Stetsons

Since Tom was asking about gear, here's an old post I wrote about selecting a Stetson hat. I found it because, by coincidence, someone dropped by yesterday to comment on what is now a seven-year-old post!

I don't know that it's still true that bricks-and-mortar stores sell them cheaper. Seven years ago, it was. Some of the other advice is probably outdated too. But there's still a lot of use.

A Small Sliver of America

Watch as a small business' employees learn about their new health care plan. They are not happy campers.

Shame

Watts Up With That posts a guest column suggesting that the "pause in global warming" risks destroying the reputation of science.  I disagree.  What destroyed the reputation of a lot of scientists, and the confidence of thinking people in a particular arm of the scientific community, was the subversion of their scientific professionalism and honesty to wishful thinking and political expediency.  The "pause in warming" was simply the evidence that exposed them.

Cheap microscope

If this isn't just about the coolest thing ever.


H/t Maggie's Farm.

And now for something completely different

DL Sly made me do it.  Cassandra didn't stop me.

SOTU or STFU?

Those darned Republicans, always obstructing the President's plans for greatness.

Wanted and found

You may recall my post about the death of my neighbors' 14-year-old grandson Sam last August.  The driver of the truck that crossed the median and struck Sam's car, killing him and the car's driver, was on parole at the time.  He was badly injured and spent some weeks in the hospital--but then somehow he was allowed to leave the hospital without being taken into custody.  By the time he was indicted in late November, he was in the wind.

He was found yesterday, however, in Arkansas, and will be brought back here for trial.

The defendant has a moderately impressive rap sheet.  The police told my neighbors that, in the minutes before the fatal crash, he had nearly run several other cars off the road.  An accident waiting to happen, as they say.

The man's son, who was also in the wreck, has received more favorable public notice.

Honors

Why not?  The Nobel Peace Prize couldn't get much more degraded than it already is.  I'm sure the President would be thrilled to share his honor with Mr. Snowden.

Uh-oh

American bankers are jumping off buildings in London.  HSBC, a London bank, inquires innocently of its customers what they plan to do with that cash they propose to withdraw, if they should by any chance be allowed to do so?  Investors cast nervous eyes on the Chinese banking system.  Turkey enacts drastic interest-rate hikes in failed bid to halt the collapse of their currency.  Argentina and Venezuela--oh, there's no point following any further details in their concerted efforts to destroy their economies.

Granted that a currency and an economic system are based in large part on what people believe, there's still an apparent limit to how much can be achieved by lying.  Signals from reality have an inconvenient habit of intruding.

No need, therefore, to address any of the usual nonsense contained in the SOTU address.

Atlanta metro area paralyzed by global warming

Fifty schoolchildren trapped on buses.  I assume our host is pretty frozen in.  The frigid air just missed us to the east; we've been hovering in the mid-30s day and night.

Making sense

Rand Paul responds informally to the SOTU.  It's crazy, he says, to send our money to central planners in Washington and hope they'll send it back in such a way as to create jobs.  It's not that the government is stupid, he observes--"though that's an open question"--but that it can't match the focused, close-up, personal performance of the original owner in picking winners and losers.

It's nice to watch a politician who's not afraid of basic free-market economics and knows how to expound them in plain English.

But Of Course

"96% of Dems Who Support Raising Minimum Wage Don't Pay Their Interns."

Well, I mean, you should pay more for your labor. I'm doing these kids a service, what with all the exposure I'm giving them.

Funny thing about exposure:

American Wins Syria

Winning by not losing may be an even better strategy if you are not fighting, suggests the National Interest.

The U.S. is right to seek a quick settlement to the civil war in Syria. The humanitarian costs alone compel America to push for reconciliation between the warring sides. Nonetheless, the legitimate desire to end the conflict does not diminish the reality that the U.S. is winning in Syria. From a purely strategic standpoint, no country has benefitted more from the horrible tragedy in Syria than the United States.

There's a lot of hemming and hawing at the opening and closing of the article about how 'of course' none of this justifies allowing the war to continue in a prolonged, grinding way. The humanitarian concerns alone justify ending it as soon as possible.

Just, you know, noting the fact that it's really worked out great that these guys have been killing each other for years now.

Tough Sell

My sister did once talk me into doing "the Warrior Dash" with her. It was kind of fun, because you couldn't possibly take it seriously. (She chided me that we were never going to get a good time, because I kept stopping to help people over the obstacles if they were having trouble. But really, courtesy aside, that's what you should do: if it's meant to be a quasi-military event, the military moves as a unit. Helping your brothers and sisters over the obstacles means the unit gets there faster, and can bring its power to bear as designed. It just happens this particular unit is especially flabby.)

I also like the beard. I don't have the long hair, but my beard is pretty thick this winter.

More nullification

Connecticut is surprised and disappointed that so many of its gun owners failed to take advantage of a new opportunity to register their weapons and magazines.  No doubt, as one newspaper speculated, the problem was that many were prepared to meet the deadline on New Year's Eve, but were taken by surprise when the office shut early at noon.

Doctrine

The Responsibility to Protect doctrine represents a leap forward in accountability for states and does not infringe upon their sovereignty, as states are no longer held to be completely self-contained entities with absolute power over their populations. Rather, there is a strictly defined corpus of actions that begin the R2P process — a process that has different levels of corrective action undertaken by the international community in order to persuade, cajole and finally coerce states into actively taking steps to prevent atrocities from occurring within their boundaries. That R2P does not violate sovereignty stems from the evolution of sovereignty from its Westphalian form in the mid 17th century to the “sovereignty as responsibility” concept advanced by Deng, et al. Modern sovereignty can no longer be held to give states carte blanche in their internal affairs regardless of the level of suffering going on within their borders.

That's a mouthful, if you intend to apply it to real states.

Nullification

Meanwhile, on the marijuana front, the people of states like Colorado are engaging in an odd, 21st century variety of nullification. Unlike the 19th century John Calhoun version, state laws legalizing marijuana don't purport to neutralize the still-extant federal laws banning cannabis. But the state, and millions of Coloradans, are simply ignoring the federal law and, in essence, daring the feds to do something about it.

State laws, of course, can't neutralize federal law, as the Constitution's Supremacy Clause makes clear. But, bloated as it is, the federal law enforcement apparatus isn't up to the task of prosecuting all the marijuana users in Colorado. And if it tried, it would have to bring them to trial before juries in Colorado, who would probably acquit most of them. There would also be massive political backlash, amplified in the coming 2014 and 2016 elections because Colorado is a swing state. And in response to Colorado's example, other states look likely to follow suit, making the feds' problem much bigger.

So, despite all the federal laws on the books, Colorado has de facto nullified them, and started a process that may very well snowball, all without directly attacking the federal laws, or the federal government, at all.

Rand Paul On Women

Dr. Althouse is worried that Republicans still can't talk about women. Really, she'd rather they didn't, but thinks Democrats won't let them stop:

Gregory tries to drag Paul back to the question — whether the GOP should be talking about "women's health, women's bodies." And Paul goes through the same tactics: cooling things off with a joke ("I try never to have discussions of anatomy unless I'm at a medical conference"), saying that the whole subject is "dumbed down" and political, and observing that way women are doing well. He adds another compliment, that the women he knows are "conquering the world," not complaining about how "terrible" and "misogynist" it is. He never says one thing about birth control, women's bodies, or the unfortunate locutions of other members of his party.

So that's how Paul is going to deal with the media efforts to lure Republicans into playing the Democrats' war on women game.

Of course, Paul's a libertarian, and so he's one of those on the Right most inclined to let the whole business go.

And in truth, the Right as a movement had let it go before Obamacare. Whatever your personal feelings about contraception, they were personal feelings, and we were going to accept that people could make choices in private. Whatever else may be said about the decision to require free birth control in Obamacare-compliant insurance, it's been a huge political win for the Left because it's forced the issue of contraception back into the public space. "Free" just means that everyone else has to pay for it, which means that it's everyone else's business.

Dr. Althouse seems to be out at sea here:

If young women are "conquering the world" (as Paul said), why not credit Monica Lewinsky with her conquest of the world's most powerful man? She was enthusiastic and willing, from what I read. I think the sexual harassment problem in the case of Bill Clinton has to do with other women who were pressured to have sex and with the women and men who were not in a position to improve their standing in the workplace by interacting sexually with the boss.

The relevant moral issue here is not that men in the White House were denied the opportunity to advance themselves by pleasuring the boss. That won't even come up as an issue if you hold the line on the real moral issue, which is... are we really so lost that we have to explain what it is? That we have to explain why this isn't something to celebrate? The oathbreaking, the use of power to seduce and corrupt, the lies under oath, the adultery, all of it?

No, the Clinton legacy hasn't been fully appreciated. Not at all.

Well Done!

Arms & Armor. Keep scrolling.

Saturday Afternoon AMV

Another one of Hayao Miyazaki's modern fairy tales. Both different and familiar.