Happy Turnkey Day

From me to you:

(Click to enlarge. The picture is Mr. Lockit from The Beggar's Opera.)

Thanksgiving 2009

Thanksgiving At Home:

I've spent the last two Thanksgivings in Iraq, where Bill is still again this year. It will be interesting to see how a real Thanksgiving dinner compares to the Army's!

It's good to be home this year, but I hope you'll keep the deployed in your thoughts at times today. For some of you that will be all too easy, as someone you cannot help but think of is absent from your table today; for others, please make a moment or two.

TGTBTU on YouTube

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly:

Apparently, YouTube has decided to offer the full version of Sergio Leone's classic for free, until the end of the month. Most likely you have a copy or two on your shelf already, but if not, enjoy.

A Speech

A Speech:

One of you sent me an email about the USS Constitution. I wondered if the story was at all true, so I looked around a bit. I can't verify it, but I can now point to a source: US Marine General Jim Jones.

Let me begin by sharing a bit of history with you about our nation’s oldest warship, the USS Constitution. My good friend General Jim Jones used to tell this account. I can’t vouch for its historical accuracy, but believe it’s a pretty good story all the same:

On 23 August 1779, the USS Constitution set sail from Boston loaded with: 475 officers and men… 48,600 gallons of water… 74,000 pounds of cannon shot… 11,500 pounds of black powder… and 79,400 gallons of rum.

Her mission: to destroy and harass English shipping.

On 6 October, she made Jamaica, took on 826 pounds of flour… and 68,300 gallons of rum.

Three weeks later, the Constitution reached the Azores, where she provisioned with 550 pounds of beef and… 6,300 gallons of Portuguese wine.

On 18 November, she set sail for England where her crew captured and scuttled 12 English merchant vessels and… took aboard their rum.

By this time, the Constitution had run out of shot. Nevertheless, she made her way unarmed up the Firth of Clyde for a night raid. Here, her landing party captured a whiskey distillery, transferred 40,000 gallons aboard and headed for home.

On 20 February 1780, the Constitution arrived in Boston with… no cannon shot… no food… no powder… no rum… and no whiskey. She did, however, still carry her crew of 475 officers and men and… 48,600 gallons of water.

I'm pretty sure they used water for cooking or something.

Pushback

Pushback:

A post on LTC West, on the occasion of the SEAL story from yesterday.

I have great sympathy for the military lawyer, who must enforce the law even when he doesn't think it's right. It was probably worth making that point to troops leaving for Iraq: even if he thought you were right, he'd still have to prosecute you. There's probably an interesting moral argument to be made on the subject of a commander choosing personal legal consequences to putting his soldiers at greater physical risk; or on the duty of a man, and an officer, to obey the law versus the duty of a commander to his men.

The SEALs plainly decided that they preferred to fight rather than accept what felt like injustice out of the law. I don't know what the result of the procedure will be, but I can see that LTC West is -- if anything -- liberated to fight even harder. I hope that, whatever comes of the SEALs' case, they are able to continue to serve the Republic according to their conscience.

Fight Club

Fight Club Prophecy:

I didn't catch Fight Club back in 1999. In fact, I caught it for the first time earlier this fall, about ten years late. Man, is it wild in how well it predicted the world of our age. With one exception: in the movie, we were meant to be fighting on the other side.

Four people have been arrested in Peru on suspicion of killing dozens of people in order to sell their fat and tissue for cosmetic uses in Europe.

The gang allegedly targeted people on remote roads, luring them with fake job offers before killing them and extracting their fat.

The liquidised product fetched $15,000 (£9,000) a litre and police suspect it was sold on to companies in Europe.

That's not us. That's criminal gangs. Fight Club wondered whether we'd be the ones leading the charge to unmake the world.



Did you want to hold it together? We've, most of us, given ourselves to the task: we've sworn oaths to uphold the Constitution and try to preserve it. When I was a boy I used to wonder, reading the lives of Wyatt Earp and others of his kind, whether they knew that they were destroying themselves. If they built a final peace, who would need Wyatt Earp?

In Lonesome Dove, Texas Ranger Captain Gus McCrae asks the question explictly:

Woodrow Call: [riding in San Antonio] Things sure have changed since the last time I was here. It's all growed up.

Gus McCrae: Of course it's growed up, Woodrow. We killed all the Indians and bandits so the bankers could move in.

Woodrow Call: Only a fool would want the Indians back.

Gus McCrae: Has it ever occurred to you, Woodrow, that all the work we done was for the bankers?

It's an odd position to be in. The wages of victory are slander and the hatred of the protected, who believe in their clean hands. The wages of defeat are a world in which we are needed and valued.

Yet we are men of honor, and therefore we must try for a world that neither needs nor wants us. We must, because our wives and children will be safe there.

Until our sons try to become men, that is.

UPDATE:

From Japanese Death Poems, ed. Yoel Hoffmann:

In 1582 the samurai leader Oda Nobunaga (1534-82) captured a company of over a hundred Buddhist monks who were allies of his enemy. He ordered his men to pile dry branches around the prisoners and set fire to them all.... With flames licking at his body, Kaisen responded, "If you have vanquished your selfhood, coolness will rise even from the fire."

If you have seen the movie, confer with the scene captured here, of Tyler Durden looking on during the beating of the narrator:



Katsu.

Change

Yes, You Can Change. If You Must.

Spiked has a pretty good article on the subject of change, and how it distracts.

Present educational fads are based on the premise that because we live in a new, digitally driven society, the intellectual legacy of the past and the experience of grown-ups have little significance for the schooling of children.

The implicit assumption that adults have little to teach children is rarely made explicit. But there is a growing tendency to flatter children through suggesting that their values are more enlightened than those of their elders because they are more tuned in to the present. So children are often represented as digital natives who are way ahead of their text-bound and backward-looking parents.

Well, people look backwards with their minds for the same reason they look in three dimensions with their eyes: because that's the only way the organ works.

A useful English Lit project would be to grab up the Louis L'amour novels and run through them for the literary references; and then make a class that required students to read those books he cites. (And to read them in the manner he recommends: for example, to read Plutarch's 'lives' at least three times.) Ivanhoe. Shakespeare. Blackstone's legal commentaries. So many others!

A useful philosophy project would be to grab up those same novels by the man, and have the students read L'amour directly. What did he mean to say about life? About manhood? About duty? About honor? About the right way to live, and how best to learn?

I looked for his books in the local public library. Even in rural Georgia, there were only two of them in the collection.

It's OK, though: the truck stop down the road sells a neverending supply. Truckers have a lot of time to think, like cowboys riding trail. When the rest of it falls apart, they'll still be there.

Psalm 109

Psalm 109:

JarHead Dad wrote the other day to mention a new bumper sticker seen up around Pigeon Forge: "Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8." Being the sort of folks who have a Bible on the dashboard, they quickly discovered that it was a joke:

"Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

As usual with political jokes, a lot of people aren't finding it funny. Here's one of them:

Among the world's top Google searches today are phrases that contain the words "Psalms 109 8", and "Psalm 109 8 prayer for Obama". For those of you who may not know that particular verse, it reads "May his days be few, may another take over his position." And before anyone excuses this toxic use of scripture as nothing more than the wish that President Obama not be re-elected to a second term of office, the next verse in the psalm reads, "May his children be orphans and his wife a widow".


In fact, the entire chapter is about the prayed for death of an evil person. Not to mention that anyone who knows enough Bible to have thought about this verse in particular, surely knows the entire chapter and appreciates its message. Pretty scary stuff.

All this is especially upsetting in light of the last weeks' events at Fort Hood.

That last line gave me whiplash. Even granting that the broader passage is quite unkind to the wicked person, there's surely a difference between praying for God to punish the wicked, and deciding to kill a bunch of people yourself. Deuteronomy has God advise those who might wish to seek vengeance to leave it in his hands:

"To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste."

The early Christian book of Romans re-emphasizes the point:

"Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord."

The Christian vision is to forgive; but for those who cannot forgive, to give the wish for vengeance to God. This is much in line with the early Church's position on sex, which is: abstain; but for those who cannot abstain, marry. In both cases, there is a perfect way, but there is then also a humane exception that allows the exercise of the vital power in a way that channels its harmful qualities in useful directions. Anger is a natural part of mankind, and a just response to wickedness. Lust is a natural part of mankind, and the normal response of youth to beauty.

The vengeful may pray to God, and the lustful may take wives. Thus there are not murderers but prayerful men, and not predators but husbands.

In this way, the Bible's response is the opposite of the call to Jihad. It is meant to contain the wrath, mitigate it, channel it where it does good rather than harm. It is not a call to murder, but to give your wrath to God and trust his disposition of it.

Economic Collapse

Collapse Through Debt:

The Wall Street Journal reports:

President Barack Obama took office promising to lead from the center and solve big problems. He has exerted enormous political energy attempting to reform the nation's health-care system. But the biggest economic problem facing the nation is not health care. It's the deficit. Recently, the White House signaled that it will get serious about reducing the deficit next year—after it locks into place massive new health-care entitlements. This is a recipe for disaster, as it will create a new appetite for increased spending and yet another powerful interest group to oppose deficit-reduction measures.

Our fiscal situation has deteriorated rapidly in just the past few years. The federal government ran a 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion—the highest since World War II—as spending reached nearly 25% of GDP and total revenues fell below 15% of GDP. Shortfalls like these have not been seen in more than 50 years.

It's not just an American problem, as the UK Telegraph notes:

Governments have already shot their fiscal bolts. Even without fresh spending, public debt would explode within two years to 105pc of GDP in the UK, 125pc in the US and the eurozone, and 270pc in Japan. Worldwide state debt would reach $45 trillion, up two-and-a-half times in a decade.

(UK figures look low because debt started from a low base. Mr Ferman said the UK would converge with Europe at 130pc of GDP by 2015 under the bear case).

The underlying debt burden is greater than it was after the Second World War, when nominal levels looked similar. Ageing populations will make it harder to erode debt through growth. "High public debt looks entirely unsustainable in the long run. We have almost reached a point of no return for government debt," it said.

Inflating debt away might be seen by some governments as a lesser of evils.

If so, gold would go "up, and up, and up" as the only safe haven from fiat paper money. Private debt is also crippling. Even if the US savings rate stabilises at 7pc, and all of it is used to pay down debt, it will still take nine years for households to reduce debt/income ratios to the safe levels of the 1980s.

The bank said the current crisis displays "compelling similarities" with Japan during its Lost Decade (or two), with a big difference: Japan was able to stay afloat by exporting into a robust global economy and by letting the yen fall. It is not possible for half the world to pursue this strategy at the same time.

The other half of the world isn't going to do that well either: China and the developing world are likewise dependent on investment from the First World, and sales to that world's economies.

Brad DeLong, meanwhile, seasons his praise of a Paul Krugman piece with this warning:

The long Treasury market is thinner than many people think: it is not completely implausible to argue that it is giving us the wrong read on what market expectations really are because long Treasuries right now are held by (a) price-insensitive actors like the PBoC and (b) highly-leveraged risk lovers borrowing at close to zero and collecting coupons as they try to pick up nickles in front of the steamroller. And to the extent that the prices at which businesses can borrow are set by a market that keys off the Treasury market, an unwinding of this "carry trade"--if it really exists--could produce bizarre outcomes.

Bear in mind that this whole story requires that the demand curve slope the wrong way for a while--that if the prices for Treasury bonds fall carry traders lose their shirts and exit the market, and so a small fall in Treasury bond prices turns into a crash until someone else steps in to hold the stock...

This is something to think really hard about....

"Picking up nickles in front of the steamroller" is an expression that doesn't really capture the nature of what is being done. The metaphor suggests that these guys are aware of the steamroller, but are risking their necks to try to collect up the free money that's lying around before it gets here. The truth is that the bad actors on the private side of the equation are actively fueling the "steamroller," as through predatory lending to unqualified buyers in advance of the housing crisis. They're urging people to stand in front of the steamroller, and charging admission for the right.

The bad actors on the government side are simply ignoring the existence of the steamroller. That is clear from the vast scale of these new expenses, while doing nothing to deal with the existing crises in Medicare, Social Security and public pensions.

Beer Will Make You Feel Better

Beer Will Make It All Better:

...if you're a man.

Drinking alcohol every day cuts the risk of heart disease in men by more than a third, a major study suggests.

The Spanish research involving more than 15,500 men and 26,000 women found large quantities of alcohol could be even more beneficial for men.

Well, in celebration of that little piece of wisdom, here's a Singapore blues band performing a classic by the Reverend Horton Heat.



The title of this post is taken from another song, whose chorus goes: "Everybody's got to believe in something; I believe I'll have another beer."

Give them the bayonet.

Colonel Lewis L. Millett, an Army veteran of three wars who received the Medal of Honor for leading a rare bayonet charge up a hill in Korea, died Saturday in Loma Linda, Calif. He was 88.

The colonel was hard core. He would have been an interesting man to serve with.

Wood = Felony?

The Insanity of the Law:

We've reached a point in our history at which we honestly have no idea what the law says. For example:

This amendment deals with illegal plants -- the primary thrust being illegal wood. Henceforth, all wood is to be a federally regulated, suspect substance. Either raw wood, lumber, or anything made of wood, from tables and chairs, to flooring, siding, particle board, to handles on knives, baskets, chopsticks, or even toothpicks has to have a label naming the genus and species of the tree that it came from and the country of origin. Incorrect labeling becomes a federal felony, and the law does not just apply to wood newly entering the country, but any wood that is in interstate commerce within the country. Here are some excerpts from a summary:

[...]

Anyone who imports into the United States, or exports out of the United States, illegally harvested plants or products made from illegally harvested plants, including timber, as well as anyone who exports, transports, sells, receives, acquires or purchases such products in the United States, may be prosecuted.

So, if you buy an incorrectly labeled pack of toothpicks, you've just committed a felony.

Did you know that? Of course you did not. Nobody knew it. These omnibus bills create new crimes all the time.

How many new felonies are in the more-than two thousand pages of the Senate's health care bill? Will we know by the time they vote on it, scant days after compiling it? How many of them will have read it?

I'm sure you read that Texas appears to have accidentally banned all marriages.

This break-neck, all-the-time changing of the law is the absolute enemy of liberty.

First, it hems in the space in which we are free.

Second, and worse, it undermines the rule of law itself. "Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is a bedrock legal principle: you can't claim, as a defense in court, that you weren't aware of the law governing your actions. When the law becomes unknowable, due to rapid, massive, and constant changes, that bedrock principle becomes unjust.

A standard often invoked in the law is 'the average, rational person.' If the average, rational person honestly can't know what laws he lives under, how can the system be just? How can it be valid? How can we morally prosecute anyone for violating such laws?

The law, in such a system, becomes wicked. It no longer protects that average, rational person. The average, rational person becomes a felon.

The government must be stopped from changing the law all the time. We need to find a way to put on the brakes.

No Decision?

No Decision?

That's what the White House is saying:

President Barack Obama will not announce his decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan before the Thanksgiving holiday, senior aides said on Thursday. The news came as the president greeted 1,500 troops at Osan Air Base in South Korea, just before boarding Air Force One....

"You guys make a pretty good photo op," the president said.

Standing on a riser wearing a blue suit and red tie, with a cluster of troops and a large American flag behind him, Obama expressed "the gratitude of the American public" and said his meetings in four countries over eight days in Asia will help deliver a "safer more prosperous world for all of us."

Thanksgiving is an important holiday, and a time for reflection. There's been quite a lot of reflection already, though; and besides, isn't this the decision?

President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have turned the focus of Afghan war planning toward an exit strategy, publicly declaring that the U.S. and its allies can't send additional troops without a plan for getting them out.

The shift has unnerved some U.S. and foreign officials, who say that planning a pullout now -- with or without a specific timetable -- encourages the Taliban to wait out foreign forces and exacerbates fears in the region that the U.S. isn't fully committed to their security.

"It's not a good idea," said Rep. Ike Skelton (D., Mo.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

Whether it is or not, it's the decision. What we're now debating is means to the end of getting out.

That may seem like a small thing, since our mission in Iraq also includes an end-state whereby we withdraw remaining forces. However, the Bush administration pushed the public debate in the direction of how to achieve victory, not an exit strategy. The difference in that debate is significant even if you designed precisely the same practical steps to achieve one as the other. That is, even if your plan for 'achieving victory' is exactly the same plan as an 'exit strategy,' there's an important difference in perception.

"The moral is to the physical as three is to one," as Napoleon said. Telling your troops, your allies and your enemies that you are not committed to the region will have effects. Those effects may echo from little battlefields at distant outposts, to the cities of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

VALOUR-IT 2009 Final

Project VALOUR-IT 2009 Final Scores:

I'd just like to pass on Cassandra's words of congratulation to all of you, in her capacity as Marine Corps Team Leader. As you can see from the scores, the Marine Corps team met and surpassed their goal in a very difficult year (indeed, none of the other teams achieved the goal; in most years, the competition is to see who can get to $35K first).

Thank you for your kind attention, and for your concern for our wounded veterans.

Don't be hatin'.

The blogger Instapunk has an interesting rant (note: very strong language in parts) on the phenomenon of what I'm going to start referring to as Palin Derangement Syndrome:

Americans -- remember them? -- should be asking themselves what it means that a woman of traditional American values can be so reviled, so relentlessly, so unscrupulously, so take-no-prisoners viciously. She doesn't need to become president to perform an invaluable role. Why is she so popular in the heartland?
Because she is us. A good-hearted ambitious American doing her best to offer her best. If they -- and who are they, exactly? -- hate her so much, then it has to be the case that she's only a symbol of the hatred they feel for all the rest of us. If ordinary average Americans ever figure this part of the equation out, the 'liberals' are done forever. I'm thinking Sarah Palin is making that outcome more likely.

And I say to that sentence: I certainly hope so.

WTF?

Whiskey Tango...

If I ever meet this fellow who has gotten himself elected President, I'm going to demand to know why he isn't bowing to me.

"Why should I?" I imagine him saying. "You're not a king, a monarch, a head of state."

No, I'm not. But I'm a free American citizen, and as such, I'm the equal of anyone in the world. If he'll bow to them, as America's primus inter pares, then it must be personal. That is, he's not bowing because it is right for the President of the United States to bow where no "mere" citizen would, but because he personally is a scoundrel who knows his place.

An American citizen can look the Queen of England in the eye as an equal, if he chooses. We won the right on the battlefield. In her case, one might choose to do otherwise, as she merits special honor. A gentleman might bow to her as a lady without shame, for she truly is one.

But Hu Jintao? He's no lady.

The Road Is Not

The Road Is Not:

Tonight I made the last long run to finish the move. Man, family, horse and dog, and all their gear have made the movement to a new home. We should begin to be good, tomorrow.

Lots to do yet, but things are better than they have been, starting time now.

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

That quote is attributed to Ghandi, but I'm thinking it has applications here. Like the article says:

"...for somebody who's supposed to be such a political joke, an Arctic ditz and eminently dismissable as a serious anything except maybe a stay-at-home hockey mom, Sarah Palin is sure drawing an awful lot of attention from Democrats and eager critics."

I usually don't read political memoirs, but I think I'm going to be making an exception in this case.

And speaking of the governor, Nate Silver of 538.com (a basically Democrat polling website) makes the case for why Sarah Palin will run for president in 2012. But what I find especially interesting is the comments. Just look at all the anti-Palin comments, and replace "she" with "he" and "Palin" with "Obama" and see how they sound. Very, very interesting.

I’m unhappy and my life is hard and nobody understands and this should be important to you.

Read it quickly before the woman comes to her senses and takes it down.

Grim, you ain't missing anything. Get settled with your family.

(via Ace of Spades)

Out of Touch

Out of Touch:

I apologize for the continued lack of new posting here. We're moved, but the phone company doesn't have a cable pair in this part of rural Georgia to carry our phone/internet signal. We're working on resolving that one way or another; until that happens, I'll have to connect from the public library!

I want to thank my co-bloggers for their interesting entries. I'm glad to read Joesph's commentary on the subject of the FT Hood shooting trial.

Aside from that, I'm afraid I haven't had enough internet access lately to be much abreast of the happenings of the world. I have been working on wells in a pasture, cutting hay, and laying some white clover seed for the benefit of certain horses.

Hope to be back soon. In the meantime, I'll be around as I can be.