Not our usual fair, but fun to watch ...
I had no idea Christopher Walken had a dance background.
Moon Over Caledon, Part II
The second part of the short story is now available on Amazon, for free, if any of you wish to read it. The third part will appear on the 30th.
The Cost of Red Tape for Small Businesses
Bee Stings
Inspiring: US Women's Soccer Team To Boycott Scoring Goals Until Racism Is Defeated
I'd prefer that they boycott representing the US, given that they really shouldn't want to represent anything they believe is evil, but this works.
AOC Says How She Accidentally Glued Her Face To Her Coffee Table Is A Clear Failure Of Capitalism
Wisdom from our favorite economic genius.
Ben And Jerry's Introduces Fun New Flavor 'Push The Jews Into The Sea Salt And Caramel'
Scientists Warn That Within 6 Months Humanity Will Run Out Of Things To Call Racist
I'm not sure we have that long.
Adventures in Truck Driving
So tonight a semi-trailer driver decided to allow his GPS to direct him back to Asheville. He apparently didn't notice the sign that says "WARNING: TRUCKS NOT ADVISED TO TRAVEL THIS HIGHWAY." That's ok. Anyone can just ignore that. That's only advisory, after all.
Then he allowed himself to be directed by GPS off of the highway onto a very narrow secondary road that runs across the top of Neddie Mountain, which is helpfully called "Neddie Mountain Road" so you'll know that it's not the right road for a semi. There he became stuck trying to manage a hairpin corner with crumbling shoulders and precipices on both sides.
Pity the poor driver. He's a young black man, he's in the middle of mountain country full of Confederate flags and hillbillies he's been taught to fear his whole life, he's stuck in a truck full of valuable cargo, and it's getting dark.
So he calls for a wrecker, which a tractor-trailer capable wrecker has to come from Asheville and takes hours to get there. He has to sit there alone for hours and hours until help finally comes. Now it's fully dark and they're trying to haul him out. They get him out, and realize that not only can he not get through that curve, they can't get their wrecker through it either.
So they call the Volunteer Fire Department. It's now fully dark, and we have guys out with flashlights helping them painstakingly back the whole way back to the highway that was never a good option for a truck like that to begin with. The wrecker can probably turn around maybe a half a mile back, but there's nowhere on that narrow road to turn around a semi.
We'll get him out, but I imagine it will take all night. Then he's got to drive back to Asheville using the long way that he was trying to avoid in the first place.
UPDATE:
Entrapment
The hell you say.
The government has documented at least 12 confidential informants who assisted the sprawling investigation. [Note: there are only six accused plotters.--Grim] The trove of evidence they helped gather provides an unprecedented view into American extremism, laying out in often stunning detail the ways that anti-government groups network with each other and, in some cases, discuss violent actions.An examination of the case by BuzzFeed News also reveals that some of those informants, acting under the direction of the FBI, played a far larger role than has previously been reported. Working in secret, they did more than just passively observe and report on the actions of the suspects. Instead, they had a hand in nearly every aspect of the alleged plot, starting with its inception. The extent of their involvement raises questions as to whether there would have even been a conspiracy without them.
We've all seen the "alleged evil right-wing plot turns out to have been invention of FBI/ATF" movie before. If we're at the point that they've infiltrated these organizations thoroughly enough to have two informants on the payroll for every defendant, we can surely declare victory on Joe Biden's "Strategy to Counter Domestic Terrorism" and go home. We're in more need to counter the Federal police, who are apparently out there creating violent plots all the time.
Arizona Poll
78% of Arizona Republicans doubt Biden won based on the initial results of the audit. That's interesting, but even more interesting to me were some of the statistics the article cited.
Despite Biden’s victory, Republicans carried every countywide office in Maricopa, save for the sheriff (which an incumbent Democrat held), including flipping the county recorder and winning the open treasurer seat....Add to this fact that very vocal Trump-supporting members of Congress, like GOP Reps. Andy Biggs and Debbie Lesko, won their re-election contests in Maricopa County districts by massive margins, and now the red flag is starting to go up.
That does seem odd! Hm...
Porn Stars and the Right
Apparently a female porn star -- "Brandi Love," which I assume is a pseudonym -- was turned away from the Turning Point USA conference. TPUSA is a youth-oriented conservative movement of some sort, one that I don't know well. Its leadership is smug about their decision.
I wouldn't be inclined to turn anyone away at the current moment, least of all because they were a sinner. Donald Trump, for all his flaws (and sins) certainly did not look down on porn stars. Nor, per se, did another figure of some importance.
Of course, I am a sinner myself and not much inclined to throw stones from my glass house. Perhaps these are better people than me, more upright and moral, and thus more fit to condemn; but they still are going to need people to effect a democratic solution.
The entry to heaven is said to be narrow, but roads made by men should be wide. If you make the road too narrow, no one can follow you; and perhaps you cannot keep to that road yourself.
What is a “Pudding”?
Americans have a very different answer than the British, who almost can’t answer at all. My favorite British puddings are savory: black pudding, for example, is made with blood and oatmeal. It is often served as a breakfast food.
Meanwhile, an airborne virus with a 10% fatality rate
Don't worry, V.P. Harris is safe
This seems like a high positive COVID test rate for a bunch of vaccinated public serpents, even if they were crowded in a private jet without masks, while fleeing to the nation's capitol to break a Texas quorum and get photo ops with Kamala Harris. The Texas House Dems can't very well admit they weren't vaccinated, so I have to assume they took one of those tests with a zillion replications that is almost guaranteed to produce false positives. I'm not getting the point of the exercise, though. To cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccinations? On their own claim to have been vaccinated? To irritate the VP's staff by admitting that they put her at risk, or force her to argue that vaccinated people don't have to wear masks, or needn't quarantine? Why get tested in the first place? If there's no political capital to be made from the whole exercise, I suppose we have to chalk it up to idiocy, no great leap.
I guess they could be hoping they'll all be quarantined in D.C. for a few weeks, but the special session in Austin will last until August 31.
Black Rifle, White Flag
It's understandable, given the pressure around 'domestic extremists' and a counter-terrorism strategy from the White House aimed at Americans on the wrong side politically, that some people would want to try to negotiate a separate peace. Black Rifle Coffee is led by such people.
It's ok. They love Big Brother now.
Black Rifle professes to be eager to put some of its fiercest and trolliest culture-war fights behind it. “What I figured out the last couple of years is that being really political, in the sense of backing an individual politician or any individual party, is really [expletive] detrimental,” Hafer told me. “And it’s detrimental to the company. And it’s detrimental, ultimately, to my mission.”Hafer and Best were talking in a glorified supply closet in the Salt Lake City offices, where potential designs for new coffee bags were hanging on the wall. One of them featured a Renaissance-style rendering of St. Michael the Archangel, a patron saint of military personnel, shooting a short-barreled rifle. In Afghanistan and Iraq, Hafer knew a number of squad mates who had a St. Michael tattoo; for a time, he wore into battle a St. Michael pendant that a Catholic friend gave him. But while the St. Michael design was being mocked up, Hafer said he learned from a friend at the Pentagon that an image of St. Michael trampling on Satan had been embraced by white supremacists because it was reminiscent of the murder of George Floyd. Now any plans for the coffee bag had been scrapped. “This won’t see the light of day,” Hafer said.“You can’t let sections of your customers hijack your brand and say, ‘This is who you are,’” Best told me. “It’s like, no, no, we define that.” The Rittenhouse episode may have cost the company thousands of customers, but, Hafer believed, it also allowed Black Rifle to draw a line in the sand. “It’s such a repugnant group of people,” Hafer said. “It’s like the worst of American society, and I got to flush the toilet of some of those people that kind of hijacked portions of the brand.”
Canceling St. Michael the Archangel because some bad people may 'embrace' him is going a long way to prove your loyalty. Hafer says they won't start a "Black Lives Matter" coffee line, though. I'm not sure why not. As the journalist who suggested it during the struggle session interview pointed out, it would help them get clear of many despised former customers.
Thought Experiments Down the Slippery Slope
My friend Jim Hanson (formerly Uncle Jimbo of BLACKFIVE) has a few narrative expressions of concern about the direction of America. His models -- which he gives up front -- are 1984 and Brave New World, and he intends these to be speculative warnings along the same lines. It's not that we'll necessarily get there... but we have gotten a lot closer to 1984 than we had hoped, even with Orwell's warning.
Demons and Monsters
Two from the Babylon Bee. "According to sources, the demon will be moving to somewhere he'll feel more welcome, like Washington D.C."
The Dignity of Pirates
An amusing description from the opening of a history of the Normans.
The gulf stream flows so near to the southern coast of Norway, and to the Orkneys and Western Islands, that their climate is much less severe than might be supposed. Yet no one can help wondering why they were formerly so much more populous than now, and why the people who came westward even so long ago as the great Aryan migration, did not persist in turning aside to the more fertile countries that lay farther southward. In spite of all their disadvantages, the Scandinavian peninsula, and the sterile islands of the northern seas, were inhabited by men and women whose enterprise and intelligence ranked them above their neighbors.Now, with the modern ease of travel and transportation, these poorer countries can be supplied from other parts of the world. And though the summers of Norway are misty and dark and short, and it is difficult to raise even a little hay on the bits of meadow among the rocky mountain slopes, commerce can make up for all deficiencies. In early times there was no commerce except that carried on by the pirates—if we may dignify their undertakings by such a respectable name,—and it was hardly possible to make a living from the soil alone. The sand dunes of Denmark and the cliffs of Norway alike gave little encouragement to tillers of the ground, yet, in defiance of all our ideas of successful colonization, when the people of these countries left them, it was at first only to form new settlements in such places as Iceland, or the Faroë or Orkney islands and stormiest Hebrides.
Apparently in the high English society that considered itself descended chiefly from the Normans, in the year 1886, 'pirate' as a description was thought to be at least somewhat respectable. Maybe they were still thinking of Sir Francis Drake.
No Longer Worried
Charles Murray is a pre-Boomer, born in 1943, which makes him 78 years old. He published his most (in)famous work, The Bell Curve, in 1994, which is almost thirty years ago now. At that point he was already almost sixty, and you might have thought him ready to speak uncomfortable thoughts without too much fear of being (as we would say now) canceled. Yet for nearly thirty years I have heard his defenders pointing out that he was misunderstood, that he didn't really say the things that he is most hotly criticized for having said.
Instapundit just posted a link to his new book, Facing Reality: Two Truths About Race in America. Here is how it describes itself:
The charges of white privilege and systemic racism that are tearing the country apart fIoat free of reality. Two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt, need to be brought into the open and incorporated into the way we think about public policy: American whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians have different violent crime rates and different means and distributions of cognitive ability. The allegations of racism in policing, college admissions, segregation in housing, and hiring and promotions in the workplace ignore the ways in which the problems that prompt the allegations of systemic racism are driven by these two realities.
Emphasis added. That's exactly the claim his defenders have been trying to walk away from all this time: that the things we tend to describe as structural racism are in fact the fault of minority groups, because they are (a) less intelligent on average and (b) more violent (perhaps because they are less intelligent). He has apparently decided to embrace this idea and use his last years in defense of it.
I don't know that I believe that (a) is true; I am persuaded that at least some of the counterarguments I've read over the year are plausible. Claim (b) is true as a matter of empirical fact, although just why it is true is the real issue. Are some groups more violent because their situation is less tolerable or just, or are they more violent in some inherent -- perhaps even essential -- way?
I notice the top-rated review accuses Murray of "soft pedaling" and "sugarcoating," which is definitely not how I would have described this approach.
Another reviewer has an insight that poses an immediate danger of confirmation bias to me: "An honest appraisal of the differences in criminality between groups by actual data. What I took away, however, is that in cities of 500,000 or less these group differences are much less evident and important. What this book seems to be is a reasoned argument for a post-urban society. Most, if not all of the pathologies of modern life are associated with large urban populations."
It's not quite all -- there are still plenty of drugs in rural America, for example. It may really be most.
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