Good To Hear Things Are Improving So Rapidly

I mean, it's only been 100 days, and they really did have quite a shock.

“I absolutely despise these people,” one woman tweeted at me after I interviewed Trump voters. “Truly the worst of humanity. To hell with every one of them.”...

I wrote my last column from Oklahoma, highlighting voters who had supported Trump and now find that he wants to cut programs that had helped them. One woman had recovered from a rape with the help of a women’s center that stands to lose funding, another said that she would sit home and die without a job program facing cutbacks, and so on. Yet every one of them was still behind Trump — and that infuriated my readers.

“I’m just going to say it,” tweeted Bridgette. “I hate these people. They are stupid and selfish. Screw them. Lose your jobs, sit home and die.”

Another: “ALL Trump voters are racist and deplorable. They’ll never vote Democratic. We should never pander to the Trumpites. We’re not a party for racists.”

Sooner or later, somebody's going to have to figure out how to show respect. The problem is, as bikers know, you've got to show respect to get respect. Or, as the Irish put it, "Many's the time a man's mouth has broken his nose."

UPDATE:

Speaking of bikers and matters of interest to this page, the new "Sons of Anarchy" spinoff has recruited one of the Range 15 crew!

I'll be interested to see how much of the Range 15 style makes it into the series (or if the character, like the actor, is a 75th Ranger vet).

Sure Would Be a Good Time for a Deal with Russia

You know what would make a baseline for a good deal? That one that Blackwater founder Erik Prince was supposed to have passed the outline of to the Russians in the Seychelles recently. Back off support for Iran, help us in Syria, you can largely pick Assad's replacement, keep the naval base, and we'll start work on loosening those sanctions you hate so much.

It'd be easy and sensible for both nations to make such an agreement, except right now any Trump administration official who tried it would be painted as a TRAITOR TRAITOR RUSSIA TRAITOR!

Too bad, because it might save millions of lives. Certainly it might help those poor people in Syria, who as of yesterday I was told we were supposed to care about and take responsibility for.

UPDATE:

Noam Chomsky says some unkind things about Democrat theories on Russia and Trump.

Of course, Chomsky's kind of a pinko from the old days -- can we say 'pinko' on the air? -- so maybe it's not too surprising to find him on this side.

Thursday night Russian Gothbilly?

I say Gothbilly because the song is originally a goth-rock classic from the '80s.

But I never imagined it like this:


Original here:

Nunes Down, Gowdy Up

The entry of the Ethics Committee into an investigation into Nunes means that he can't oversee work on the Russia investigation -- although, at this point, I think we've learned enough to know that nothing important is going to come out of that investigation anyway.

Nunes says the charges against him are baseless politicking. Well, handling classified information is -- or should be -- a serious matter. Still, I'm not sure what he's supposed to have done wrong. The main thing people seemed upset about is that he informed the President before his fellow Congressmen. That can't have been an unauthorized disclosure unless the President 'didn't need to know' that he had been targeted for surveillance. I would think that would be hard to establish even if there were a formal court procedure; it's certain to come to nothing given that the Ethics committee has "not set up a special subcommittee to handle the matter and are under no requirement to issue any findings related to their investigation."

So much for that. Is there something else he's supposed to have done wrong that might actually produce some results, or was getting him to step down the only result anyone cared about?

In any case, I note that Trey Gowdy is in a sense elevated by Nunes' removal. I will be surprised if that leads to an improved outcome from the Democrats' perspective, but they called the ball.

The Filibuster Wanes

At some point, either we or whoever succeeds us is going to have to establish new ways of treating opposition opinions with respect. Such respect enables people with deep disagreements to reason together to better ends.

At the moment, however, everyone is rushing in the other direction. I expect some deep pain will be necessary to convince them of the wisdom of a better way. For now, enjoy the fireworks.

Jante Law

Danes tend to believe in something called Jante Law, which has 10 rules all around the idea of accepting the average.... Jante persists in the culture in every way and, according to Ourhouseinaarhus, even affects the school system. There is no competitive school system, no advanced programs for gifted learners. The schools must all be equal, and the students must help each other rather than vie for 'the best.' There are no rewards program, no trophies for the students who graded better. As the blogger commented, the Danish children learn early on about Jante.

The laws themselves are simple. They all encourage the idea that you are average, and that's just fine.

1. You’re not to think you are anything special.
2. You’re not to think you are as good as we are.
3. You’re not to think you are smarter than we are.
4. You’re not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.
5. You’re not to think you know more than we do.
6. You’re not to think you are more important than we are.
7. You’re not to think you are good at anything.
8. You’re not to laugh at us.
9. You’re not to think anyone cares about you.
10. You’re not to think you can teach us anything.

There's an American version of this, but it's a little different in its purpose.

Big stick?

Secretary of State Tillerson's brief comment:

North Korea launched yet another intermediate range ballistic missile. The United States has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.

Knight versus Soldier versus Firefighter: The Obstacle Course

It looks like the soldier and the firefighter are really a soldier and a firefighter (Swiss, in both cases), whereas the 'knight' is a martial artist. That may have had an impact on the final results, although they track the weight of the gear very closely.

Jim Webb's Piece on Women in Combat

The piece on USAF leadership reminds me to point you toward Jim Webb's long form piece from 1979, in case you didn't go back and read it while reading the commentary about the controversy it provoked. If you didn't read it because you were wanting to avoid a display of misogyny, you can stop worrying about that. The piece says little about women, most of it complimentary and supportive of equality except in combat roles -- he mentions, for example, his support for Thatcher and for a female President.

What the piece is really about is what it took to graduate from Annapolis and survive as a Marine Platoon Leader in Vietnam. It serves as a reminder of how much uglier war gets than what we have seen in the long years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which were often ugly enough. Yet there is no guarantee that future wars will not look like the one he describes, for those who can stand to read the description.

That is coupled with a call for a much more punishing regime of training than the one we employ now, more punishing even than the one he observed in 1979. He is clear on how the brutality of the plebe year he experienced at Annapolis carried him through the worst parts of Vietnam. In addition to that, the brutality of that training doubtless kept many a young man who wouldn't have survived the strains of war out of the critical role of battlefield leadership. That's another hard matter, one that I do not see on the field of ideas today: I gather that the idea of psychologically brutal training is still considered acceptable for certain special operations roles, but otherwise is taken to be an abuse of the young Americans who volunteer for military service.

The Elites All Know Each Other

Just another regular reminder of how small the circles are.

Where it all gets somewhat ridiculous is when CNN’s Jim Sciutto tweeted the following:

Just in: "The idea that Ambassador Rice improperly sought the identities of Americans is false." – person close to Rice tells me

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) April 3, 2017

For the record, Jim Sciutto worked in the Obama administration. It is a fact not mentioned in Sciutto’s CNN biography, but it certainly should be....

Before Sciutto worked at the White House, he worked at ABC. Do you know who he worked with at ABC? Ian Officer Cameron. Do you know who’s married to Cameron? Susan Rice.

So he's a guy who worked with Rice for Obama, after he worked with her husband, and now works for CNN reporting on Rice and probably quoting her husband. Got it.

A Fighter Pilot Goes BOOM

We don't talk about the Air Force a lot around here, but they're having a real retention problem with their pilots right now. Partly it's because the airlines are hitting mandatory forced retirement dates, and need to hire qualified pilots bad -- so they're putting up big money for anyone who will sign.

But it's not all about that.

You took one of the few jobs left in the world that kids hang posters of on their walls, and you made it so damn miserable that thousands of guys like me are calling it quits. And the worst part is, you have no idea HOW you made it miserable, and even less of an idea how to fix it. You are focusing on the second and third order effects, but not the root cause.

Boss, you were a fighter pilot. You were trained for years in how to identify the root cause. I know you have the ability to dig past the airlines, ops tempo, queep, and other reasons you’re currently focusing on, and find the DFP. I know that you know what it is, I just don’t think you have the stones to call it out in public and do something about it, so I’m pulling the handles.

Yes, life in my Air Force has gotten tough. But the real reason I’m leaving boss, the heart of the issue is this. I’m a leader, I always have been. People follow me because I’m good in the Air, I have a strong act in the bar, and I give a shit about the people that work for me. And because I’m a true leader, I will never lead in this Air Force. Instead, the guys that are leading in my place, and in the place of all of the others like me, are boot-licking, risk-averse, yes men who have spent an entire career being faithful followers and couldn’t lead a 2 ship to the end of the runway. They’ve been rewarded their entire careers for being non-confrontational, making only safe decisions, punishing downhill and protecting uphill, and most importantly, being loyal to the bad leaders above them.

There's a lot more. The obscene song lyric quoted at the end, by the way, is from a Dos Gringos song called "Has Anybody Seen My Wingman?"



Actually, it's one of the cleaner Dos Gringos songs.

So Much for "Russian Collusion"

If this story is accurate, there was no back channel between Russia and Trump's people before 11 January. The meeting described here was to set one up, in order to begin exploring possibilities -- and not to execute pre-existing plans.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions....

The Seychelles meeting was deemed productive by the UAE and Russia, but the idea of arranging additional meetings between Prince and Putin’s associates was dropped, officials said. Even unofficial contacts between Trump and Putin associates had become too politically risky, officials said.

So: there was a single, exploratory meeting; held months after the election; with all follow-up abandoned due to the political heat.

That'll about do it for the legendary Russian Conspiracy. If these details hold up, there's nothing to find.

UPDATE: Rolling Stone's Taibbi: 'Seriously, guys, this Russia stuff is sounding deranged.'

Democrats Continue to Feud Over Clinton Loss

Who was at fault? Not "deplorables," says Bernie Sanders.

Not millennial feminists, says the New Republic.

In the end, millennial voters, both male and female, were cool to Clinton for a host of reasons. If she was unable to muster their full-throated support, the blame lies with her, not them. Feminism rests on the basis that women should be judged for their worth, but Bordo instead assumes that Hillary Clinton, by virtue of her gender, should have been spared the critical gaze of young women. And that’s sexist.

Let me offer a mild edit that will clarify the issue:

"Feminism rests on the basis that women should be judged for their worth... and Hillary Clinton was."

Georgia DOT Has No Plans to Take Responsibility for Disaster

A rather brutal assessment, but well deserved.

Willa Cather

I downloaded an Audible version of "Death Comes for the Archbishop" recently, to listen to while I drive, paint, re-grout tile, or garden.  Why have I never read Willa Cather before now?  It's just wonderful.  Free, too, among Audible's collection of classics.  The title character is sent by the Vatican around 1850 to shepherd the newly American-owned territory of New Mexico.  What a pleasure it is to read an unsnarky though unsentimental treatment of missionary Catholicism--and the protagonist isn't even a depressed drunk, for a change.  Cather's narrative voice appeals to me deeply.

In 'Honor' of Liberty Chance C*****

For a friend, lost for many years but brought to mind but recently.

Also, because it's right. Honor holds the world together.

Stress Toy

Why Not Imagine Your Opponents?

Stephen King is as good as imagining as most, I suppose. Why bother encountering your opponents when you can just make them up?

Nobody cared about national security in terms of her abuse of Top Secret information in her emails; nobody cared about Benghazi. But they did care about racism, yo:

Felicia Gagnon Most of my customers at the Washateria were for him, so I decided I was, too. It wasn’t just going along with the crowd, either. He always had an answer for everything, and he took no shit. Also, he wants to keep the illegals out. My job isn’t much, but it pays the rent. What if some illegal comes along and tells Mr Griffin – he’s the owner – that she’ll do my job for half the salary? Would that be fair?

Andrea Sparks It wouldn’t, it absolutely wouldn’t. And I admired him for a comeback he made to Clinton in, I think it was their first debate. She said he paid no taxes, and Trump came right back, said: “That makes me smart.” I knew right then I was going to vote for him, because taxes are killers. That’s why no one from the middle class can really get ahead. They tax you to death. I am making a little bit of money, but I’d be making a lot more if they didn’t tax me so badly, and why do they do it? To pay welfare for the illegals Felicia was talking about. The beaners, the darkies and the camel-jockeys. I would never say that if I wasn’t full of this truth serum stuff, but I’m glad I did. It’s a relief. I don’t want to be a racist, it’s not how I was raised, but they make you be one. I work hard for what I’ve got, from nine in the morning until midnight, sometimes until one in the morning. And what happens? The government takes the sweat from my brow and gives it to the foreigners. Who shoot it into their arms with dope the drug mules bring up from Mexico.

Barker Amen to that, sister.

I have literally never heard anyone say "beaners," "darkies," or "camel-jockeys" except on television. And I live in a very white, very rural part of Georgia. I grew up in a part of Georgia that was ethnically cleaned twice! (Once in the 1820s, and again in 1912). If this kind of racism still existed, I'd run into it.

I did once encounter a guy running a gun shop in Gainesville who responded to my incredulity about his proposed prices by saying that they were the "Paco price," and then offering me a better deal (which, though reasonable, I was too offended to take). That was in the early 1990s, which was also the last time I heard anyone voice an objection to interracial dating or marriage. Even then, I remember how much it bothered me that it bothered him.

It's a different world, but not all of us live in it.

Ayaan

Here is a lady who has earned her right to criticize that which she has chosen to criticize. People sure hate her for it, but if anyone can have a right to a dissident opinion, who but her has a better claim?

Ft. Hood Shooter Going On Hunger Strike

Gee, I sure hope this gets him all the justice he deserves.