I Doubt the Quality of This Advice

When the New York Times is willing to publish an op-ed partially entitled, "Save the Republican Party," you can guess what the second part of the headline is.

Editorial Understatement Award

The IBT conveys a judgment:

"ISIS has a poor record when it comes to women's rights, according to a recent Human Rights Watch report."

Nessie

It's unclear whether the Loch Ness Monster still exists, but once upon a time it did. Scotland is finally devoting some resources to researching its native sea monster, some fifty years after its discovery.

The Perfect Story for the Hall

Combining several recent themes, goose hunters in Iceland recovered a 9th century Viking sword.

We can all take the rest of the day off.

Diversity is Good, Right?

War History: "The American WWII Ace Who Shot Down 7 German, 1 Italian, 1 Japanese, And 1 American Plane!"

What I love about the story is that, instead of courtmartialing him and stripping him of flight status, they just put an American flag kill mark on his plane next to all the others.

Vox on 'the Clinton rules' that cause the media to treat Hillary Clinton so unfairly:

[T]he more power a person wants in our republic, the more voters should know about her or him. But it's also an essential frame for thinking about the long-toxic relationship between the Clintons and the media, why the coverage of Hillary Clinton differs from coverage of other candidates for the presidency, and whether that difference encourages distortions that will ultimately affect the presidential race.

RCP, on the media having a rare interaction with Clinton:

Clinton, under pressure for not holding a press conference for nearly 280 days, was peppered with questions like, "How was your Labor Day weekend?" Another question: "Are you ready?"

"Do you have a Labor Day message?" one reporter asked.

"I do, you'll hear it," Clinton answered. "I definitely, I definitely do. If you want more happy Labor Days, you know who to vote for."

"Thanks, I'll come back later," Clinton said as she exited the cabin that holds the press.

Later, you know, like maybe in mid-November.

The Alt-Right at Chicago Boyz

They have a post wrestling with the term, and what they think the evidence behind the movement looks like.

There is a predictably long comments section, featuring some names you'll recognize.

G20 in Hangzhou

I spent a lot of time in Hangzhou around the turn of the century. This report from the Guardian sounds perfectly plausible to me. China of course has no real property rights, and if they want to show up and bulldoze your building to expand a road (or otherwise for 'the common good'), well, you're just out of luck. You can live in the rubble until you find something better, maybe. So, yes, I'm completely prepared to believe that the Communist Party forced a third of the city's residents to leave for the week.

The article's pictures don't show the pretty parts of Hangzhou, though, just the post-Commie industrial architecture. Hangzhou was a capital during the Southern Song dyansty, and is full of temples and statuary around the beautiful West Lake (Xi Hu). We used to climb Precious Stone Hill and overlook the lake frequently, or take hikes in the tea country near the Dragon Well.

Unfortunately, the massive air pollution from the coal plants that power the city have done a great deal to harm the city's beauty (as well as the health of anyone living there). Still, you can get the sense that it was once very lovely, and almost is still.

Google has many better images of the place. If anything, this collection errs in the other direction. I noticed when I lived there that I had carefully cropped out all the huge piles of trash and rubble from my pictures, all the ugly stuff of Communism, to try to capture just the beautiful things. I went around and took a bunch of photos of that awful stuff as well, so that I wouldn't forget what the city was really like. It is beautiful, almost, in places. But that beauty exists beside incredible ugliness and damage. Parts of Hangzhou looked worse than Baghdad, as even a war in a merely socialist state cannot do damage like peace in a fully Communist one. Such a government destroys merely by its ordinary existence, both directly and indirectly. Unfree to hold any part of it as their own, the people finally give up caring about it.

Trump Supporters

Salena Zito spent some time in Pennsylvania to learn about Trump supporters first hand.

It's a good piece. Here are some excerpts:

In interview after interview in all corners of the state, I've found that Trump's support across the ideological spectrum remains strong. Democrats, Republicans, independents, people who have not voted in presidential elections for years — they have not wavered in their support.

Two components of these voters' answers and profiles remain consistent: They are middle-class, and they do not live in a big city....

While Trump supporters here are overwhelmingly white, their support has little to do with race (yes, you'll always find one or two who make race the issue) but has a lot to do with a perceived loss of power.

Not power in the way that Washington or Wall Street board rooms view power, but power in the sense that these people see a diminishing respect for them and their ways of life, their work ethic, their tendency to not be mobile ...

These are voters who are intellectually offended watching the Affordable Care Act crumble because they warned six years ago that it was an unworkable government overreach. They are the same people who wonder why President Obama has not taken a break from a week of golfing to address the devastating floods in Louisiana. (As one woman told me, “It appears as if he only makes statements during tragedies if there is political gain attached.”)

Voice such a remark, and you risk being labeled a racist in many parts of America. ...

It is no surprise that white identity politics is, if not rising, as least more visible today. The Progressives, especially the culture warriors, have been using identity politics as a political arsenal for decades. At some point, it was probably inevitable that some whites would surrender to the Progressive agenda and embrace identity politics themselves.

That said, I think the vast majority of Trump supporters are not thinking about "white identity" themselves, but are concerned about the racism that's been used against them for the last couple of generations, and which seems to be getting worse. That's a legitimate concern, and no one needs to adopt white identity politics to address that.

Zito's claims make sense to me: Trump support is in large part about being on the losing-but-right side in the culture wars, and it's about the unjust economic consequences of that for the future. She notes that Trump supporters themselves are more likely to be employed and solidly middle class; it is their children and grandchildren they fear for.

The Power of Innocence

The 2012 movie Snow White and the Huntsman unexpectedly asserted many ancient themes, and first among them was the power of innocence. Within the film, innocence brings with it faith, hope, and charity. Two other Christian themes include the power of evil coming from subversion of good and the redemption of the fallen. Although there is almost no visual Christian presence in the movie, no crosses or other symbols, Snow White does recite the Lord's Prayer early on, which I think shows the writer and / or director were aware of some or all of these themes.

Medieval themes include birds as messengers, the power of blood, the dark and dangerous forest, the importance of a virtuous ruler for the natural phenomenon of a kingdom, and chaste love. That last is also a Christian theme, but here it seemed more medieval in expression to me.

And, of course, the story of Snow White is about the nature of Beauty.

The images of Snow White-as-war-leader in the movie are reminiscent of Joan of Arc. With a quick search, this was the best I could find of Snow White:

Here are two images of Joan of Arc from the website Catholic Saint Medals.

 

 

Another aspect of the movie is that, while she does wear armor and fight, she is not shown as a great warrior. Rather, she is portrayed as a natural leader: Broken, hopeless warriors who have turned to drunkenness, outlawry, or despair, are redeemed by her innocence and her sense of the mission of redeeming their land and people. With her, they are given new hope and faith. She leads, and with the tremendous power of hope and faithfulness she brings, they fight and die to restore their land and themselves.

A New Rallying Point for the Nation: End Geese

Rich Cromwell over at the Federalist claims that "Geese are the worst animals on the planet and we should end them." Here's a taste of the rest:

Winged Sky Trash

Geese, [compared with venomous snakes who serve a purpose], are actually horrible and deserving of hatred and scorn. They’re big, nasty beasts. They serve no purpose, they’re disgusting, and they definitely do not prefer to leave you alone. You don’t even have to pick them up or accidentally step on them to experience their wrath. Yet some people inexplicably like them.

Can a new War on Geese unite Americans?

Cool

Here's a new nanomaterial that blocks visible light, so you don't have to walk around looking naked, but lets infrared radiation pass through, so you stay cooler.  It even wicks moisture.  Next challenge, making it feel nice so someone might actually wear it.  I wish I had some right now: as soon as it gets light I'm about to head out into the breathable soup to take the black dog on a jog.

The end of summer is just coming into sight.  Although it's not what you would call comfortable to run in this, it's no longer asking for heatstroke.  We've even begun planting salad greens for the fall crop.  Fall is right around the corner, marking the beginning of our six-month glorious season.

Nearly 90 lbs. lost, in the neighborhood of 35 to go.  I was really, really fat.  ("Not circus fat, but she gettin' there.")  Now I'm just a bit fat, very close to the high end of medically normal.  It truly is a new life.  Last year at this time I could not have dreamed of jogging.

Okay, the sun is just about riz.  I'm off.

Saturday Night Music

Since we're doing it, try this.



Pair with a bitter -- I like Foster's Oil Can ESB.

UPDATE:

This one's from 1981, the tail end of the big wave of Outlaw Country. It's an instrumental piece, but it hits the right notes. Pair it with an American whiskey.



UPDATE:

How about the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club? You can stand to that good American whiskey for this one too. Good luck in the morning, though.



UPDATE:



This one's for getting sober again, after all the things you did wrong. Somehow you have to get over being lonesome, onery, and mean. I don't know how it works, but some of these old hands might guide you better than I can. I stay pretty ornery, and pretty mean. I have moments when I don't feel very lonely. You pick good people to bring in close, if you want that.

And if you're going to do Waylon Jennings, do this one too:



Cause after all, that was the point at which he started trying to think about 'leaving well enough alone.'

KONGOS for Saturday Night

This is not my usual thing, but I like it. See what you think.

Anybody Ever Lose A Piece of "Sensitive Equipment" In the Military?

Or, for that matter, been involved in any way with a unit that lost a piece of sensitive equipment?

Headline: "FBI: Hillary Clinton Lost Cell Phones with Classified Emails."

How'd that work out for you?

UPDATE: Did you ever try to ship a SIPR computer, say, in the actual mail? What do you think would have happened if you had? What if it got lost?

UPDATE: Wretchard:

What's really astonishing about the Hillary email saga is that we're not talking about the correspondence of the foreign minister of a two bit no account country like Upper Slobovia. We're talking about the Secretary of State of the USA.

Do you have 18 mobile devices? Do you smash them with hammers? Do you mail them somewhere and lose everything? Is it your practice to migrate your emails via Gmail?

She apparently did. How do these people think?

What Clinton told the FBI on Classification

Clinton thought the "C" 'that denoted classified information' had something to do with alphabetical order. (It actually denotes "confidential," not "classified," and specifies a specific level of classification.) How could you make such a mistake? Well, for one thing, the entire document was improperly marked, as were all of the documents in her email containing classified information. All such documents should, in addition to the paragraph markings that are abbreviated, be clearly marked with non-abbreviated classification marks in the header and footer. No document bearing such markings nor even eligible for such markings should ever have been transmitted on an unclassified system.

That is not a defense excusing her mistake (if it was a mistake, and not just a lie to cover her negligence). It is a separate set of offenses. State operated with astonishing laxity in handling these communications. She is responsible for that, as the head of the department in question.

The rest of her defenses, well:

“Clinton stated deliberation over a future drone strike did not give her cause for concern regarding classification,” the notes said.

"Clinton stated she believed no policy or practice existed related to communicating around holidays, and it was often necessary to communicate in code or do the best you can considering the email system you were using."

“Clinton could not give an example of how classification of a document was determined."

“Clinton did not recall receiving any emails she thought should not be on an unclassified system."

One wonders how much Tylenol the FBI agents had to consume during the course of this meeting. Just reading the notes is making my head hurt terribly.

UPDATE: Unexpectedly.

Joe Bob Briggs: We Could Use Some Of Those Burkinis, Please

This is the kind of essay that has fallen out of favor in the last generation, as it's too long for the culture now. These days the rampant takers-of-offense will be so mad after his first few paragraphs, for the once-insouciant but now forbidden 'Married with Children'-style jokes, that they won't get to the serious point at the end. Indeed, the operative theory today seems to be that anyone who would make an offensive joke (let alone a series of them) couldn't have a serious point worth considering.

The serious point is that there's an American heritage of religious life that differs from the French approach, but that he thinks is worth preserving; and that he is willing to take seriously the idea that Muslim women are deserving of a kind of honor for devotion to a holy life.

Jonah Goldberg on the "Core Alt-Right"

Reading Ed Morrissey this evening, I thought this was interesting:

So what does the “core alt-right” represent? “The one thing they all agree on,” Jonah says, “is what they call racial realism, or racialism, which is just a social science sounding term for racism. … the one thing they all agree on is that we need to organize this society on the assumption that white people are genetically superior, or that white culture is inherently superior, and that we should have either state-imposed or culturally-imposed segregation between the races, no race mixing with the lower brown people.”

If you don’t agree with that philosophy — if you’re animated more by border security, national security, and a tougher trade policy — then you’re not really alt-right, Jonah argues. ...

This comes up in a discussion between Goldberg and Hugh Hewitt that Morrissey refers to. The audio is at the link and fairly interesting, if you want to hear the whole thing.

Here's what Goldberg argues we should do:

HH: ... Now does the term alt right get used exclusively in that fashion?

JG: No, which is one of the things that we should be doing, is we should be helping sharpen the distinction, not blur the distinction. I agree with you. There are a lot of people who don’t know what the alt right is. I live in these swamps. I’ve been having these fights for 20 years. I didn’t hear the term alt right until Donald Trump came up. But I know a lot of the people behind the alt right, because I’ve been getting it, they’ve been attacking me and then saying nasty anti-Semitic stuff to me since I started working at National Review. I mean, people are like, the guys at VDARE and these other places, they’ve all coalesced around this idea of the alt right, and it is not a coalitional idea where they want to be part of the conservative movement. It’s that they want to replace the conservative movement.

HH: And they have to be driven out of the Republican Party.

JG: Yes.

HH: I’m speaking as a partisan now. As William F. Buckley led the effort to drive the Birchers out of the party, so must genuine conservatives drive out what you and I agree is the core alt right.

JG: Right.

They both understand the difficulty of doing this, but agree it's what should be done. Beyond the problem of nomenclature, I don't know if it's possible today to do what Buckley did.

What do you think about all this? The nomenclature, what should be done, etc.? I'd be interested to know.

Even For CNN, This is Something

Rarely does CNN engage in censorship to the extent of applying a “blur” to images unless there’s some nudity or a close up of an actual dead body. But this week their sister network, Headline News, finally found an image too objectionable to air. It was a gentleman (identified as a hero) from New Jersey who had saved a toddler from a sweltering hot vehicle. So what required the blur?

He was wearing a Trump 2016 shirt.

Emphasis added. Presumably the image itself wasn't offensive: if he'd been a criminal wearing a Trump t-shirt, I expect it would have passed muster. A hero who saved a toddler from a horrible death, though? We can't have him associated with support of Trump in the public's mind.

The Best Party

I was just adding to my list of reasons to love Iceland, when I remembered actor, comedian, and mayor, Jon Gnarr.

The All-Knowing Wikipedia informs us that:

In late 2009, Gnarr formed the Best Party with a number of other people who had no background in politics, including Einar [Örn Benediktsson]. The Best Party, which is a satirical political party that parodies Icelandic politics and aims to make the life of the citizens more fun, managed a plurality in the 2010 municipal elections in Reykjavík, with the party gaining six out of 15 seats on the Reykjavík City Council (34.7 percent of the vote). Einar, who was second on the party's list behind Jón, won one of the seats on the city council.

Jón ended up defeating the centre-right Independence Party-led municipal government of Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir, which came as "a shock" to Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir. Jón's victory is widely seen as a backlash against establishment politicians in the wake of Iceland's 2008-2011 financial crisis.

Gnarr won the mayoral race in that election, and I've always wondered whether he actually did add any blathering loons to the Reykjavik zoo. Here's one of the Best Party's political ads, with probably one of the best campaign speeches ever at the end.