Prorogation, which suspends parliament from sitting in a period it might otherwise be expected to sit, is an accepted right of a sitting government. But it has never been applied in a manner such as this: as a means of denying parliamentary action opposed by the government. Johnson denies that this is his intent, but few believe him.Good luck, says I.
By sending members of parliament back to their constituencies in early September and then returning them on Oct. 14th, Johnson has significantly shortened the time they will have to pass legislative alternatives to his Brexit plan. With a final European Council meeting scheduled for Oct. 17th, unless an emergency follow up meeting is held, European leaders will have to accept Johnson's proposals to avoid a no-deal Brexit, or else accept a no-deal Brexit as is.
A Brexit Gamble
A surprising constitutional maneuver in the UK has people over there a little stirred up.
'Fastest Woman On Four Wheels' Killed in Land Speed Record Attempt
I don't follow the sport and had never heard of her, but she was apparently something else. Her shakedown run went over 483 miles per hour.
The first absolute land speed record, in case you were curious, was a bit over 39 miles an hour. Things have changed since 1894.
Rest in peace, brave lady.
The first absolute land speed record, in case you were curious, was a bit over 39 miles an hour. Things have changed since 1894.
Rest in peace, brave lady.
Of Course, Of Course
Footage from the camera outside Epstein's cell is "unusable."
Trump "proposal" to nuke hurricanes is "racist."
Performatively pious Congressperson turns out to be a hypocrite who doesn't want to discuss 'personal life.'
Well, these things are just to be expected.
Trump "proposal" to nuke hurricanes is "racist."
Performatively pious Congressperson turns out to be a hypocrite who doesn't want to discuss 'personal life.'
Well, these things are just to be expected.
Nine Diabolic Questions
I found another of Tex's crew. It's not a bad piece, especially once the questions are answered.
Fake News Today
MS: "List: Lines from The Princess Bride that Double as Comments on Freshman Composition Papers."
BB: "Bernie Sanders Arrives In Hong Kong To Lecture Protesters On How Good They Have It Under Communism."
DB: "Guam Finally Capsizes."
TO: "School Administration Reminds Female Students Bulletproof Vests Must Cover Midriff."
Cf. this video:
As The Onion reminds us, there's some female agency involved in all this.
BB: "Bernie Sanders Arrives In Hong Kong To Lecture Protesters On How Good They Have It Under Communism."
DB: "Guam Finally Capsizes."
TO: "School Administration Reminds Female Students Bulletproof Vests Must Cover Midriff."
Cf. this video:
As The Onion reminds us, there's some female agency involved in all this.
Ordo Militaris
Via Douglas, a Catholic 'private military company' with Crusader themes. In principle, the idea of forming an order of knighthood to combat the extensive persecution of Christians worldwide right now seems reasonable to me; and incorporating as a private entity seems rational given that the Church is currently disinclined (especially the Pope!) to anything remotely resembling a real fighting order. Whether or not this particular organization has anything like the capacity to accomplish those goals is not known to me.
They do have a holy rule, which makes them similar to numerous orders of knighthood established during the Crusader period and the period of the Reconquista. Two points that refer to secular realities strike me: that those who held military rank should serve in the Order with the same rank they held in the secular military service; and that those who are wealthy enough to provide their own expenses shall enjoy greater honor than those who depend on the Order to pay their way and/or their salary. Those are the sorts of practicalities that historically bedeviled religious orders, a kind of recognition that the nobility and the wealthy aren't quite prepared to surrender all of their privileges in order to follow God. But the verse says 'if you want to be perfect,' which is more than most of us even want.
Related to our recent discussion, it looks as if they have a Twitter account that was mysteriously temporarily deleted during a Congressional hearing relevant to them.
I'll open the floor to discussion, both of the idea in general and the particular example.
They do have a holy rule, which makes them similar to numerous orders of knighthood established during the Crusader period and the period of the Reconquista. Two points that refer to secular realities strike me: that those who held military rank should serve in the Order with the same rank they held in the secular military service; and that those who are wealthy enough to provide their own expenses shall enjoy greater honor than those who depend on the Order to pay their way and/or their salary. Those are the sorts of practicalities that historically bedeviled religious orders, a kind of recognition that the nobility and the wealthy aren't quite prepared to surrender all of their privileges in order to follow God. But the verse says 'if you want to be perfect,' which is more than most of us even want.
Related to our recent discussion, it looks as if they have a Twitter account that was mysteriously temporarily deleted during a Congressional hearing relevant to them.
I'll open the floor to discussion, both of the idea in general and the particular example.
Social Media Building Chinese-Style "Social Credit" System
Well, of course they are. They helped build China's.
Crimes are punished outside the legal system, which means no presumption of innocence, no legal representation, no judge, no jury, and often no appeal. In other words, it’s an alternative legal system where the accused have fewer rights.One way of controlling this is to have the government insist that Americans' rights be in no way limited by corporations, and to establish protections that would void any "license agreement" that abridged such rights. That, however, depends on the government being a limit on corporations rather than aligning with them. The alignment of corporate and government power is quite likely, given the resources corporations have, and the benefit to overweening politicians of being able to have a compliant corporation enforce limits on the citizenry that the Constitution would not allow.
Social credit systems are an end-run around the pesky complications of the legal system. Unlike China’s government policy, the social credit system emerging in the U.S. is enforced by private companies. If the public objects to how these laws are enforced, it can’t elect new rule-makers.
An increasing number of societal “privileges” related to transportation, accommodations, communications, and the rates we pay for services (like insurance) are either controlled by technology companies or affected by how we use technology services. And Silicon Valley’s rules for being allowed to use their services are getting stricter.
If current trends hold, it’s possible that in the future a majority of misdemeanors and even some felonies will be punished not by Washington, D.C., but by Silicon Valley. It’s a slippery slope away from democracy and toward corporatocracy.
In other words, in the future, law enforcement may be determined less by the Constitution and legal code, and more by end-user license agreements.
Victims of Journalism
Journalists, of course.
“...using journalistic techniques to target journalists and news organizations as retribution for — or as a warning not to pursue — coverage critical of the president is fundamentally different from the well-established role of the news media in scrutinizing people in positions of power,” wrote reporters Jeremy Peters and Kenneth Vogel.
Appalachian Orpheus
Anna and Elizabeth are the two women in the "Old Churchyard" video. Besides singing, they make these hand-cranked cartoons and puppet shows. Their art is a river of life.
The Orpheus legend is very old. His music is so beautiful that the rocks and trees dance around him, and he can raise the dead, but he arouses the jealousy of the gods. Like most stories about the war between life and death, it comes in versions with both sad and happy endings. One of the modern versions, "Black Orpheus," has both:
A Song of a Man Who Died Well
His name was Blaze Foley. He had a strange life; much of it he was homeless. Like many who could not maintain a home, he was unable to trust many, and unable to do the basic things that would have enabled his stability. He was important to the Outlaw music scene in Austin, Texas, but he never attained much success in his life.
All the same he died well. Few do, and perhaps there is nothing in life more worthy than a good death.
Storm
This weekend my county is engaged in a number of two-year anniversary events marking the still-incomplete recovery from Hurricane Harvey. I took a screenshot of this radar picture showing the landfall. It's usually hard to tell what the underlying geography is, so I photoshopped a bit, adding green outlines around the inhabited peninsulas (the southern one being Rockport/Fulton proper, and the northern one being ours, Lamar), and black outlines around the uninhabited peninsulas (including the Aransas Wildlife Refuge, home of whooping cranes in the winter) and the barrier islands. The "X" is about where our house is. This picture still gives me goosebumps, remembering the sense of a huge wave about to break over us. Metaphorically, I mean; we weren't overwashed, but the radar pictures we got before we lost our signal looked like a 40,000-foot atmospheric breaker about to crash.
On Dual, and Multiple, Loyalties
I realize that accusations of 'dual loyalty' have a fraught history for the Jewish community especially, and thus that the remarks earlier this week around 'disloyalty' were upsetting to many. Acknowledging that, however, I want to frame a principle in political philosophy in universal terms: not for Jews, or Jewish-Americans, but for all of us everywhere.
The principle is as follows: It is the mark of a healthy political system that it accepts that its members have many other claims on their loyalty, and can negotiate such claims insofar as they are natural or otherwise legitimate. It is the totalitarian system that demands that children turn in their parents to the state for disloyal thoughts, not the healthy system. It is the totalitarian system that demands that religious orders direly violate their conscience, as informed by centuries of theological arguments and developed doctrine, in order to conform to some new fashion in law.
A natural loyalty to one's parents, as well as to those who have taken special interest in one and helped one along, is right and proper. A healthy state neither needs nor ought to command disloyalty to such things in preference to itself. Loyalty to friends, to community organizations, to principles, these things are not undesirable. It is Mussolini who said that the ideal should be 'everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' The system he was describing literally was fascism; other systems that aim at the same ideal, to include the recently-mentioned People's Republic of China, are actively evil rather than healthy modes of human politics.
To return to the specific case, it is also true that loyalty is a two-way street. I think it is only natural to feel a kind of loyalty -- a degree of loyalty -- to a state that declares itself to exist for the specific purpose of providing you and your kin a safe haven if all else fails; to welcome you whenever you come, and even to welcome you home if you choose; and that has shown a willingness to risk lives in the defense of those like yourself who have fallen into danger. It would be a strange sort of character that did not respond to such a display of loyalty in at least some reciprocal way. I do not suggest that anyone has so responded, and certainly do not name anyone as having such feelings, but I would certainly understand if someone from that particular community did feel that way.
To speak again to the universal, I would say that this is a fit principle for judging the validity of any human state. If it cannot accept natural and otherwise legitimate loyalties that may contravene its designs, the state is overweening. Such a state is suffering from a kind of hubris, which produces tragedy and sometimes a great fall. It is unworthy in spite of whatever other claims it has to glory, as the great Greek tragic heroes were found unworthy in this way in spite of being heroes.
Negotiation may sometimes be necessary in the hardest cases: it is one thing to say that a parent who discovers a beloved child engaged in a great crime might ought to inform the authorities; it is another to say that the parent should not, in that process, hire lawyers to protect the child's interests against the state, or that the parent must disown the child and disavow all sense of natural loyalty to them. These concerns may arise in the hardest cases, I agree. Nevertheless, the principle holds true.
The principle is as follows: It is the mark of a healthy political system that it accepts that its members have many other claims on their loyalty, and can negotiate such claims insofar as they are natural or otherwise legitimate. It is the totalitarian system that demands that children turn in their parents to the state for disloyal thoughts, not the healthy system. It is the totalitarian system that demands that religious orders direly violate their conscience, as informed by centuries of theological arguments and developed doctrine, in order to conform to some new fashion in law.
A natural loyalty to one's parents, as well as to those who have taken special interest in one and helped one along, is right and proper. A healthy state neither needs nor ought to command disloyalty to such things in preference to itself. Loyalty to friends, to community organizations, to principles, these things are not undesirable. It is Mussolini who said that the ideal should be 'everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.' The system he was describing literally was fascism; other systems that aim at the same ideal, to include the recently-mentioned People's Republic of China, are actively evil rather than healthy modes of human politics.
To return to the specific case, it is also true that loyalty is a two-way street. I think it is only natural to feel a kind of loyalty -- a degree of loyalty -- to a state that declares itself to exist for the specific purpose of providing you and your kin a safe haven if all else fails; to welcome you whenever you come, and even to welcome you home if you choose; and that has shown a willingness to risk lives in the defense of those like yourself who have fallen into danger. It would be a strange sort of character that did not respond to such a display of loyalty in at least some reciprocal way. I do not suggest that anyone has so responded, and certainly do not name anyone as having such feelings, but I would certainly understand if someone from that particular community did feel that way.
To speak again to the universal, I would say that this is a fit principle for judging the validity of any human state. If it cannot accept natural and otherwise legitimate loyalties that may contravene its designs, the state is overweening. Such a state is suffering from a kind of hubris, which produces tragedy and sometimes a great fall. It is unworthy in spite of whatever other claims it has to glory, as the great Greek tragic heroes were found unworthy in this way in spite of being heroes.
Negotiation may sometimes be necessary in the hardest cases: it is one thing to say that a parent who discovers a beloved child engaged in a great crime might ought to inform the authorities; it is another to say that the parent should not, in that process, hire lawyers to protect the child's interests against the state, or that the parent must disown the child and disavow all sense of natural loyalty to them. These concerns may arise in the hardest cases, I agree. Nevertheless, the principle holds true.
"Hereby" and Orders
As the President should have learned during his attempt to ban trans* servicemembers by Tweet, comments on Twitter do not constitute a lawful order even when you have otherwise lawful authority. On this occasion, I'm not at all clear on the degree of lawful authority that exists via more formal processes. Probably there is some sort of authority, held over from World War II and/or World War I, to issue orders even to privately-held American companies in a time of war. Of course, we are not in fact at war.
Here again, as with the birthright citizenship stuff and for that matter the trans* servicemember ban, the President may be broadly right on the desirable policy. I'm reasonably sanguine about a trade war with China. It will hurt, but it will hurt them more, and they can less afford it. It may expose the structural faults in their economy, which are much more severe than anyone really wants to admit. If so, it may cripple Chinese power designs via mass investment projects like the "New Silk Road." Even if not, it may weaken their hand to undertake new oppression against Hong Kong, and may limit the resources they have for their ongoing cultural genocide against the Uighur in what they like to call their New Frontier ("Xinjiang"). This may be the most we can do for the freedom fighters there, given China's powerful nuclear umbrella. Possibly even some of the longer-term positive effects may come to pass that the President, and some others, have decided can be gained on this road. I'm agnostic about that; but breaking totalitarian China is worth the candle. Humanity may long thank us for once again paying the price to break another totalitarian system of authority that has been creeping out further and further.
President Trump still has to be held to constitutional and legal limits on his power. Even if one trusts him (which not everyone does, to put it mildly), the forms exist to restrain the ones you don't trust who may get their hands on that power later. That might come any day, as health is uncertain for anyone, and he is engendering enemies both wealthy and powerful with these moves.
Here again, as with the birthright citizenship stuff and for that matter the trans* servicemember ban, the President may be broadly right on the desirable policy. I'm reasonably sanguine about a trade war with China. It will hurt, but it will hurt them more, and they can less afford it. It may expose the structural faults in their economy, which are much more severe than anyone really wants to admit. If so, it may cripple Chinese power designs via mass investment projects like the "New Silk Road." Even if not, it may weaken their hand to undertake new oppression against Hong Kong, and may limit the resources they have for their ongoing cultural genocide against the Uighur in what they like to call their New Frontier ("Xinjiang"). This may be the most we can do for the freedom fighters there, given China's powerful nuclear umbrella. Possibly even some of the longer-term positive effects may come to pass that the President, and some others, have decided can be gained on this road. I'm agnostic about that; but breaking totalitarian China is worth the candle. Humanity may long thank us for once again paying the price to break another totalitarian system of authority that has been creeping out further and further.
President Trump still has to be held to constitutional and legal limits on his power. Even if one trusts him (which not everyone does, to put it mildly), the forms exist to restrain the ones you don't trust who may get their hands on that power later. That might come any day, as health is uncertain for anyone, and he is engendering enemies both wealthy and powerful with these moves.
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