeptics have often overstated their case, sometimes because they are leaning on pro-Russian sources in order to find anyone independent of the groupthink that has overtaken all American and prominent Western media. Unfortunately, that means absorbing also some of the Russian messaging, which finds its way into such sources even where they attempt independence. The fog of war has been itself here, as always, but there is no getting around the fact that the war has been fought mostly on Ukrainian territory, and it is Ukrainian infrastructure that has suffered. To some degree the West can backfill munitions, if it has factories or stockpiles (which it doesn't for Soviet-era air defense missiles); it can't replace the power grid. 

Discuss, if you like. I suspect things are far more dire even than these leaked reports suggest, as the pressure to produce positive thinking in US intelligence is higher than ever (witness Afghanistan).

Spies in the Church

This has a kind of Reformation-era feel. 

Justice through Pardons

Probably many of you remember this case.

On Friday, 37-year-old Army sergeant Daniel Perry was found guilty of fatally shooting Garrett Foster, an Air Force veteran and BLM protester.

Perry’s defense lawyers say he shot Foster in self-defense at a demonstration in downtown Austin, Texas, on July 25, 2020.

Texts from Perry in which he wrote he “might have to kill a few people” who were “rioting” outside his apartment were used in the trial, which began on March 27.

He said he felt threatened after 28-year-old Foster pointed his AK-47 at him, though witnesses said they never saw Foster raise his weapon.

I was of course not there, but I notice that witnesses 'never seeing' things at these kinds of events is a common defensive strategy. There's a case in Atlanta right now around the so-called "Cop City" protests where a Georgia State Trooper was actually shot, and the witnesses -- who are mostly members of various activist groups and anarchist circles -- claim that they never saw a gun, so the cop must have been shot by one of his own. The police say they recovered his gun, can show that he purchased it, and that forensics establish that it was definitely the one that shot the trooper. The protesters say that they haven't seen or independently verified the police's forensics, so they will continue to hold that the trooper was shot by other cops.

It's possible. In the old days we would go to court and hash it out, trusting the jury to make a fair decision. In the current climate, juries and jury pools are selected for being subject to confirmation bias -- and so are prosecutors. Here as in the DC cases we've been watching, the prosecutor from Austin is biased and the jury pool draws from the most left-wing community in Texas.

On Saturday, Abbott wrote Texas has one of the nation’s “strongest ‘Stand Your Ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney.”

Noting that, unlike other states, the governor in Texas is only allowed to act on a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles, Abbott said he had already “made (the pardon) request and instructed the Board to expedite its review.”

Abbott also noted he’s “already prioritized reining in rogue district attorneys,” likely referring to Travis County District Attorney Jose Garza.

This points to a failure of trust in our system so basic as to make certain areas very dangerous even to visit. Armed and violent riots are being coupled with an official system of punishing not the rioters, but anyone who defends themselves. This was prominent in Venezuela, where roving gangs loyal to the Communist government were enforcers of terror, protected by the law rather than restrained by it.  

Conan Report

I took the dog to his first VFD meeting and training session, which was on the setting up of helicopter landing zones for extractions. As you know, this is something that comes up from time to time and it's important for younger or newer members to learn. 

He was a big hit with the firefighters, although being a puppy he slept through most of it. I did pass him off to our training captain to hold for a little while during my turn at operating some of the equipment. She enjoyed the opportunity to hold a puppy. 

Stop the bleed

Speaking of rescue, a neighbor recently lost control of a power tool of some kind and gashed his leg badly, apparently at least knicking the femoral artery. A volunteer fireman across the street arrived quickly and used a "Stop the Bleed" kit and recent "Stop the Bleed" training to control a fairly dramatic hemorrhage. Although the nearest hospital is nearly an hour away, our neighbor was treated successfully and is home and doing well.

The news inspired me to put a "Stop the Bleed" kit in our kitchen and to read up on the controversy over tourniquet use. The "North American Rescue Tourniquet" is said to enjoy a good reputation. The manufacturer's website had a link to an article discussing tourniquet use throughout history, ending with this (paraphrased) summary of the current thinking:

Normally, we should leave tourniquet use to civilian or military personnel with proper training. Most hemorrhages even from amputation can be controlled with direct pressure, elevation, and packing of the wound.

Having said that, no patient should bleed out because we're afraid of a tourniquet. The complications from tourniquet use can be very serious indeed, but not in comparison with death. A tourniquet is a viable backup measure even for amateurs if other strategies aren't enough to save life, especially if transport to a hospital must be delayed.

If the safety of the patient or of caregivers requires emergency movement, use a tourniquet to control a life-threatening hemorrhage, but reevaluate it ASAP once in safety.

Place the tourniquet about a palm's width "upstream" (proximal, not distal) from the wound, or more if necessary to avoid a joint. If there is an impaled object, don't let the tourniquet press down on any part of it.

Remove all clothing from under the tourniquet (note that your first-aid kit should include fabric shears), and leave the tourniquet exposed, with no bandage wrapped over it. Mark the presence of the tourniquet prominently, including the time it was applied (note that your kit should include a Magic Marker to write on a bandage away from the tourniquet but easily visible to the next worker). Tell a conscious patient to inform every medical worker he comes in contact with when the tourniquet was applied.

Generally, you may need to tighten a tourniquet in the field but should almost never loosen it. Tighten the tourniquet if the wound continues to bleed below the pressure point, other than oozing from exposed marrow. Do not loosen a tourniquet in the field in any of these situations: (1) obvious signs of shock, (2) amputation, (3) resumed hemorrhage upon trial release of the tourniquet, or (4) (in a long-term emergency rescue) after the tourniquet has been in place for 6 hours. Even if hemorrhage no longer is an immediate danger, restoring long-blocked flow to blood-starved tissues can cause deadly problems that require more intensive medical care than you can possibly give in the field.

From Raven: Snowboarding Rescue

Look how just a little preparation allows one man to save another from a tree well. 

Rites of Spring

My congregation is pretty elderly, but at Easter we get a pretty good crop of young people. Our pastor brings out a plain wood cross with some wore netting on it and asks the kids to come up and help cover it in blooms.

We often have a baptism, too, and this morning was no exception:

A good Easter hymn.

An Easter Joy

By chance coincidence, AVI just had a post last week about this in which he wisely warned against such things. An ancient inscription I also saw last week says likewise:

I  am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home in my own hands fifteen years ago.

So I am fairly warned. 

Happy Easter

It’s a glorious morning in South Carolina. May your feast day be wonderful. 

UPDATE:

Turtle on the Catawba.

Rift.

Charlotte

This weekend brought me to Charlotte. 

Their website is ten years out of date, apparently, and it’s much too uptown to be a Viking bar. The axe was rubber and the clientele were whatever you call yuppies these days. About what you’d expect from a city. 

National Beer Day

 Today is also National Beer Day. I guess it is only fitting that I post some appropriate music for this important holiday. 

Good Friday Music

 W.A.S.P. was one of the more outrageous heavy metal acts of the '80s. In fact, the PMRC listed one of their songs amongst the "Filthy Fifteen."  No one in the band was more outrageous than its frontman, Blackie Lawless.  However, a number of years ago Blackie Lawless reconnected with the Christian faith of his youth.  Since then, Christian themes have featured prominently in the band's lyrics. W.A.S.P.'s last album was the 2015 release, Golgotha. The song below is one of my favorite from that album and particularly appropriate for today.

Declaration of Arbroath

Todays date was chosen for National Tartan Day because it was the date of the signing of the Declaration of Arbroath in the year of our Lord 1320. 

From these countless evils, with His help who afterwards soothes and heals wounds, we are freed by our tireless leader, king, and master, Lord Robert, who like another Maccabaeus or Joshua, underwent toil and tiredness, hunger and danger with a light spirit in order to free the people and his inheritance from the hands of his enemies. And now, the divine Will, our just laws and customs, which we will defend to the death, the right of succession and the due consent and assent of all of us have made him our leader and our king. To this man, inasmuch as he saved our people, and for upholding our freedom, we are bound by right as much as by his merits, and choose to follow him in all that he does.

But if he should cease from these beginnings, wishing to give us or our kingdom to the English or the king of the English, we would immediately take steps to drive him out as the enemy and the subverter of his own rights and ours, and install another King who would make good our defence. Because, while a hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit in the slightest measure, to the domination of the English. We do not fight for honour, riches, or glory, but for freedom alone, which no true man gives up but with his life.

Emphasis added.  

National Tartan Day III: Firefighters

There have been several tartans designed for firefighters, mostly for pipe and drum bands associated with fire departments. Sadly, their duties are normally at funeral services. 

Here are a few, either universal or local to North Carolina.

Firefighter Memorial Tartan designed by Kelly Stewart, who notes: "Lastly, the three red lines in the middle of each square are 3 red threads, 4 red threads and three red threads - representing the 343 NYFD firefighters who lost their lives on 11th September 2001 - the largest number of firefighters who ever perished in a single day in the history of the United States."

National Tartan Day II: Military Issue

The weaving of plaid is prehistoric in Scotland and Ireland, apparently following patterns that were specific to localities only because particular families knew how to weave them. The use of symmetrical "tartan" to identify a particular clan is 19th century, and was part of the industrial effort to systematize the Highlands. It probably grew out of the use of such tartans to create military uniforms, famously including the Black Watch, a loyal-to-the-government-in-England unit that patrolled the highlands against rebels and their ilk.

US Marine Corps "Leatherneck" Tartan (Unofficial)

There are very many military tartans, too many for a useable post. After the jump, I will put up some of them, but only for the American military. I will not include the Confederate military, though it is officially considered part of the American military by Federal law; they had several, as you might imagine given the heavy Scottish highlander ancestry in the Appalachians, especially North Carolina, which provided more combatants than any other state in that conflict. I will only include current-service US military units.

I will also not include veterans' associations, such as the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association, purely for the sake of brevity. There are lots of those too. 

National Tartan Day

It's National Tartan Day, the annual celebration of Scottish heritage. Many states have registered district tartans that residents can wear, including both the state in which I was born and the state in which I currently reside. 

The Carolina District Tartan

Georgia District Tartan

Scenes from Western North Carolina

I met this gentleman, whose name is Jim, along with his daughter Dakota and his granddaughter (who is 7 and introduced me to her puppy). The horses were Frank and Jesse James, Frank being the one who was blind in the right eye. My son and I were out on the motorcycles, and met him on a mountain road. He offered us another kind of ride, which of course I took. He's a cool old character: blacksmith, farrier, and rebuilder of classic muscle cars. He took us over to his barn and showed us some of his collection.

Below the fold, some video from the fire scene the other night (taken after the fire was out).

Homecoming

It is an honor to once again join this august group of bloggers. To commemorate this auspicious event, I would like to introduce you to a favorite band of mine. Wytch Hazel is a band from Lancaster, England. Their sound is heavily influenced by bands like Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, and Iron Maiden. Their lyrics center on Christian themes. They describe themselves in the following way: 

"In the parallel universe where the New Wave of British Heavy Metal happened 600 years early, WYTCH HAZEL are the band of choice for the discerning Plantagenet headbanger."

They had me at Plantagenet headbanger. 

The first song is from their upcoming album, "Sacrament," out on 2 June. The other two songs are from their previous album, "Pentecost."

Supermajority

The NC legislature will now be able to override vetos from our rotten governor whenever they want. 

The Sword

The Sword is one of my favorite bands, founded on a retro style that looks back to 1982's Conan the Barbarian and its inspirations in hard rock and early metal. I think I've posted that song before, as it encompasses Norse style ritual cursing.

This one is a laid back piece, but try this one too:

And this one:

You get a lot of country music, Western music, and roots Americana on this blog, but that's not all we do around here.

Appalachian State Wage Discrimination

This appears to be a clear violation of Federal law, if the facts as presented in the article hold up on examination. It's 'for a good reason' and 'on the right side,' though, so who knows if anything will be done about it?

"Pagan's Progress"

In a review of "Prince" Harry's autobiography -- I assume he at least participated in editing it -- Dominic Green identifies the young man as one of his generation: "Not religious, he seeks enlightenment like a typical millennial: via drugs and meditation."

Harry has said he’s “not religious,” but he is spiritual. Christianity leaves him cold, but he pursues enlightenment with a zeal that would have warmed the heart of a Puritan divine. He travels this path alone, guided by drugs, spirit animals sent by his late mother, Diana, and daily yoga and meditation....

At around 15, Harry experienced a ritual induction into manhood. Guided by Sandy, a family retainer, he shot a stag. Sandy slit the dying animal’s throat and belly and told Harry to kneel.... Sandy pushed Harry’s head inside the carcass and held it there. “After a minute I couldn’t smell anything, because I couldn’t breathe. My nose and mouth were full of blood, guts, and a deep, upsetting warmth.”

“So this,” Harry tells himself, “is death.” Yet he’s ecstatic. “I wasn’t religious,” Harry writes, “but this ‘blood facial’ was, to me, baptismal.” Finally, he has lived the “virtues” that had been “preached” to him since childhood. Culling the herd is being “good to Nature” and “good to the community.” Managing nature is “a form of worship,” and environmentalism is “a kind of religion” for his father. For the first time Harry feels “close to God.”

This reminds me of another insight of GKC's: 

The only objection to Natural Religion is that somehow it always becomes unnatural. A man loves Nature in the morning for her innocence and amiability, and at nightfall, if he is loving her still, it is for her darkness and her cruelty. He washes at dawn in clear water as did the Wise Man of the Stoics, yet, somehow at the dark end of the day, he is bathing in hot bull's blood, as did Julian the Apostate.

The thing about being an apostate from the Church of England is that there's no peril in it. You can be a witch or a druid without fear in the lands consecrated to the Church of England; you can be a witch or a druid without ever leaving the Church of England. It's an easy faith, whether ardently beloved or rejected. It hunts no heresies and no heretics. 

I'm reading currently a very similar book, though, by a young Muslim woman who has adopted a similar path to rethinking Islam. I'm struck by how similar the paths are: she speaks of studying other religions for syncretic purposes, seeking wisdom from Native American elders, becoming a witch, taking magic mushrooms to appreciate the mind of God. Their paths are unique -- there is no room for orthodoxy in the religion of the youth, which every man or woman makes up for himself or herself -- but they are not dissimilar. 

Yet she is to be praised in a way that he is not to be, because what she is doing requires real courage. Even though she lives in America and is relatively buffered from the perils, that buffer is in no way absolute. It takes a brave woman to try to live an Islam that incorporates witchcraft; it takes genuine courage to publish a book about doing so. 

One mourns for Harry, who was once a soldier who knew virtues and courage. Not so for her, who is living such things even now. It is strange, really, how such similar paths can be so essentially different. 

Smoke on the Water

Another big wildfire yesterday during the heavy winds we were warned about in the weather report. That's two in a week. It was down on one of the lakes used for hydropower, so there was equipment and fuel and facilities endangered. We were pretty worn out by the end of it.

I'll try to get some rest and be back to normal next week.

April 9th

Having mostly learned the history of WW II from the American perspective of the expected final victory, movies like April 9th, about Danish soldiers tasked with delaying the German invasion in 1940, or Uprising, about the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, give me the very different perspective of the good guys losing.

In April 9th, a Danish platoon of bicycle infantry is tasked with holding off an invading column of German motorized infantry until reinforcements can arrive. 

It does not work out that way, of course. The bicycle versus the armored car is a fitting metaphor for the fighting that ensues, but the actions and character of 2LT Sand drive the story. He is repeatedly given questionable orders, faced with setbacks and shortages, and forced to fall back, and fall back, and fall back. Sand is an honorable man who must balance his duty to follow orders with doing what he believes is the best thing, and he must handle the tension of men vs mission when the mission seems increasingly impossible.

I found the movie compelling, but I'm interested in this kind of story. It only has a rating of 6.6 out of 10 on IMDb, so apparently it's not to everyone's taste.

It is free on Amazon Prime right now, if you are interested.

Addition, 4/2/23: I guess to make the review complete I should address some other film aspects. I'll put these below the fold, and there are some slight spoilers.

Fire, Water, Wind

We had a wildfire up Caney Fork about five miles yesterday, one of several fires in the area. All the resources were tied up so we only got one helicopter drop. We did the rest the hard way. 

Today began our annual recertification training on emergency vehicle driving. Tonight was the nighttime road course in the high mountains. Tomorrow is the obstacle course in pouring rain and high winds. 

It’s an adventurous life. 

Ham Sandwich Time

Mike Lindell Draws Sword, Cuts Off Ear Of Officer Attempting To Arrest Trump

In other news:

Media Calls For Moment Of Silence For Shooter Who Was Misgendered

FBI Vows To Get To The Bottom Of What Christians Did To Provoke Attack

I thought the Bee only did satire.

UPDATE: According to criminal defense lawyer Toni Messina over at Above the Law, it was originally New York Judge Sol Wachtler who said that “If a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich.” According to the Wikipedia page "Ham Sandwich," in the cultural impact section, this sentence was then quoted by author Tom Wolfe in his novel, Bonfire of the Vanities.

Good one, Seth

Powerlifting

We've talked about the issue of strength sports and trans* issues before. In general powerlifting and Strongman divides between those who worry about the issue and those who don't care at all about the issue because they support any sort of chemical engagement to improve strength anyway. (Why worry about testosterone if you're ok with steroids?) Some of the various leagues have therefore permitted anyone to identify any way they want.

There's really only one issue with this approach.

This is the moment a male coach claims to be a woman and smashes the female bench press record at a powerlifting competition in Canada.

Bearded Avi Silverberg is shown calmly approaching the bench in men's clothing as part of a protest against gender self-identification policies in sport.

Silverberg then unofficially breaks the female bench press record for the 84+ kilograms women's category, which was a 270lbs press - officially set by a trans lifter.

Hell, I could break that record this afternoon in my warmup sets. (Note that it was set by a trans lifter, too, not a biological female). 

More Good Legislative News in NC

The governor of this state is an impediment to every good thing, but he is standing aside from this law because it passed with veto-proof majorities in both chambers.

The North Carolina legislature came together recently to pass strong anti-rioting legislation that will increase the penalty for those arrested in Antifa-style riots.

House Bill 40, which passed with bipartisan support, contains the same provisions as a bill that was vetoed in 2021 by Democratic governor Roy Cooper....

The legislation increases the penalty for those arrested for rioting where deaths or injury occurred, or significant damage was inflicted on property. It also increases penalties for anyone convicted of assaulting a first responder during a riot. Since radical organizations supporting Antifa rioters with systematic bail funds has resulted in revolving door justice, the bill also tightens bail and pre-trial release requirements.

Among the provisions of the law is a heightened penalty if you riot while on drugs (or while brandishing weapons). The prohibition against attacking emergency personnel (the term used in the law, rather than 'first responder') is a Class D felony, equivalent to being a member of a terrorist organization, trafficking in serious quantities of cocaine, train robbery, intentional arson, or voluntary manslaughter. 

If we must have laws, at least let them be good laws. Until and unless actual revolution is justified, this kind of rioting is utterly destructive.

Bad News

 In the musical spirit of recent posts ...

Mind Your Business

In the last few years, I've come around to the view that 'minding one's business' is an ethical duty that has become dangerously undervalued. It's a value I think deserves to be in the first rank, because it respects everyone's right to make up his or her own mind about what seems right. Why shouldn't we be emphatic about the importance of minding one's own business?

Just lately, thanks to a link from D29, I have begun to see why it might be so undervalued.

The source for that data is allegedly a Nature article; maybe it's exactly right and maybe not, but I can definitely see where the impulse is coming from. Liberal (in the strict sense) morality aims to be universal rather than particular, and looks (Kant is an exemplar) to the disinterested and purely rational as a measure of avoiding prejudice for kith or kin. 

One might however note that it is surprising at best to value a complete stranger, a tree, or the life on Venus (if any!) to precisely the same degree that you value your own mother. You presumably owe your mother a lot, even if she was a bad mother. You may well never cross paths with the Venusian Central Committee at all, let alone their flock. It's not only not humane, it's inhuman not to care especially about the people close to you.

In a federalist system like ours, the refusal to let the other states go their own way further increases the likelihood of conflict. We have to fight, if everywhere has to be the same and we can't all live with the same rules. We can get along, if you can go your way in Maryland and Georgia can go another way all its own. Alabama, Texas, California, Vermont, etc. If you really hate what you grew up with, you can find another way not so very far off.

Do we really want to have to fight about everything? Is that actually ethical, when it is so easily avoided? We don't have to fight with each other.

So anyway, here's another song. Pause and reflect; selah.

UPDATE: James thinks the heat map graph is overly dramatic. The data can be presented in ways that make it look less emphatic.

Used to Have a Heart....

...but the highway took it.

This is by Garrett Hedlund, written by singer-songwriter Hayes Carll. This is another young country singer who still knows how it used to be done. Here is Hedlund doing a Merle Haggard classic.

UPDATE: Speaking of Hayes Carll, here’s himself doing one I like. 

Other News of Congress

There are two potentially significant matters happening in Congress -- it's hard to say how significant, but they're worth watching.

A supermajority in the Senate has voted to repeal the Iraq War authorization as part of an attempt to restore Congress' role in deciding whether or not we go to war. The opponents are Republicans, for some reason. There were 65 'yes' votes, which is nearly enough to override a Biden veto if he should choose to veto the repeal in the face of majority support from his party.

The Restrict Act, which aims to ban TikTok, appears to grant the government massive new authority to monitor your internet activity -- and to send you to prison for decades if you use a VPN. It is being framed as a national security measure, and section 3(A)1-2 appears to restrict the intent of the law to measures that are plausibly framed as national security violations. However, it's pretty easy to read section 5 to include almost all privacy technology, and the definition of who is a foreign adversary is open and flexible. 

Also, the bill restricts judicial review to the DC court of appeals (sec. 12(D)). That move appears to be intended to give the government a very large 'home court advantage' in any attempt to address government excesses via litigation. 

I'd suggest opposing this one, if you are still inclined to write to legislators. 

NC Vote on Pistol Permits, Church Carry

NC has a stupid system that allows sheriffs to prevent ordinary people from buying a pistol, even if they pass the FBI background check, just if they want to do so. It dates to the Jim Crow era and was of course intended to prevent black people from buying pistols. It's up for repeal right now: the legislature voted to kill it, the (Democratic) governor vetoed the repeal, and the Senate voted to override the veto. The matter is now with the state house.

The bill also includes a more relevant repeal, which would allow people who attend church to carry guns to church even if their church also has a school attached. Currently churchgoers with schools are mandated to be disarmed during services (but not those whose church lacks a school), even though church services are typically on Sunday when no school is in session. Public schools, meanwhile, enjoy armed police guards as a rule.

Under the present circumstances, when Christian communities seem to be under attack, you might think that allowing churchgoers to protect each other was a reasonable policy. We'll see what the legislature says.

The override requires a 3/5ths vote, which means that 72 representatives must vote in favor of it [see update]. There are 71 Republicans, the rest Democrats. It'll be interesting to see if party has become so powerful that even such a close vote can't be won, in a state that is mostly rural and that mostly is strongly in support of self-defense.

UPDATE: The governor's veto was successfully overridden this morning. 

Apparently the 3/5ths requirement in NC is 'of votes cast,' allowing Democrats to support the bill by simply not showing up for the vote. That saves face, I suppose, which can be an important thing. It also prevents primary opponents from being able to charge them with having voted for a gun access bill supported by Republicans in increasingly partisan times.

UPDATE: From the Jackson County Sheriff's Office:

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, any person seeking to purchase or transfer a handgun in North Carolina is no longer required to apply to the sheriff for a pistol purchase permit.  All pistol purchase permitting laws in North Carolina have been eliminated by the enactment of Senate Bill 41, Guarantee 2nd Amend Freedom and Protections.  

Background checks will by done by the dealer when purchasing a handgun.

More important to my way of thinking was the church carry; you could already have dodged the difficult sheriff by getting a concealed carry permit, which would also serve as a pistol permit but which was 'shall issue' rather than 'may issue' from the perspective of the sheriff. Letting parishioners protect each other is a big deal.  

Definitely no Uvalde

God bless these cops.

On Nashville

In one of those grotesque coincidences that give rise to conspiracy theories, yesterday the major regime newspapers -- the Washington Post and the New York Times -- both had leading stories aimed at trying to gin up support for a gun ban. The Post in particular went with a full court press yesterday, with three different stories on the front page of the website aimed at especially AR-15-style rifles. These were portrayed as having always been intended by their designers for a military audience only, with evil profit-seeking capitalism in the gun industry driving their popularity with civilians. 

An admission against interest made in the Post: as many as 1 in 20 Americans owns an AR-15, meaning that there are fully 16 million such rifles in private hands. Unmentioned, but just as important, is that rifles of all kinds including these account for almost none of the gun violence in America statistically. These rifles aren't the problem: there are too many of them accounting for almost none of the violence. (Those numbers also mean that restrictions on them are presumptively unconstitutional under Bruen.)

The NYT had an extensive photo spread with moving quotes from the people included in the artful photography, talking about the psychological stress that 'the problem of gun violence' brought to their lives. The quotes showed that these people are mostly stressed about the potential for mass shootings. Not admitted by the article: mass shootings account for almost none of the gun violence in the United States statistically. The psychological stress is mostly being created by the media: almost all of the actual gun violence in America is committed with illegally-possessed handguns, and occurs in only a small number of neighborhoods in a few cities nationwide. The numbers are clear: America is a safe country. It has a few bad neighborhoods. 

What a conspiracist will grab upon is the timing of that full-court media press coupled with a mass shooting happening later that same day, carried out by what looks like a likely left-wing agitator (indeed an assassin, perhaps on the model of the anarchists who killed Archduke Ferdinand as a method of compelling political change). 

Even the press is grudgingly admitting that a likely motive seems to be opposition to Tennessee's legislation on what the unnamed movement likes to call "gender-affirming care." 

The most immediately striking fact about yesterday's violence, though, is that it was carried out by a biological female. That almost never happens. Just as mass shootings are a statistical anomaly in the field of gun violence, and rifle shootings are a statistical anomaly in a field of all homicides, murders -- let alone mass murders -- by females are very rare. This is like lightning striking three times.

What strikes me as a probable lane of inquiry is the use of testosterone 'hormone therapy' as an aggravating factor. The difference between the female murder rate and the male murder rate probably has something to do with the presence of this hormone at vastly higher rates in males; adding injections of it to a biological female may well be associated with an increased aggressive violence rate. In other words, the 'gender affirming care' looks like a probable suspect, at least an aggravating factor.

We know for sure that we'll be hearing plenty of inquiries into the other two statistical anomalies because they are the favored hobby horse of the government and media, as a way of trying to restrict an American right they despise. The other one? It looks like the media would like to "correct his pronouns," which is perhaps not merely about political correctness: perhaps it's about burying the issue of hormone therapy by hiding the statistical anomaly. 

UPDATE: The shooter was apparently receiving "mental health treatment," which could mean a lot of different things. Treatment for gender dysphoria is one such treatment, one that often involves hormones. Did it here? How safe is it to inject hormones not to replace ones that have declined with age, injury, or disease, but to add new ones that the body never generated at similar scales on its own? These are the sorts of questions that ought to be asked here.

On "Transgenderism"

I was talking recently with a good friend who is politically strongly in favor of what you might call the transgender rights movement. What I actually called it in the discussion we were having was "transgenderism," which caused her to object. She said they didn't like that word, and there was no such thing as "transgenderism," only people who are trans.

That surprised me a lot, because I hadn't intended the word as a pejorative: I meant it to be exactly equivalent to "feminism," which is a philosophy she strongly espouses. Just as feminism is a philosophy with a political component that advocates for changes to the law and society for the benefit of women ("femina"), so too this seems to be a movement with a political component that advocates for changes to the law and society for the benefit of trans people. 

One may, of course, argue about whether the proposed changes will in fact benefit the class of people it means to benefit; one may argue about the propriety of advocating for benefitting one class of Americans over another. (There's a kind of irony especially in doing so from the ground of equality, though as you all know the argument is that things are so unequal that even more unequal treatment is the only way to level the field.) Still, I wasn't trying to argue about the business at all, I was just trying to refer to it. All I wanted out of the word was a way of naming the thing under discussion. Apparently even referring to the political movement is tracking as offensive for some reason, and the polite thing to do was to pretend that there was no political movement, only people of a certain kind. 

This strikes me as very strange. One would think that they would be only too happy to acknowledge the similarity between their movement and the feminist movement, especially those of them who are trans-women. It's rather obviously an outgrowth, has adopted many of the same arguments, and is broadly supported by feminists (with the exception of the 'trans-exclusive radical feminists,' as such women are called by, er, the political movement under discussion which apparently shouldn't be named). 

A kind of basic hostility to an accurate description of the world is a strange thing to try to build upon. I understand the old Marxist ploy to try to get people to consent to a lie in order to disrupt their morale, and even their morality. This was coming from a good friend, though, who really believes she is helping and motivated only by kindness towards the transgender. Her motives I don't question, but how strange it seems to me to commit to this kind of refusal to refer to a political movement that obviously exists, is quite vocal and active, and which is a clear outgrowth of her own movement that is similarly named. 

Who Defends Free Inquiry?

Journalist Matt Taibbi points out that Democrats as a party have abandoned free speech. Republicans seem to be involved in a wave of book banning over concerns about children being exposed to sexuality at an unreasonably early age. One Republican Congressman, Clay Higgins of Louisiana, said:

“Over time, American communities will build beautiful, church owned public-access libraries. I’m going to help these churches get funding. We will change the whole public library paradigm. The libraries regular Americans recall are gone. They’ve become liberal grooming centers.”

Technically that's not a call to defund public libraries, only to fund a new array of public-access libraries run by churches. It is true that the libraries of today often feature displays of books that are left-wing in character, and the ALA tends to side with the cultural left openly and reliably. Just as there's a desire to separate from each other politically, there's an understandable desire to separate from each other culturally. 

The basic principle of free inquiry needs defenders. I understand that parents may not always want their children exposed to some things at early ages, and I agree that parents should have their rightful authority to guide their children's lives and educations recognized. That said, there needs to be a defense of the right of adult minds to think and speak honestly even when what they have to say is unpopular -- or popular with many ordinary people, but not with the wealthy and powerful.

Right now there doesn't seem to be an agenda by either party to defend freedom of speech and inquiry. There are movements on both sides (to the degree that there are two sides) to oppose it. That's a matter of grave concern. 

UPDATE: Now book burning. 

"More FBI in the Proud Boys than Proud Boys"

“There’s more C.H.S.s than there are defendants in this case,” Sabino Jauregui, one of Mr. Tarrio’s lawyers said, using an abbreviation for confidential human source, the F.B.I. official term for an informant.

“I asked my intern the other day if she’s a C.H.S.,” he said.

In addition to being the heaviest concentration on J6, they had a secret police informant inside the defense team, which has only just come out -- well into the trial.

Victim-Blaming Pays for Antifa

Andy Ngo gives a glimpse of how Antifa is being funded by the very cities they attacked. 

The basics are, first, Antifa deploys lawyer "green hats" among the rioters to record events from their side. Other Antifa elements are tasked with identifying non-Antifa media for intimidation and theft or destruction of recording equipment to keep anyone else from generating video evidence against them. Then, after the riot, they sue the city for excessive police violence. Typically, the city DA decides not to fight them on it and the city forks over millions. Rinse and repeat.

In your heads

More good links from Maggie's Farm this morning, this time about the late unpleasantness in France. If Western logic is the ultimate authoritarian bugbear, there's something charming and hopeful about an disciplined group of violent anarchists torching MacDonald's outlets to protest the slight erosion of state-funded pension rights.

Prime Minister Macron reportedly called this France's "J6" moment. It's what the Pelosi/Schumer crowd probably wish you'd believe J6 looked like. They keep telling you J6 was a bloodbath of historic proportions, and we're not just talking about the protesters we killed, you guys!--but some of you refuse to prostrate yourselves in shame. I think they'd do well to splice in some footage of the Paris flames and threaten to arrest any Americans who dispute that they're images of the U.S. Capitol.

Pitch perfect

MIT is trying to host a debate on DEI, but the DEI deans are boycotting. I admired their written response:

“We also learned of a debate that will be happening on campus in a few weeks over what I think is an utterly false binary of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ versus ‘merit, fairness, and equality.’ A number of people, including me, were invited to participate in this event last year. We declined based on the framing, but it fueled our thinking about how to set the right conditions for a discussion — avoiding simplified versions of issues and concentrating on a format that will broaden attendees’ perspectives rather than on having one side ‘win,'” Dozier said in a March 15 news release announcing his own set of conversations to be held on campus.

"False binary" is a terrific opening: smug, universal in its application, and announced with dignity and a profound disinclination to explain. Some of you troglodytes may have been thinking there's an inherent conflict between DEI (or as we now apparently call it, DIEB, for "belonging") and merit, fairness, and equality. Well, you're wrong, that's all, and by the way shut up. So much for framing: you did it wrong, now go away.

Also, the format is problematic, an observation that is much deeper and more nuanced than taking a position on the issue to be argued. The whole point is to broaden the perspectives of you troglodytes, not to give you some kind of opportunity to, what do we call it, "win." Winning is very primitive and binary. Also, that other thing, the one that's not winning, is not something we particularly wish to think about, and the fact that you're willing to think about it--yes, we can see you salivaitng over there--only shows how narrow, false, and binary you are.

We need to set the right conditions for a discussion. Actually, several of us make a living enforcing those conditions, for a generous and virtue-affirming fee that supports an enviable lifestyle. The goal is not to simplify issues but to compound them into multifarious enigmas spring-loaded with lots of rage, while preserving the flexibility to shift one's ground constantly, with lots of pained expressions. We call these interactions "conversations." We have ways of making you like them. Shall we have one now? Just nod, we'll tell you if and when it's your turn to speak.

Sagan on Democracy

The introductory remarks are helpful, but the real point starts at 1:07. Sagan was wise enough to frame this as an anti-Republican argument, so it got on major network television even in the Clinton era. It is actually a very serious threat to a self-governing society. 

1) Science and technology are increasingly a focal point of our society, but they are not generally understood by the public -- yet in a democracy, the public has to make decisions. 

2) Since they cannot, actual power passes out of their hands into the hands of 'experts' appointed by the government -- yet the same problem applies to choosing who the experts are. The people cannot assess whether real experts, or mere partisan power-players, have been chosen; and the politicians, not being experts either, can't distinguish the genuine ones either. 

3) Since the politicians have to choose, and can't distinguish between real experts and political allies who are claiming to be experts, they'll generally choose political allies -- there's something in it for them there, at least. Appoint some nobody just because he has a degree or something and that person might do anything once in power. At least the party functionary will do what you want.

4) Thus, the 'scientific and technological society' ends up not only destroying self-government in favor of government by experts, but actually fails to achieve government by experts in favor of government by factional loyalists regardless of their mental or technological capacities. 

Then the second reason, which relates directly to Tex's post below:

5) Science is really about skeptical empiricism, a mode of inquiry rather than a body of knowledge. 

6) A free society needs people who have both education and skepticism, and must be free to question ideas. This is the only way to have a self-governing people.

7) Failing that the people do not run the government, the government runs them. 

We seem to have achieved both of these in the last few years. We are now "governed by experts" to a greater degree than ever before, yet these experts at places like the Department of Energy seem to have been chosen for ideological reasons primarily (and possibly solely). All of this power has passed to the Secretary of Health and the rest of the bureaucracy, and the people in charge of it look to ordinary eyes to be barking mad, interested in political domination rather than actual expertise. 

Meanwhile, attempts to question the science put forward by these experts is increasingly forbidden. Indeed, it looks like the government is investing heavily in technologies and partnerships expressly intended to suppress free inquiry. This is being done in the name of protecting less-qualified ordinary people from drawing wrong conclusions by being exposed to 'bad' information; but what it's actually suppressing is the very spirit of science Sagan described. It is the spirit of skeptical empiricism that is being attacked, to make sure there aren't challenges to the appointed 'experts' who increasingly serve as the replacement for democratic self-government. 

I guess they have a point

NPR may be onto something. I have to agree that there's "limited evidence" that men have an inherent advantage over women in sports, in the same sense that there's limited evidence for essentially every proposition I can imagine. The evidence that the sun rises in the east, for instance, is limited to the number of times any of us has personally witnessed the phenomenon, as well as to our ability to aggregate the testimony of humans throughout recorded history--so far. I applaud NPR's stunning and brave determination not to jump to conclusions.

If any NPR staffers survive the current spate of layoffs, I look forward to their application of the same intellectual humility to all of the truisms routinely spouted by earnest radio personalities. Anthropogenic climate change threatens humanity? Joe Biden is the president of the United States? Childhood genital mutilitation is health-affirming? "There's limited evidence of that."

Seven Spanish Angels

Per Whiskey Riff, this day 1985 an unlikely duet went big. 

Riding Weather

Today was, and tomorrow is reported to be, ideal riding weather. I spent the morning engaged in an adventure I shall not relate because it involves rescue service participation in a murder investigation, and such things are wisely not spoken of before the trial. That was expected to take the day and didn't, so I had taken a day off from work that I suddenly had free. I spent seven glorious hours riding in fine spring weather, with a good meal at a smokehouse in amongst the pleasures of the road. 

We shall see if I am able to get free tomorrow; certainly not all day, as many things need my attention in addition to the motorcycle. Still, the warm parts of the year bring their pleasures.

Chinese Military Tactics Evolve

Cracker Jack Changes Name to Less Offensive Caucasian Jack

 

In other news, FBI, CIA Relieved They No Longer Have To Travel Abroad To Turn Countries Into Banana Republics.