I want to thank you all for your condolences, as well as for the congratulations on the birth of my niece. I will be spending the week with my mother to help her get through all the many details that come with ending a 49 year partnership with another human being. In addition to mourning, as all of you know who have done it, there is a lot of paperwork, a lot of stuff to untangle, and of course personal effects to deal with.
On Saturday, however, I'm putting her on a plane to meet her new grandbaby. I'll be with her until I send her through security at the airport, and family will pick her up on the other side.
Fire and Deep Water
Today, I am an uncle. My sister gave birth to a baby girl. Mother and child are well.
Also today, my father died.
Also today, my father died.
Trump vs. Chavez
As Venezuela enters its end-game, the news reports seem strangely unable to diagnose its problem. Could it be, for instance, that the country's destruction resulted from electing leaders with the wrong personality? That didn't help, I'm sure, but as this author points out,
Look, I’m as scared of a Trump presidency as any reasonably sane center-right pro-democracy millennial. But Trump is not surrounded by a loony team of Marxist advisors hellbent on destroying the economy for the sake of denying that there is such a thing as a market.In the meantime, I'm still not sure what the final cataclysm will look like, but Venezuelans already are beginning to eat their cats, dogs, pigeons, and zoo animals--those that haven't starved first.
Free Fire Zone
Uncle J and Kurt Schlichter cut loose, on a topic we've just been discussing here.
I mean really, really loose.
I mean really, really loose.
Kim Rhode: One of Us
She may tomorrow become the first woman to win six straight medals in an Olympic sport. Today, she's a spokesman for us.
Yet Rhode, who is funny and personable in conversation, doesn’t resort to typical athlete dodges when talk turns to gun control. “We should have the right to keep and bear arms, to protect ourselves and our family,” she says. “The second amendment was put in there not just so we can go shoot skeet or go shoot trap. It was put in so we could defend our first amendment, the freedom of speech, and also to defend ourselves against our own government.”
It’s a view Rhode plans to pass down her three-year-old son as he grows up. “I hope to have him out there shooting, when he becomes of age,” she says. “I started when I was like 7 or 8 years old, and it was something that was a big deal in my family, to gain that right of passage.”
I Believe I've Heard This Song Before
CENTCOM’s intelligence analysts already are concerned that the DoD IG report will not have as much teeth as the House Republican task force report. These military analysts told The Beast that the head of CENTCOM’s intelligence directorate, Maj. Gen. Steven Grove, and his civilian deputy, Gregory Ryckman, had deleted emails and files from computer systems before the inspector general could examine them.I'm sure the servers won't be "cleaned in a manner designed to prevent complete forensic recovery." I mean, what are the chances of that?
"Not-So-Dark Ages"
The excavation of that Arthurian site at Tintagel reveals luxury goods, National Geographic reports.
Although only a few trenches in undisturbed areas of the site were excavated this summer, they exposed massive rock walls—some more than 3.3 feet (one meter) thick—that are the most substantial structures known from the period. Hundreds of small finds provide more evidence for imported luxury goods transported from the sunny shores of the Eastern Roman Empire to this blustery British outcrop.
Jesus, Outlaw?
The Art of Manliness is doing a series of interesting articles exploring masculinity and Christianity. I didn't plan to post here about it until I read the following paragraph:
That sounds familiar. Given his peripatetic life, I can easily imagine Jesus and the apostles riding down the road on motorcycles.
In fact, during [Jesus's] life critics called him a lestes — a word that meant an insurrectionist, rebel, pirate, bandit. Though the label was often associated with violent thievery, Jesus practiced what anthropologists call “social banditry” — groups of men operating on the margins of society who refuse to submit to the control and value system of the ruling elite, and who fight for the justice, independence, and emancipation of the common people. While the existing power structure considers them criminals, the exploited see these outlaws as their champions.
That sounds familiar. Given his peripatetic life, I can easily imagine Jesus and the apostles riding down the road on motorcycles.
The Only Thing That Keeps Me Hanging On
In these dark and foreboding times ...
A good pairing is Tincup, an American whiskey out of the Rocky Mountains. The flavor is sharp and spicy, like a bourbon and rye blend, and it comes with its own tin cup.
A good pairing is Tincup, an American whiskey out of the Rocky Mountains. The flavor is sharp and spicy, like a bourbon and rye blend, and it comes with its own tin cup.
Olympics Update
Things are still going well.
That was 2012. This year, we're beating the crap out of everyone and capturing an asteroid.
That was 2012. This year, we're beating the crap out of everyone and capturing an asteroid.
Olympic Jousting?
If English Heritage has its way ...
Updated with videos!
Also, this might come in handy soon.
And, I'll move my drink pairing up from the comments: I actually have little idea what jousters drank, so I'll pair it with a drink from Merry Olde England, Samuel Smith's "Oatmeal Stout." With the brewery only founded in 1758, it's unlikely to have been part of a tournament champions celebration, but some horse cavalry might have enjoyed it. Should stand up well for sieges, too.
Update 2: Grim brings us up to speed on jousting beers and suggests a hoppy lager. None actually spring to mind. I'll have to go looking for one.
Also, check out these Shire horses Samuel Smith's uses for deliveries. Beautiful.
Updated with videos!
Also, this might come in handy soon.
And, I'll move my drink pairing up from the comments: I actually have little idea what jousters drank, so I'll pair it with a drink from Merry Olde England, Samuel Smith's "Oatmeal Stout." With the brewery only founded in 1758, it's unlikely to have been part of a tournament champions celebration, but some horse cavalry might have enjoyed it. Should stand up well for sieges, too.
Update 2: Grim brings us up to speed on jousting beers and suggests a hoppy lager. None actually spring to mind. I'll have to go looking for one.
Also, check out these Shire horses Samuel Smith's uses for deliveries. Beautiful.
A Sensible Point from Vox
Dara Lind gets it right:
That would be appropriately symbolic for this year. We aren't really a part of the 2016 election. It's being fought by people who don't understand us, and that's never more obvious than when they fight about us.
Trump caricatures conservatives in the same way some liberals doPerhaps part of the reason that the media and the Clinton people hear "assassination" from what he said isn't their own ignorance or malice, but Trump's own ignorance as a speaker. It's quite possible that even he doesn't know how what he said sounds to us, or what we think about questions of violent crime versus a heritage based in morally proper revolutions.
Every time something like this happens, you can count on at least a few liberal pundits to erupt in shouts of triumph. Aha! they say. That’s the logical conclusion of the position held by “reasonable” conservatives. Donald Trump just made the subtext text!
When Trump called on “Second Amendment people,” people argued that what he said was no different from pro–gun rights tropes like “you can have my guns when you take them from my cold dead hands.”...
The problem with treating Donald Trump as the conservative id, though, is that Trump isn’t a conservative. He’s not saying things he believes because he doesn’t know he’s not supposed to say them; he’s saying things he doesn’t believe because he thinks other people do.
Maybe in some cases, for some people, he’s right. But for other people, he’s wrong. There are plenty of conservatives who’ve thought hard about the implications of their positions and drawn principled lines.
The pro–gun rights groups who’ve pushed for a broader interpretation of the Second Amendment in recent years have done so by filing lawsuits on behalf of people whose guns were illegal where they lived — not by encouraging those people to try to fire on officers if they confiscated their weapons....
But Trump doesn’t know any of this. He’s new to conservatism, and when he tries to appeal to these voters, it shows.
That would be appropriately symbolic for this year. We aren't really a part of the 2016 election. It's being fought by people who don't understand us, and that's never more obvious than when they fight about us.
Revolution Is Not a Crime But A Duty
Let's stipulate that Trump's remarks yesterday about "2nd Amdendment guys" were a dogwhistle to the 2A community. Is it representative of ignorance that the media and the Clinton campaign alike don't understand how the 2nd Amendment community would interpret the remark? Or is it malice, in which they are intentionally forwarding a false and damaging impression about both the 2nd Amendment community and also Donald Trump?
The media is following the Clinton line that this remark by Trump was an "apparent Clinton assassination threat." Possibly that is how it sounds to them because they don't understand the 2nd Amendment community at all. The same community that produces these journalists produces the EEOC workers who can misinterpret the Gadsden flag as having something to do with racism, for example. They really don't seem to get what we're doing here, and so they think that the flag somehow must be a coded signal for white animosity -- rather than a clear and obvious signal that the government had better respect its constitutional limits and stop treading on our traditional freedoms.
Likewise, in decades of hanging around 2nd Amendment folks, going to gun shows, shooting, and so forth, I've never heard anyone argue that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the capacity to assassinate one's political opponents. Such a claim would be obviously false and easy to reject, for one thing. Yet perhaps the press -- and Clinton herself, who hates hunters as well as other kinds of gun owners, and who refuses to admit that the 2nd Amendment protects any constitutional right at all -- really doesn't understand what we're talking about to such a degree that they think this is a plausible reading. There are three hundred million guns in America legally owned by tens of millions of Americans, who are taken together one of the most law abiding communities in the country. It is absurd to think that they are a nest of murderers. If that were true, you'd know it: after all, there are tens of millions of us with 300,000,000 guns. Yet gun violence is at historic lows, and two thirds of it are suicides and almost the whole of the rest conducted by guns that are not lawfully owned.
What the 2nd Amendment people endorse is the idea that the 2nd Amendment protects the capacity for a second American revolution. Now, you might say: "Revolutions are even more violent than assassinations! What kind of people would endorse revolution as a solution to political problems?"
Well, Bernie Sanders talked about it all last year. In fact, "time for a revolution!" is a standard line on the left. So let's not pretend that suggesting a revolution is somehow beyond the pale in American politics.
When we do it, we are thinking of the same people who gave us the Culpepper and Gadsden flags, as well as the Plattsburg flag, as well as the American flag.
These people:
Clinton has openly said that she intends to appoint justices who will restrict first amendment rights, both in terms of Citizens United and in terms of religious liberty and free association. She has made fairly clear her intention to infringe upon 2nd Amendment rights, which she does not even recognize as legitimate rights at all. It is striking that a woman so frequently proven to be willing to say anything at all to get elected cannot even bring herself to say that the 2nd Amendment protects a real right. We regard her as the enemy of our rights for good reason. She, by her own admission at the first Democratic debate, regards both the NRA and the Republican party as her "enemies."
Whether ignorance or malice motivates them, her faction had better learn to hear this message clearly. We have heard them clearly enough, and the long train of abuses grows longer by the day. They have elected to turn the law into a weapon against us, and a shield to protect their own from prosecution for obvious and provable crimes. They cannot now hide behind an appeal to the majesty of the law, not those who have done so much to undermine our faith in its legitimacy. The only question remains just how much longer the train must grow before the American people decide that "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
And that is the most American of questions.
The media is following the Clinton line that this remark by Trump was an "apparent Clinton assassination threat." Possibly that is how it sounds to them because they don't understand the 2nd Amendment community at all. The same community that produces these journalists produces the EEOC workers who can misinterpret the Gadsden flag as having something to do with racism, for example. They really don't seem to get what we're doing here, and so they think that the flag somehow must be a coded signal for white animosity -- rather than a clear and obvious signal that the government had better respect its constitutional limits and stop treading on our traditional freedoms.
Likewise, in decades of hanging around 2nd Amendment folks, going to gun shows, shooting, and so forth, I've never heard anyone argue that the purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to protect the capacity to assassinate one's political opponents. Such a claim would be obviously false and easy to reject, for one thing. Yet perhaps the press -- and Clinton herself, who hates hunters as well as other kinds of gun owners, and who refuses to admit that the 2nd Amendment protects any constitutional right at all -- really doesn't understand what we're talking about to such a degree that they think this is a plausible reading. There are three hundred million guns in America legally owned by tens of millions of Americans, who are taken together one of the most law abiding communities in the country. It is absurd to think that they are a nest of murderers. If that were true, you'd know it: after all, there are tens of millions of us with 300,000,000 guns. Yet gun violence is at historic lows, and two thirds of it are suicides and almost the whole of the rest conducted by guns that are not lawfully owned.
What the 2nd Amendment people endorse is the idea that the 2nd Amendment protects the capacity for a second American revolution. Now, you might say: "Revolutions are even more violent than assassinations! What kind of people would endorse revolution as a solution to political problems?"
Well, Bernie Sanders talked about it all last year. In fact, "time for a revolution!" is a standard line on the left. So let's not pretend that suggesting a revolution is somehow beyond the pale in American politics.
When we do it, we are thinking of the same people who gave us the Culpepper and Gadsden flags, as well as the Plattsburg flag, as well as the American flag.
These people:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.You can't argue against that without arguing against the whole American project. It is obviously legitimate to overthrow the government if it betrays its mission -- indeed, its sole legitimate purpose -- of securing the unalienable rights of the People.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Clinton has openly said that she intends to appoint justices who will restrict first amendment rights, both in terms of Citizens United and in terms of religious liberty and free association. She has made fairly clear her intention to infringe upon 2nd Amendment rights, which she does not even recognize as legitimate rights at all. It is striking that a woman so frequently proven to be willing to say anything at all to get elected cannot even bring herself to say that the 2nd Amendment protects a real right. We regard her as the enemy of our rights for good reason. She, by her own admission at the first Democratic debate, regards both the NRA and the Republican party as her "enemies."
Whether ignorance or malice motivates them, her faction had better learn to hear this message clearly. We have heard them clearly enough, and the long train of abuses grows longer by the day. They have elected to turn the law into a weapon against us, and a shield to protect their own from prosecution for obvious and provable crimes. They cannot now hide behind an appeal to the majesty of the law, not those who have done so much to undermine our faith in its legitimacy. The only question remains just how much longer the train must grow before the American people decide that "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
And that is the most American of questions.
Another Maligned Community
The Motorcycle Profiling Project provides statistics to show that criminality is not actually all that common among "Outlaw motorcycle clubs," in spite of Federal arguments to the contrary.
I understand that the name must be confusing. It's like Outlaw Country music, though. Their ethic is about a spirit of rebellion and a devotion to personal freedom more than it is about actually breaking the law. I suspect that, at worst, most people in both communities are more indifferent to whether they violate the law rather than committed to violating it. Probably this is especially true in matters of marijuana use, which is regrettably common in both communities.
Though I myself have never made use of any illegal drugs, and regard them as generally bad ideas, I can see why many people might take it as improper for the government to involve itself in the question of what relatively harmless substances they ingest. I tend to be more focused on the enumerated liberties and rights, which are in grave enough danger where they are not already -- as especially in the case of the 10th Amendment -- being openly violated by the government. In such an environment, being in some sense an Outlaw is the only way not to lay down your freedom.
I understand that the name must be confusing. It's like Outlaw Country music, though. Their ethic is about a spirit of rebellion and a devotion to personal freedom more than it is about actually breaking the law. I suspect that, at worst, most people in both communities are more indifferent to whether they violate the law rather than committed to violating it. Probably this is especially true in matters of marijuana use, which is regrettably common in both communities.
Though I myself have never made use of any illegal drugs, and regard them as generally bad ideas, I can see why many people might take it as improper for the government to involve itself in the question of what relatively harmless substances they ingest. I tend to be more focused on the enumerated liberties and rights, which are in grave enough danger where they are not already -- as especially in the case of the 10th Amendment -- being openly violated by the government. In such an environment, being in some sense an Outlaw is the only way not to lay down your freedom.
Just Another Russian Information Operation
Wikileaks is now claiming that their source for those DNC emails wasn't Russian hackers, but the recently murdered DNC employee killed in DC.
Well, it might be true.
The thing to remember is, where the Russians are concerned -- and Wikileaks is very much Russian intelligence -- even if it's true, they're telling you for a reason.
Well, it might be true.
The thing to remember is, where the Russians are concerned -- and Wikileaks is very much Russian intelligence -- even if it's true, they're telling you for a reason.
Who Are Your Friends?
NYT Headline: "Do Your Friends Actually Like You?"
Well, that depends on what you mean by "friends." If you mean the people I deal with socially and professionally, some of them do, and a lot of them are just being polite. That seems to be what they mean: "THINK of all the people with whom you interact during the course of a day, week, month and year."
OK, I guess. I imagine a lot of them really don't like me, but aren't ready to tell me so.
But I know some guys I don't see every year, that I don't even talk to every year, but we were together 18 hours a day in Iraq. I'm pretty sure I could go look any of them up tomorrow and we'd start back right where we left off. Certainly it's been that way every time I have ever been able to run into any of them.
Got close friends too, and family. Don't see them every day. I know who I can count on, though, and there's a few of them. Maybe one fewer, soon. That's the other side of this kind of thing. If it's just people you happen to run into every so often, well, they come and they go. The ones who count are people you miss.
Well, that depends on what you mean by "friends." If you mean the people I deal with socially and professionally, some of them do, and a lot of them are just being polite. That seems to be what they mean: "THINK of all the people with whom you interact during the course of a day, week, month and year."
OK, I guess. I imagine a lot of them really don't like me, but aren't ready to tell me so.
But I know some guys I don't see every year, that I don't even talk to every year, but we were together 18 hours a day in Iraq. I'm pretty sure I could go look any of them up tomorrow and we'd start back right where we left off. Certainly it's been that way every time I have ever been able to run into any of them.
Got close friends too, and family. Don't see them every day. I know who I can count on, though, and there's a few of them. Maybe one fewer, soon. That's the other side of this kind of thing. If it's just people you happen to run into every so often, well, they come and they go. The ones who count are people you miss.
Winners? Not Yet
You'll remember the first time they do win, if you raise them this way.
They will, too.
The Clinton campaign responded with a statement, with campaign manager Robby Mook saying: “This is simple — what Trump is saying is dangerous. A person seeking to be President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way.”First of all, that's nonsense as phrased: Clinton herself has been 'suggesting violence' in terms of talking about what she would do with regard to Syria and terrorism. The government is little but an instrument of violence, extracting taxes here and sending people to prison there, deploying a drone strike here and a Combined Joint Task Force there. Talking about how you'd apply the power of the state is most of what you do as a candidate for President. The only other topic Clinton ever discusses is whom she's going to reward with the wealth extracted from the disfavored. Everything else she talks about is suggesting violence at some level of abstraction -- that's what her calls for greatly increased taxes amount to, violence and nothing else.
What this Mook guy really meant to say is that no one running for President should ponder out loud that citizens might take up arms against the state.
It occurs to me that Thomas Jefferson ran for President.
Words versus Deeds
Clinton stories from the last few hours:
* Orlando shooter's father attends Clinton rally, seated right behind her.
* Clinton's reckless handling of national security information in emails leads to execution of American agent in Iran.
* Parents of Benghazi victims sue Clinton for contributing "to the death of both men, as well as defamation and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress."
Trump stories:
* Last ditch GOP effort to kill Trump's candidacy by running an independent candidate who can't even get on all the ballots, but who could cost some swing states.
* Susan Collins announces she will not vote for Trump, citing his "cruel comments."
* Donors for Bush, Christie and Kaisch are turning to Clinton instead of Trump.
* Poll: Clinton has double-digit lead over Trump.
Now, Trump is clearly the anti-establishment candidate left in the race. In a way, the Republican establishment's efforts to destroy him make perfect sense. The Republican establishment feels more secure with the Clinton machine, which is itself a central part of America's political establishment, than with the insurgent voters propelling Trump or Sanders. Clinton is a crony capitalist, and you can get along with her if you're rich and connected and willing to pay (in money or in favors).
That just leaves the rest of us out. We have nothing she needs or wants. And that might be fine, because she has nothing I need or want either. It just can't be fine because of what she will do to the Constitution through the appointment of 'living document' justices, and of what she'll do to American sovereignty through support of deals like the T-TIP and TPP.
* Orlando shooter's father attends Clinton rally, seated right behind her.
* Clinton's reckless handling of national security information in emails leads to execution of American agent in Iran.
* Parents of Benghazi victims sue Clinton for contributing "to the death of both men, as well as defamation and intentional and negligent infliction of emotional distress."
Trump stories:
* Last ditch GOP effort to kill Trump's candidacy by running an independent candidate who can't even get on all the ballots, but who could cost some swing states.
* Susan Collins announces she will not vote for Trump, citing his "cruel comments."
* Donors for Bush, Christie and Kaisch are turning to Clinton instead of Trump.
* Poll: Clinton has double-digit lead over Trump.
Now, Trump is clearly the anti-establishment candidate left in the race. In a way, the Republican establishment's efforts to destroy him make perfect sense. The Republican establishment feels more secure with the Clinton machine, which is itself a central part of America's political establishment, than with the insurgent voters propelling Trump or Sanders. Clinton is a crony capitalist, and you can get along with her if you're rich and connected and willing to pay (in money or in favors).
That just leaves the rest of us out. We have nothing she needs or wants. And that might be fine, because she has nothing I need or want either. It just can't be fine because of what she will do to the Constitution through the appointment of 'living document' justices, and of what she'll do to American sovereignty through support of deals like the T-TIP and TPP.
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