The undue importance of Senate elections

If the election is that momentous, the government is too powerful.  Jeffrey Tucker laments the early 20th-century triumph of Progressivism that put the choice of U.S. Senators in the hands of voters rather than state legislators:

. . . In 1913, the 17th amendment of the US Constitution was ratified. The stated intention was to eliminate perceived corruption and legislative deadlocks.

Sure enough, it did end some deadlocks, enabling an expansion of government power that would not have otherwise been possible. It also fundamentally changed the structure and political dynamic of Congress itself. The devolved structure of American government was upended and political rights of the states declined. The Senate became another version of the House, directly elected and thereby subject to the same demagoguery, factionalism, and demographic recrimination that characterized elections for the House.

The Hezbollah/Obama Report is a Bombshell

But, as Rebeccah L. Heinrichs explains, it's not really a surprising one if you followed the Iran Deal closely.

I've met Ms. Heinrichs. She isn't a political operative, if you're thinking that from the fact that she's slamming the Obama administration after the fact. Rather, she's a legitimate expert on ballistic missiles.

A Rockabilly Christmas

The Reverend Horton Heat did a whole Christmas album. If you have Amazon Prime, you can stream it for free; also on Spotify.

A Kung Pao Buckaroo Holiday

The Yuletide

Today is the Winter Solstice, the traditional beginning of the Yuletide. The Christmastide does not begin for a few days (traditionally Vespers on Christmas Eve).

Feedback

I haven't gotten very excited about the tax bill either way, believing that it fiddled in minor ways with individual tax brackets and generally pushed food around on the plate.  On the other hand, I do favor the lowered corporate tax rate, because I believe there should be no corporate tax at all:  I'd prefer to do the taxing at the individual level, where any money not ploughed back into the means of production will have to go eventually, in the form of salaries to workers or dividends to stockholders.  AT+T already has announced a $1,000 bonus to its workers to celebrate the tax cut.  See other similar corporate responses here.

What's more, I think the cap on state and local tax (SALT) deductions will have a salutary effect on the most broken part of the current tax system, which is the failure of feedback mechanisms.  As this article makes clear, a principal effect of the SALT deduction cap is to move toward a system in which the people who vote for higher taxes will be the ones who actually have to pay them.  Any system in which citizens can easily vote for other citizens to shoulder most of the tax burden is bound to spin out of control.

I'd rather see lower taxes and smaller government, but if there must be high taxes and large government for important and worthy tasks that can't be accomplished any other way, then let those who want it put their money where their mouth is.

The Last Jedi, Take II

Meditations on leadership and its failures, from the Angry Staff Officer. (That's almost every staff officer, in my experience.)

Pssst -- That's Illegal, Rosie

Someone should tell her.

Yule dog

She really wasn't happy about this outfit.

Jól

A Punk Rock Christmas

Sex and Vengeance

What I’ll say for now is we should try to hold in balance two truths. Sex is an intractable conundrum rather than a solvable problem. But that does not absolve us of the obligation to try to make better arrangements to minimize the chance that people are victimized by it. But we should attempt this in full recognition that there may not be a satisfactory way to render safe and tractable the will to domination and subordination that radical feminists rightly see as bound up in sexual desire without summoning up a will to purity and control—and vengeance—at least as destructive as the thing it opposes.

It even be that sex is the safer, and less destructive, of the two impulses. After all, all of nature is founded on it: it is the flourishing of every higher species, and the waxing of every human nation.

Good Advice

Headline: "Historians Politely Remind Nation To Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions."

On the other hand, just because it has gone that way in the past -- or, even because it usually goes that way -- doesn't mean it doesn't sometimes go the other way too.

The Last Jedi

For those who have seen it, and for those who don't mind spoilers, a review.

Spoilers are likely in the comments, so if you don't want them, stay out of the comments.

Gaudete

We're getting close now.

A Hero in Quebec

Untrained, unprepared, but brave in heart, Aymen Derbali ran to the sound of gunfire and thus saved many lives.

"I have no bad feelings or bitterness," Mr. Derbali says. "This hasn't changed my vision of this country. I'm proud to be Canadian. What happened could have happened anywhere in the world."

Still, there are times when he has reason to wonder if the world has moved on. His act of bravery has gone uncelebrated. He has not received a single note or visit from a politician since arriving at the rehabilitation centre in July. "I'm surprised," he admits, choosing his words carefully.

One day – no one is able yet to say when – he will leave the medical centre. He cannot return to the family's fourth-floor apartment because it is not adapted for his wheelchair. The family of five will have to find a new home. Where will they go? How will they pay for it? Calls for help to city and provincial officials have gone nowhere, Mr. Derbali says.

I love this guy

In retrospect, the powers that be probably made a mistake letting this guy get his hands on a foreign education.  And Stanford University probably should have strangled him in the crib, too.

Genocide in Chicago

An idea seriously suggested by a Cook County councilman: deploy UN peacekeepers in Chicago.

President Donald Trump’s implicit threat to put the National Guard on the streets of Chicago to tackle the city’s violence problem attracted widespread ridicule earlier this year.

But if the soldiers were instead wearing the sky blue helmets of United Nations peacekeepers there might not be such a problem, according to Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, who flew to New York on Thursday to discuss what he described as a “quiet genocide” in Chicago’s black community with the U.N.’s assistant secretary-general for peacebuilding support, Oscar Fernandez-Taranco.

“The United Nations has a track record of protecting minority populations,” Boykin told Inc. before his meeting. “There was tribal warfare between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Africa, and they deployed peacekeeping troops there to help save those populations and reduce the bloodshed. We have to do something — black people in Chicago make up 30 percent of the population but 80 percent of those who are killed by gun violence.”

It's amazing to me that anyone would trust the United Nations' blue helmets in their community, given their track record.

"Rough Justice"

The anti-harassment revolution claimed its first female, feminist victim.

Ramsey, a 56-year-old retired business executive from Leawood... was running with the endorsement of Emily’s List, a liberal women’s group that has raised more than a half-million dollars to help female candidates who support abortion rights.

Ramsey will drop out on Friday, her campaign said.

“In its rush to claim the high ground in our roiling national conversation about harassment, the Democratic Party has implemented a zero tolerance standard,” Ramsey said in a statement Friday. “For me, that means a vindictive, terminated employee’s false allegations are enough for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) to decide not to support our promising campaign. We are in a national moment where rough justice stands in place of careful analysis, nuance and due process.”

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has not endorsed anyone in the race, said in a statement that members and candidates must all be held to the highest standard.

“If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault, that person should not hold public office,” said committee spokeswoman Meredith Kelly.

When equality is your only principle for justice, it is satisfied both by treatment that is equally good and by treatment that is equally bad.

UPDATE: It won't do to suggest that women are equally responsible for sexual dynamics, of course.

Behold, Your Judgment is Upon You!

Well, no one around here, but this does give us a chance to revisit a favorite song...