An Edgy Joke

I heard an Australian comedian tell the following joke, and actually laughed out loud at the punchline. It's the sort of humor that's right on the edge of what we allow these days; I suspect many of the folks who object to humor that touches on protected racial/ethnic/sexual minorities would want you not to tell it. For that reason, I'll put it after the jump, so you only have to read the joke if you want to do so. Then I'm going to talk about why I think it's a good joke, and a joke that's reasonable to tell even in this environment.

Blogger Comments

Google is being a real pain. I can’t comment myself half the time. It really hates VPNs right now; if I turn mine off long enough to post the comments they usually work.

It also seems to hate Windows. My iPhone seems to work better. 

I checked for comments wrongly and automatically marked spam yesterday and didn’t find any new ones. 

Aristotle, Tyranny & Today Part I

Tom expressed several of Aristotle's political points on tyranny in the comments to a recent post. Thoughtful people on both sides of the political aisle are thinking about Aristotle's account of tyranny; the above video was posted on Facebook by a left-leaning retired academic I know, and generated a discussion of how well Trump fits the model Aristotle described. 

Imperfectly, actually, but there are some qualities that do apply. For example, Aristotle says that tyrants use 'the meanest group of people as leaders' to avoid challenges from within, and Trump historically has empowered some pretty low-class people like his former lawyer (the one who later confessed to perjury, but on whose sole testimony was Trump convicted of all those 'felonies'). He's also accepted leaders from within the group of his enemies, though, which was probably his single biggest mistake from his first term.

Perhaps he's learning on that score? Vance is a fairly strong choice with a genuine intellectual center (a point unrecognized by these left-leaning academics, for whom his intellectual influences are déclassé, a quality they confuse with stupidity). On the other hand, Trump outright rejected Heritage Foundation Project 2025's collection of cleared people who could work for his administration and had the right values and temperament. That could mean that he is rejecting qualified people in preference to ones he can control; or it could suggest he does not trust anyone in DC, even on the right. It will have to be seen if he is better on personnel choices than previously.

What is likely obvious to readers of this blog is how well Aristotle's account fits the establishment -- except that the establishment is definitely not a tyranny on Aristotle's terms, because there isn't a single ruler. It is an oligarchy, where even the President is now a figurehead (and that will certainly remain true if Ms. Harris should succeed to the office, as she has no accomplishments of her own: she will also be a puppet). Rule is being exercised extra-constitutionally by a group of people who were never elected to the relevant office. 

I am going to put further reading, from the left side of the conversation, after the jump. In a second post I will later do an analysis of both positions and try to summarize where I think they are right and wrong.

The Outlaw Saloon

This is a charming review of Dubois, Wyoming's best dive bar, as well as the other bar. I've been to the Outlaw Saloon and it is described much as I remember it. I liked the place. I never went in the other one. 

In just about a month I'll be back out West to visit my mother and sister, if any of you will be in the Wyoming/Idaho border region. Thos., I remember that you live out there. I'll be around for a couple of weeks. 

Killing Your Dogs

Police interacting with American citizens often kill their dogs as a precautionary practice -- indeed, not just 'often,' but at least 10,000 times a year and possibly into "six figures." DOJ itself admits the matter is now "epidemic."

While officers in this country kill far more people than any other highly developed democracy and are shielded by powerful police unions, dog shootings still receive extensive national attention. “Given that there’s no shortage of actual human beings getting shot by police officers, pointing these stories out can sometimes seem a bit callous,” says Radley Balko, a journalist who has done much to expose cops killing dogs. “But I think they’re worth noting."

A database project that hoped to document and give better statistics on this had to shut down its collection efforts because there were too many submissions. 

It shouldn't be a problem for you, since none of you should come into conflict with the law. Well, at least that's how things used to be. 

The Real Enemy is not Islam

This piece at PJ Media on the problems associated with radical Islam -- murders of children, sometimes on a grand scale, among those problems -- would like to make the case that we should all be much more concerned about it. Yet the thing we should really be concerned about is mentioned later in the piece: it is that our own governments are increasingly turning their force against the citizenry.

Indeed, the “Regime” believes that ordinary white citizens and working-class people are the problem—not jihadists, Pakistani groomers, rampaging Muslim mobs, “undocumented” refugees, Palestinian demonstrators, or foreign criminal gangs. Heritage citizens are, apparently, the greatest threat to the status quo, purveyors of “disinformation,” by which the social and political elite mean what Steve Sailer in an important book has called “Noticing”—that is, seeing what is happening around one and to the culture by using common sense and honest observation. 

Thus, to say what you have noticed—and suffered—is to be guilty of disinformation, racism, bigotry or hate speech. To look the reality of immigrant and refugee violence in the face, to confront visibly corrupt two-tier policing, media duplicity, and Regime hypocrisy, and to describe it accurately is to be tarred by the state as a far-right extremist, a hooligan, a fascist or a white supremacist. 

The British government has decided to release a lot of violent criminals from prison in order to free up prison spaces for ordinary people of this sort. Five hundred prison spaces are more of a threat than a real capacity to beat the issue: if the people rise up in their millions, that won't be a drop in the bucket. So, the government is cracking down on disapproved speech, even just a remark on Facebook or X, and they aren't alone. They are afraid of their own people far more than anything else. 

We all remember the way the Canadian trucker convoy was targeted in Canada -- in a manner later found unconstitutional by its courts -- to the tune of freezing the accounts of people who donated, even though the cause to which they donated was not a terrorists group but a 501(c)3 charity lawfully formed under Canadian laws. They arrested and put into solitary confinement a preacher who gave an inspiring benediction to that convoy -- hardly an act of violence. They did this because they realized that the ordinary people involved in the trucker movement could shut down Canada's economy if they chose, and they feared their own ordinary citizens more than they do anything else. 

Nor is our own government immune. This piece at Hot Air helpfully summarizes several of the recent affronts that have come to light, including the VP nominee declaring that there is "no right to free speech" if the speech is deemed hateful or misinformation by the government; placing Tulsi Gabbard, who served her country faithfully when called up by the National Guard (not to put too fine a point on it), under a terrorist air watch that has her followed by armed men onto airplanes; the security state burying any discussion of its failures (we hope they were failures!) leading to Trump's almost-assassination; a swing state announcing that it won't be prepared to count votes on election day, and that its expected changing vote totals "are not evidence" of cheating; and many more. Our media has taken to declaring that there 'is no evidence' on many controversial issues, rather than exploring the evidence for different propositions in order to help readers get to a good judgment. It has accepted a duty to oppose with hostility one side on this election, while doing everything it can to support the establishment side. 

What's with all this 'fortification'? It suggests that our establishment is likewise motivated by a fear, not of criminals or terrorists or invasions across the border, and certainly not of Islam, but of ordinary Americans. What sins are they trying to hide from our eyes that justifies such fear? What do they tremble to think we will learn if the levers of control pass out of their hands? 

Bee nails it as usual

I still can't embed images, but the caption is "Tim Walz backs out of VP nomination after learning VPs sometimes have to deploy to dangerous places overseas."

This Would Be Really Embarrassing if His Defenders Understood the Culture

One of the old milblog crew came up with this. This is a challenge coin made up by our Mr. Walz with a Command Sergeant Major insignia on it. 

His former battalion commander put out a statement affirming that "he did not earn the rank or successfully complete any assignment as an E-9. It is an affront to the Noncommissioned Officers Corps that he continues to glom onto the rank." He does express satisfaction with his performance at lower ranks, so it's not like he's 'denigrating military service' per se. Just this one little aspect of evading an assignment and yet pretending to the rank he didn't earn because of that evasion.

But remember, these claims are made "without evidence," a term of art meaning that there is clear evidence but we're all supposed to pretend otherwise. It's very important that we all make-believe very hard in cases of these claims made "without evidence." 

Brotherhood of Bikers

My wife's rear brake blew up near Waynesville today. I had just inspected it when I replaced her rear tire a couple of weeks ago and didn't see any metal fatigue, but obviously I missed something. Nobody was hurt, but she found herself with the brake locked and the axle locked by the parts of the exploded brake right in the middle of an intersection off US 276.

Her bike isn't that heavy, so I picked it up and moved it out of the road. Then my son and I worked at it with the tools we had in the tool bags until we managed to free the brake and axle so it could roll again. As befits the brotherhood of bikers, we had several people stop and offer additional tools. 

In addition, a guy driving a Budget rental truck asked if he couldn't just fit the thing into the back of his truck and take it to the nearest shop. Well, of course we would be very happy if you would do that! So we wheeled it up the ramp and tied it down, and he transported it to the cycle shop maybe twelve miles off where we left it. 

Possibly it'll get stolen before they open on Tuesday, but if so it's insured. I locked the forks and hid the key where nobody is likely to look, and left a message on the shop's answering machine so they'll know what's going on when they open Tuesday morning. Then we rode home with my wife in the passenger saddle, the way we used to before she decided she preferred to ride her own machine.

His what?

Walz's "manliness" is vewy scawy for Wepublicans. If a voter "doesn’t need traditional gender and racial hierarchies to validate his life choices, then what does he need Donald Trump and JD Vance for?"

That’s a terrifying question for a Republican ticket that offers little beyond resentment, rage and a promise to restrict the freedom and democratic power of its opponents. It explains why Vance immediately began smearing Walz’s military record, claiming — without evidence, of course — that Walz had “abandoned” his unit when he ran for Congress before the unit was deployed to Iraq.

I wish I could be more sure that voters will ever get a chance to hear the stolen-valor case about Walz, not to mention his positions on communism, COVID snitch lines, the benefits to schoolchildren of closing schools, genital mutilation of minors, full-term abortion, denial of care to babies who survive abortion, abandoning police stations to rioters who have their hearts in the right place and need space to vent, and raising taxes after quickly blowing through a large state budget surplus. Instead, Walz is a manly Mister Rogers! As the Bee said, Workers of the world, let's get together sometime for a potluck!

Without evidence, of course. In any case, the evidence might violate community standards. Which is lucky for Walz, because he's enjoyed full political cover for years from a compliant Minnesota press, so he's feared nothing from exposure, and most of these positions are extremely well preserved in print and on camera. Not that that will matter much if a now-compliant national press simply memory-holes them and concentrates on his Presbyterian green bean casserole recipe.

I've been reflecting on this. I'm fairly certain I don't need traditional gender and racial hierarchies to validate my life choices. Trump's family life isn't much like mine, but I'm still voting for him for the third time.

Lying

Remarkable interview:

J.D. Vance: I think it's a problem for Walz to have lied about having gone to war.

Dana Bash: They've corrected that.

J.D. Vance: They've corrected it by admitting that he lied.

Dana Bash: Let's move on.

And it's not as though he lied about it once. He's been dining out on stolen valor for a long time.

Magic

Arthur C. Clarke's Three Laws: The laws are:

(1) When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

(2) The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

(3) Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Apropos of Law 3, SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine is so advanced the CEO of ULA doesn’t understand it.

Our SpaceLink internet service continues to give us fantastic speed and zero problems, as well, while the Spectrum cable connection drives my neighbors up the wall. Long live Elon Musk, who has done more than anyone else I can think of lately to preserve free speech on Earth.

In Fairness, However...

She's just right about this. This point is completely correct.

Her classism is showing, because she’s talking in terms of dormitories; but it’s also exactly why the services use barracks until they get young soldiers, sailors, airmen or Marines married off to someone else who will look after them.

The Incoherence of Joy

So there's a recession on, one that is likely to get worse for at least a year or two. What's the plan for that? There isn't one, a fact even the New York Times has begun to notice.

It is impossible to make a similar estimate for Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent this fall. She has not laid out any tax or spending plans, or other economic policy proposals, with enough detail to estimate whether they would add to deficits or reduce them.

In fact there aren't any plans at all, and all of the old positions are recanted.

Ms. Harris, who began seeking the Democratic nomination late last month immediately after Mr. Biden stepped aside and endorsed her, has no policy proposals posted on her campaign website — economic or otherwise.

The media has settled upon a new idea, whose unity of expression shows that it is clearly coordinated with her campaign: she is the candidate of joy!

But she was selling herself as a prosecutor, remember? There's nothing joyful about prosecution. Alongside executioners, prosecutors wield the hammer of the state against members of the public. It is to be hoped that this is done in the interest of justice (as it manifestly was not in her case, as Tulsi Gabbard pointed out). It is not a happy job, however.

I suppose this makes sense to the media because they feel joyful when contemplating four years of being governed by a prosecutor like her. Too, there's a kind of sense to the promise that if only she's elected the media will do its best to fill our screens with joy instead of the rage, bitterness, and anger that will be our daily bread from them if we don't listen.

Still, it's another astonishing maneuver, akin to the earlier attempt to sell us on the basis that she's a career professional politician -- akin to a practiced surgeon. 

Obviously the election isn't really about any of this, because none of this makes any sense. I can't decide if they're doing this because they can't think of anything better, or if they're so sure of the election's 'fortification' that they don't feel they need to run a real campaign. You'll find out what our economic policies are after the election, peasants. 

The Chaplain Speaks

It's pretty tough when your chaplain reads you out from the altar, as it were. 

The chaplain of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s field artillery regiment said there is no excuse for the Democratic VP pick to have abandoned his National Guard unit before a critical deployment — not even running for Congress.

“In our world, to drop out after a WARNORD [warning order] is issued is cowardly, especially for a senior enlisted guy,” retired Capt. Corey Bjertness, now a pastor in Horace, North Dakota, told The Post.

Bjertness, 61, was the chaplain for the 1st Battalion, 125th Field Artillery, of which Walz was command sergeant major before retiring in 2005, two months before the unit deployed to Iraq....

“Running for Congress is not an excuse,” Bjertness said of Walz’s decision to quit. “I stopped everything and went to war. I left my wife with three teenagers and a 6-year-old and I was gone for 19 months.”

Several other of his unit mates have choice words as well, as does the mother of one of them who didn't come home.

Thomas Behrends, the command sergeant major who replaced Walz, previously told The Post of the Minnesota governor: “He had the opportunity to serve his country, and said ‘Screw you’ to the United States.”

...

Walz’s old unit, whose main job was running security for US convoys in Iraq, suffered three casualties during the deployment he missed — including Kyle Miller, 19, who joined the National Guard while still in high school, and David Berry, 37.... 

Miller’s mother told the Daily Mail this week that Walz had taken “the coward’s way out” by retiring before deployment....

“Honestly, I think we lucked out when we got Command Sergeant Behrends,” he said of the CMS who took over after Walz retired. “Maybe Walz resigned because he knew he wasn’t up to the job, that he didn’t have the confidence to lead.”

Behrends, who is from Brewster, Minn., called the Democratic vice presidential candidate “a traitor” for the timing of his retirement.

“When your country calls, you are supposed to run into battle — not the other way,” the retired command sergeant major told The Post Tuesday. “He ran away. It’s sad.”

Meanwhile his brigade says that they were was informed that they were selected to deploy during 2004, months earlier than first reported, and before he made any decisions about running for Congress.

Not How That Works

While discussing the CSM matter, a left-wing fellow said to me, "Well, he was against the Iraq War. He couldn't go serve in it, could he?"

For socialists, that's a remarkably egotistical view of the ethics of national service. What about your oath? What about the men you trained with, who were depending on you to look out for their interests as their CSM? Even if you were staunchly opposed to the war, don't you have duties to your word, to your comrades, to the country you swore to serve? 

Amazing.

A Pyramid of Falsehood

Picking up on yesterday's topic, an investigative reporter I've met decides to press on the Stolen Valor bit. He finds a couple of actual lies built upon the initial falsehoods about the CSM status.

The first falsehood might have an innocent explanation, but Waltz never appears to have attempted to correct the report:

Bloomberg’s Joshua Green, then employed at The Atlantic, was the first major reporter to profile Walz. In an interview with the then-congressional candidate, Green writes that in 2004, Walz left his hometown in Minnesota “to serve overseas in Operation Enduring Freedom.”

It’s unclear if this is Green, a veteran reporter, omitting major facts, or if Walz, the interviewee, is selling Green on a particular narrative. Nonetheless, the assertion is incredibly misleading, as it leaves the reader under the impression that Walz served as boots on the ground in the Global War on Terror, when in reality, he merely deployed to Italy in 2003 for a six month stint.

It gets much worse.

During a confrontation with the hated George W. Bush's team, Waltz engineered a claim that the Secret Service might "arrest" him over "opposing the president." He then challenged them in a way that made it into the press:

Green discusses a 2004 visit from former President George W. Bush to Gov. Walz’s hometown, in which a protesting Walz (who was still serving in the military) told the reporter about him supposedly demanding to speak to the then commander in chief.

“Walz thought for a moment and asked the Bush staffers if they really wanted to arrest a command sergeant major who'd just returned from fighting the war on terrorism,” Green writes.

This was before the Warning Order, so not only had he not "just returned from fighting the war on terrorism," he hadn't even been asked to fight the war on terrorism. We now know that, when asked, he found a way to evade his orders and responsibilities. 

The piece closes with another set of outright lies by Waltz, one intended to disarm fellow veterans of the rifle with which they can best defend their families:

On Tuesday, The X account for the Kamala Harris campaign posted a video of Governor Walz discussing the need to disarm American citizens.

“We can research the impacts of gun violence. We can make sure those weapons of war, that I carried in war, are only carried in war,” he tells the audience.

1) The AR-15 is not a 'weapon of war,' but a purpose-designed civilian rifle capable of only semi-automatic fire.

2) It is therefore not the same as the M-16 or M-4 carbines that Waltz's fellow servicemen carried in war.

3) Waltz never went to war, and therefore never carried any sort of rifle at war.

4) In fact, Waltz not only didn't go to war, he abandoned his unit and left them to go without him even though as the assigned CSM he was their senior enlisted advisor. In other words it was his job to defend the interests of the enlisted servicemembers in that battalion to the commanding officer.

Instead, he abandoned them. 

UPDATE: The National Guard officially disputes his claimed biography. 

As Governor, he’s ex officio their commander, and you might expect them to avoid embarrassment for their commander if they could find a way. Far from taking steps to protect him they’re out with their top PAO to officially state that his claim is false. That underlines that he doesn’t have the respect of those who serve under him. 

Warning Order

A 'warning order' or WARNO is an official order alerting you to expect another order that is coming soon. It's meant as a heads-up to let everyone start getting ready for something in advance of the complete information about what they are going to be commanded to do.

What you're supposed to do when you get one is to start taking appropriate steps to prepare for the command, in this case to prepare to deploy on a combat mission to Iraq. What you're not supposed to do is use the warning to figure out how to evade the command.

Two retired Command Sergeants Major accuse our new VP nominee of having done the latter.

On May 16th, 2005 he quit, leaving the 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion and its Soldiers hanging; without its senior Non-Commissioned Officer, as the battalion prepared for war. His excuse to other leaders was that he needed to retire in order to run for congress. Which is false, according to a Department of Defense Directive, he could have run and requested permission from the Secretary of Defense before entering active duty; as many reservists have. If he had retired normally and respectfully, you would think he would have ensured his retirement documents were correctly filled out and signed, and that he would have ensured he was reduced to Master Sergeant for dropping out of the academy. Instead he waited for the paperwork to catch up to him. His official retirement document states, SOLDIER NOT AVAILABLE FOR SIGNATURE.

On September 10th, 2005 conditionally promoted Command Sergeant Major Walz was reduced to Master Sergeant. It took a while for the system to catch up to him as it was uncharted territory, literally no one quits in the position he was in, or drops out of the academy. Except him....

The 1-125th Field Artillery Battalion was deployed for 22 months in 2006 - 2007. During this time, they were restricted by Army regulations and could not speak out against a candidate for office. In November 2006 he was elected to the House of Representatives. 

Is it true? Well, he doesn't deny it.

A spokesperson for Walz previously said this topic has been covered before and referred Alpha News to a past story where Walz said “normally this type of partisan political attack only comes from one who’s never worn a uniform.”

Yeah? Ask John F. Kerry about what happens to those who betray their comrades in arms.

She May Argue With Her Logic

From the Easy Rider soundtrack, which is why I know the song, the lyrics came to my mind for some reason this morning and I was struck by how odd they are. The name of the song is "Wasn't Born to Follow," and this is how experts quoted by Wikipedia talk about the lyrics:

The lyrics of "Wasn't Born to Follow" celebrate the freedom that hippies enjoyed in the late 1960s. They express the need for escape and independence. Music critic Johnny Rogan describes the lyrics as an "evocation of pastoral freedom and the implicit desire to escape from the restrictions of conventional society." Music professor James E. Perone describes the singer as "a rugged individualist at one with nature."

But that's not what the lyrics are about at all. They're about a guy who is trying to seduce, and then later abandons, a young woman who is part of the hippie culture.

And when it's time I'll go and wait
Beside the legendary fountain
'Til I see your form reflected
In its clear and jeweled waters
And if you think I'm ready
You may lead me to the chasm
Where the rivers of our visions
Flow into one another.

That is a non-subtle metaphor if I've ever heard one. Though this song is called 'wasn't born to follow,' the young man expresses not only his willingness to follow ("you may lead me") but even to be judged ("if you think I'm ready") until the act is completed. Only then will he leave her in spite of her pleas:

She may beg and she may plead
And she may argue with her logic
Mention all the things I'll lose
That really have no value
Though I doubt that she will ever
Come to understand my meaning
In the end she'll surely know
I was not born to follow.

The song is much less romantic than it sounds over the music; and rather than being an 'evocation of pastoral freedom,' or an 'escape from conventional society,' it's just about betraying a woman's love after a moment's pleasure. 

Civility and Collegiality

These are qualities I respect, but I notice that they like everything are turned into weapons these days. On civility:

With less than a month before the primary, however, Smith withdrew his candidacy and endorsed Nethercott. Smith’s decision came after he and Nethercott met for coffee to discuss the campaign and the issues at stake.

Another topic over coffee was the tenor of politics in Wyoming these days...the scorched earth nature of campaigns, the deluge of misinformation presented to voters, the intensely personal attacks and the overall feeling of nausea that results from seeing our political process degenerate into a gutter fight.

Smith, not wanting to contribute to this political angst, withdrew and endorsed his opponent.

I’ll correct myself. There are two examples of political statesmanship evident here. 

The first being two political rivals setting differences and all the attendant bullshit aside to sit down over coffee and pick each other’s brain. That is almost a revolutionary act of civility in today’s atmosphere. It should be applauded by voters and emulated by other candidates.

The second act of statesmanship is Smith stepping down. This took courage and suggests that both candidates were motivated by reason instead of emotion. Politics in Wyoming needs a lot more reason and a lot less emotion these days. And this act, too, deserves to be applauded and emulated.

So, my sweaty ol’ Stetson is tipped to both Tara Nethercott and Gregg Smith. 

I really do appreciate that, but I notice that the rest of the column is devoted to running down "the Freedom Caucus" and "Young Americans for Liberty," and so forth and so on. So civility is great, as long as the right wing guy steps down and endorses the left wing girl.

Meanwhile, collegiality:

Of late, Justice Kagan has been pushing the latter conception of collegiality–that it entails having an open mind, and a willingness to be persuaded. I have to imagine this push is part of her effort to corral Justice Barrett's votes at every opportunity. If there is any common thread with Joan Biskupic's reporting, is that Justice Kagan flipped Justice Barrett in several cases. I've yet to see any indication that a conservative Justice has flipped a liberal member of the court to reach a conservative outcome. Flipping is not ambidextrous–it only works on the left.

There's got to be a way to be civil and collegial without giving away the store. 

UPDATE: Related.