Unfortunately, in the current environment lawsuits will have to accompany major elections all the time. This has been a longstanding practice on the other side, where voter ID rules or other election security practices are routinely subject to lawsuits to try to get a court to suspend them. It's not usually the DNC but an allied 'civil rights' group, claiming that the intent is not ballot security but disenfranchisement of a class of voters. It's about time that election security advocates got in the game, because they've been getting drug over the coals by similar practices for decades.
Good!
A series of pre-election lawsuits against bad voting practices has been initiated by the GOP. This is one of the things that was missing in 2020, meaning that after the election courts mostly dismissed lawsuits about bad practices as laches, 'too late.' These may well be dismissed as unripe, meaning 'too early.' However, they may not all be; and if they are, at least when they're brought up again after the election it will be harder to just rule them too late since an earlier court will have explicitly told them to wait.
Dog rescue
Inspiring before and after pictures of our most recent dog rescue: 58 lbs., which was skeletal, to 89 lbs., which appears to be his ideal weight:
He's about to start heartworm treatment, but in about 2-3 months he'll be available for adoption. The rescue group for which I'm fostering him would like to place him somewhere a little further north. He has beautiful indoor and outdoor manners with people, other dogs, and cats, but is a large vigorous animal who would be happiest somewhere he could run around outdoors in a cooler climate. The rescue group pays for transport.I was feeding this guy 16 cups of food a day when he arrived in April or May. I tapered him off as he recovered, and he's eating 4 cups a day now.
What'd'ja Expect?
DB: "President who dropped Afghans from sky asks why you thought Gaza pier would go any better."
Liberal Language
I really like our local paper, the Smoky Mountain News, in spite of its very clear liberal bent. They do good journalism and get the facts right. It is wearisome having every single story described in that liberal context, but compared to the way that far wealthier outfits don't even bother to get the facts right, it's good for what journalism has become.
The problem is that the profession has become such an echo chamber that they can't even be fair when they're trying to be fair. It's not as if they don't make an effort to be. They just can't.
For example, here's a story about the abortion issue. The headline is as "Roundtable sheds light on threat to abortion care." So (a) the opposing view is a threat, and (b) abortion isn't just abortion, it's a form of "care." The story is literally an attempt to describe a roundtable that discusses the issue, and the news involves giving the views of each side. And they try:
Right to life advocates view abortion as an attack on human life.
It's not the opinion, i.e. 'view,' of right to life advocates that abortion is an attack on human life. It is an indisputable fact that abortion necessarily involves the destruction of a human life. The view is that it is wrong to destroy an innocent human life absent some very compelling reason to do so -- usually even right to life advocates are willing to accept genuine medical necessities arising from things like intratubal pregnancies, where a refusal to perform the abortion would not save the baby but would ensure the death of the mother.
You don't have to take that view, but you can't reasonably reject the fact.
A lot of right-to-life advocates even think that rape and/or incest are good enough reasons to allow killing the innocent human being. The guy they are citing as an example, Mark Robinson, takes that view. They credit him for that view, and say he has "softened" his stance over time. Softness and caring are on the pro-killing side. Hardness and uncaring is, unconsciously I believe, associated with the side that is opposed to the killing of human beings.
Here's another story where they legitimately are trying to be fair, and just can't quite. This one is about the new Pride festival in Haywood County's seat of Waynesville, for some reason scheduled after Pride month. (The one in Sylva is much later still -- they've taken over Labor Day weekend for it, even though Labor Day was a good left-wing cause already. The burly union man has been getting less and less popular among this crowd for a generation or so, though once the mainstay of their political influence.)
For many, a Pride festival is a fairly straightforward event, a celebration of unity among people marginalized for who they are and who they love. But in a purer sense, Haywood County’s historic first Pride festival and a competing prayer meeting held the night before were both compelling exercises of constitutionally protected rights, suggesting maybe — just maybe — that Americans can, in fact, disagree without being disagreeable.
That's not a bad opening. It does suggest that the normal opinion, "for many," is that Pride is "straightforward" and about love. It does allow the "competing prayer meeting" to exist in an permissible category of constitutional activity that can even be respectful.
They go on to frame the story in terms of the one LGBTQ advocate who showed up to the prayer meeting, and offered a biblical citation in support of her position -- a citation they don't bother to quote, but that they do praise as a "courageous speech." Later on they mention it involved citations from Acts 10, but they don't offer the citations or the argument so that it might be evaluated. Why would you? They don't quote anyone else's biblical citations either; the only approved use of biblical citations is to defend left-wing political positions, and it's not really important whether those citations are plausibly constructed. Nobody serious believes in the Bible anyway, not really.
They did quote her as saying "I just wanted to offer it to you, with an open heart, to consider that maybe that which you are calling 'unclean' God does not call 'unclean.'" Thus, I'm guessing it was this passage:
9 About noon the following day as they were on their journey and approaching the city, Peter went up on the roof to pray. 10 He became hungry and wanted something to eat, and while the meal was being prepared, he fell into a trance. 11 He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. 12 It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. 13 Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”14 “Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”15 The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”
So the argument would be something like: just as God can make clean for eating animals that the Jews were previously told in clear scripture were unclean, so too God could make homosexuality clean even though earlier scripture held that it was not clean.
It's a reasonable parallel. One could argue that no similar vision has been sent to a prophet to inform them of the new status of the previously unclean, but who knows if that's true or not? It's very hard to identify true prophets, and we haven't necessarily heard if God sent that message to one. The argument does show that the clearly and demonstrably unclean has been made clean once; why couldn't it happen twice?
The piece would have been stronger if the journalists had included that argument, without becoming an editorial because it would have just been straight news about what the advocate said at the prayer meeting. But they didn't include it, because it never occurred to them to think that a biblical argument was actually important.
The piece goes on to talk about the Pride festival, giving parts of what it calls the "rousing speech." Again, language on their side is "courageous" and "rousing." The other side is mostly quoted as warning itself not to be hateful, which shows that side is constantly tempted to hate.
It's a good newspaper, really. We're lucky to have it. They're trying their best, too. They just can't do it.
That's OK, We'll Just Vote Again
It's an interesting feature of the French constitution that the loss of an election can allow the sitting-but-just-voted-against President to call for another election immediately. This time they got a more palatable result to the elites: instead of a right-wing government, they'll have a coalition with their very hard left. Whatever it takes to keep the right wing out of power! They could have voted ten more times if necessary.
UPDATE: See discussion for further clarification of French election laws.
Bikeriders: The Song.
The band Lucero wrote a song about the book, The Bikeriders,
back in 2005. Unsurprisingly, it was included in the movie soundtrack. It’s a
good song and the pictures in the video are actually from the book.
News of a more local sort
This is the difference a small path divergence can make for a small tropical system: A much weakened Beryl took steady aim for several days at an area just south of the Mexican border. Then for a day or two the forecast pointed right at my home, before it started to drift further up the coast on Thursday. At that point I released my reservation with a contractor to put up my storm shutters, even knowing that I'm still convalescing and couldn't do it alone, while Greg's back (though improving) wouldn't permit him to help at all. Friday the track wobbled between us and further east.
On Saturday I managed to get two strapping young men out here to pull lawn furniture and some potted plants into the garage, but I released them as well without making them stay to put a shutter even on a big double door that opens inward and gave us the worst time during Harvey.
In the end, the storm has set sail for tiny Palacios, halfway to Houston from here. It may briefly regain hurricane status and make landfall with 75-85mph winds, heading almost directly for the coastal and isolated South Texas Nuclear Plant on its way to College Station and then Texarkana, missing both Houston and Dallas.On this map, our little peninsula is just west of the first bay shown east of Corpus Christi, called "Espiritu Santo." (Our bay, Copano, is too small to show up here; not even Corpus's much bigger bay is visible. Landfall is expected just east of Matagorda Bay, the large bay down the coast from Houston's Galveston Bay.) Here at home, we'll likely get some light wind and, if we're lucky, 2-3 inches of rain.
Greg is dutifully but gingerly doing his PT. Knock on wood, it seems he may not need surgery, if his little enzymes continue to eat up the bits of extruded disc. Considering that he's been out of commission for two months, that's surprising but welcome news, like this storm track and minor intensity.
A Different Perspective: The Bikeriders
I saw the Bikeriders today and my reaction to the movie was a bit different than Grim’s. As Grim pointed out, the movie is based on Danny Lyon’s photobook, The Bikeriders and you have to understand it in that context. The movie provides a pretty fair dramatization of the book.
The movie tells the story of the founding, and dark metamorphosis,
of the Vandals Motorcycle Club, a fictional representation of the Outlaws
Motorcycle Club that was the focus of the book. The movie tells the story through
the experiences of Johnny (the club president), Benny (Johnny’s right-hand man),
and Kathy (Benny's wife). These characters were actually in Danny Lyon’s book
and provided some of the recollections he included. Consequently, I didn’t find
it odd that the Kathy character narrated some, by no means all, of the plot. That
is not inconsistent with the book.
Kathy is the perfect character to provide the narration she
does at different times throughout the movie. While she is closely associated
with the club, she is not a member. She is not an outsider but neither is she
an insider. She shares the values and aspirations of mainstream society (a
stable family life and respectability) while simultaneously being immersed in
the biker culture (riding and hard partying) due to her marriage to Benny. Consequently, her character provides a both a
contrast to, and a bridge between, biker culture and mainstream American
society.
In many ways, the male lead of the movie is actually Johnny, played by Tom Hardy. At least he was my favorite character. He represents the original biker culture and ethos while providing the order, discipline, and leadership necessary to forge a group of outcasts into a functioning organization. His story illustrates the fall of the original, post WWII, 1% motorcycle club culture and its replacement with the much darker variant that emerged in the 60’s. Anyone interested in learning about the original motorcycle club culture should read The Original Wild Ones: Tales of the Boozefighters Motorcycle Club
I don’t agree with Grim’s assessment of the Benny character
played by Austin Butler. His character doesn’t lack agency, in fact, his
refusal to surrender it is the central theme of his story. Benny represents the
contradiction at the heart of motorcycle club life. On one hand he seeks the total
freedom the motorcycle club sells itself as representing. On the other hand,
the club is making increased demands on him that will strip that freedom away.
Johnny wants Benny to take over leadership of the club but Benny refuses because
doing so will replace his freedom with responsibility. Kathy wants him to leave
the club as it becomes more violent and drug influenced but he also rejects her
demands because doing so would also surrender his freedom.
Grim said that “In the movie the ending of that story is
very sad, even though (or partly because) the lovebirds escape to a 'happy'
life without motorcycles, brotherhood, honor or valor.” I didn’t see it that
way. Benny didn’t leave the club until after the club abandons brotherhood,
honor, and valor. Once the club became a
criminal organization that had no issue with killing its own members it ceased
to be the club Benny joined and Johnny founded. When the club chose a new darker path that Benny
was unwilling to follow, honor demanded that he leave.
Grim claims the script writer denied the characters agency due
to the choices they made. Once again, I disagree. The story told through the
characters of Johnny, Benny, and Kathy track the experience of Danny Lyon as recounted
in his book. He actually became a patched member of the Outlaws Motorcycle Club
but eventually left the club due to the very dark and violent direction the
club eventually followed. As I said at the beginning of this review, you have
to understand the movie in the context of the book upon which it is based.
I do agree with Grim’s statement that the movie is a “Strong
drama, and a good study of an earlier set of generations.” I highly recommend
the movie.
Another Federal Victory
Dad29 sends this news of an FBI victory over a Nazi motorcycle club — one that they themselves founded.
Apparently, someone in the FBI had the idea of merging a domestic terrorism case with a biker case. Killian planted the idea in Kreis’s head to start a neo-Nazi motorcycle club, the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade Motorcycle Division—named after a horse-mounted unit of Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS….
So they couldn’t get the Outlaws MC to have anything to do with this. They clearly want there to be Nazi MCs. I guess they watch old movies where the bikers wear Nazi emblems, without grasping that they meant something different by them. They had these things as war trophies, either their own or from friends who passed them down. They weren’t declaring allegiance to the enemy, they were counting coup and showing brotherhood with their own. Since that generation, the usage has fallen away. There is no longing for Nazi-themed clubs, which is why they had to build one.
But they want the American right to be Nazis, so they just keep believing. They convinced dude to set one up, in partnership with him, and then they had a state attorney knock it down.
“We decided to strike against the Kavallerie Brigade by bringing these heavy-duty drug charges to shut the active members down,” Foster reportedly said, bragging about shutting down an FBI front group.
Emphasis added both times.
So just remember that anyone who wants you to join them in celebrating Nazis is a Fed. Anyone who wants to talk even in theory about the potential need for bombs is a Fed. Anyone who wants to speculate about using guns to stage attacks is a Fed.
This is basically the same story as several other stories we’ve seen lately. The secret police are working hard, which may not be obvious from all the Hamas-friendly groups running around.
Tangled web
It's no picnic keeping straight the ostensible reasons for denying Kamala Harris a shot at the top position in the White House. Sure, there's the obvious problem that she's an unpleasant fool. But then how to explain how she ended up as VP in the first place? No one wants to admit explicitly that she has literally zero redeeming qualities beyond checking intersection boxes, still less that her appeal (like that of her boss before her, to a lesser extent) was the in terrorem effect of imagining the impact of the sitting president's exit. And yet that seems to be the exact corner they're backed into.
OK, say Harris is great but doesn't appeal to the foolish masses, though party leaders assert their sophisticated ability to appreciate her privately. So how come no one thinks it would be a good idea to put her on a new ticket under Newson or Whitmer as VP? She's so unelectable that she'd drag down the newly anointed candidate for the top position?
Knock her leadership experience? True, she was an undistinguished senator, but she has been VP for four years. The problem there is that she has been sidelined as VP even more, perhaps, than the usual hapless possessor of that office. "Groomed for the top seat" she is not, even in the context of a top spot that for several years has been filled by various unelected flacks, in short anyone or everyone but the technical holder to that position. But calling attention to Harris's hollow title doesn't do much to pander to the black or female vote, or the lack of seriousness of an administration or a party who couldn't face up to the real danger that an unusually elderly president might not make it even through his first term.
Black Turlogh
Here are a pair of articles about one of Robert E. Howard’s lesser-known heroes, Turlogh Dubh O’Brien. “Dubh” is Gaelic for “black”; with reference to the previous post, the name “Douglas” is an anglicized version of “Dubhglas,” which translates literally as “Blackwater.”
Modern readers usually forget that the Cimmerians were supposed to have been the ancestors of the Scottish Highlanders and Irish Gaels. The movies often use the term “Northman,” which was originally used for the Norse of Norway. Even when Howard wants to write about the Vikings, he usually introduces a Gaelic leader, more often Cormac Mac Art. (The Vikings, meanwhile, were Danes in those stories).
Privateers
There’s no ‘constitutional right’ at work here, in spite of the headline, but you can get Congress’ permission.
It may not get much publicity, but there it is, smack-dab in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: Congress has the power to grant citizens “letters of marque and reprisal.” Meaning that, with Congress’s permission, private citizens can load weapons onto their fishing boats, head out to the high seas, capture enemy vessels, and keep the booty. Back in the day, these patriotic pirates were known as “privateers.” At the start of the Revolutionary War, America had a meager navy, so we had to rely on these privateers, who captured nearly two thousand British vessels and confiscated vast amounts of food, uniforms, weapons, and barrels of sherry....The Founding Fathers were big fans of privateers. Late in life, John Adams wrote glowingly about the 1775 Massachusetts law that first legalized them, calling it “one of the most important documents in history. The Declaration of Independence is a brimborion in comparison with it.”
The author is playing this for laughs, while trying to make the point that originalist thinking is foolish.
For several minutes, we spoke about originalism and the Constitution. Though it’s obscure, the privateering clause highlights that this document—for all its brilliance and prescience—was written in a vastly different time. Some passages—such as those about the “blessings of liberty” and “equal protection”—are timeless. But others are clearly the product of the eighteenth century.He would not know this, but there has been quite a lot of recent thought given to restoring privateering. During the early phases of the Global War on Terror, it was regularly discussed as a way of making the market work against the problem. Not just at sea, either: just as land-based forms were used in the 19th century, known as ‘filibusters,’ so too there was considerable thought given to licensing private armies with similar privileges to seize prizes to fight terrorist forces in Africa and elsewhere.
Probably the best known example is Erik Prince of Blackwater fame, who proposed doing exactly that in Africa and in Ukraine. In the end the government decided that it preferred to keep direct control over armed forces, but consider how poorly that strategy ultimately fared. Really the Russian government did what Prince wanted with the Wagner group, fairly successfully. Those forces proved unreliable against American-backed irregulars in Syria, and haven’t been effective in Ukraine, but they were pretty effective against Islamist irregulars across Africa.
China, meanwhile, is effectively using a ’gray zone fleet’ of fishing privateers to war against the Philippines over control of the sea lanes and fishing areas. It’s proving quite difficult to contest effectively. Privateers are in play right now.
Less piratical but still more on the side of militia forces, several US States maintain naval militia to this day.
It may be that walking around in a tricorn hat and writing petitions with a quill pen s carrying a lot of the weight of making this originalist idea seem dated. With a little more attention, like other constitutional matters it too proves to be of continuing interest.
Independence Day
The wife and I rode over to the unincorporated village of Cashiers for their fireworks show. Cashiers is an interesting little mountain town. It has no government, but somehow has a fully-funded independent rescue service, fire department, and ambulance service. It only has seven hundred residents, but this time of year there's about twenty-five thousand people there on vacation in condos or second homes. It's a very pleasant little town, which enjoys its anarchy so much that it turned down an invitation from the state legislature to formally re-incorporate.
Fireworks were pleasant and plentiful, and then we rode home. It's a promising start to the Independence Day holiday, which we will be celebrating intensely as always. It's the most wonderful time of the year.
Brought to you from the other half of the Range 15 team, the ones who don't sell coffee these days.
Like a Fox
I was introduced to this song at a very young age by Banks & Shane, the band from Atlanta. For many years I didn’t understand it at all. My limited understanding of women forbade it.
In a way it is really only now that I understand the song. I suppose it is amazing that I maintained such a naive view of women until my 50th year. Maybe I have mostly just known good and virtuous women.
Fist-Fighting
There's probably something healthy about fighting that our society refuses to accept. At a recent concert out Texas way a young singer named Miranda Lambert broke up a fight between some female fans (verbally), and then had the wisdom to set terms for when fighting was allowed during her set. Like G. K. Chesterton said about Christianity, it has the wisdom to divide the world in recognition of human nature: "Here you can swagger, there you can grovel."
Any one might say that we should be neither quite miserable nor quite happy. But to find out how far one MAY be quite miserable without making it impossible to be quite happy—that was a discovery in psychology. Any one might say, “Neither swagger nor grovel”; and it would have been a limit. But to say, “Here you can swagger and there you can grovel”—that was an emancipation.
One of the thing about The Bikeriders movie that is striking is how little violence is in it -- and the worst of that either from those completely outside motorcycle culture, or those from the younger generation who had been explicitly rejected as unworthy for the culture and who found a way to worm their way in anyway. Early in the film Johnny faces a challenge, and asks if it should be answered with fists or knives. "Well, I don't want to kill you," the other man says, so they just fight with fists. Likewise in a later brawl, Johnny spends his time either trying to avoid it or breaking it up, and all the sides drink beer and become friends afterwards. There's another scene of drunken brawling, but it's just for fun. Nobody is really trying to hurt anybody.
In my generation, the great film was Fight Club. That film (and its earlier book) supposed that the way the culture had changed to forbid fighting had caused a kind of real psychic damage to young men. The earlier age depicted in the newer film allowed younger men to brawl on the weekends, under the eyes and guidance of older men who didn't anymore wish to, then go back to work on Monday.
Fight Club suggests that the popularity of the fight, once released, will ennoble the men so that they can overthrow the whole world and end a civilization that hates them. The Bikeriders thinks they'll keep steady jobs if you just let them be themselves and don't make a big thing about the occasional fistfight. They're just blue collar guys, working things out for themselves. They'll be back on Monday to drive the truck or turn the wrench or whatever.
Maybe we shouldn't make such a big deal about it. The law says it's all 'simple assault' and subject to arrest and court intervention, but it really shouldn't be. No harm, no foul: and mostly, there's not really any harm. We're probably better off if we make room for it, especially for those who choose fists over knives, and leave the guns alone.
A Moment of Equality
For one brief shining moment, the Democratic Party treats its own just as shabbily as it treats everyone else.
Multiple committee members on the call, most granted anonymity to talk about the private discussion, described feeling like they were being gaslighted.... Harrison offered what they described as a rosy assessment of Biden’s path forward. The chat function was disabled and there were no questions allowed.
Even the Inner Party eventually isn’t trusted.
UPDATE: The first Democratic Congressman calls on Biden to withdraw.
"Chevron deference" primer
Glen Reynolds sorts out some of the ignorant raving about the recent "power grab" that reversed the Chevron deference doctrine. What the Supreme Court ruled is that Congress passes laws, the executive branch enforces them as written, and courts kick them back to Congress if they're ambiguous and need to be amended. If executive-branch bureaucrats find a statute's actual words ill-suited to whatever their newest enforcement crusade is in any particular year, the cure is to get Congress to use better words.The way statists are squawking, you'd think the only question worth asking is whether a particular crop of bureaucrats is pursuing a good policy. To the contrary, it's equally important how policy is set and who has the Constitutional power to contest it.This is much like the caterwauling over whether Supreme Court decisions promote good policy in a particular area of controversy. Unless the policy is enshrined in the Constitution or a law properly enacted by Congress, it's not the point in a Supreme Court decision. That Court is charged with ensuring that, if the Constitution or a statute is at fault, it must be amended legally. Not overturned by mobs in the street or jackbooted bureaucrats, but voted on by elected officials according to well-understood rules and precedents. That's the "rule of law," no matter how unhappy it makes the New York Times.
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