The Election Ends

"May Have Been The Losing Side. Still Not Convinced It Was The Wrong One."

I see that John McCain has called Senator Obama -- now President-elect Obama -- to conceed defeat. Our country has made a horrible mistake; that much is clear. We will raise taxes in a recession, and cut military spending during a war.

In 2004 and 2006 I wrote:

In medieval battles, often forces coming into contact with each other were nearly evenly matched. The forces fight -- Vikings and Saxons clashing at each other behind their shield walls -- until that small difference in strength breaks one of the lines. Then, pouring through the breach, the victors tear apart the shield wall and rout the enemy. Few of the losers escaped from such battles, when any did. Though the foe may have been of nearly equal size and strength, at the last that small difference led to a complete victory for one side, and complete destruction for the other.

Democracy works in a similar way. We have had a giant clash of peaceful armies, and in spite of the completeness of the rout, we must remember that their force was nearly as powerful as our own.

For those of you readers who were part of the defeated army, I salute you. You have every reason to be proud of how hard you fought, and of the dedication and steadfastness with which you struck for your cause. You can hold your heads high, knowing that you did absolutely everything that could be done.

In the next years, we must remember the 55 million. It may be that some of them can be won over, through argument or through example, or even -- on matters not of principle -- through compromise. Even when not, we must remember that they showed that America is their country too: no one can ever again claim to be backed by the "silent majority." That majority has now spoken, but it spoke on both sides.

At this writing, it is 37-40 millions for McCain/Obama. That small difference is nevertheless total in its speech.

Well, people make mistakes; so do nations. There are three consolation prizes: first, that this will give our fellow Americans who are black a new confidence that this nation is theirs equally. They can tell their children with utter confidence that they can grow up to be President. That is a wonderful thing.

The second is that the Democratic Party has learned a lesson that we used to speak about on occasion. The majority it has gained includes a large number of conservative Democrats of the old type -- many pro-life, or defenders of gun rights. Senator Zell Miller spoke of "A National Party No More," but the Democrats have rebuilt the coalition. That is the reason for their success today -- they were able to compete across the nation.

That will mitigate the worst impulses of the new Democratic Congress, but it also means that the Democratic Party itself is healthier than it used to be. The Republican Party is not, but the third consolation prize is that it has the chance to become so. A sitting party has a great deal invested in its incumbents, due to the way that the system has come to favor them. A party without incumbents is free to look for new blood -- and new blood is necessary.

Furthermore, it is available. It is not only Sarah Palin who represents the future, but the returning armies that have done so much for the freedom of the Iraqi people. From these can be recruited -- by both parties, if they wish -- a band of citizens who have personally sacrificed for the ideal of human liberty.

The moment is difficult; the future is bright. Reread the post below on "Providence." Do boldly; have faith.

Condolences

Condolences:

Our condolences for the family of Madelyn Dunham, including Senator Obama. Many is the grandmother and grandfather that have raised a child in similar conditions, and it is hard duty. She did right by her grandchild, and that's a fine thing.

Providence

Providence:

William McIntosh, the "White Warrior" of the Creek nation, had risen to the leadership of the Creeks in spite of being of mixed Creek and Scottish blood. That Scottish ancestry offered no shame to a warrior people: he was of the blood of John Mohr McIntosh (the Gaelic byname meaning, "the Great"). John Mohr was recruited by Georgia's own founder, the heroic Sir James Edward Oglethorpe, friend of the Yamacraw nation, to guard the early colony against Spanish raiders from the south. Chief William was of the blood also of General Lachlan McIntosh, who served with General Washington at Valley Forge and helped to negotiate treaties for the establishments of forts in the west during the Revolutionary war; he thereby opened the West to later expansion. General McIntosh also killed Declaration of Independence signatory Button Gwinnett in a duel. Finally, he was a direct descendant of William McIntosh, who was sent by the Revolutionary government to the Creeks to aid them in fighting the British.

Perhaps out of loyalty to this revolution, or out of loyalty to his fathers who fought for it, Chief William McIntosh made a deal that put the lands of the Creek Nation under the jurisdiction of the state of Georgia. Shortly thereafter, he was assassinated in his home by tomahawk; but the transfer of authority held in spite of his murder.

What had heretofore been forested country began to be cleared by homesteaders, who wanted a place to grow food for their families and crops to sell at market. As they cleared a particular patch of land in west central Georgia, they began to notice that the land began to erode far more than other lands in Georgia. The erosion was serious enough to be noteworthy in the 1830s. One can imagine the early farmers wondering how bad it would get. The topsoil, and their livelihood, was washing away: where would it stop?

Here.



Providence Canyon, North Rim



Providence Canyon, West Rim



Providence Canyon, Spire

It's a strange world we live in. Divided loyalties lead to murder or betrayal. Other men stake their hopes on a crop, and see the ground literally wash away from them. Hopes are dashed, lives are blasted, the work of a lifetime is lost: and an unimaginable beauty appears from the land. Long she waited there, cloaked in seemingly usual hills and valleys, waiting only the right touch to make her beautiful. How many more wait, and for what man's touch?

The ranger center proudly posts several registry sheets showing the names of famous guests. In 1967, the guest register for Providence Canyon was boldly signed: "John Wayne."

Remember:

Disaster may give way to beauty.

Many things are hidden.

Here are men who did their best, and followed their vision. They did not get what they sought: Chief McIntosh was killed by his own, farmers lost their fortunes, Lachlan McIntosh slew a great man of his own cause.

Here is their mark: this is how the world received them.

Find its equal. The world loves such men. At their touch, she shows herself as only does a woman who loves.

Miss Manners

Miss Manners & The Ugly:

A fine point made by Judith Martin, better known by her pen name of "Miss Manners." She is responding to this letter:

I am a very private person, and I believe that having good manners is important, so I work hard at being polite every day. I have had a co-worker for the last two years who keeps asking me what I'm "really like."

When this happens, I answer, "This is what I'm really like," until he gets tired of it and gives up. I have encountered other people who ask me variations of this same question, e.g. "What is the real you like?"

If my co-worker ever hears me say something even vaguely negative or not entirely polite, he says with great pleasure, "Now, there's the real you coming out."

I am getting frustrated with people who assume that my slip-ups and mistakes expose more of my real character than the manners I work hard at every day....

Miss Manners notes:

Whole schools of unpleasant art have been built on the idea that only the ugly is real.

The same notion applied to people appeals to those who, like your co-worker, want to justify their own rudeness on the grounds that they are being natural, honest and true to themselves. As they undoubtedly are, more's the pity for the rest of us.

She is right; but that's only the first part of this story.

I recall a historian writing about General Washington -- sadly, I cannot recall his name -- who pointed out that Washington composed and personally copied rules of etiquette. These were not things he always did perfectly, that he wanted others to copy: he did not present himself as a Mohammed, a model for others to emulate because of a special and perfect relationship with God. Rather, the copies he made of these rules were to impress the etiquette upon himself, in the hope of making himself into the man he wanted to become.

The historian pointed to our culture of "authenticity," and noted that George Washington didn't have it. What he had was a vision of the good, and a desire to be better than he "authentically" was.

I've written about that as well:

The best people devote themselves to attempting to make real some part of that ideal beauty in their own lives. This is done through training and practice. Once you have performed the deliberation to know what is right in a given circumstance, you become virtuous by training your character so that you do that, and silence in your mind all arguments to the contrary. Eventually you should become the kind of person who can only do the right thing -- but it was freely chosen training and practice that got you there.

What Aristotle was saying in the initial quote was that we can best be sure that a man has is fully trained in a given virtue if he expresses it in sudden circumstances without time for deliberation. His character is fully formed, so that the deliberation and argument is no longer necessary: he just does what is right, without thought.

This is, for ethical decisions, precisely the condition that the martial arts aspires to teach in physical decisions. It is the condition the Japanese martial arts calls mushin, "No Mind."

The vision you are training to be is the "real you." The vision of the beautiful is the real thing. The rest of it -- all of it -- falls away. Your consciousness of being in charge of those lesser decisions may even be an illusion.

It is the vision, only the vision, that is real.

And I thought, “I will go with you,
As man with God has gone,
And wander with a wandering star,
The wandering heart of things that are,
The fiery cross of love and war
That like yourself, goes on.”

Change you can believe in

Change You Must Believe In:

Looking at the ratings of the Obama campaign commercial, you have to be struck by how few people watched it.

Does that imply that the poll numbers are wrong? Maybe, but not necessarily.

I think the thing it may say is that the support he enjoys -- at or just under 50% of voters, by most measures -- is not about policy. A lot of these people want to believe which, to a certain degree, means not looking too closely.

The Democratic plan, as the last few days have made clear, is twofold:

1) To raise taxes in a recession,

2) To defund the military in a war.

On point #1, the only question is how massive the tax increases will be. Sen. Obama's commercial made use of a new number -- $200,000. If you've been watching the debate closely, you know this is a shift. It has been $250,000 until now. Sen. Biden recently said $150,000. The movement is on, downward, toward the real number. How low will it go? What will the effect be of higher capital gains taxes and higher income taxes on a struggling economy?

On point #2, Sen. Barney Frank has said that he wants cuts of as much as 25%. One presumes that means an end to operations in Iraq at least, an end to research and development, and spending constrained to replacing worn equipment with the generation-old designs already extant. Sen. Obama has separetly called for ending, delaying or subjecting to yet-another-review-past-the-QDR all R&D and procurement.



American power has been built on technology. The reason we succeed on the battlefield is not that Americans are braver than any other kind of man, or even that they are more virtuous. It is that we have good technology coupled with good training and tactics. Everything we do arises from this union, both parts of which involve large R&D and training budgets. The decrease in the effectiveness of IEDs against American forces, for example, came from a combination of new technology to identify and jam IEDs; plus a careful review of evidence, by experts in IED Defeat cells, to develop tactics and protocols that defend us. These experts must be either hired or trained; and they must be paid.

What will the effect be of such decisions as these be on national security? They're a move to try to be more like the Russian army: a big, cheap force.

That means that you pay with lives what you save in dollars.

Don't look too closely. He won't fight wars, maybe. He's called for an increase in the number of Marines and soldiers; why would he need them? Well, maybe he doesn't mean that. He's promised to go into Pakistan's tribal areas. Well, maybe that's just to sound hawkish in the debates. He may not get to be the one who decides.

What then? Negotiate? Iran has already stated its preconditions. Do we meet them? Use France as a go-between to pre-negotiate better ones?

It's best not to think too much about that. Don't look too closely. Just vote. If you want to believe, that's the only way to make it work.

The Senator should be glad no one wanted to see it. His support hinges on that key group, the people who are determined to believe.

UPDATE: Of course, some people can actually listen to what he says, and still believe:



The saddest thing is, McCain actually promised to do that. The Obama campaign called the plan "more costly and out-of-touch than we ever imagined."

It's amazing.

Hm.

Is This Really True?

Women candidates must look good to be elected, study claims, while men are judged on competence.

The current election would seem to discredit both parts of that result. First, the frontrunning male candidate has shown no competence at anything he's ever undertaken (besides running for the next higher office, at which he's proven fairly adept), yet he has held a consistent lead. The media surrounding him has made much of his youth and energy, and he's been asked to dance on the air several times.

Meanwhile, the highest vote-getting female candidate of all time was the junior Senator from New York. I wouldn't say anything unkind about a lady's appearance, so please don't take this remark in that way, but she is not a classic beauty. While certainly dignified and respectable, her looks are not the reason why anyone would vote for her.

So: another case where a study 'proves' something the authors would like to believe, against the actual experience of reality?

PHILLIES WIN THE SERIES!!!!

Voting

More Voting Woes:

From Mississippi, this time.

Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann is the first to admit the situation with voter registration in this state is terrible.

"It is terrible," he says. "Combined with the fact that we don't have voter ID in Mississippi, anybody can show up at any poll that happens to know the people who have left town or died -- and go vote for them."

On the other hand, they report 123% of eligible voters are registered. Now that's participation!

For Eric

Music for Eric:

One of my favorite discussions we ever had here was on the subject of music: where are our Wagners? Eric pointed to film music, and one of the choices widely endorsed was Ennio Morricone.

A rare piece, not well known, was his score for "Guns For Saint Sebastian." It is beautiful all the way through.



The love theme is also exceptional, though I have not found it online as yet.

Aces

Aces:

This guy has hands.

Woah

Woah:

This article claims that Georgia voters are waiting up to eight hours to participate in early voting.

I've voted in Georgia most of my life -- and early-voted myself a couple of weeks ago. Even before the advent of early voting, I've never waited so much as five minutes to vote. This year, my wife and I went and there were plenty of machines available for us to walk in and out. There was no waiting at all.

Now, the story suggests that there were some problems with the electronic voting system -- but why not just come back tomorrow, then? People lining up at 4 AM to vote? Democrats warning that 'there may not be time' for all the voters who want to vote to be able to do so?

Didn't we used to do this on just one day, and not that long ago? What could possibly explain this nonsense, given that you now have a month and a half instead of 12-18 hours?

NRA Day

NRA Day:

The National Rifle Association has a great ad out.



Meanwhile, US News and World Reports has an interview with Governor Palin and her husband that reminds me (again) of what I like about the lady.

From my interview with Palin and hubby Todd yesterday, they explained how they size people up on outdoor expeditions in Alaska: "It's like Plato said, 'You learn more about someone in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.' We've had people that Todd has ended up hiring [for his commercial fishing business] based on how they did out on a hunt or a snow machine ride with us to see if they are going to complain. Are they going to buck up and realize that you have to make the best of the circumstances you're in? It's a good kind of testing ground for people," says Palin.

That's absolutely the truth. It also turns out that she's a Life NRA member, and hunts with a .243 when she's out for caribou.

Sheepherder

"A Sheepherder Came and Put Up a Fence..."

"...I saw him one time, but I ain't seen him since..."

25 Million

Twenty-Five Million Dead:

So planned the Weathermen under the leadership of Bill Ayers, according to the FBI agent who investigated them.

Did they mean it? It's worth remembering another Communist group of the same period, which assassinated a US Congressmen, and then committed the largest mass suicide in human history.

Our friend Noel of Sharp Knife writes:

Obama let these sociopaths babysit his children. Does that give you confidence that he'll protect your children?

All that is in the past, though. As Noel points out, those radical Communist groups linked to Obama haven't killed anyone since, well, February or so.

About 50 parishioners were locked into the Assemblies of God church before it was set ablaze. They were mostly women and children. Those who tried to flee were hacked to death by machete-wielding members of a mob numbering 2,000. ...

By mid-February 2008, more than 1,500 Kenyans were killed. Many were slain by machete-armed attackers. More than 500,000 were displaced by the religious strife. Villages lay in ruin. Many of the atrocities were perpetrated by Muslims against Christians. ...

Initially, Mr. Odinga was not the favored opposition candidate to stand in the 2007 election against President Mwai Kibaki, who was seeking his second term. However, he received a tremendous boost when Sen. Barack Obama arrived in Kenya in August 2006 to campaign on his behalf. Mr. Obama denies that supporting Mr. Odinga was the intention of his trip, but his actions and local media reports tell otherwise.

Mr. Odinga and Mr. Obama were nearly inseparable throughout Mr. Obama's six-day stay. The two traveled together throughout Kenya and Mr. Obama spoke on behalf of Mr. Odinga at numerous rallies.

Odd we haven't read more about that. I'd like to hear the rest of the story.

Our friend Baldilocks has a few things to say about it, though. Her opinion matters here, because her family is rooted in the same area; her father is an important journalist in Kenya.

Hiring Ravens

Hiring Ravens:

The London Spectator's Philips writes:

As I have said before, I do not trust McCain; I think his judgment is erratic and impetuous, and sometimes wrong. But on the big picture, he gets it. He will defend America and the free world whereas Obama will undermine them and aid their enemies.

Here’s why. McCain believes in protecting and defending America as it is. Obama tells the world he is ashamed of America and wants to change it into something else. McCain stands for American exceptionalism, the belief that American values are superior to tyrannies. Obama stands for the expiation of America’s original sin in oppressing black people, the third world and the poor.

Obama thinks world conflicts are basically the west’s fault, and so it must right the injustices it has inflicted. That’s why he believes in ‘soft power’ — diplomacy, aid, rectifying ‘grievances’ (thus legitimising them, encouraging terror and promoting injustice) and resolving conflict by talking. As a result, he will take an axe to America’s defences at the very time when they need to be built up. He has said he will ‘cut investments in unproven missile defense systems’; he will ‘not weaponize space’; he will ‘slow our development of future combat systems’; and he will also ‘not develop nuclear weapons,’ pledging to seek ‘deep cuts’ in America’s arsenal, thus unilaterally disabling its nuclear deterrent as Russia and China engage in massive military buildups.

There are two great insights there. The first one -- that McCain will defend America, while Obama will try to change it into something else -- is obvious enough, yet seems to have escaped a great many people.

The second one, though, is something that should be written in great iron letters where every college student can see them. The move to "rectify grievances" has the effect of offering legitimacy to the charges raised against you. Sometimes, that is the worst thing that could be done.

The Crack

The Veneer Cracks:

Human Rights Watch was recently reporting from Venezuela:

On September 18, we released a report in Caracas that shows how President Hugo Chávez has undermined human rights guarantees in Venezuela. That night, we returned to our hotel and found around twenty Venezuelan security agents, some armed and in military uniform, awaiting us outside our rooms. They were accompanied by a man who announced—with no apparent sense of irony—that he was a government "human rights" official and that we were being expelled from the country.

With government cameramen filming over his shoulder, the official did his best to act as if he were merely upholding the law. When we said we needed to gather our belongings, he calmly told us not to worry, his men had already entered our rooms and "packed" our bags.

But when we tried to use our cell phones to get word to our families, our colleagues, and the press, the veneer of protocol quickly gave way. Security agents surrounded us, pried the phones from our hands, and removed and pocketed the batteries. When we then insisted on contacting our embassies, they shoved us into a service elevator, took us to the basement, and forced us into the back seat of an SUV with tinted windows. When we asked where we were headed, they told us only that we were going to the airport.

Three security agents sat behind us, at least two with weapons drawn. One used a cell phone to receive and relay orders as we raced through the streets of Caracas and out onto a highway. At one point an order came to turn on the SUV's radio so we could listen as the state news agency announced our expulsion. The announcers told their captive audience—which also included every other Venezuelan listening to the radio, since all stations are required to broadcast such messages—that our organization was funded by the US government and that we were part of a campaign of aggression against Venezuela.

Probably news to President Bush, who has been annoyed by HRW in the past. Of course, in the United States they are free to operate without being expelled by gunpoint, and their belongings -- as their offices and papers -- are secured by the 4th Amendment.

Bugler

"Bugler, Sound Recall!"

We were up in Dahlonega yesterday, a small town in the North Georgia mountains that was home to America's first gold rush. It is currently home to North Georgia College and State University, the military college of Georgia. As we finished our business and began to drive home, the sound of the bugler drifted across the town, playing "Retreat" and then "To the Colors."

It inspired me to see if there was a good repository on the internet of military bugle calls. The Army has one. Unsurprisingly, the Federation of American Scientists also has a collection. You may enjoy listening to these, whether you are occasionally on Army installations and wonder after the calls used, or if you like old cavalry Westerns and wonder what the bugle calls mean, or simply have a love for history and military traditions.

When I was last in Iraq, every morning at 0600, the loudspeaker at the headquarters of the Third Infantry Division in Iraq sounded the charge. That hour would normally be used for "Reveille," but that call is to be used when raising the colors. As the US flag was not to be flown on Iraq territory, out of respect for the sovereign status of our host nation, the charge was used instead.

Good Job, ATF

Good Job, ATF:

One rarely hears praise for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms around here, but today they earned it. Well done.

Yep

Yep, Saw That Coming:

Just yesterday we were talking about punishing the guilty:

One expects that, in Obama's America, justice will be done in this case: the citizen whose experiment proved that the campaign had manually disabled all credit-card safeguards will be arrested and prosecuted for making the fake donations. Once he's safely in prison, just as Joe is now safely out of work, we can all stop worrying about the matter.

Today, Megan McArdle notes a plan for prosecution:

If a wingnut uses the Internet to give the Obama campaign a donation in a fake name, with the intent of fooling the website into accepting an invalid contribution, isn't that using interstate communications facilities to defraud under 18 USC 1343?

Here's part of the definition of "fraud" from Black's Law Dictionary:

a false representation of a matter of fact, whether by words or by conduct, by false or misleading allegations, or by concealment of that which should have been disclosed, which deceives and is intended to deceive another so that he shall act upon it to his legal injury

Seems like a pretty good fit to me.

Ms. McArdle is a remakably generous woman, who chooses to believe the best about the Obama campaign:

The Obama campaign screwed up massively; it should not be possible to charge something to a credit card without matching the name to the name on the credit card. Most responsible web processors also require that you provide a fair amount of other information, to ensure that people aren't using stolen cards. And beyond that, last time I looked it was mandatory to get correct names to ensure that people aren't violating the campaign finance laws. I don't support those laws, to be sure. But as long as they are the law, all the campaigns have to abide by them.

Wondering if we can't prosecute the person who exposed the campaign's error smacks of police state tactics. Yes, I still support Obama, and I have no reason to think that the error was deliberate.

"Error"? She is aware that the campaign has disabled all the normal safeguards that "responsible web processors... require," and is ignoring the "mandatory" requirement to collect correct names "to ensure that people aren't violating the campaign finance laws."

It seems to me a stretch to believe this was a "massive screw up," given the extraordinary benefits that such an "error" brings to the Obama campaign. That would be somewhat suspicious even from a campaign that had behaved reasonably well up until now. This one has been accused of massive fraud from Iowa forward, as regards their abuses in the caucus states, with ACORN, and so on and so forth. Surely there's a threshhold beyond which we no longer assume these are innocent mistakes.

By the same token, this isn't the first time Obama supporters have wanted to destroy someone critical of the campaign. Ask Joe the Former Plumber.

UK OK

UK now OK:

Well, we can stop worrying about the economic crisis now -- at least, England can.

FOUR extra ravens are being drafted into the Tower of London because of the financial crisis — to prevent a 350-year-old curse coming true.

King Charles II decreed there must be at least six ravens otherwise a disaster would strike the nation and the Royal Family.

And up to now, bosses have kept just one spare bird in residence to act as a “super sub”.

But with the UK facing credit crunch meltdown, they ruled an extra four must now be acquired.

This strikes me as a totally reasonable and correct course of action: it's good not to mess with curses from ancient kings. Yet it is interesting that the English are interpreting the current crisis as so bad that they need reinforcements in the Tower of London: and not just to think of it, but to order it done and pay for it. There's a lot of end-times language going on here, too, as we've discussed from time to time, especially around the Obama candidacy and its messiah-like images. Interesting days.