Jesse James

He was a man, who killed many men.

The song's been done a few times.

Well, maybe he wasn't a hero. But wasn't he a man?

Bang, Bang. Isn't That A Pretty Sound?

Embrace Violence – Two simple words, that when together, build the foundation for all that we know. A minute number of people ever stop to think about the circumstances that surround the very freedoms they spend the majority of their lives enjoying. Not the main stream core freedoms that our country was founded on, rather the diminutive pieces of thread that weave together to form the very fabric that holds our great nation together. Each day passing as the last, each day taken for granted with little to no thought about how fortunate they really are for having in their lives, those that embrace violence.

In our world there lives a relativity small group of guardians who not only stand ready to do violence on the behalf of others, but actually wait anxiously for the opportunity. Men that live outside the illusion of safety built upon walls of ignorance and denial that is our peaceful existence in this world. Men who would rather dance with the devil in the valley of the shadow of death than sit at a Starbucks, sipping a $10 dollar coffee while contemplating whether their skinny jeans are adequately squeezing all available testosterone into their systems in hope of fulfilling their latest desire of obtaining a beard.

For this chosen group, violence is the answer.

These are my people. Does that make me a bad man, or a good man? Or just a man? Maybe, as Edward Abbey said, that's honor enough.

The Smell of Victory

They're smelling it.

And they just don't understand what is going to happen if they follow through.

Orlando & LA

I don't have much to say about this, but somehow I've been talking about it most of the day. Lone Wolf terrorists have two quite distinct profiles. Most of them are white supremacists with criminal histories that built ties to criminal organizations like the Aryan Brotherhood. I'll bet the LA case turns out that way. The rest are Islamic supremacists with ties -- sometimes merely sympathies -- with terrorists. The Orlando shooter was clearly one of these.

These are solvable problems, but only if we square up on what we're dealing with. It's two separate, similar, supremacist problems. Neither "all gun owners" nor "all Muslims" nor "all white people" are the problem. It's a narrow, easily targeted selection of folks who cause almost all of these issues.

C'mon Brexit

These are our brothers overseas. Of course, I was on the side of Scotland separating from Britain too. The bigger governments are always worse, but you have to balance that against the danger of invasion from abroad. Right now, Europe couldn't invade Vanderbilt. Small is the way to go.

Rolling Stone: Democrats Will Learn All The Wrong Lessons from Sanders

They have no choice, because they never understood him to start with.

Nobody saw his campaign as an honest effort to restore power to voters, because nobody in the capital even knows what that is. In the rules of palace intrigue, Sanders only made sense as a kind of self-centered huckster who made a failed play for power... [T]he theme of this election year was widespread anger toward both parties, and both the Trump craziness and the near-miss with Sanders should have served as a warning. "The Democrats should be worried they're next," he says.

But they're not worried. Behind the palace walls, nobody ever is.

Petraeus to Launch Gun Control Group

Well, of course. Nobody's more intense about gun control than the Armed Forces.

Veterans Coalition for Common Sense to encourage elected leaders to "do more to prevent gun tragedies." The group will feature veterans from every branch of the military who are urging lawmakers to toughen gun laws, the organization said in a news release.

This group won't accomplish more than giving false narratives to the media for propaganda use. Nevertheless, that's still harmful. Sort of like "only" revealing classified information to your mistress. It's not as bad as putting it on an easily-hacked private server with no proper encryption protocols. But your country won't thank you for it, all the same.

Thunderbolt Iron, Redux

King Tut isn't alone. Here's some American thunderbolt iron.

Ranger UP Addresses Male Body Image

Archaeology Confirms Viking Saga

Archaeologists working in Trondheim in Norway are amazed by the discovery of a human skeleton in the bottom of an abandoned castle well. The skeleton provides evidence that confirms dramatic historical events mentioned in the Sagas....

In 1197 King Sverre Sigurdsson and his Birkebeiner-mercenaries were attacked and defeated in his castle stronghold, Sverresborg, by his rivals, the Baglers. According to the Saga, the Baglers burned down buildings and destroyed the castle’s fresh water supply by throwing one of King Sverre’s dead men into the well, and then filling it with stones.

Now, following a trial excavation in the well, archaeologists can confirm this dramatic story. Archaeologists managed to retrieve part of the skeleton they found in the well in 2014. A fragment of bone produced a radiocarbon date that confirmed that the individual lived and died at the end of the 12th century, the same time as the incident described in the Saga.

Reducing Sexual Assaults: Self Defense Works Best

In a study surprising only in that it comes from Canada, researchers found that women taught to defend themselves suffer fewer sexual assaults.

The four-year study tracked nearly 900 women at three Canadian universities, randomly selecting half to take the 12-hour “resistance” program, and compared them to a second group who received only brochures, similar to those available at a health clinic. One year later, the incidence of reported rape among women who took the program was 5.2 per cent, compared to 9.8 per cent in the control group; the gap in incidents of attempted rape was even wider.

The discomfiting part: Potential victims are still shouldering the burden for their own safety.

I don't see why that should be "discomfiting." I've spent a great deal of my life learning to defend myself, my family, and those around me. I make it a point to always be armed, though often only with a knife, to help ensure that I am always capable of rendering an effective defense. I regard it as a source of pride that I am strong and capable in these areas, and that those I love are safer with me around.

I would regard it as shameful to depend entirely on others for my defense. I would regard it as slavish to accept that my only proper defense was to trust that others wouldn't hurt me.

Far from being discomfited by the thought that I should have a hand in my own defense, I think that taking charge of your own defense is virtuous and ennobling. If I had a daughter, I would hope that I could teach her to do the same.

National Reconnaissance Office Patches are Awesome

Take a look at these mythic beauties.

Not Some Fairytale

Picture this. A Muslim leader reaches out to a group of Christians and invites them to his country. The Christians happily accept the invitation, while the Muslim leader prepares his people for their arrival. This is the first time the two communities have met in an official delegation. Matters of state, politics and religion are the topics of discussion. The two groups see eye-to-eye on most issues, but also agree to disagree on theological issues. If one phrase can best describe their meeting, it is “mutual respect”.

At the end of their talks, the Christians tell the Muslims, “It is time for us to pray”. The problem for the Christians is that there is no church nearby to worship. Instead of letting the Christians pray on the dirty street, the Muslim leader tells the Christians, “You are followers of the one true God, so please come pray inside my mosque. We are all brothers in humanity.” The Christians agree to use the “Islamic space” as their own. A bridge between these religious communities is made in the name of peace and goodwill.

This story is not some fairytale. It is a historical fact (I did, however, make-up quotes based on how the interaction might have played out). The Muslim leader of the story is Prophet Muhammad and the Christians are from Najran, or modern-day Yemen. The event happened in Medina in 631 AD. This moment in time represents one of the first examples of Muslim-Christian dialogue, but more importantly, one of the first acts of religious pluralism in Islamic history.

Now fast forward to 2016 in Damascus, Syria. The city – and much of the Middle East - has plunged into darkness. Pastor Edward Awabdeh leads a prayer in a Church despite threats on his life by the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) militant group. Pastor Awabdeh maintains the Christian faith, although many of his religion have fled a country which is now ranked the fifth most dangerous country in the world to be a Christian.

The militant group regularly persecutes religious minorities in the large swathes of Syrian territory it has taken, and its ultimate aim is to destroy all traces of Christianity in the Middle East.

But to put it bluntly, the daily abductions, murders, beheadings and destruction perpetrated by IS fanatics on the vulnerable Christians of the Middle East directly contradict Prophet Muhammad’s vision of an Islamic state.

It doesn't fix everything wrong with Islam's vision of how it relates to Christianity, but this understanding would mark a significant change for the better.

Law and Order

I've written a number of times about my thoughts on the rule of law. Where ordinary people are concerned, the law ought to be a tool for creating a peaceful and harmonious order. That means it should be well considered, and it should be enforced if it has to be. On the other hand, enforcing the law is not an end in itself. Officers of the law should be focused on the peace and harmony, rather than on ensuring that every documented violation of the law is paid for in court.

However, I have also written, I think that those entrusted with the power to enforce the law should be held to the law exactly. The extra power over the lives of others that they are granted should be matched with a stricter standard of personal adherence to the rules they enforce.

Instead one often sees the opposite. No one drives faster than police do, and not just when responding to a call. No one parks illegally more cheerfully than the government vehicle whose driver assumes there is no danger of a ticket. No one abuses the power of their office more readily than an ally of President Obama's, whether her name is Lois Lerner or Hillary Clinton.

It would be one thing to excuse a momentary lapse of judgment from a career official with an otherwise stellar record. It is another when one is excusing a pattern of behavior that was intentional, illegal, and immoral.

In the case of Clinton, as her history proves, there is always another abuse.

My Favorite Part About This is the "Tradition" Argument

The 9th Circuit says there's no Constitutional right to carry a concealed weapon.

OK. Open carry is fine with me.

But my favorite part is the argument:

“The historical materials bearing on the adoption of the Second and Fourteenth Amendments are remarkably consistent,” wrote Judge William Fletcher, going back to 16th century English law to find instances of restrictions on concealed weapons.

Mrs. Clinton made this argument during her recent failure to identify a right to keep and bear arms in the Constitution. She also spoke of "our history from the very beginning of the republic" in terms of identifying restrictions on the carrying of firearms. Nathan Deal said something similar in his veto of campus carry this year.

OK. We had a tradition about what constituted "marriage" too. It lasted from about a thousand years ago until last summer. You remember what you had to say about "tradition" as an argument then?

Not that I'm unwilling to accept such arguments now. I just would like an agreement that we'll accept them across the board.

Hey Boss, You Know You're An Idiot?

Yeah, I know.

I could almost bend my thumb normally today, although it's still bruised as hell, so of course I decided to finish laying in this new gate. Naturally that involved chainsawing the posts, pouring the concrete, stretching the wire, hooking it up to the posts, and hammering the staples.

Cuts off a section of the property that was otherwise enclosed, so as to effectively create a new pasture. Avalon was impressed with her new range, as it was full of grass we've been letting grow with this project in mind.

Also my apple trees. Hopefully her little herd won't steal too much, but as little rain as we've had this year I wasn't going to get much out of them anyway.

Now, excuse me if I have a drink. My hand kind of hurts. Because I'm an idiot.

Congress Must Move to Appoint a Special Prosecutor

The President of the United States just endorsed a woman under investigation by the FBI for corruption and violating national security law. It was bad enough when the prosecutorial decision was going to be made by an office that had donated $75,000 her campaign this year.

Nothing could make clearer that the legitimacy of the law is being thrust aside for political reasons. Nothing could more clearly underline the need for a special prosecutor in this case.

Aware

A neuro-scientist proposes a partial theory of consciousness. It doesn't get at the Hard Problem, but it does offer a suggestion for how consciousness might have come to be, and a predictive model for what sorts of other animals might have it.

The Twelfth of Never

When the State Department was asked when they would turn over to the public Clinton's emails related to her negotiation of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, they actually said "November 31st."

D29 points out that this is exactly equivalent to 'the Twelfth of Never,' or at any rate not until after it's of any use to you.

Want to read her aides' emails? How does 75 years from now sound?

Poor Whites Are The Future of Poor Blacks

For now the Clinton campaign is sticking to the rhetorically strong but intellectually weak argument that 'Make America Great Again' means something like 'Restore Racism as a Guiding Principle.' Sooner or later, however, the machine Democrats backing Clinton over Sanders are going to have to grapple with a reality they are refusing to accept. The Washington Post touches the point without recognizing it.

Gallup asks people to rate their current lives on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 is the worst possible life they could be living and 10 is the best. Crucially, they also ask people to imagine what their lives will look like five years in the future.

Among the poor, whites are the demographic group least likely to imagine a better future for themselves, Graham found. Poor Hispanics were about 30 percent more likely to imagine a better future than poor whites. The difference for poor blacks was even larger: They were nearly three times as likely to imagine a better future than poor whites.

The difference in optimism between poor blacks and poor whites is nearly as big as the difference between the poor and the middle class overall: "The average score of poor blacks is large enough to eliminate the difference in optimism about the future between being poor and being middle class (e.g. removing the large negative effect of poverty)," Graham found....

The past 30 or 40 years have seen striking economic and health gains for non-white families -- in part, this is a result of the rolling back of discriminatory policies that kept minorities locked out of middle-class life. But working-class whites may look back and see no similar pattern of gains, in part because they weren't as broadly discriminated against in the first place.

Part of the optimism gap is indeed because of "a shrinking pie of good jobs for low-skill/blue collar workers," Graham said in an email. "Whites used to have real advantages (some via discrimination) that they no longer have ... they are looking at downward mobility or threats of it, while poor blacks and Hispanics are comparing themselves to parents who were worse off than they."

Here's the problem the Post doesn't see. If you look at discrimination in the workplace '30 or 40 years ago' -- that is, reaching all the way back to the mid-70s -- you can see that almost all of the good for poor minorities to be had from ending workplace discrimination has been had. Forty years ago the blue-collar economy was strong enough that it was willing to pay a premium for its racism. Today, it's quite common here in Georgia for me to see 'help wanted' signs printed only in Spanish. Corporations have learned to compete with each other through globalization, importing foreign workers, and yes, through hiring American minorities who live in poorer neighborhoods (and who thus have lower income requirements, and can take lower wages).

This 'ending of racism' is something corporations have congratulated themselves about quite loudly, preferring to see it as a kind of personal enlightenment. Some of it was that: Coca-Cola markets its role in making Atlanta 'the City too Busy to Hate' back in the Civil Rights era, and they deserve the credit. But much of what has happened since the mid-70s has been done not for moral reasons but because the end of corporate racism meant the opening of whole new fields of action for depressing blue-collar wages.

For now it looks like poor blacks and poor Latinos are on the way up, but the truth is that workers of their class are on the way down. It used to be a worker could raise a family. Then it was true that a married couple could raise families if they both worked. Then it was true that probably only one of them could find work, so it was better if it was the mother raising the kids alone -- then she could at least draw welfare. Now it's lucky, in much of what used to be blue-collar American communities, if either of them can find work.

What all that means is that the despair in poor white communities today is the despair of poor black, Latino, and Asian communities tomorrow. For now it looks rosy only because the last 40 years have been a wealth transfer from poor whites to poor minorities. But the game is grinding to a close: poor whites don't have much left to lose. Over time, the same forces that have been spiritually crushing the poor white community will destroy the hopes of other American poor as well.

This is something that Trump and Sanders both seem to grasp, although they have very different plans for approaching it. Maybe neither plan was much good, or was much of a plan, but they were both at least aware of the problem. The Clinton camp denies that the problem exists.

And no wonder. As proven by her actions while Secretary of State with regard to donations to her foundation, the Clinton camp is government for the highest bidder. The highest bidder can be Russian as readily as American. She is the favorite of the Davos crowd, not just the candidate of Wall Street. She personally negotiated the TPP that she now pretends to oppose, just as her husband is the #1 name associated with NAFTA.

For now, the Democratic machine's racially coded language is masking this reality. The coming pain is the dashing of the rising hopes of American minorities. They will be leveled with poor white Americans in a way they didn't expect: by seeing their hopes and dreams equally diminished.

Clinton gave a speech about the inequality between rich and poor the other day, while wearing a twelve-thousand dollar jacket.

This last week, I've read tons about how big a racist Donald Trump is. Maybe he is. But he's not the one profiting from racism. These racially coded appeals are helping a band of thieves swipe an election, so they can sell the power of their office to the highest bidders.