Grim's Hall

I Suppose It's Only Natural

Given all the rain we've had lately, you'd have to expect a tide to roll.

Where the Republican Hopefuls Went to College

I'm not sure why Lindsey Graham is still listed as a "hopeful," but ok.

Fiorina has a bachelor's degree in "Philosophy and Medieval Studies." She'd fit in around here quite well.

On religion and war, on why the 21st century will see the resurgence and not the death of faith, and on what Christians, Jews, and Muslims should do to make that resurgence wise. The author is a rabbi, and a thoughtful one.

Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes

Maybe not autumn music, but Jimmy Buffet has a number of good, under-appreciated tunes. I understand the first is about his grandfather, a tall-ship captain back in the day.

"We Need To Repeal Gun-Free Zones"

Gun Owners of America has a thorough rebuttal of the President's speech.

Nihilism, Plus Security

Consider these password security questions, whose answers are a little hard to dig up on the internet.

The Pack Almost Stopped the Oregon Shooting

A heroic US Army veteran charged the murderer in Oregon. He was shot five times, but fortunately survived and is recovering. If he'd had the tools to go along with his brave heart and strong will, he might have prevented these crimes.

A US Air Force vet at the school's veteran center nearby actually did have a handgun, and moved to intervene along with a number of other veterans. Unfortunately, they obeyed lawful authorities who herded them back inside their own building for their safety.

The government is the only thing that kept American citizens from stopping this attack. We need to comprehensively rethink the role of citizens in dealing with these sorts of distributed threats. The pack response to a threat of this type is exactly the right one. It has worked time and again, sometimes in spite of the government's best efforts to prevent it from working.

If you are a pro-government sort, perhaps it will help to remember that the citizen is also a kind of officer of the government. We entrust the office of citizen with a number of functions central to the common peace and lawful order, such as voting for other officers of the government, serving on juries, and the power of making citizens' arrests.

This is the only office adequately enough distributed to answer a threat of this particular kind. It is also the least likely office to devolve into tyranny, because its power is the least concentrated and most distributed among the American people.

We can take these guys. They are generally weak, full of anger but without virtue. It is only the differential power created by stripping Americans of our means of self-defense that allows them to carry out these attacks. We can stop them.

UPDATE: Loyalty is a two-way street. The wounded Army vet who fought for our fellow citizens is being supported by his former unit mates. You are invited to participate.

This is from some of Chris' 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment Brothers:

"There is a PayPal set up to help Chris in his recovery. It's on our NPO 5/20 brotherhood set up to help our brothers we served with. The website is 520brotherhood.org the PayPal link is on the page just earmark for Chris Mintz and it all goes to help his recovery and bills"

http://520brotherhood.org/donate.html

There's also a "Go Fund Me" account that's been set up:

https://www.gofundme.com/375getwc

He's going to have a lot of bills while his broken legs heal, which is going to put him out of work for a while. We need to take care of each other. He did his part.

Giving value for the wage

A developing story that should be fun to watch: Remember Joe Wilson, the shady "yellowcake" ambassador at the center of Scooter Libby's conviction for misleading federal investigators? He has sued a company called Symbion for nonpayment of $20K/month in consulting fees. Symbion, which builds projects of some sort in Africa, is quarreling with Mr. Wilson over the services he was supposed to provide, including perhaps special access starting in 2009 to then Secretary of State Clinton. Symbion has countersued, alleging that Wilson took credit for things he didn't really cause, such as Clinton's visit to a Symbion project. Clinton's email, heavily redacted to obscure "confidential" issues (though of course she never used her private email for state business, let alone classified business), suggests that Wilson was accustomed to approach her via Sid Blumenthal, and that she was at least in some degree open to his advances.

The dispute already has turned up gossipy bits about Wilson's use or abuse of company perks, in true "master of the universe" style, and his subcontracting of work to another shady ambassador, since indicted on federal charges. But what will be really fascinating about this suit is that, in order to get his pay, Wilson will have to prove that he delivered on things like access to Clinton. If I were he, I'd hire a food taster.

Publicans and sinners

Pope engages in quasi-political action; shock ensues.

Whoever Has No Sword Is To Sell His Coat...

Early updates on the shooting in Oregon.

The President has issued his predictable call for more gun control. Every time one of these thing happens, he sees a need to strip more Americans of arms. I see a positive demonstration that the police can't protect you, and a duty to try to protect my fellow citizens, and thus become more firmly intent on never surrendering my arms nor the right to bear them. This is the sort of thing that could have been stopped, but once again, the victims were disarmed under color of law.

The Nairobi mall attack

Someone has pieced together eyewitness accounts of the terrorist attack a couple of years ago in Nairobi, which don't sound quite like what we heard at the time:

Nura and his two colleagues were having an early lunch of beef stew with chapati while the mechanic worked nearby when a call came through on the radio. “All units: Shooting going on at Westgate. Robbers inside.” Nura spoke on the phone to his commanding officer, who told him to get to the mall “and do whatever is necessary to handle it.” Nura left his plate of food on the table and jumped into the car. He was excited, eager even. As the unmarked squad car sped up the road, Nura hung out the window, waving his radio and shouting at drivers to move out of the way.

News of the assault was beginning to spread via frantic phones calls, texts, and WhatsApp messages. Westgate is in the heart of a Kenyan-Indian part of the city, and the close-knit community there knew better than to rely on the authorities to send help. Instead, the call went out to the community’s own licensed gun holders, who were organized into self-appointed armed neighborhood watch units.

A Few Choice Words For The U.N.

...and then, no words at all.

Let's Play A Game

The New York Times published an article called "27 Ways to Be a Modern Man." Low score wins.

I have to confess to numbers 4, 5, and 11 (although not for 'modern' reasons -- I just refuse to use Twitter). That's a score of three for me.

You might be curious about number 16: "The modern man lies on the side of the bed closer to the door. If an intruder gets in, he will try to fight him off, so that his wife has a chance to get away."

That's not me. Oh, I sleep on the side closest to the door, in part because of the possibility of intruders. But if I get up to deal with one, my wife can sleep in.

Knowing her, though, she'd probably go for her Glock. Who wants to be left out of a good time?

Let's not be hasty

From Ralph Peters:

Want to know how low we’ve sunk? The president of France just repeated his demand that Assad has to go. Secretary of State John Kerry, following the pattern of his surrender to the Iranians, has already said that, well, maybe Assad can stay for a while until there’s a “managed transition.”

Never before has a US presidential administration combined such naked cowardice, intellectual arrogance and willful blindness. We don’t have a president — we have a scared child covering his eyes at a horror movie. And Putin knows it.

The pickle crisis

Lileks has completely internalized the media narrative on income inequality. He could write these things in his sleep now.

Meet Your Meat

I assume you know the punchline to the joke about the pig with the wooden leg.

This only works with a certain kind of city folk. The rest of us knew where the meat came from, have cleaned and dressed our own meat, and understand how this works. You don't eat it while it's a cute piglet. You eat it once it's a mean old hog that would be just as happy to eat you, too.

What Do We Do Now?

Richard Fernandez of the Belmont Club mourns the coming to pass of several of his core predictions. Fernandez, who also writes under the pen name Wretchard the Cat, has long written a strategically insightful narrative that strikes a kind of middle position between what you hear from me and what you hear from Cassandra. This stretch of his post, for example, couldn't have been written by either of us, but might have been written by a committee designed to edit our work into a common theme.

Fred Feitz at Fox News makes a brave but conventional attempt to outline a strategy to recover America’s position in the Middle East. It’s worth reading but suffers from the assumption that the same set of actors in Washington who landed us in trouble will do different things in the future. That is an assumption which Ted Cruz’s epic speech on the corruption in Washington does its best to refute.

Cruz explains at convincing length that Congress — the Republican Party included — has been bought off. The whole place is rotten; there is no balm in Gilead nor cavalry to ride to the rescue. In Cruz’s telling political America stands condemned because it is financially, morally and internationally bankrupt. If that’s what Obama has done Cruz explains that’s what the Republicans helped him do.

To the question “what do we do now” Cruz’s answer is “don’t wait for Washington”.

The virtues of Cruz’s indictment are also its limitations, because while his speech accurately portrays the oncoming danger, it does so at the cost of convincing the viewer that America had it coming. Washington in Cruz’s characterization is not the result of bad luck but the accretion of national vices. In that sense, there is about Cruz’s analysis the flavor of Crime and Punishment.

The problem with the retributive narrative is that it sounds too much like a story from out the old books and most politicians, reluctant to sound hokey, are loathe to take it up, however true it may be. For in the retributive story there is one unpleasant feature; disasters continue until the sinners “repent” and repentance is something most of us are by and large averse to.

Much as the voters despise politicians, most of them are attached to life as it is. They love the normal; the predictable, the comforting and the routine. Therefore they love without realizing it the liberal narrative, which falsely promises a painless progression from cradle to grave without the need for virtue, courage or even industry.

There's a lot of worth in what he has to say after that, where he talks about the way forward. It's worth taking a moment to realize that the last week -- as the last six months -- have involved a coming-to-be of a new world and a passing-away of the world we knew. The ramifications have only begun to appear in reality. What we knew is slipping away. We will have to be bold, but the good news is that we will have the opportunity to be bold. The death of institutions and easy assumptions means a birth of possibility. New things will come to be, and we will have at least some power to shape them. We must be wise in what we make of that potential, insofar as it is in our power to shape.