Bee Stings

Running Low On Ideas, God Makes Oklahoma

It's a fair cop, though the southeastern and southwestern corners of the state as well as the panhandle have bits of interesting topography. Really, though, is there any interesting topography from Galveston, TX, on up through Kansas?

On This Day In History: St. Nicholas Punches Arius For Claiming 'Die Hard' Is Not A Christmas Movie

However, an even worse heresy has recently arisen: Die Hard is a Harry Potter movie!

Caitlin Clark Explains That White Privilege Feels Weirdly Like Getting Beat Up By Giant Black Lesbians

Man Struggling To Understand How God Could Let Good Things Happen To Bad People Like Him

Updates

Tex sends: Hillary Clinton Awarded Honorary Canadian Medical License

"OTTAWA — Former Rightful-President Hillary Clinton has been awarded an honorary medical license by the Canadian Minister of Health due to her decades of experience providing dignified euthanasia services to men and women in America." 

(It's actually worth the half minute it takes to read the whole article.)

Biden Issues Pardon To The Dark Lord Sauron

"The pardon will reportedly cover any crimes that Sauron may have committed during the entirety of the Second Age of Middle Earth."

'Now Now, Let's Not Be So Hasty To Find And Assassinate Everyone Responsible For The Healthcare Crisis,' Says Nervous Obama

Home for the Holidays

Country Cooking at the VFD

I arrived home last night just in time for — literally within an hour of — the Volunteer Fire Department’s Christmas party. It’s always fairly early in Advent so as to preserve the actuality of Christmas for the family: after all, the Fire/Rescue service takes members away from their families often enough throughout the year. 

Especially this year! We are grateful and fortunate to have come through so much so well. 

The food at this feast reminds me so much of my childhood, when this kind of ‘country cooking’ was almost the only thing available even in local restaurants. Now, it’s hard to find. Just a simple meatloaf, fried chicken, potatoes with gravy, green beans (not pictured), rolls, and a selection of dump cakes and fruit cobblers for dessert. Water, tea or soda to drink, like the dry South in which I grew up. My wedding was dry: Georgia on a Sunday in the old days always was, except perhaps in Atlanta. 

It’s good to be home. 

UPDATE: I am reminded of this joke about Appalachian Southern cooking.

A Marian Carol

I came across this link on Twitter, and it leads to a post not just presenting the video, but the history, language, and musical evolution of the carol.  Quite interesting.  Reading that I came to suspect that the term for young ladies in the UK in the 60s- "bird"-  may not have to do with the animals, but rather with a Middle English term (berde) that was resurrected with a modern spelling and understanding.  Turns out that may not be exactly the case, but perhaps there's a relationship there regardless.  Turns out she did a whole thread of carols, but I've not had time to go through them all yet.  Something to help get you in the spirit of Advent.

Mordor Ascendant

Back in the District for three nights. With the expected transition coming in days, the bureaucracy is off the chain. Crazy times. 

Assateague

A good day spent with wild horses (or feral ponies, depending upon whom you ask).

The horses are pretty calm, as long as you treat them with proper respect. 

The island itself is very beautiful. 

The Glorious Atlantic

…at dawn. 

The Heart of a Bull

Peruvian cuisine tonight. The waitress carefully explained to me, after I ordered it, that it would be the actual heart of an animal. It was delicious. 

The Great Eggnog Riot at West Point

Come for the riot-worthy recipe, stay for the story of Cadet Jefferson Davis's eggnog rebellion.

The lightbulb comes back on

A crazy thought from disappointed Democrats: maybe the Constitution has some answers for how to rein in government when we find ourselves in a minority. It turns out there's federalism, separation of powers, and all kinds of stuff we might want to look into.

Syria

A friend writes:

Events are moving quickly in Syria after Hezbollah was crushed. The Turkish terrorists have taken Hama, the Iraqi parliament has authorized troops to enter Syria, and Russia has pulled its fleet from Tartus. Because Turkey has closed the Bosporus to them, the Russians will have to sail to northwest Russia to reach a friendly port. What a mess. I blame Israel ;-).

Tilghman Island

Travels Before Yule

I’m making a final swing for business before settling down to winter on the mountain. I’ll be on the road until the 13th. Posting may be light. 

What I been sayin'

Several reports of the surprising-but-not-surprising Hunter Biden pardon have mentioned that Hunter will no longer be able to plead the Fifth if called to testify in future probes of corruption on the part of his family, especially his father Joe and his uncle Jim. What that observation immediately suggested to me was that Hunter will be exposed to contempt charges if he does not testify and perjury charges if he does--assuming he won't simply tell the truth, a possibility I discount for the present. Jonathan Turley makes the same point in today's Hill article.

Strangely enough, Still-Sort-of-President Biden could have avoided this trap by commuting Hunter's sentence instead of pardoning him. That was the approach followed by President Bush in the conviction of Scooter Libby. President Bush reportedly felt it was wrong to pardon a crime he actually believed had been committed, but it was reasonable to commute the sentence in light of the unfair and persecutory nature of the prosecution. That ostensibly is also Biden's explanation for the pardon.

Like many, I look forward to pardons for the J6 participants, or commutation to time served at the very least, for any as to whom there may be credible evidence of violence. They've all already experienced more punishment than any rioters I can think of for the 2020-2022 period. Ditto for anyone convicted of standing around outside an abortion clinic praying.

Experimental Archeology and Notre Dame Cathedral

In 1997 an experimental archeology project was begun near Treigny, France. The project was to build a new castle, Guédelon Castle, using only the materials and methods available in the 13th century, in order to learn more about how castles were built. It took 25 years and involved hundreds of craftsmen, bringing about whole new generations of masons, carpenters, blacksmiths, etc., who had years of experience in medieval building methods. In 2019 Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris burned down and many of these craftsmen went to work on the rebuilding project.

Wikipedia article explaining the castle project -- lots of pics

Guardian article on the Guédelon Castle craftsmen going to work on Notre Dame

For anyone who is interested in 13th century castle building, I can't recommend the five episodes of the BBC series Secrets of the Castle highly enough. It seems to be available for free on YouTube. (That said, if you already know a great deal about the topic, the series was made for a popular audience and may not be all that exciting.)

Here is the Guédelon Castle website, especially useful if you plan to visit.

Women in Power

As a student of Medieval history I have read a vast number of papers by other students of such history. As the academy has grown more and more heavily female, the proportion of papers about Medieval history that are feminist has waxed larger and larger. Young women who go to college and then grad school are very likely to be feminists, and they want to study women and power-struggle issues because that's what they're interested in anyway. As a consequence, I have read variations of the following paper probably thousands of times:

As a feminist historian, I study the ways in which women were able to pursue and achieve their goals in spite of the restrictive patriarchy of the Middle Ages. In my study of X, I examined the way that she/they were able to achieve a remarkable degree of success in pursuing her/their goals. Even more surprisingly, given the strident patriarchy of the era, I found that her/their chief allies were often the men in her/their lives rather than other women.

I have read this paper many, many times -- about individual women or groups, across social classes whether nobility in Ireland or criminals in France, laity or nuns or abbesses, bakers and brewers and housewives. The conclusion of their research always comes as a surprise, an exception to the reality they assume held sway.

Except it's not an exception; all these papers find the same things, everywhere they look. Just because I have read it so often, I have long been waiting for the breakout female historian who will similarly read such papers and come to question the assumptions they brought to their initial work. Maybe we've been sold a bill of goods about how men and women related in the Middle Ages, as we were about the idea that medieval people thought the world was flat. At one time everyone 'knew' that was true, but it just wasn't the case.

The woman who makes this breakthrough -- and it will have to be a woman, because a man making that argument would never get anywhere, especially not in academia -- will one day be recognized as a historian of the first water. She will overturn the whole field of Medieval studies by showing that some of its basic assumptions are false. She will also improve her contemporary world, both by speaking the truth, but also by improving the relationship between educated men and women who are now taught to view each other as oppositional classes of beings.

While we aren't all the way there yet, historian Erika Graham-Goering has taken us a major step further. She studies especially the area of France around the early period of the Hundred Years War, sort of the height of High Medieval feudalism. What she found ought to be astonishing: she found that women held exactly as large a proportion of positions of power in Medieval France as they do today -- and more than they did after the modern revolution in France.

When historian Erika Graham-Goering checked the number of women who were in power worldwide five years ago, she was surprised. The proportion was the same as it was in France in the 14th century: one in five.

Graham-Goering’s area of expertise is power, who held it, and how it was exercised in the late Middle Ages....  

Graham-Goering focuses on how society was organised. An important finding is that the exercise of power was much less authoritarian and more productive than the impression created in later times. It was about finding practical solutions to situations that arose in the moment.... 

“Women were somewhat more vulnerable to coups, but nonetheless, one in five of those in power were women. When Jeanne married, she remained the legitimate owner of the land.”

Noblemen and women performed many of the same leadership tasks, although few women went to war. An important exception here is Joan of Arc (1412–1431), now a saint in the Catholic Church. For a period during the Hundred Years’ War, she led the French army in the war against England.

“It’s a thought-provoking fact that women lost power after the French Revolution and the introduction of democracy. They could neither be elected nor vote themselves. Whereas when positions were inherited, they actually had a reasonably good chance of being at the top of the hierarchy and in power,” Graham-Goering concludes.

The rise of science in the early modern period has a similar feature: people like to think that history is the story of progress, so that the rise of science should align with a greater acceptance of women and an end to superstitions like witch-burning. In fact, we invented science when we started burning witches. The rise of science and superstition went hand in hand, accompanied with a rise in cultural misogyny. 

By the way, in the US Congress it's a about one-in-four: 25 Senators plus the Vice President as a tiebreaker, 127 of 435 in the House. The fact that I didn't know that without looking it up suggests that we don't really view it as that big a deal; I know how many Republicans and Democrats there are in the Senate without having to look, for example. Among governors, it'll be 13 of 50. It's interesting that these very different times and places have settled on about the same ratio, in spite of having completely different methods of selection. That might also be worth studying, but it is not properly a question for historians. 

"Rebels" Seize Aleppo

Yesterday a surprise offensive led to the fall of Aleppo, Syria's largest city. The most important question to ask yourself when trying to understand the various wars in the Middle East is, "Whose proxies are these?" The struggle for dominance and control in the region is led by different factions, and if a surprise offensive happens it means that one of them has provided clandestine support at sufficient scale to enable a breakout.  

Let's see how the NY Times covers this to help its readers understand what is going on in Syria.

Headline: "Rebels Seize Control over most of Syria's Largest City."

Subhead: "The rapid advance on Aleppo came just four days into a surprise opposition offensive that is the most intense escalation in years in the civil war."

First paragraph: "Rebels had seized..."

Second paragraph: "...antigovernment rebels..."

Third paragraph: "...some rebels..."

Fourth paragraph: "...surprise rebel offensive..."

By the fifth paragraph, we finally get a hint of whose side these 'antigovernment rebels' might be on, at least in the negative: 

"The timing of the assault suggested that the rebels could be exploiting weaknesses across an alliance linking Iran to the militant group Hezbollah in Lebanon as well as the Assad regime in Syria and others."

So, they're not Iranian proxies. But who are they? 

Sixth paragraph: "...well-armed rebel fighters... opposition forces..."

Seventh & Eighth paragraphs: "...rebels..."

Finally, in the ninth paragraph we learn that the Times knew all along who it was, and just didn't want to tell us: 

"Within hours from Friday into Saturday, Syrian government soldiers, security forces and police officers fled the city, according to the war monitoring group. They were replaced by the Islamist and Turkish-backed rebels sweeping through on foot, motorbikes or on trucks mounted with machine guns."

Oh. They're Turkish and Muslim Brotherhood forces. Erdogan, who has been aligned with and backed the Muslim Brotherhood across the region, is making a play to take advantage of the recent crippling of Hezbollah by Israel to strengthen his power versus Iran. This is part of the long-running Sunni-Shia competition to dominate the Middle East, and Erdogan's personal quest to restore Turkey to the leadership position of the Islamic world. The Ottoman Turks held that position (and the title of 'caliph' of the 'caliphate,' which the Brotherhood exists to try and restore) for centuries; and while the oil and gas wealth of the Gulf states gives them power and independence from the traditional Sunni leadership in Egypt and Turkey, it's a goal of Erdogan's to reclaim that place.

Iran is the leading challenger to that traditional Sunni leadership, and it has had a good run for decades now following our deposing of Saddam and their consequent establishment of a 'Shia crescent' stretching from the gulf across Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Levant and the Mediterranean. They use this to supply Hezbollah, and then Hamas and the Houthis. Their Houthi proxies at the mouth of the Red Sea have given them an ability to threaten shipping throughout the Middle East. 

So what you're really seeing is an unintended consequence of Hamas' attack on Israel, which has led to the savaging of one Iranian proxy (Hamas) and the at-least-temporary crippling of another (Hezbollah). Assad is now under a push from the Turks -- these 'rebels' are actually the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army and their paramilitaries -- and Aleppo is closer to Turkey's border than it is to Damascus. 

Turkey is a nominal American NATO ally, but in fact is no friend of ours; they frequently shell our own proxies, the Kurds, with whom we have SOF embedded. However, the enemy of your enemy is at least an opportunity; Turkey here is fighting another Iranian ally/proxy, and drawing off some Russian attention as well. 

Recall that the Russians have also been supporting the Houthi with targeting data, without which they would far less effective as Iranian proxies. This is to punish us for supplying similar targeting support to the Ukrainian forces, who are functionally NATO proxies to bleed Russia; so too here the Turkish proxies are functionally NATO proxies in the world war we are in, even if they're really pursuing Erdogan's and the Brotherhood's agenda rather than NATO's. 

Most likely Erdogan started moving the clandestine support for this play about the time Israel and Hezbollah started their clash, realizing he'd be able to expand and consolidate his zone of control in Syria in the wake of that. He has several times threatened Israel over the war in Gaza as part of asserting that claim for leadership of the Islamic world, but as you can see, he's functionally on Israel's side -- even if he's actually only on his own. His actions damage the Iran/Russia/Assad axis, and therefore are bad for Israel's enemies. Whatever he may say out loud, what he's doing advances their interests:  accidentally, but actually.

UPDATE: Sure enough, Syrian “rebel” leader Abu Tow gave a statement to Israeli public broadcasting station Kann assuring that Israeli interests won’t be targeted by his forces “due to shared enemies.”

The Feast of St. Andrew

Today is the feast day of the first of Jesus’ disciples, Andrew the Apostle. Because he is the patron saint of Scotland, today is a national holiday there.  

Georgia-Georgia Tech

Clean, old-fashioned hate had a banner year. Georgia beat Tech after being down 17 points at halftime, tying it up in the fourth quarter, and then going to eighth overtime to win 44-42. 

Tech isn’t even ranked. Georgia has been ranked as high as #1, currently #6. This victory is not too far from Alabama losing to Vanderbilt, which they did this year. 

2024 has been an interesting year. 

The Renaissance of Notre-Dame Cathedral

 

That was back in September. Here's a much shorter video from today that shows more of the cathedral.

This would be worth going to see.

Thanksgiving Duck

I roasted a duck stuffed with apples and red onion, as well as various herbs. There are only three of us for the feast this year, so it seemed like a good time to try a small bird with different flavors. 

Please accept my Thanksgiving wishes for all guests of good will. May it be a good feast and a time to celebrate many things for which you have reason to be thankful. 

1924 Turkey Toss

Everyone remembers the WKRP episode, but in 1924 something similar really happened in Tulsa. 

It’s something that would be hard to imagine today. Recipients had to slaughter and clean as well as cook their own adult turkey. In 1924 these skills were still very common. Today you’d have animal rights activists protesting, too. 

A Trophy

Currently displayed on the wall of a brewpub in downtown Sylva.

Thanksgiving

An article James linked, deploring the commercialization of the West, notes that Europe absorbed Black Friday without Thanksgiving. 

As an American, I’m not sure whether to be embarrassed or offended, since we have a splendid and relatively uncommercialized holiday just the day before that expresses the best in American civic instincts. What could be more wholesome than giving thanks? And what do Europeans import? The parasite without the host, consumption without gratitude.

A Lesson in Hebrew

Today I was talking with a Jewish friend, who was telling me about one Thanksgiving he spent in Antwerp. He wanted to buy a Kosher turkey for the holiday. He found a Kosher butcher, but that guy only spoke Flemish and Hebrew. My friend speaks Hebrew, but didn’t know the word for ‘turkey.’ It was a funny story about him mimicking gobble sounds until the guy got the idea and told him the right name. 

Hebrew was revived for spoken use in the 19th century, so the ancient language doesn’t really have a word for ‘turkey,’ as it was originally spoken in the Middle East and died out before the discovery of the Americas. Thus, the name of the bird was invented after the origin of our holiday. 

The name has an ambiguous translation, which can mean “rooster of India” or “chicken of thanks.” Columbus thought he’d gone to India, after all. That the same word can also mean thanking or praising is a happy coincidence. 

Ceasefire

There were reports of heavy rocket fire and 'suicide drones' (really just using drones as guided missiles) by Hezbollah in the hours leading up to the ceasefire announced today; Israel, meanwhile, struck Beirut. In the wake of the announcement reports are of troop movements by the army of Lebanon to the southern regions that they had abandoned to Hezbollah at the start of the conflict. 

The official Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) depends upon and intertwines more than it likes to admit with Hezbollah. The US funds and equips the LAF, which our State Department likes to pretend is a reliable stabilizing force. Since we were also funding the IDF, this meme is almost accurate:

The rockets on the right are Iranian, of course, not US-provided ones; but thanks to the Obama administration and the Biden administration, we probably bought those rockets too. Hezbollah does get other forms of war materiel from us via the LAF. The only real inaccuracy is that this a shot of rockets coming from Gaza, so those are Hamas' Iranian-provided rockets rather than Hezbollah's. 

None of this implies that peace is breaking out in the Middle East quite yet, as Israel and Iran are still going at it. The war against Hamas isn't over yet either. Things are a little bit quieter, though, assuming the ceasefire holds for a while. Right now that's as good as it gets. 

Thanksgiving Conversations

 

If you can't have sympathy for the Left this Thanksgiving, maybe a little for the Devil?

UGA Rejoins the USA

The University of Georgia, where I spent a lot of time some years ago, has decided to reaffirm support for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 

NEW: The University System of Georgia has:

-Banned DEI statements in hiring and admissions.

-Added free expression training to student orientation.

-Declared political neutrality.

-Required the teaching of the Declaration, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and more.

Students often oppose free speech for their enemies while relying on it themselves. Georgia has hosted a number of pro-Hamas demonstrations that walk right up to the line of First Amendment protection by asserting support for a State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization. Often it's those same students who join such protests and yet tend to support speech suppression towards their political opponents. It's not that they don't have principles, it's just that power rather than liberty tends to be behind those principles.  

UGA compares well to a lot of academic institutions in that there has remained some room for sanity there. Georgia's Board of Regents are early adopters of this movement to recommit to founding principles. 

Meanwhile, most of the college is much more concerned about Georgia's admission to the upcoming College Football championships. This has been the wildest college football year I can remember. Georgia whipped UMass last week by 21 points, but has lost to Alabama and Ole Miss; Alabama lost to Tennessee; Georgia beat Tennessee; Georgia also beat Texas, which it may play again in the championships if Texas beats Texas A&M, who just lost to Auburn, who usually can't beat North Korea. (Georgia beat Auburn by 23 points.) Alabama will also be admitted, in spite of losing to Tennessee, Oklahoma (who also lost to Tennessee, Texas, and Ole Miss but who beat Auburn), and, incredibly, to Vanderbilt.

Sanity, then, prevails in having more interest in the football than the politics; but sanity definitely does not prevail in determining who is going to win the championship games. You'd do as well to flip a quarter as to try to understand the stats. 

First Time for Everything

Russia hits Ukraine with a ballistic missile. It’s supposed to be the first time this kind of intermediate-range missile has been employed in combat. 

Is that true? I wonder. Ukraine is supposed to have struck its own airport with a ballistic missile in the opening hours of the war because it had been seized by Russia airborne and special forces. We discussed at the time the way that would redefine the tactical use of airborne to seize airheads (see comments). 

It would be nice to see the escalation winding down. The good news is the provision of land mines, which suggests a hardening of the lines that will make it easier to accept the current status quo as a condition of peace. Odd to think of land mines as a humane consideration, but by setting the current boundaries as firm they satisfy Russian demands to keep what they’ve won as a condition of ending their operations. Likewise Ukraine’s concession that Crimea can only be recovered diplomatically, i.e. not at all. 

The outgoing government here seems to be trying to tie the hands of the incoming administration, but it’s a dangerous game. I’ll be glad when they run out of time for it. 

UPDATE: Per the Bismarck Cables, more signs of peace on the horizon: polls in both Russia and Ukraine show waning support for the war, and public desire for a negotiated peace. The exhaustion of the public coupled with the hardening of the lines suggest that there's little more for either side to gain by continuing the war.

Early Snow

I don't remember seeing snow here in November before, but this morning there was a light dusting -- enough to turn the world white, though not enough to completely cover the grass and stones. 

Blue skies this afternoon, so it'll all be gone as if it were never here before you know it. 

Selection

I was reflecting this morning on the way we choose people for roles that are important. There's been a lot of talk about whether proposed upcoming officials are qualified or appropriate for the roles they are being nominated to hold. To some degree that represents the need for outsiders from the credentialling systems, just because those systems are in deep need of reform. You can't nominate traditionally qualified people, in other words: the only people who could do the job of deep reform must be people who aren't coming out of our traditional cursus honorum.

So we need another method. There are two basic methods that we use besides elections, although there are other options including the Athenian one. The first one is testing, and the second one is ordeal. Often we combine these.

Testing is preferred when you can identify a competency associated with success in the position, can effectively test for that competency, and don't much care about the character of the person as long as they can do the job well. This was Plato's strong preference to the Athenian option, assigning roles by lottery, which he detested. 

A testing system lets you skip the associated ordeal, which also allows for quick approval of qualified candidates when alacrity is needed. For example, you might let people test out of having to go to commercial drivers' school if they can demonstrate on a practical road test that they can safely handle a big truck, and on a written test that they understand the regulations of the road and how to operate it. If they've got all that, it's enough to go along with and they could learn the rest on the job.

Ordeals are preferred when the character of the person is the first consideration, and we want to make sure that we either (a) select only people whose character we have had time to be sure of, or (b) select people only after they have gone through a character-testing-and-shaping process. There are often tests worked into the ordeals, but the real issue isn't the tests or their scores, it's suffering the process.

All sorts of organizations use ordeals. Academia has the long Ph.D. process that subjects grad students to poverty, intense stress, and years of proving that they can get along with the academic structure well enough to be accepted and approved -- in addition to the various courses, tests, the dissertation, and the need to publish in approved journals. The Civil Service inducts people and then subjects them to its human resources' continuous monitoring, and its internal bureaucratic process of selection for promotion, to identify the most compliant and obedient candidates whose character guarantees that the organization's broader purpose will be pursued by its officers. Motorcycle clubs usually require prospects to spend a year or more on a probationary status, subject to service requirements and forbidden the prestige of full membership; only after a long prospecting period can they be voted on as members. Our fire department has a six-month probationary period during which you are expected to attend meetings and trainings, and to take supporting roles on calls outside the 'hot zone.' Following that, you can be voted on as a full member -- although there are still vast amounts of training courses, practical and written tests, before you will be certified as a 'Firefighter' or 'Technical Rescuer.'  

Indeed, as mentioned we often combine testing and ordeal. For example, if you want to become an Army Ranger, you will first be tested for basic qualifications; then, if you pass the tests, you'll go through the Ranger Assessment and Selection Process (RASP), which is an 8-week ordeal designed to test your character. If you pass that, there are more ordeals and further tests as you progress. The SEALs famously use 'Hell Week' as part of a difficult selection process; the Special Forces have an even more onerous selection process that entails significant service before you can even begin it.

There aren't good tests for the roles we are trying to fill. The traditional ordeals, meanwhile, serve to ensure that candidates are aligned with the organization's purpose -- which is what we don't want in a reformer. That leaves us with an alternative option, like the Athenian one; or with another sort of ordeal.

In our context, WF Buckley's '100 names in the phone book' concept is close to the Athenian approach. He doubted our institutions' ability to either test or set ordeals that would produce the right kind of people. Instead, he preferred to rely upon the common sense of Americans to assign jobs of importance -- at least in theory, and as a quip. Whether he would endorse it now, when it might violate his patrician sensibilities, is not as clear; but he endorsed the principle, once upon a time. 

What is really being done is the choice of an alternative ordeal. Each of these candidates has been subjected to the ordeal of torment by the state and the very thing they are being asked to reform. That guarantees someone who understands what is bad about the organization, and thus in need of reform. 

What this process may not do is select for people who understand what is good about the organization that might need to be preserved -- Chesterton's Paradox of the Wall. Maybe some of these organizations don't serve a sufficient good to justify the harms they cause now. Maybe all of them don't. That is the risk, though; it is the gamble. 

Starlink Waitlist

Over at Instapundit, Vodkapundit points out that Starlink is sold out again. North Carolina is one of the regions. 

No wonder! In the recent hurricane, Starlink was the only thing that connected us to the world. Phones were down— landlines were down as well as cell towers— and cable and therefore cable and phone-based internet. People were cut off for weeks, unless they had Starlink and a generator. Then you were just fine. 

One of the best things we had was a mobile Starlink attached to a brush truck. People could come up to the fire station and use the wireless network it projected, and we could take it out to the backcountry to help distant families let their loved ones know that they were safe. 

I’m a big fan. They really came through when needed. 

One of my favorite amendments

From DC Draino on X:

We had free speech on 1 social media app for less than 2 years and won the White House, Senate, House, and the popular vote

This is why they freaked out when @elonmusk bought Twitter

Their regime can’t survive without censorship

Living into the Intentionality of what Openness Can Be

Clarity of thought and clarity of expression are often linked. It is striking how elaborate the elocutions become when you don’t just want to speak the plain truth, in this case, “Our principles were getting in the way, so we disposed of them.”

Beware what you're a magnet for

Though I had a hard time sustaining attention during the extended football analogy at the beginning of this article, I was rewarded with some eye-popping statistics about the Nobel Prizes awarded to legal immigrants to the U.S. First, there was this pithy observation from the guy who so closely resembles our Bad Orange President:

When hundreds of Jews left Germany, including 16 who had been awarded the Nobel Prize, Adolf Hitler declared, “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science, then we shall do without science for a few years!”

Your terms are acceptable, as they say these days.

There follow some observations on recipients of Nobels in economics that I will pass over in dignified silence on the ground that competence is no more associated with prizes in that field than in the field of world peace. The article then gets to the real meat:

Of the 117 Nobel Prizes awarded to Americans in chemistry, medicine, and physics since 2000, 45 went to immigrants. Since 1960, nearly a hundred immigrants have won the “hard science” Nobels. Legal immigrants. In some years, such as 2016, the majority of people in the entire world recognized by the Nobel Committee were American immigrants.

As the author argues, we might want to look harder at EB (employment-based) green card policy while we're tightening up the border obstacles to Tren de Aragua members in the next four years.

Hey Good Lookin’

“I’ve got a hot rod Ford and a two-dollar bill…”

Killing is the Business

A hiker writes an opinion piece for the Washington Post.

As I walked that day, I thought a lot about what we’re doing when we elect a president of the United States. This country is the most powerful and arguably the most violent empire that has ever existed, and to the extent that we have an emperor, it’s the president. Through policy choices at home and military action abroad, every president kills people. It could be thousands of people or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions, depending on circumstance and their inclination. Killing people, choosing who will die both here and abroad is a fundamental part of the job. It is the job. Whatever else the president does, they do on their own time. Is “Emperor of the Violent Hegemony” the kind of job that’s possible to be a good person in? Is it the kind of job where anyone, however well-intentioned, can effect positive change?

Is it possible to be a good person while being a farmer?*

Killing is what happens on farms. Seriously. I'm saying this as a farmer.

City people think that farms are "where life happens." Nonsense. Farming is about killing stuff. I don't even raise livestock or poultry and I have to kill stuff.

I can get crops to grow by simply putting seed in the ground. The rest of my job is to kill, kill, kill. Kill weeds. Kill insect pests. Kill vertebrate pests. Whether by herbicide, pesticides, shooting, trapping, stomping, you name it — I spend far more time killing than I do making something grow. Mother nature takes care of the growing. I have to remove the competition. There have been days when I've trapped 50+ pocket gophers and shot 100 ground squirrels - before lunch. They needed killing, and the next day, more of them were killed because they needed killing. At other times, I've shot dozens of jackrabbits at night and flung them out into the sagebrush for coyotes to eat.

And none of that starts in with helping neighbors slaughter steers, lambs, chickens, etc.

That's farming: killing. Lots of it.

I suppose one could make an argument about the USA being 'the most violent empire that has ever existed,' although one would have to argue both that it was "an empire" and also that it was more violent than some obvious alternative contenders. Still, there is a point to be made that a whole lot of killing is necessary for cultivation -- of a civilization, or a culture, or of a field of crops. 

Killing is inevitable for life; that is one of the basic facts of reality. The question isn't whether you kill, but whether what you killed for was worth it.

*The citation on that from 2008 is dubious; Cassandra posted it here and ascribed it to me, but the dead hyperlink points to National Review; I think it sounds like VDH. I've only ever written one thing for National Review, and it was not on this subject; and we don't have jackrabbits or pocket gophers, so I'm sure I didn't write it.

Anna Ruby Falls

Glorious Morning

The FEMA Scandal

In my ongoing reporting on the hurricane efforts here, I've mentioned that I haven't seen a FEMA person. I still haven't, though I'm told they've got a place in the county seat you can go to and talk to one if you want. I have also heard reports from other areas of the state that FEMA is more active there, and that may simply mean that they have been triaging their reaction to the worst zones. Triage is normal in emergency operations, and not the sign of anything untoward. 

That said, everyone I know who applied for aid got turned down by FEMA. Publicly the Feds promised '$750,' but really it was an indefinite figure and you had to fill out an application and go through a long process, one that allowed them to reject you for many different reasons. One reason was 'we weren't able to meet with you to verify your claims,' which if they wanted to verify claims about your property losses presumably means they had to come out to your property. 

So when I hear that they just avoided houses with Trump signs, I wonder if voting maps were another resource for determining which areas to visit. Allegedly, avoiding 'hostile' houses is departmental policy -- and maybe avoiding 'communities' where the 'trend' was thought negative.

On "Fox News @ Night," Washington clarified that bypassing properties that sport Trump signs is part of a broader policy designed to protect the safety of FEMA personnel. So, staffers have the right to skip over houses displaying Trump signage if they feel "uncomfortable," she said, similar to the fear of aggressive animals that are unchained and running loose.

So, the policy isn't specifically about avoiding Trump supporters per se, Washington insisted. The guidelines instruct FEMA workers to avoid any situation that may make them feel unsafe — such as an off-leash dog, she suggested.... 

"So the people [with] FEMA were fearing the Trump houses like they were fearing people with vicious dogs in their backyards?" Fox News host Trace Gallagher pressed.

"Exactly," Washington replied. "Unfortunately, the passionate supporters for Trump, some of them were a little bit violent."...

"This was the culture. They were already avoiding these homes based on community trends from hostile political encounters. It has nothing to do with the campaign sign. It just so happened to be part of the community trend," Washington went on.

I don't claim to have any definite information about this beyond having never met a FEMA person in the whole rescue operation. As I said above, that could simply be understandable triage of the sort that is normal and necessary. Her testimony invites questions, however. I'm sure we'll all be interested in the answers. 

Carbon Mike

"It's time for these state and local officials to start paying a political price for stomping all over these constitutional rights -- these civil rights, for that's what they are[.]"

In the context the shift from 'constitutional' to 'civil' makes sense, as this is a black gentleman whose rights are being trampled by a state government. That's what the Federal civil rights acts intended to stop; the fact that it is his Second Amendment rights being trampled by a Northern state rather than his voting rights being trampled by a Southern state is immaterial. 

Gorge Passage

The I-40 repair in Pigeon River Gorge will still be quite a while. Asheville’s largest newspaper has photos.

UPDATE: Taking the opportunity to improve wildlife safety along the interstate— and drivers’ too. Try hitting an elk or bear at speed and you’ll appreciate the innovation. 

Name that Tune

I know I have heard another song to this tune, which is not unusual with tunes from folk music. I can almost hear it in my mind, but the words are garbled in memory. Perhaps one of you knows it?

Saving 'Our Democracy' in Europe

The Friday before the election, I wondered whether Democrats would be willing to destroy the Ring of the appearance of legitimate elections. It proved they were not, quite, and thereby they lost nearly everything.

The system could defend itself more powerfully by discarding the illusion, and like Egypt just openly stating that only certain candidates will be allowed to win. That would do away with the challenge, but also a major source of the system's power -- somewhat like destroying the Ring unmade Sauron and his challenge to the freedom of the age, but also destroyed the work of the Three and the ability of the world to sustain magical things like elves. The system seems to think of its challenger as being Sauron-like in evil, given their choices of analogies for him. Will they destroy the Ring to stop him? The loss of this illusion would protect the powerful, but they would retain only a shadow of their power, only what they could hold onto by naked force and coercion.

Lesson learned in Europe! Germany will outright ban its biggest right-wing party before its upcoming elections. 

The Logic of the Gabbard Pick

I had forgotten this story about TSA placing Gabbard on a watch list.

In the discussion of the post below about her nomination to be DNI, I had mentioned that she was not an intelligence officer but a medical one. Thomas pointed out that she'd served in Civil Affairs, though as a reservist (not everyone realizes that Civil Affairs is a special operations posting in its active duty component, and thus entails some SOF training). She was a military police officer. None of that really points up why you'd pick her as DNI. [UPDATE: see comments for further corrections from Thomas, who is apparently a fan of her career.]

If the purpose is to de-weaponize the government so it isn't used against its own citizens, which is a noble and proper purpose, then the TSA story explains the choice. She has reason to be personally offended by what was done to her, as Trump does himself. It makes sense of what the project really is.

National Popular Vote Compact

That hoary left-wing idea for functionally disposing of the Electoral College is still a terrible idea. It technically only comes into force if ratified by enough states to make it binding, but it’s still worth pointing this out. 

Tulsi for DNI

That's a stunning pick. This is definitely shaping up to be the anti-establishment administration. Hopefully, it'll be exactly what we need.

Jim Hanson is happy with the SECDEF pick, too, which is a good recommendation from where I sit.

We bid farewell

This HotAir piece by David Strom is preaching to the choir, I know, but the final video is Schadenfreude in a bottle. Expert Dem analyst Dr. Arlene deleted her account shortly after the election, so I'm afraid we won't get to watch her updated post-election thoughts.

Her cackle rivals that of Harris and Clinton.

More Kilmer

A much less famous poem by Joyce Kilmer was featured in this Veteran’s Day piece at PJM. As noted in our earlier discussion of his poetry, Kilmer earned the right to express these sentiments by volunteering for hazardous scouting duty — duty that cost him his life. 

A Major Proposal

One of the things the incoming administration is proposing to do is to back national concealed carry reciprocity. In a way, this sounds simple. Exactly how your driver’s license is good in every state, your concealed carry license would also be. Crossing state lines wouldn’t matter; you’d be carrying legally in one state or another. 

And for most of us, it’s not that big a change anyway because most states already recognize each other’s permits. For example, if you have a permit in your home state of Florida, here’s the map of who recognizes your permit. 

That’s enough states to call a Constitutional Convention, propose and ratify an expansion of the 2nd Amendment. 

So for most people in all those green states, this is a minor change that would only slightly expand their functional liberty. 

The big change is that many states, including Florida, will issue permits to non-residents— for example, if you’re traveling there and your own state won’t. A strong Federal reciprocity law would effectively bring shall-issue concealed carry to all Americans. Even in California; even in Maryland; even in the District of Columbia. 

That’s a big deal. 

Veterans and Helene

A Washington Post photojournalist discovers what I've been telling you all along: veteran volunteers are at the forefront of the hurricane response. 

Their backgrounds make them well-suited for a disaster response of this magnitude. “This is what we do when we go to war. We go into bad scenarios with towns turned upside down,” said Mark Elkhill, an Army veteran with the relief group Christian Rangers. (The name Christian Rangers is taken from an exercise in Robin Sage, the nearly two-week special field “final exam” for would-be Green Berets.)

Most of the group with Elkhill are former U.S. Army Green Berets and this is exactly their mission: to train local people to recover, sustain and protect themselves, he said while taking a break from cutting firewood that locals will use to heat their homes this winter. “The only difference is we’re not getting shot at here, which makes it a thousand times easier,” Elkhill said.

I told somebody I was with during emergency operations that it was like 'the good-parts version of war.' It's all the eudaimonia without the downsides. It's small wonder that veterans are 'finding purpose' in it, to use the Post's chosen language.

Independence

I can't embed this YouTube short, but it's a fun one to click on.

Surprising shifts

Matt Vespa points out that this election was not just more of the "revenge of the white working class" dynamic. Some amazing precincts flipped red in places like New York's Chinatown and a Chicago ward.

You do that

I keep reading articles that flirt with awareness of where the Dem party went wrong, only to draw a laughable conclusion about the cure.

“Obviously this is a major reckoning for the Democratic Party in terms of, particularly as it relates to young men, Black and Hispanic voters and rural voters,” said Jef Pollock, a Biden and Harris campaign pollster. “If the economy were perceived by voters as swimming, things might be different. But for now, it’s clear these voters I’m talking about — particularly young men, Black men, Hispanic men, and rural White voters — do not see the Democrats as addressing their everyday needs, and that’s something we need to think about holistically.”

We certainly need to see a lot more political speeches emphasizing the holistic approach. More cowbell!

The linked article contains an excerpt from a WaPo piece, presumably behind a paywell, not that I'd go there anyway.

Veterans Day

A very happy day to all of you who served. 

Blinding insights

The Guardian notices that people hate leftists. They're still unclear on why:

Many of them, of course, have arrived at that conclusion thanks to outright bigotry.

Cast Iron & “Never”

Never and forever are neither for men.

You’ll be returning again and again. 

-Fritz Leiber, “The Circle Curse,” Swords Against Death

My wife of 25 years did something I warned ‘never’ to do: she put a piece of my cast iron through the dishwasher. This is the classic offense against Southerners’ sensibility that people from the north do after they move down here. This was a grill press rather than a skillet, but still  

Cast iron really is indestructible, though. It took some work to clean the rust and reseason it today, but it came out just fine. I shouldn’t have worried about it. 

It’s good as new, which is to say, not as good. But it’s good enough to get started rebuilding a new layer of seasoning. 

Happy Birthday, Marines

A message from the Commandant on the occasion of the 249th birthday of the United States Marine Corps. 

UPDATE:

Stolen from a friend. 

Helene's Wrath: A Visual

The Washington Post has an interesting satellite view that expands slowly out into a map of the area northeast of Asheville, and then to all of the nearby areas centered on that region. Most of that area is National Forest, sparsely populated in part because it protects Asheville's reservoir lake. The down side is that lake has been murky and full of sediment since the hurricane, complicating the recovery for Asheville residents whose water system is not set up to handle heavy sediments. Normally that water is pristine, at least for city water.

AVI will have seen a lot of those worst-hit areas on his trip down here, the one where he and family went up to Craggy Gardens on the Blue Ridge Parkway. That road overlooks the North Fork Reservoir, the lake I was talking about above. 

Old Fort, on the map east of Asheville along the I-40 corridor, is still said to be in bad shape. Asheville itself remains troubled. 

UPDATE: 

As you would expect, the drying downed trees create a fire hazard that exactly maps to the worst of the hurricane strike. 

Rabbit/Duck

Illinois just lost its assault weapons ban, based on a philosphical argument about the famous rabbit/duck graphic. 

Always nice to see philosophy used for the good. 

MarsLink

Now you're talking.

In a move that feels straight out of sci-fi, SpaceX has proposed “Marslink,” an adaptation of its Starlink satellite network, to deliver internet connectivity on Mars. 

Presented to NASA, Marslink aims to establish a high-speed data relay system—capable of transmitting 4 Mbps or more—across 1.5 astronomical units, the distance between Earth and Mars.

The concept envisions multiple satellites in Mars orbit, leveraging Starlink’s advanced laser communication tech to maintain a constant, near-instantaneous data flow between planets. 

This network could serve Mars missions, allowing real-time images and data streams from Mars to Earth, as well as supporting future ground operations and Mars orbit assets.

Let's go to the stars. 

Grownups

I saw a pithy GenX explanation yesterday, basically "You tried to shove a Nanny State down the throats of a generation that didn't have a nanny, that was barely supervised by parents." Apparently a whole swath of the population has some pretty solid libertarian leanings, which is a great relief to me after watching all the infantile tantrums by the "leave me alone but support me from a distance you rich jerks" crowd.

The meltdown brigade would do better to worry about the newest outbreak of pogroms, this time in Amsterdam. Israel, in any case, is alert and on the job. Not much infantalization happening in Israel these days.

The devil you say

CNN worries about how the second Hitler term will be even worse than the first:

[T]he staffing decisions this time around will be designed intentionally around individuals who will not work to undermine his agenda from within. . . .

The People Shifted to Trump

There are an endless number of election post-mortems today, focusing on how Trump overcame his 'baggage' (mostly people didn't believe the media's tales about him) and why he won. I'm going to talk briefly about why Democrats lost. 

The clear evidence of the vote was that the people shifted towards Trump almost across the board. College-educated? Up four points. Over 25% black? Up four points. Over 25% Latino? Nine points. Large population over 65? 4.9 points. Large population 18-35? 5.6 points. Literally not one county in America voted for the Democratic candidate at higher rates than in 2020.

Why did this happen? Because the Democrats refused to trust democracy. They had the chance to admit that the public had serous doubts about the age and mental stability of their candidate, Joe Biden. They could have held a primary to consult the people about who they should run instead. Had they done so, that primary would have produced a candidate with broad popular support among Democrats, who could contest the general electorate for its approval. 

Instead, they did everything they could to avoid democracy. The elites decided that no primary was to be held, and they did everything they could to prevent one. This included extensive lawsuits to keep opponents off the ballot, including the scion of the Kennedy family, RFK Jr. If they had let him compete against Biden and lose, he would have endorsed them after it was clear he had been fairly beaten in an election. Because they did it with trickery, lawfare, and even the infiltration of his campaign, he went over to Trump and threw his support there instead. 

Then, when it became crystal clear that Biden wasn't up to another term, the party once again refused to solicit popular opinion or input, and forced a replacement without debate or any sort of election. She lost because she never had any public support to begin with, because she never won a single election -- not a primary, not a single delegate to be a Democratic Presidential candidate, not this year and not ever. None of the process of building public support, working out what the people want and need from their candidate, none of that ever happened. They just tried to ram it through without consultation. 

Having done that, of course, she didn't really campaign. She hid from the press and from the people, took scripted questions that were designed to protect her from scrutiny, and didn't do the work of getting out there and getting to know the ordinary people, finding out what they need, winning their support. 

Meanwhile, that's all Trump did. He did democracy better than them. Much better, because he was the only one who even tried it. 

UPDATE: Or possibly there's a simpler explanation: ~15MM votes just evaporated from 2020, compared to other recent elections. 

Freedom of Speech is Back on the Menu

 The NYT's Editorial Board today:

The founders of this country recognized the possibility that voters might someday elect an authoritarian leader and wrote safeguards into the Constitution, including powers granted to two other branches of government designed to be a check on a president who would bend and break laws to serve his own ends. And they enacted a set of rights — most crucially the First Amendment — for citizens to assemble, speak and protest against the words and actions of their leader.

Glad to know that the central importance of free speech has been re-discovered. It wasn't very long ago they were sounding pretty sour about the idea of speech lacking government oversight and regulation. 

Let the memes begin

Whew

First he dodged a bullet, and then we did.

NOTE: This post was actually written by Texan99. See discussion. 

Probably Not, Though

Dad29 sent me this clip of Tucker Carlson talking about nuclear power as demonic. 

I think he is clearly correct that spiritual things are of central importance, and probably out to sea on his conclusions about exactly how that works. For example, at one point he says that the reason we're getting hit with more hurricanes is probably abortion. Even some climate-change supporters don't agree that we are in fact getting hit with more or stronger hurricanes on average, but let's leave that. I looked into that a bit and found this map of abortion rates by state:

What I notice about that is that, while Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina all are pretty dark, the rest of the hurricane-strike region isn't as much so. Where are the natural disasters hitting New York and Pennsylvania? Probably this theory just doesn't hold water.

Likewise, while it's not quite as easy to explain the invention of nuclear power as it is to explain, say, the invention of the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell), that's only because it was a lengthy process of many discoveries over a long period of time. It's not that we can't give a precise account of which human beings contributed what part, it's just a longer story that most people won't have at the tip of their tongue. 

As I said in the email conversation, too, "Nuclear weapons arguably have provided more peace than almost any human invention; though there have been small wars, and proxy wars, we haven't had a major war in decades. Of course, that could change if people don't start thinking straight. Nuclear energy, meanwhile, has great promise to lift up the human condition. 

"I don't think it's demonic; it is weird, though. All the stuff that happens at the quantum level is. But God made the quanta too."

That doesn't unravel the point that spiritual things are of titanic importance. They are. We should all attend to those matters, in our own homes and communities, first and foremost with those who are closest to us and deserve our time and attention. If we do that, I do believe things will get better where we are, for a while, as long as we keep doing it. 

Alas, Quandarius

The pointless, farcical “pier” to Gaza still managed to cost the life of an American soldier. 

Rmaich- A familiar story

 Found this thread on Twitter analyzing the targeting patterns of Israel in Southern Lebanon, and a couple places stand out- one of them an area/town named Rmaich (or Rmeish).  It resonated with me as yet another story of indomitable hill people just wanting to be left alone.  Fortunately, they've been successful keeping Hezbollah out, much to their benefit.

 

https://x.com/Saul_Sadka/status/1853204103825961360

Gettysburg and Ukraine

Back in August, Ukraine pushed into Kursk to the great excitement of German armor commanders. We rarely discuss that war in this forum, but over at Dad29's place I suggested an analogy.

It's been difficult to make sense of this offensive, and the reporting on it is wildly inconsistent depending on the outlet and which side they support. (This is perfectly normal in a warzone: "fog of war" and all that.)

However, it did occur to me to wonder if this was the Gettysburg Campaign of the Ukraine war. Analogously, both were the first time the defending army went on the offensive and actually invaded the other's territory in the full scale; both of them were principally intended as raids, with psychological effects on the enemy populace a secondary target. Both intend to take pressure off a long-suffering defensive region (northern Virginia/Donbass).

Both are major commitments of remaining maneuver forces, which entail significant opportunity costs. By deploying these forces in the north, Ukraine is risking what might have been important reinforcements. The Confederate government had wanted Lee to reinforce Vicksburg, but he took his forces into the north instead and suffered a strategic loss instead. That allowed Grant to capture Vicksburg and sever the Confederacy, then assume command in the east and press Lee's remaining army for the rest of its days.

I don't claim to know what the facts on the ground are over there; the fog of war is too thick right now. If the historical analogy holds, though, a Ukrainian loss here could spell the beginning of the end.

This week, the Bismarck Cables suggests that, in spite of major new loans guaranteed by stolen repurposed interest payments on stolen frozen Russian wealth, Ukraine needs a major intervention because Russia is taking a lot of territory. Failing very significant escalation by Ukraine and its allies in the West, he says, Russia is likely to prevail. 

I find this significant because the Bismarck Cables has always struck me as one of the more well-informed outlets writing on this topic, and also because it has always had a clear pro-Ukraine stance. Thus, this is an argument against interest rather than the cheerleading of one side or the other that makes up so much of the fog of war.

Escalations of the type he is advocating are unwise in the extreme. The war has been expensive enough that Russia is unlikely to repeat it. In my opinion we should pursue the peace that can be had. Putin after South Ossetia was likely to repeat his offense; after Crimea, even more so; but the Ukraine war has been ruinous on Russian manpower and war materiel. Letting them keep the majority-ethnic-Russian areas they have seized and held at such cost is not likely to encourage further aggression, but it could allow us to de-escalate in the Middle East especially as well as in Europe. 

Ukraine got out of Kursk about what Lee got out of Pennsylvania, and ultimately expended resources that now can't be used to reinforce lines which are, similarly, starting to collapse. They are still in a happier position. Lee didn't have the option of negotiating a peace that would have allowed the Confederacy to survive in the unconquered territories because, after all, the whole point of the war was to refuse to accept the existence of the Confederacy or the legitimacy of any secession from the Union. Putin has not asked for a similar level of submission from Ukraine, and doesn't have the power to enforce one anyway.

Rather than run the hazard of escalating the war into a direct NATO-Russia force-on-force conflict that could even become a nuclear exchange, we could help offer a peace that while minimally acceptable to Russia also prevents further Ukrainian losses of men and territory. The Kursk gamble did not pay off, but collapse can still be avoided without the need for significant escalation of an already-bloody war.