Flop Top Beer
The DUI rules have tightened a very great deal since this song was recorded. These days you'd go to jail for a long time just for doing a hundred, if they caught you. If they did.
I understand Ireland has repealed DUI laws for the countryside, and only enforces them in the city. They decided it was better, and less of a risk to everyone overall, to let country people drink in pubs together than to make them drink alone at home. Probably less of a risk to let them drive a hundred on country backroads, too, than to chase them down.
Georgia Legislature Update
Since the unceremonious death of any hope for new gun-control bills this year, after the Speaker of the House flatly said he wouldn't schedule any such votes, talk has turned to other things. To a surprising degree, it's turned to marijuana. I have no real opinion on marijuana, just an unreasoned sentiment against it. Still, the pot people have picked their bills very carefully, and have managed to put together a list of cases that are controversial even for people whose instinct is that dope is bad. They all turn on medicinal uses, especially a use of cannabis oil on children with skin diseases or burns. Carefully chosen wedges!
Another issue is the one we talked about when the session opened, which is religious liberty. I note with deep amusement the irony of Al Jazeera's coverage of this question. It's good to know that the folks in Qatar are deeply concerned about Georgia passing 'anti-gay' legislation.
It's amazing how far this has gone in a year. At this point we aren't even talking about a recognition that civilization would simply cease to exist without heterosexual relationships, nor that loving marriage between the parents is the objectively best thing for the children of such unions. At this point, what we're talking about is that we might suffer an economic boycott if we don't force everyone to participate in the celebration. What is the loss of liberty beside the loss of profit?
What was this country for again? It seems like someone wrote something down, way back when, that had to do with the whole reason governments were instituted among men. Maybe it was profit. I forget.
Another issue is the one we talked about when the session opened, which is religious liberty. I note with deep amusement the irony of Al Jazeera's coverage of this question. It's good to know that the folks in Qatar are deeply concerned about Georgia passing 'anti-gay' legislation.
The coalition’s purpose: “to oppose discrimination of any kind,” said Chance, now a spokesman for the group. “In fact, the first thing you think of when you think of the South is racial discrimination."Is that right? Maybe you should consider moving to a place with better mental associations for you. Qatar, say.
It's amazing how far this has gone in a year. At this point we aren't even talking about a recognition that civilization would simply cease to exist without heterosexual relationships, nor that loving marriage between the parents is the objectively best thing for the children of such unions. At this point, what we're talking about is that we might suffer an economic boycott if we don't force everyone to participate in the celebration. What is the loss of liberty beside the loss of profit?
What was this country for again? It seems like someone wrote something down, way back when, that had to do with the whole reason governments were instituted among men. Maybe it was profit. I forget.
The Candidate of Muscling You Along
An interesting observation from The Intercept: in terms of union nominations, Hillary Clinton wins the union's nomination whenever the leadership of the union decides whom to nominate. If the membership decides, the endorsement goes to Sanders.
I have noticed that seems to apply to left-wing political action organizations like MoveON, too. They set a high bar for endorsement, saying that they'd only endorse a candidate if a three-quarters supermajority sided one of the candidates. Sanders won. Likewise with Howard Dean's PAC, which put the matter to a vote and got a vast supermajority for Sanders.
Even members of the old Clinton administration are starting to break away: yesterday, Robert Reich endorsed Sanders.
For now, before anybody has voted (and before the FBI has made its impact known), Clinton has a narrowing national lead. She's hoping that superdelegates, union leaders, and other power players will pull everyone into line.
Maybe not.
I have noticed that seems to apply to left-wing political action organizations like MoveON, too. They set a high bar for endorsement, saying that they'd only endorse a candidate if a three-quarters supermajority sided one of the candidates. Sanders won. Likewise with Howard Dean's PAC, which put the matter to a vote and got a vast supermajority for Sanders.
Even members of the old Clinton administration are starting to break away: yesterday, Robert Reich endorsed Sanders.
For now, before anybody has voted (and before the FBI has made its impact known), Clinton has a narrowing national lead. She's hoping that superdelegates, union leaders, and other power players will pull everyone into line.
Maybe not.
Range 15 Red Band Trailer
What do you get when a bunch of Iraq and Afghanistan vets get together to make a movie, and successfully raise a ton of money? Apparently you get a zombie movie starring a bunch of Medal of Honor recipients, co-starring a bunch of former Rangers and veterans including at least one SEAL -- plus William Shatner and Danny Trejo.
Are We Going to War?
Mitch McConnell appears poised to vote the President powers unlimited in time or space to pursue ISIS. He apparently put this together without telling anyone, even his deputy, and has advanced it using a Senate rule that allows him to bring it to a vote at any time rather than at a time scheduled on the calendar.
Oddly, the Democratic Party are the ones balking at this vast transfer of authority to the President. Senator Murphy of Connecticut described it thus: “It is essentially a declaration of international martial law, a sweeping transfer of military power to the president that will allow him or her to send U.S. troops almost anywhere in the world, for almost any reason, with absolutely no limitations.”
Plausibly much of the world has descended into a situation in which 'martial law' is the only law left, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. None of those three areas are likely to improve soon without major US involvement. On the other hand, this is a big ask to come out of nowhere with no national debate. President Obama has performed very badly as Commander in Chief, but he has now less than a year in office. We don't have any idea to whom we are delegating this authority. This may not be the time. Certainly it's worth thinking about whether or not a largely-unlimited transfer of authority is the right approach.
Oddly, the Democratic Party are the ones balking at this vast transfer of authority to the President. Senator Murphy of Connecticut described it thus: “It is essentially a declaration of international martial law, a sweeping transfer of military power to the president that will allow him or her to send U.S. troops almost anywhere in the world, for almost any reason, with absolutely no limitations.”
Plausibly much of the world has descended into a situation in which 'martial law' is the only law left, especially in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. None of those three areas are likely to improve soon without major US involvement. On the other hand, this is a big ask to come out of nowhere with no national debate. President Obama has performed very badly as Commander in Chief, but he has now less than a year in office. We don't have any idea to whom we are delegating this authority. This may not be the time. Certainly it's worth thinking about whether or not a largely-unlimited transfer of authority is the right approach.
Is There a Hippocratic Specialist in the House?
Contrary to what I have believed for a couple of decades, "First, do no harm" is not in the Hippocratic Oath, although there is a promise that, "With regard to healing the sick, ... I will take care that
they suffer no hurt or damage."
At least, the promise was in the original. It's interesting how the ancient Greek oath has changed in its modern form.
At least, the promise was in the original. It's interesting how the ancient Greek oath has changed in its modern form.
A 'Judgmental Churchgoer' Talks Bikers
Under the heading of honest soul-searching, an unlikely friendship prompts this article:
UPDATE: By the way, in the Waco case, the DA finally gave in and agreed to turn over the evidence against one biker without requiring a mandatory oath from the defense attorney that he wouldn't talk to the press about it. It looks like they managed to get a lot of the other attorneys to sign, and the agreement with the one attorney just prevented a court from ruling that the DA's practice was illegal.
Fair Disclosure: I'm not part of the biker culture. In actuality, I'm a Middle American, fairly conservative, church girl. And I'll be the first to admit, I'm pretty darn judgmental. Always have been.It's on the misuse of the Patriot act to target bikers under Obama appointee Janet Napolitano, following similar abuses during her term as governor of Arizona.
Yes, I know it's wrong. And yes, I'm working on it. Really I am. Feel free to check-in later for a progress update.
But I can assure you, I don't need a twelve-step recovery program. I'm already enrolled in the unofficial Sonny Barger, "Get-Over-Yourself-Candy-You're-Not-Better-Than-Anyone-Else," one step program.
How did that happen? Despite our vast differences, I've been close friends with Sonny for over three decades. And if there's one thing I know for sure -- he's a man of integrity.
UPDATE: By the way, in the Waco case, the DA finally gave in and agreed to turn over the evidence against one biker without requiring a mandatory oath from the defense attorney that he wouldn't talk to the press about it. It looks like they managed to get a lot of the other attorneys to sign, and the agreement with the one attorney just prevented a court from ruling that the DA's practice was illegal.
It's Good To See The Regulations Catching Up
The Department of Defense is set to release new security rules later this week, making it clear that consequences for violations don’t apply equally to everyone, sources say. The revisions will make explicit what has until recently been an informal system that occasionally treated powerful people the same as peons, and, more rarely, sometimes failed to bring the wrath of God down on regular people acting out of conscience.
"The Dark History of Liberal Reform"
A review of a new book by Thomas C. Leonard, Illiberal Reformers: Race, Eugenics & American Economics in the Progressive Era. It is not about current politics, and Leonard is apparently a progressive himself. It is about an honest look at the history of the movement.
In a 1915 unsigned editorial at this magazine [The New Republic], the editors ridiculed the Bill of Rights as a joke. “They insist upon invoking abstract principles, instead of trying to determine for concrete cases whether social control should supersede individual initiative…how can we discuss that seriously?” The doctrine of natural rights will “prevent us from imposing a social ideal.”...That sounds like an interesting book. Honest soul-searching is rare in any age. The author of the review states that it is very difficult to 'suss out' any lessons from the history, which leaves 'no good guy left standing.' I'm not sure there wasn't one -- the lone dissenter on the Supreme Court -- but it sounds like a book worth reading to see.
“The progressive goal was to improve the electorate,” Leonard writes, “not necessarily to expand it.” Jim Crow laws suppressed turnout in the South, but it fell in the North as well. New York state’s participation went from 88 percent in 1900 to 55 percent in 1920.
It’s impossible to understand early twentieth-century progressives without eugenics. Even worker-friendly reforms like the minimum wage were part of a racial hygiene agenda. The progressives believed male Anglo-Saxons were the most productive workers, but immigrants and women were willing to accept lower wages and displaced white men...
A legal minimum wage, applied to immigrants and those already working in America, ensured that only the productive workers were employed. The economically unproductive, those whose labor was worth less than the legal minimum, would be denied entry, or, if already employed, would be idled. For economic reformers who regarded inferior workers as a threat, the minimum wage provided an invaluable service. It identified inferior workers by idling them. So identified, they could be dealt with. The unemployable would be removed to institutions, or to celibate labor colonies. The inferior immigrant would be removed back to the old country or to retirement. The woman would be removed to the home, where she could meet her obligations to family and race.If Leonard didn’t have the quotes from prominent progressives to back up his claims, this would read like right-wing paranoia: The state’s most innocuous protections reframed as malevolent and ungodly social engineering. But his citations are genuine.
...
To bring right-wing fears full circle, the progressive Supreme Court of 1927 (including Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis) ruled 8-1 in Buck v. Bell that forced sterilization was constitutional. Holmes wrote that, “It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.”
Father Gabriel Tooma
Preserving the Christian legacy by disguising it.
What he is doing, he says, is even more important to the Christian minority's fate in northern Iraq: He is rounding up ancient manuscripts and relics and hiding them in secure locations around Kurdistan, hoping to save them from the iconoclastic fury of the terror insurgency.Not forgotten from the mind of God. Nevertheless, it is good work that he is doing.
"If Daesh burns down a church we can rebuild it, but the manuscripts are our history. They trace back our roots, they are part of our civilization," he said, using the Arabic acronym for the group. "If they get destroyed, then we are lost, and our culture will be forgotten."
The High Water Mark
Here is a sixteen-year-old German girl who has the courage to tell the world, and her government, what she thinks about the migrant policy. Specifically, she is terrified.
Listening to it shortly after reading Mark Steyn's piece (hat tip D29), I have to wonder if she will be the last generation of German girls who feel free to speak in public on this subject.
Listening to it shortly after reading Mark Steyn's piece (hat tip D29), I have to wonder if she will be the last generation of German girls who feel free to speak in public on this subject.
The German Chancellor cut to the chase and imported in twelve months 1.1 million Muslim "refugees". That doesn't sound an awful lot out of 80 million Germans, but, in fact, the 1.1 million Muslim are overwhelmingly (80 per cent plus) fit, virile, young men. Germany has fewer than ten million people in the same population cohort, among whom Muslims are already over-represented: the median age of Germans as a whole is 46, the median age of German Muslims is 34. But let's keep the numbers simple, and assume that of those ten million young Germans half of them are ethnic German males. Frau Merkel is still planning to bring in another million "refugees" this year. So by the end of 2016 she will have imported a population equivalent to 40 per cent of Germany's existing young male cohort.This girl may live to see a very different Germany than the one that made her believe that she could express her views about the men who frighten her for the world to see. One wonders what that Germany will do to her.
Common Ground: Sources
We spend a lot of time in the Hall arguing with each other, and that's good. I've learned a lot that way and enjoyed the back and forth. However, occasionally I get into an argument where, by the end of it, I feel like I understand my interlocutor less than when I started.
So, for a few posts, I'd like to focus on finding and establishing some common ground. For this first one, I'd like to talk about the sources of our beliefs. I assume everyone has been influenced by their experiences, but those are not easily shared. Hence, I'd like to focus on books, essays, articles, movies, songs, anything we can link to or directly share in some way.
For me, John Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government has been influential, and the basic ideas of natural rights and social contract are very appealing to me. Embarrassingly, I have to admit I've never read the whole thing, only summaries and commentaries. However, it's not terribly long, so I've made reading it one of my goals for the spring. Wikipedia has a decent treatment, I think.
Another important influence has been Frederic Bastiat's The Law. It's a short read, and the bumper sticker summary might be something like "All Government Is Violence: Vote for Less." ("Vote for the minimum necessary" would be more accurate, but that's getting too long to fit on a bumper sticker readable by anyone but the worst tailgater.)
Finally, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which I read a couple of decades ago and should read again. Two much more recent books that have influenced me are Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States (summarized here on Wikipedia) and Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.
Yeah, it's mostly old stuff. I am an ex-Progressive; there came a point now about 15-20 years ago where I decided I was no longer a Progressive, but didn't know what I was. (I still haven't quite worked that out.) I did admire the Declaration of Independence, so I started with the Revolutionary period and started reading. Those ideas still make the most sense to me.
What have been some important sources of your political beliefs?
So, for a few posts, I'd like to focus on finding and establishing some common ground. For this first one, I'd like to talk about the sources of our beliefs. I assume everyone has been influenced by their experiences, but those are not easily shared. Hence, I'd like to focus on books, essays, articles, movies, songs, anything we can link to or directly share in some way.
For me, John Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government has been influential, and the basic ideas of natural rights and social contract are very appealing to me. Embarrassingly, I have to admit I've never read the whole thing, only summaries and commentaries. However, it's not terribly long, so I've made reading it one of my goals for the spring. Wikipedia has a decent treatment, I think.
Another important influence has been Frederic Bastiat's The Law. It's a short read, and the bumper sticker summary might be something like "All Government Is Violence: Vote for Less." ("Vote for the minimum necessary" would be more accurate, but that's getting too long to fit on a bumper sticker readable by anyone but the worst tailgater.)
Finally, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, which I read a couple of decades ago and should read again. Two much more recent books that have influenced me are Milton Friedman and Anna Jacobson Schwartz's A Monetary History of the United States (summarized here on Wikipedia) and Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.
Yeah, it's mostly old stuff. I am an ex-Progressive; there came a point now about 15-20 years ago where I decided I was no longer a Progressive, but didn't know what I was. (I still haven't quite worked that out.) I did admire the Declaration of Independence, so I started with the Revolutionary period and started reading. Those ideas still make the most sense to me.
What have been some important sources of your political beliefs?
The perils of pot
It has been known to cause just a trace of paranoia. The dispatcher kept a straight face.
The late unpleasantness
My sister put this together, so all the references to relatives are the same for me:
These are my great-great grandfather (from my mother's Yankee side of the family), Asa Gates White, born 1817, and his third wife, a spinster schoolteacher named Martha Bush Keyes, born 1826. The Keyes and White families were friends. Like Asa, Martha was born in Morgan County, Ohio, and later moved to Wabaunsee, Kansas. Wabaunsee was founded by Congregationalist abolitionists from the East just after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854. Its schools, where Martha taught, are noteworthy for having always been integrated, 100 years before Brown vs. Board of Education. Later, Asa and Martha moved to San Diego, while Asa's children stayed in Kansas.
My grandfather, Harlow Ferguson, was Asa Gates White's grandson. In 1891, when Harlow was six years old, he and his older sister Bernice were orphaned in Kansas, and their grandfather Asa died a month later in San Diego. Asa's widow Martha was left responsible for the orphans' care, but whether because she barely knew them or because she lived at such a daunting distance, she did not send for them to California. Instead, Harlow was sent to live with a schoolteacher in Wabaunsee, presumably a family friend of Martha. In later years he hired out to a number of different families as a farmhand. He never again saw his sister Bernice or left Kansas. Bernice, though a protestant, was sent to a Catholic orphanage to live; we have no further news of her.
The White family traces its origins back to Elder John White, a Puritan and one of the founders of Cambridge, Mass. Asa Gates White served the Union Army in Company K, 6th Iowa Cavalry, from 1862-1865. My father's family, on the other hand, the Kilpatricks, were completely Southern, having emigrated to Virginia in the 18th century from Ulster, and then spread through the South along with the cotton culture. All able adult Kilpatrick males (too many to list, but including two great-grandfathers) fought for the Confederacy. Only when both my parents ended up in graduate school in 1944 at Berkeley did the Northern family join with the Southern. Eighty years before, their ancestors had been fighting each other, sometimes in the same battle, opposite sides.
These are my great-great grandfather (from my mother's Yankee side of the family), Asa Gates White, born 1817, and his third wife, a spinster schoolteacher named Martha Bush Keyes, born 1826. The Keyes and White families were friends. Like Asa, Martha was born in Morgan County, Ohio, and later moved to Wabaunsee, Kansas. Wabaunsee was founded by Congregationalist abolitionists from the East just after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854. Its schools, where Martha taught, are noteworthy for having always been integrated, 100 years before Brown vs. Board of Education. Later, Asa and Martha moved to San Diego, while Asa's children stayed in Kansas.
My grandfather, Harlow Ferguson, was Asa Gates White's grandson. In 1891, when Harlow was six years old, he and his older sister Bernice were orphaned in Kansas, and their grandfather Asa died a month later in San Diego. Asa's widow Martha was left responsible for the orphans' care, but whether because she barely knew them or because she lived at such a daunting distance, she did not send for them to California. Instead, Harlow was sent to live with a schoolteacher in Wabaunsee, presumably a family friend of Martha. In later years he hired out to a number of different families as a farmhand. He never again saw his sister Bernice or left Kansas. Bernice, though a protestant, was sent to a Catholic orphanage to live; we have no further news of her.
The White family traces its origins back to Elder John White, a Puritan and one of the founders of Cambridge, Mass. Asa Gates White served the Union Army in Company K, 6th Iowa Cavalry, from 1862-1865. My father's family, on the other hand, the Kilpatricks, were completely Southern, having emigrated to Virginia in the 18th century from Ulster, and then spread through the South along with the cotton culture. All able adult Kilpatrick males (too many to list, but including two great-grandfathers) fought for the Confederacy. Only when both my parents ended up in graduate school in 1944 at Berkeley did the Northern family join with the Southern. Eighty years before, their ancestors had been fighting each other, sometimes in the same battle, opposite sides.
Maybe Not
The Marine Corps Times suggests that vets should pursue 'more secure' gun laws.
Maybe. Whose security? What is being secured? What is being secured? Liberty, or something else?
Maybe. Whose security? What is being secured? What is being secured? Liberty, or something else?
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