Subsidies

The Heritage Foundation has claimed that the average annual benefits paid to Illegal-Alien Headed Families is $24,721. Wretchard asks the right question which is, "Isn't this a subsidy to employers who can hire for less because the govt pays more?"

It sure is.

It used to be the case that the Forsyth County Sheriff's Department paid such low wages that deputies were eligible for food stamps, Medicaid, and all sorts of other assistance from the state and Federal governments. The county commission argued that they were being good stewards of our tax dollars by getting a great deal on law enforcement paychecks.

In a way that was true: they had hit upon a successful scheme to push part of the cost of employing a deputy off onto taxpayers from outside the county (indeed, from across the entire nation). However, it was never clear to me why anyone in Oregon (say) should help pay the freight for local law enforcement from which they obtained no benefit whatsoever.

What's the benefit that we taxpayers obtain from high levels of illegal immigration? I know what benefit the corporations obtain, and what benefit the Democratic Party expects. But what's in it for us who are paying for it?

Patton

Turns out the famous speech that opens the movie was a highly-edited version of a speech Patton regularly gave. You can read the original, in all its profane glory.

Didn't Think That Through

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is one of those people whose chief claim to fame is being a "first," in his case being London's first Muslim mayor. Now, it can by accident happen that any given person is the "first" of a type to occupy some position -- first prominent member of the Rotary club, first semi-professional golfer, whatever. The issue with these people who focus on being the "first" whatever is that they're offering their accidental identity as if it were proof of some positive accomplishment -- as if it were a reason to vote for them, some virtue in respect of which they ought to be preferred for the office.

In any case, he decided to give a speech on the evils of nationalism.

The world is becoming an increasingly turbulent and divided place. We’ve seen Brexit, President Trump elected in the United States and the rise of right-wing populist and narrow nationalist parties around the world.... The last thing we need now is to pit different parts of our country or sections of our society against each other — or to further fuel division or seek separation.

There are two problems with this. The first is that he decided to give this speech in Scotland, a nation whose elective offices have been recently dominated by an organization called The Scottish National Party.

Oops.

The second problem is that Khan himself is a living symbol of an even more divisive, even more narrow mode of 'pitting different parts of our country or sections of our society against one another.' If this is the right standard for judgment, identity politics fares even worse than nationalism, which at least is willing to take any kind of Scot as long as they're Scottish. Drawing the division at the level of the nation at least avoids drawing divisions below that level.

Nor is it clear that it is the right standard in any case, as even supra-nationalist divisions can end up being destructively divisive. Communists were not usually guilty of nationalism -- Ho Chi Minh and a few others excepted -- because they wanted to dispose of all nations in favor of a global government. They still ended up dividing members of nations against one another. Indeed, if strife is the proper measure, it was the singers of the Internationale who had more blood on their hands than anyone.

Doing no harm

Not having a heart attack? You probably shouldn't have a stent. Beta-blockers are iffy, too; it may be that they will have no effect on your likelihood of heart disease or death, though you'll probably die with better-looking blood pressure numbers. That proposed knee operation might bear a little scrutiny, too. The article doesn't discuss statins, so don't even get me started on those. A good way to look at proposed treatments is to compare the "number needed to treat" with the "number needed to harm."

Walter Russel Mead: No Way Trump is in Russia's Pocket

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he'd be doing:

* Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
* Blocking oil and gas pipelines
* Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
* Cutting U.S. military spending
* Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia's ally Iran

That Trump is planning to do precisely the opposite of these things may or may not be good policy for the United States, but anybody who thinks this is a Russia appeasement policy has been drinking way too much joy juice. Obama actually did all of these things, and none of the liberal media now up in arms about Trump...

For now, as Dr. Mead goes on to note, this is all talk from Trump. He has a prediction about how to judge the actions that follow the talk too.

Wasters

We use wooden wasters for a lot of Historical European Martial Arts (HEMA). Via Insty, here's a video about how dangerous these little things really can be.



Still, you gotta practice with something.

Chaos Keeps Chaos At Bay

In praise of Jim Mattis.

A Pretty Clever Protest

CPAC attendees were tricked into waiving little Russian tricolor flags with "TRUMP" inscribed in gold upon them.

The protest group that pulled that off deserves a moment of credit. I might not have noticed the symbolism myself, given that the Russian tricolor is red, white, and blue. In my mind's eye, the Russian flag still looks like this:



Any other flag is barely going to impact my consciousness as a symbol of Russia.

Bent Out Of Shape

People are all bent up about the 90-day by-country bar on entry in Trump's immigration Executive Order. The only thing it was meant to accomplish was to give the various agencies involved time to come up with a better method of vetting those who wanted to enter the United States from seven terror-prone regions -- I say "regions" and not "countries" as parts of some of them are effectively ungoverned. The bar was never meant to be in place for more than 90 days, it was just meant to buy time for study.

When the AP trumpets this leaked report, they see a pungent criticism of the Trump administration's order.

A draft document obtained by The Associated Press concludes that citizenship is an "unlikely indicator" of terrorism threats to the United States and that few people from the countries Trump listed in his travel ban have carried out attacks or been involved in terrorism-related activities in the U.S. since Syria's civil war started in 2011.... The three-page report challenges Trump's core claims. It said that of 82 people the government determined were inspired by a foreign terrorist group to carry out or try to carry out an attack in the United States, just over half were U.S. citizens born in the United States. The others were from 26 countries, led by Pakistan, Somalia, Bangladesh, Cuba, Ethiopia, Iraq and Uzbekistan. Of these, only Somalia and Iraq were among the seven nations included in the ban.

I don't know that it's right to say that the document "challenges Trump's core claims," since his core claim was that he wanted his agencies to study the issue during the 90 days and come up with a better system. That sounds like what they're trying to do.

It's interesting that one of the early conclusions is that the list of seven "countries" -- which, we all know, was generated by the Obama administration -- was itself faulty in excluding many of the worst offenders. Note that Saudi Arabia didn't make this list either, which is interesting given that the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis.

So: if the list of nations wasn't solid, and citizenship is a poor indicator anyway, what's better? That's the thing that we really need an answer to, and it's work like this that is going to help us get there. Rather than proving that Trump is a fool (quod erat demonstrandum for the media these days), this seems to prove that his people are taking the task seriously and trying to sort out a good answer to that question.

Childhood in Scotland

Not for most Scottish children, more's the pity, but for four blessed ones.

Behold the Bolt-Action Glock

Yes, it's real. Why? California.

Symphony in Consciousness

We're also putting in a massive budget request for our beloved military. And we will be substantially upgrading all of our military, all of our military, offensive, defensive, everything. Bigger and better and stronger than ever before, and hopefully we'll never have to use it, but nobody's going to mess with us, folks. Nobody. It will be one of the greatest military buildups in American history. No one will dare question, as they have been, because we're very depleted, very, very depleted sequester. Nobody will question our military might again....

I say Democrats, please, approve our Cabinet and get smart on health care, too, if you know me. But we're taking meetings every day with top leaders in business, in science and industry. Yesterday I had 29 of the biggest business leaders in the world in my office. Caterpillar Tractor, Campbell Soup, we had everybody. We had everybody. I like Campbell Soup.

His style is inimitable, but there really is a kind of style to it.

What did you think of the speech?

The Worldview of the Hillary Clinton Supporter

There's a rich irony in finding such a succinct explanation of their view of the right use of power expressed in terms of actual witchcraft. These are instructions for casting a spell against Donald Trump and his supporters.

To clarify, the original document states that this is a binding spell, which seeks to restrain someone from doing harm instead of harming the targeted individual themselves. Binding does not generate the potential negative blowback to the caster’s karma.

So, the idea is that no bad karma comes from using your power to strip away the freedom to do things you think are harmful.

That's almost the whole ideology in a nutshell, isn't it?

The Washington Post as Heavy Metal Album

A gallery.

"Take a Cue from Psychopaths"

That's the title of a whole section of this Vox piece on how to deal with Trump voters.

It's a more fair-minded piece than the title, or the advice, would suggest.

The Fourth Circuit is Wrong

So, let's say you're a liberal judge -- or, in this case, a whole bunch of liberal judges ruling en banc -- and you really don't like the Heller decision. However, the author of that decision recently died, so you figure you can tee up the Supreme Court to reverse it in a new precedent. Thus, you decide to issue a ruling completely ignoring the Heller decision, and creating a wholly new standard for what kind of weapons deserve 2nd Amendment protection.

The problem is that the new standards doesn't just ignore Heller. It also directly violates the logic of the prior most-important 2nd Amendment Supreme Court Ruling, United States vs. Miller.

The Miller ruling appears to say that the only weapons the 2nd Amendment protects are those that are suitable for militia service, as for example by being of "ordinary military equipment." What the new 4th Circuit case says is that no weapons are protected if they are "most useful in military service." In other words, the two categories are mutually exclusive: the Supreme Court's standard is exactly the opposite of the 4th Circuit's.

And that's if you throw out the Heller decision entirely, as if it never existed.

However, it does exist.

DB: Russia Names Snowden Ambassador to United States

"I look forward to investigating the charges of a Russian cyber-hack of the U.S.," a grinning Snowden told reporters....

Though American by birth, Snowden has lived in Russia since 2013 after having what he called "creative differences" with his former employers. He was awarded Russian citizenship last year by Russian president Vladimir Putin for what Putin called, "outstanding and irreplaceable services provided to the Motherland."

An Arthurian Kickstarter Project

From the Kickstarter page:

Le Morte d'Arthur & The Arthurian Concordance

With great pleasure we offer this project to fund the beginning of an “Arthurian Library”. Three amazing books are a part of this single project.

There’s a new edition of the classic text that’s the most important source of the legend as we know it today. We also offer the first volume of an illustrated graphic novelization of Le Morte d’Arthur. Finally, we offer The Arthurian Concordance, an encyclopedia overflowing with lore.

...

The new text edition of Le Morte d’Arthur is edited by renowned Arthurian scholar John Matthews. The author of dozens of Arthurian books, John brings a lifetime of knowledge and insight to this edition of the classic by Sir Thomas Malory.

The deluxe hardcover book features reinforced binding and an interesting 8x8 inch format to feature the stunning cover art by Natee Puttapipat. The book will be an awesome 750+ pages and full-color throughout.

The interior design features an outside margin for notes to annotate the classic Malory text. This text is provided by John Matthews as well as Arthurian scholar and storyteller Greg Stafford, the renowned game designer of King Arthur Pendragon, a bestselling and award-winning tabletop roleplaying game considered among the most influential.

Photos at the link. I like those wide margins.

3 EPA principles I can live with

Despite being an avid environmentalist, I've come to despise the EPA in recent years.  Scott Pruitt's introductory speech included three points I admire:

“Regulations ought to make things regular,” Pruitt said. He added, “Regulators exist to give certainty to those that they regulate. Those that we regulate ought to know what’s expected of them so that they can plan and allocate resources to comply.”

Pruitt then turned to the rule of law saying, “As we do rule making…it needs to be tethered to the statute. The only authority that any agency has in the executive branch is the authority given to it by Congress.” He went on to say that sticking closely to the law would help avoid uncertainly and litigation.

Finally, Pruitt said, “Federalism matters.” “I seek to ensure that we engender the trust of those at the state level,” he continued. “That those at the state level see us as partners, in this very important mission we have as an agency, and not adversaries,” he said.

Divisions

Majorities of Democrats consider Trump "the enemy," but an exactly equal majority of Republicans consider Democrats "the enemy."

That focus is to mis-state the problem, argues The American Interest:

The basic division in American politics today is not over the merits of President Trump. Many of those who voted for him believed that he lacked the moral grounding and gravitas that great Presidents must ultimately draw on. The division is between those who think that, before Trump, things were going just fine and the American elite was doing an excellent job and those who blame the rise of Trump on the failures and blindness of the so-called “meritocratic elite” who, they would argue, have been running the country into the ground.

In foreign policy, the United States has had two failed presidencies in a row.... Domestically, our leadership elite has watched passively as infrastructure decays, state and local pension systems accumulate unsustainable debt loads, the national debt inexorably climbs, and the social capital of the nation erodes.

There was no sign from the Clinton campaign that anybody understood that the nation’s path was unsustainable.

The cursus honorum has ceased to provide us with reliable leadership. We've had a nearly endless stream of people leading the government whose resume reads something like this: 'Ivy League, Ivy League grad school, Ivy League law school, minor post in government or Wall Street, bigger post in government or Wall Street.'

The way they have been trained to think isn't working.