What? He Said It Was A Scheme.

George Monbiot suggests a... well, he himself calls it a "maverick currency scheme," so let's go with that.

A presidential theory of voting

Government is the thing we do together when we want to push each other around.

I prefer Scott Rasmussen's formulation.

The Case Against Scott Walker

Argued in the expected fashion at Daily Kos.

It strikes me that Republicans will only even possibly care about the claims under point two. If he's tied to significant local corruption, that's a problem. The other three points are not of interest except to his opponents, but even many of his supporters might be persuaded if there is truth to the corruption claims.

Socio-cultural revolutions

Pascal Emmanuel Gobry challenges the assumption that time has a one-way arrow when it comes to revolutionary progress.

Now, it's important for me to make clear what I am not saying. I am not saying that today's progressives are "the real racists." I am not saying that same-sex marriage or any other progressive social movement is the equivalent of racism. Today's progressives have at best a fuzzy lineage with yesteryear's, and all of us are implicated in this civilizational enormity; as one who is "conservative" by today's political standards but firmly in the camp of Enlightenment liberalism, i.e., a "progressive" on the scale of millennia, I don't exculpate myself from this legacy. Not all racists were progressives and not all progressives were racists (it was the French Revolutionaries who banned slavery in the French colonies, for example). No group — ideological, religious, or otherwise — comes out of that complex history looking good (which itself should warn us off easy narratives of Progress vs. the Dark Ages).

The Best Hole is a Fighting Hole

So we're in one. Let's cut it into the right kind.

Semper Paratus

A group of Norwegian Muslims will be forming a circle around Oslo synagogue after the celebration of Shabat this Saturday in a solidarity gesture called the Ring of Peace.

"If the Jihadists want to use violence in the name of Islam, they must go through us Muslims first," said one of the event's initiators.

That's awesome and deeply honorable, but be ready for them to come right through you. They're ready to do that. What's your plan when they do?

Suckers Abound

As incarceration numbers have topped out in recent years thanks to what looks like the beginning of the end of the war on drugs, women have gained a stronger foothold in the prison industry, getting jobs that—like so many others in America—have traditionally been dominated by men.

So many others. Chiefly unpleasant jobs, like being a prison guard. But this is a real step forward, having more women as prison guards... er, for some reason that will come to me.

But along with that progressive change has come a steady drip of lurid tales about sex between guards and inmates.

Ah, so you're on the side of progress! That means you must be a good guy we can trust.

As contrasted with the bad guys:

We probably shouldn't be too shocked, though. There is no rule, regulation, or state of affairs a savvy prisoner cannot subvert. This has been proven many times over and is confirmed when you talk to long-time inmates.

"I love when I see a new, young, and naive female working in prison," says a convict we'll call Mack.

Mack has spent the better part of the last 20 years in and out of state and federal prison. He's in his 40s, a born-and-bred criminal who is all about what others can do for him in the here and now.

Damned hardened criminals. We shouldn't trust them, because they can subvert almost anyone. Hey, by the way, how'd you come to know Mack?

I met many people like Mack during my 21 years of incarceration[.]

Ha! I have the sudden suspicion that Vice has been suckered too.

Category Error

If you ask people, how many of you support raping people who rape, you would find it very hard to find anyone that would support that... The reason why we would be hesitant to endorse it is that – what normal person would be paid to do something so compromising as raping a human being? But yet we have this idea that we can kill someone in a way that doesn’t implicate us. If it’s not right to torture someone for torture, abuse someone for abuse, rape someone for rape, then how can we think we can kill someone for killing?

First of all, don't bet you won't get volunteers for the raping-rapists thing. This isn't the country it used to be.

Second, the answer to your question is that rape is always wrong, whereas killing is sometimes right and praiseworthy. I'm good with being "implicated" in something honorable and worthy of praise. The problem isn't killing, it's the structure of executions. What's wrong with the execution is that there's no honor in it, because there's no risk in it. It's like taking out the garbage. Sometimes you have to, but that doesn't make it glorious.

Start By Speaking the Truth

Belmont Club author Richard Fernandez:

Both the Obama administration and the Franco-Germans are as trapped as the Ukrainians in Debaltseve. The Ukrainian troops are surrounded by the Russian troops, while the Western leaders are imprisoned by their own lies. The soldiers are invested by encroaching lines. The statesmen are trapped in a high wall of political bricks comprised of their own falsehoods. Having led their nations forward with false assurances of safety, both the EU leaders and the Obama administration are struggling to find an escape without admitting error.

They will not find it easy. Both cornered groups are hoping the cavalry will arrive before the last cup of water runs out. The soldiers are hoping for the European monitors to ride to the rescue, while Merkel and Hollande for their part must also be looking for a miracle. Maybe Putin will relent. As for Obama, he must be praying as he has never prayed before that ISIS will have a change of heart.

Taranto at the Wall Street Journal:

As funny as it is, it also feels a bit unsporting to pick on Harf like this. After all, she’s just doing her job, which is to act as a mouthpiece for an administration whose guiding principle seems to be that political correctness—which is to say, a thoroughgoing dishonesty—is the best weapon for dealing with Islamic terrorism.

Sometimes they even admit it.

After a discussion of religion

The Washington Post, tortured by a fear of backlash, struggles to find the words to describe today's story of a Detroit muslim who asked some fellow bus passengers whether they were Muslim, and on hearing that they were not, stabbed them.  Per Ace, the first try was:

Police: Man stabs two after asking if they are Muslim.

followed by (after protests):

Police: Muslim man stabs two after discussion about religious beliefs.

Ace's commenters suggested the following alternatives:

Conversation Over Islam Leads to Stabbing, Police Baffled.

Hate Crime Charges Likely After Muslim Man Survives Knife Attack During Religious Argument.

1938: Trains begin transporting Europe's Jewry to unknown locations to the east, after a discussion of religion.

What do they want?

I don't think it's that much of a mystery to the Hall, but apparently it's finally sunk in, even for those on the Left.

The linked article from the Atlantic lays out in massive, I'd say scholarly, detail where Daesh came from, their goals, their plans to achieve those goals, and possible ways to thwart them.  Most of it was already known to me, but there were some pieces that I did not know as well.  It's long, but very much worth it.

Abyssus Abyssum Invocat

It is shocking to realize that her citation of Revelations 20:4 is not in any way altered.

Then I saw thrones, and those seated on them were given authority to judge. I also saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for their testimony to Jesus and for the word of God. They had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” — Revelation 20:4

She has a very generous soul. My own desire, I confess, is to say with Isaiah: "Here I am: send me."

Life Begins

...in unexpected ways.

Jeffrey Kieft, PhD, professor of biochemistry and molecular genetics and corresponding author of the article in Nature, said scientists have long thought that the molecular signals that initiate protein synthesis in bacteria and eukaryotes are mutually exclusive. Scientists in Kieft's lab explored whether a structured RNA molecule from a virus that infects eukaryotic cells could function in bacteria. Surprisingly, they found that it could initiate protein syntheses, a process necessary for life.

"What we found bridges billions of years of evolutionary divergence," said Kieft, who is also a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Early Career Scientist.

We often talk about viruses about being a kind of quasi-life. Maybe they are also pre-life.

Climate Change

Power is out. The trees are sheeted in ice. Stand outside on the porch, and you will hear a near constant set of crashes from breaking limbs and falling trees.

No problem. We have firewood and all we need.

May not post much for a day or two. Supposed to get record breaking cold tomorrow. But there is plenty of wood yet.

Message Received

The Islamic State’s Al Hayat Media, the group that has published the previous beheading videos in the Middle East, produced the Libya video titled, “A Message Signed With Blood To The Nation Of The Cross.”

“All praise is due to Allah the strong and mighty,” said an ISIS jihadist dressed in military fatigues in American-accented English. “And may blessings and peace be upon the ones sent by the sword as a mercy to all the worlds,” he added.

The masked ISIS member continues:

Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of Al-Sham and Dabiq’s plain, chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time, and today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message.

All crusaders: safety for you will be only wishes especially if you are fighting us all together. Therefore we will fight you all together. The sea you have hidden Sheikh Osama bin Laden’s body in, we swear to Allah we will mix it with your blood.

After the ISIS leader finishes speaking, his fellow terrorists then commence the beheading of the 21 Egyptian Christians. “And we will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission, the promise of our Prophet, peace be upon him,” The militant leader says after his comrades slaughter the Christian hostages.

Censorship is Damage

We have this thing called "the Internet" that routes around it.

Death to the Iran Deal

There is a general rule of thumb that if you have to make a deal, you often have to make a bad one.

The problems raised by authorities ranging from Henry Kissinger, the country’s most senior former secretary of state, to Sen. Timothy M. Kaine, Virginia’s junior senator, can be summed up in three points:

●First, a process that began with the goal of eliminating Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons has evolved into a plan to tolerate and temporarily restrict that capability.

●Second, in the course of the negotiations, the Obama administration has declined to counter increasingly aggressive efforts by Iran to extend its influence across the Middle East and seems ready to concede Tehran a place as a regional power at the expense of Israel and other U.S. allies.

●Finally, the Obama administration is signaling that it will seek to implement any deal it strikes with Iran — including the suspension of sanctions that were originally imposed by Congress — without a vote by either chamber. Instead, an accord that would have far-reaching implications for nuclear proliferation and U.S. national security would be imposed unilaterally by a president with less than two years left in his term.

We don't have to make this deal.

"Bush Lied."

Well, at least, he demonstrated substantial self-control in disseminating secret information that could have helped his cause in 2006.

Cause and effect

For a good look at how hard it is to make sense when discussing cause and effect in complex systems with ill-understood dynamics, try this article and the associated discussion in the comments.  I'm not sure most of us ever get beyond the magic stage.

The Wind Under the Stars

I don't think I've ever heard wind like tonight.

The wind was on the withered heath,
but in the forest stirred no leaf:
there shadows lay by night and day,
and dark things silent crept beneath.

The wind came down from mountains cold,
and like a tide it roared and rolled;
the branches groaned, the forest moaned,
and leaves were laid upon the mould.

The wind went on from West to East;
all movement in the forest ceased,
but shrill and harsh across the marsh
its whistling voices were released.

The grasses hissed, their tassels bent,
the reeds were rattling—on it went
o'er shaken pool under heavens cool
where racing clouds were torn and rent.

It passed the lonely Mountain bare
and swept above the dragon's lair:
there black and dark lay boulders stark
and flying smoke was in the air.

It left the world and took its flight
over the wide seas of the night.
The moon set sail upon the gale,
and stars were fanned to leaping light.