Lee Van Cleef

"The Bad" was a pretty good guy.

Van Cleef took his high school diploma early, at 17-years-old, so that he could enlist in the United States Navy in 1942.

After basic training he attended the Naval Fleet Sound School where he trained as a sonarman. Van Cleef was first assigned to submarine chaser USS SC-681 and spent the next 10 months looking for German U-boats around the Caribbean. He then joined USS Incredible, a minesweeper of 530 tons.

One of the most dangerous moments for him happened during the invasion of southern France, in which the USS Incredible was attacked by numerous German Human Torpedoes.

Van Cleef found himself in a life-threatening position though his courage and skill not only saved him but he was also awarded the Bronze Star for his service.

From January 1945, the minesweeper operated out of the Soviet base at Sevastapol, Crimea, to clear mines in the Black Sea. Next stop for the USS Incredible was Palermo, Sicily and then Norfolk — before finally reaching Pearl Harbor.

Odysseus at the Mast

Scientists discover a shipwreck far below the surface that looks very much like the one on a famous vase from ancient Greece.

"Nothing" Is A Wide Country

An editorial piece:

Nothing is more incompatible with Jewish thought and history than Peterson's deliberate insensitivity to the effects of hate speech. The political correctness he and other conservatives malign has, rightly, raised the social and political cost of prejudice - and not yet far enough

I don't especially care about Petereson, and I don't have any special insight into Jewish thought or history, although I have read some of the major philosophers -- Maimonides and Gersonides, say. Even from my very non-privileged perspective, though, I'd say that I can think of a few things that would be more incompatible. Denial of God, for example; denial of the covenant with Abraham; materialism.

That last one's kind of important. Lots of materialists around these days. But sure, let's focus on raising the costs of unpopular speech. That'll work out great for religious minorities.

Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

The Syria two-step continues.

Antisemitism Done Right

If you're going to be Antisemitic, don't be coy about it and leave people in doubt about how you really feel. Go all out, like these Belgians.

Political polarization by county

Maps of the U.S. showing the intensity of the disdain with which Republicans view Democrats, and vice versa, by county.  My own little county is pretty mild.  Florida and South Carolina really stand out as polarized next to their neighbors.

Mountains to the Seas

I'm more of a mountain man, but I can definitely appreciate this initiative.

Seasteading was conceived more than a decade ago out of libertarian enthusiasm for the possibilities of improving governance through an explosive proliferation of new polities. Building modular floating "land" on the high seas, its advocates argue, would increase our ability to escape the depredations of existing governments.

Yeah, I can see it.

BB: Voting is Self-Defense

"I don't particularly love the party I usually vote for, but hey! They're a little less likely to one day outlaw my faith," he told a friend... "I don't really care to win the culture wars or anything. But the candidates I support tend to be slightly more prone to just leave me alone."

At publishing time, Christians who abstained from voting were silently thankful that people like Michaels are willing to do the dirty work of voting in self-defense.

Swords in the News

Shades of Burnt Njal.

A man with a sword was shot and killed by police in Mount Holly on Saturday after he set a home on fire, jumped from the second story and tried to run away, multiple media outlets reported.

Mongols MC Keeps Patch

A Federal judge has ruled that the government's attempt to force the motorcycle club to stop wearing its trademark is unconstitutional under two separate amendments.

Nearly two months after a federal jury decided that a notorious motorcycle club must forfeit the rights to its trademarked emblem, a judge on Thursday nullified the verdict, finding that seizure of the intellectual property was unconstitutional.

In a 51-page ruling, Federal District Judge David O. Carter said the government’s strategy of trying to devastate the Mongols motorcycle club by confiscating its treasured Genghis Khan-style logo would violate the group’s First Amendment right to free speech and the excessive fines clause of the Eighth Amendment.

That may be the first echo of the recent unanimous SCOTUS decision barring excessive civil asset forfeiture schemes. The First Amendment grounds were expected, but that application of the Eighth is new. This effort to prosecute the club at the club level was more successful than some previous efforts, however, as several individuals were convicted of specific crimes. Those convictions were upheld.

They may be viruses, but they're our viruses

Sometimes you gang up on the bully, sometimes you conscript him into service.

Hot bird water

A new cartoon for the Aspergerish among us:  strangeplanet.  I'll never be able to call it chicken soup again.

What Do You Call A "Gender-Fluid" Monarch?

I'd say "a queen" (*rimshot*) but really that's not good enough for royal protocol. Maybe for a while they can make do with "His or Her Royal Highness, the Prince or Princess of Such-and-So."

Woke

If you don't know Titania McGrath -- who insists she is not satire -- you are missing out. Here is an interview with a woman who might, or might not, be the brains behind her.

Prison Reform

Van Jones has a good point. Don't just read the soundbite caption. It's worth listening to his full commentary.

African Methodists Fight For Biblical Sexuality

An interesting story via Instapundit.

Contrast with this story about Michelle Malkin, where the progressives at tech firms are working to elevate ancient religious norms over modern American ideas of liberty.

How Dare You Allow Her To Defend Her Friend?

It's racist, because she's black, I guess? Allowing a black woman to defend a white man against a charge of racism is using her as "prop," which proves that he's racist; whereas, of course, using a white man to defend a white man against a charge of racism is to be dismissed as mere white privilege (or "supremacy" or something). And of course, if you don't defend yourself at all, well, surely you'd rebut it if you could, so the charge must be true.

These rhetorical games are getting old fast.

Gun Control Bill Up in House

If you're inclined to call your Congressperson, the vote is today on the universal background check bill. Almost all gun sales are already subject to background checks; this would criminalize private sales between individuals, so that the government had a record of every single transfer. This would be used only for the good, of course, and never to build a database for confiscatory purposes.

UPDATE: Post hoc ergo propter hoc is an informal fallacy; but the timeline is interesting.

UPDATE: Cam Edwards points out that, should this bill become law, a battered woman who borrowed a gun to defend herself would be a criminal -- and on conviction, would lose her right [UPDATE: See comments] legal permission to own a gun.

Travel Guide

I've been to quite a few of the red areas on this new map of the world's most dangerous destinations.

Not all of them, to be sure. Road trip!

Once More on Reparations

...then I'll step back.  (Note: cross-posted from my blog)

Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate wannabe and Senator Kamala Harris (D, CA) wants us to take our dark history seriously.

We must confront the dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination in this country that has had many consequences, including undermining the ability of black families to build wealth in America for generations.  We need systemic, structural changes to address that.

Absolutely.  The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of slavery and government-sanctioned discrimination.  

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who ruled that Dred Scott, a free black man in the north, must be returned to the ownership of his owner—and who further ruled that blacks could not be citizens of the United States because blacks were not fully men.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its demand for the States Right of holding slaves, slavery over which the nation had to fight a bloody civil war to end because of Party intransigence.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its creation, the Ku Klux Klan, which it used to terrorize newly freed blacks—and any who supported them—in the aftermath of the Party's lost overt slavery policy.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of its Jim Crow Laws, designed explicitly to keep blacks from voting.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of segregation, resumed in full under President Woodrow Wilson (D), who actively resegregated the Federal government after it had been steadily integrated following the Civil War, a policy for which Wilson insisted blacks should be grateful for the "protection," and which continued apace in schools under the fiction of "separate but equal," which included all public spaces, and which extended even to sections of buses, drinking fountains, and rest rooms.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of destroying black families by enacting "welfare" laws that paid single mothers but not intact families, making it fiscally useful, if not wholly immoral, for fathers to absent themselves.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of deliberate, overt racial (and gender) discrimination in its "affirmative action" policies that give special treatment based, ultimately, on skin color and/or gender.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark history of undermining the ability of black families (such as they're allowed to exist) to build wealth by keeping them trapped in Party's welfare cage with the designed-in welfare cliff that prevents welfare recipients—most of whom are minority recipients, with most of those black—from getting a new job or a pay raise that would put them above an income threshold that would cut welfare payments by more than the pay raise.

The Progressive-Democratic Party must confront its dark present of identity politics that seeks to give special treatment to particular groups of Americans—which is nothing more than segregation modernized.

The Progressive-Democratic Party does, most definitely, need systemic, structural changes to address that.

Eric Hines