Archive for 2017
July 4, 2017
WINNING: Enjoy that road trip! July 4th gas hasn’t been this cheap in years. Have you hugged a fracker today?
REAL FIREWORKS: Soldiers conduct a mine clearing exercise at Ft. Greely, Alaska. The troops used a Mine Clearing Line Charge (MICLIC). Heck of an explosion.
CHARLIE MARTIN: Charlie Gard vs. the Know-Betters.
A GOOD CAMPAIGN ITEM FOR THE FOURTH: Ed Gillespie Wants Legal Fireworks in Virginia. I think that Henry Reed would approve.
Flashback: Rudy Giuliani and Henry Reed. Not long ago, the Insta-Daughter told me that the Henry Reed series, which I pressed on her during her childhood, was one of the best things she read as a kid. That was one of my prouder moments as a father.
THE HISTORY OF FAKE NEWS: A brief history of weaponized information by an assistant professor of military history at West Point.
Not everyone needs to be professionally trained as an intelligence officer or historian to wade through sources, but Hugh Trevor-Roper was both. To apply his craft to approaching a primary source, he listed three questions that should be asked about every document: Is it genuine? Was the author in a position to know what he was writing about? And, why does this document exist? Answers to these questions are the handmaidens of trusting information and halting the malign influence of fake news.
Contemporary universities do a lousy job of improving the critical thinking skills of students — such a lousy job that you might conclude many professors don’t want their students to know how to think.
How to begin to learn how to discern fake news? By rediscovering the broad civic applicability of the historical method. It starts with modifying the national epistemological approach to acquiring knowledge, and, applied across the population of the United States, the impact could be profound.
Quite when America started deviating from critical thinking is unclear, but a test of American college students, the College Learning Assessment Plus (CLA+) shows that, in over half of the universities studied, there is no increase in critical thinking skills over a four-year degree. The reasons for this are far from clear, but the pursuit of knowledge has become more argumentative, opinion-based and adversarial than illuminating. Research papers are reminiscent of watching the prosecutor layout a criminal case on Law and Order.
The whole thing’s worth reading.
TROLL LEVEL: NEAR-TRUMPIAN. Elizabeth Warren’s real Indian opponent sends her a DNA kit for her birthday. She’s not amused.
NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES ANOTHER MISSILE: The launch is a message to the U.S. Though the UPI dateline is July 3, it was already the 4th of July in east Asia.
North Korea launched a ballistic missile early Tuesday, local time, into the waters along the eastern coast of the peninsula.
Seoul’s joint chiefs of staff stated the missile launched from Panghyon, North Pyongan Province at around 9:40 a.m., could not be identified.
Xihua, China’s state news agency, reports that Pyongyang claims it was an ICBM.
READ THE WHOLE THING: Calvin Coolidge on Independence Day.
It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.
If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. . . .
Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.
Like I said, read it.
I SEE A LOT OF HOLIER-THAN-THOU TALK ON TWITTER ABOUT HOW WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY WOULD BE TURNING OVER IN HIS GRAVE OVER TRUMP’S INCIVILITY, but here’s how Buckley responded when called a “Crypto-Nazi.”
SO IT’S COME TO THIS: Newborn baby may be the first to be registered ‘gender unknown’ because its mum insists only the tot can decide what sex it wants to be.
These are Heinlein’s Crazy Years — we just live in them.
VIRTUE SIGNALING: The Nuclear Ban Cometh… Unfortunately.
In New York, negotiations towards a nuclear weapons ban treaty—involving approximately 130 countries plus sundry civil society groups—are drawing rapidly to a close. A second draft (PDF) of the text is already under discussion. In the end, supporters of a ban will have their day. So it now seems a foregone conclusion that the UN will soon open for signature a treaty banning nuclear weapons, which would enter into force 90 days after 50 signatories have ratified it (Article 16.1).
Does that mean nuclear disarmament is close? No. In fact, the ban treaty probably won’t remove a single nuclear weapon from the face of the earth. No nuclear weapon state is attending the negotiations. And, of all those countries known to enjoy an extended nuclear deterrence guarantee, only the Netherlands is attending. Disarmament aficionados aren’t dismayed though: they get to criticise the nuclear weapon states and their allies for not attending, and to write the treaty text that best codifies their own understanding of ‘international norms’. Problems that might be genuine difficulties in any real nuclear disarmament exercise—like verifying dismantlement, punishing breakout, or designing new stable force balances at key strategic fulcra—are either postponed to a later date or avoided altogether.
In fact, the treaty’s better seen as a normative commitment than as a practical aid to a nuclear-free world. That shows up straight away in the preamble—a treaty of 21 articles is preceded by 24 paragraphs in which the signatories describe the many ways in which they are holier than thou.
It’s easy to give up what you never had, and it’s satisfying to scold others for failing to follow your non-example.
ANOTHER ARGUMENT FOR REVISITING BAKER V. CARR AND REYNOLDS V. SIMS: California’s Far North Deplores ‘Tyranny’ of the Urban Majority.
From Hollywood to Silicon Valley, California projects an image as an economically thriving, politically liberal, sun-kissed El Dorado. It is a multiethnic experiment with a rising population, where the percentage of whites has fallen to 38 percent.
California’s Great Red North is the opposite, a vast, rural, mountainous tract of pine forests with a political ethos that bears more resemblance to Texas than to Los Angeles. Two-thirds of the north is white, the population is shrinking and the region struggles economically, with median household incomes at $45,000, less than half that of San Francisco.
Jim Cook, former supervisor of Siskiyou County, which includes cattle ranches and the majestic slopes of Mount Shasta, calls it “the forgotten part of California.”
In the same state that is developing self-driving cars, there’s the rugged landscape of Trinity County, where a large share of residents heat their homes with wood, plaques commemorate stagecoach routes and the county seat, Weaverville, is an old gold-mining town with a lone blinking stop-and-go traffic light.
The residents of this region argue that their political voice is drowned out in a system that has only one state senator for every million residents.
This sentiment resonates in other traditionally conservative parts of California, including large swaths of the Central Valley, which runs down the state, and it mirrors red and blue tensions felt in areas across the country. But perhaps nowhere else in California is the alienation felt more keenly than in the far north, an arresting panorama of fields filled with wildflowers and depopulated one-street towns that have never recovered from the gold rush.
“People up here for a very long time have felt a sense that we don’t matter,” said James Gallagher, a state assemblyman for the Third District, which is a shorter drive from the forests of Mount Hood in Oregon than from the beaches of San Diego. “We run this state like it’s one size fits all. You can’t do that.”
Well, you can. But you shouldn’t. Plus, an Independence Day angle:
Residents here have long backed a different proposal for a separate state, one that would be carved out of Northern California and the southern reaches of Oregon. Flags of the so-called State of Jefferson, which was first proposed in the 19th century, fly on farms and ranches around the region.
I think that Congress has the power to reform state legislatures directly, under its Guarantee power. In fact, you wouldn’t even have to change the case law. While the courts stepped in to remedy one kind of unfairness with Baker and Reynolds, Congress can step in on its own where necessary to guarantee a “republican form of government.” And unresponsive rule by far-away urbanites with different lifestyles is precisely what our Framers rebelled against, and thus can’t qualify as the kind of state government the Framers intended.
TRUMP’S SUCCESS: Central Americans, ‘Scared of What’s Happening’ in U.S., Stay Put. Media hysteria may be more effective than a wall. . . .
DO I HAVE TO? BECAUSE HONESTLY, I’VE KIND OF BEEN ENJOYING THEM. OR AT LEAST THE OVER-THE-TOP REACTION THEY PROVOKE. Kurt Schlichter: Here’s How To Deal With Trump’s Tweets: Stop Caring About Them.
If the hyperventilating faux outrage over Donald Trump’s tweets about that pair of home-wrecking nobodies on MSNBC was actually presented in good faith, it would be merely be stupid. But it is not presented in good faith. It is a transparent attempt to drag Trump off-point and tie him up in a never-ending discussion about his completely irrelevant personal failings, even though liberals slobber over all sorts of people with personal failings who just happen to support their fascist dreams. It’s not working, because Trump cares nothing about what these fussy nannies shriek while clutching their pearls, nor do his voters really care. But it is still annoying.
No, his tweets are not annoying. I don’t care about his tweets, so they don’t annoy me. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump to be a role model or a moral paragon. I voted for him to not be Hillary Clinton, and to incrementally move towards actual conservatism. Like everyone else who voted for him, I knew he wasn’t a doctrinaire conservative. But he believed in some conservative things, and that was better than someone who believed in no conservative things, and who wanted to stamp her sensible shoe into our faces forever.
Was he my first choice? No. Was he my second? No. But was there any other choice when it came down to him or Felonia von Pantsuit?
No. Which is something a lot of the cogs in the machine that is Conservative, Inc., still don’t choose to acknowledge.
Read the whole thing.
July 3, 2017
AT AMAZON, deals in Men’s Underwear.
Also, Men’s Socks.
DEEP STATE UPDATE: FBI employees wear ‘Comey is my homey’ T-shirts to Family Day. Well, 12 of Comey’s friends did.
FROM AN ERA BEFORE THE DENORMALIZATION OF MALE DESIRE: 49 Old Photos of Men Staring at Women in the Past.
ADVICE TO WOMEN: Yes, ladies, it’s a wife’s job to make her husband happy. Interesting to see this in a place like YourTango. “What’s happened as a result has been brilliant. I started tuning much more actively into my husband — prioritizing him, touching him regularly (holding his hand, sitting very close to him, hugging him, rubbing his shoulders, etc), more actively praising and appreciating him, and — crucially — not letting my ego get the best of me and not letting my need to be right lead to Armageddon. As a result, I have managed to bring out the best in my husband. Our relationship has become light years better, and I feel much happier and more empowered.”
ABYSSINIA, RAHM: Mayor Emanuel didn’t seek comparison to Mussolini in NYT op-ed, the Chicago Tribune notes:
Either someone at The New York Times doesn’t like Mayor Rahm Emanuel very much, or the Gray Lady needs to brush up on her history.*
How else to account for the unfortunate evocation of murderous Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in the headline NYT editors put on Emanuel’s op-ed column about his work to improve the CTA in Monday’s Times?
“Rahm Emanuel: In Chicago, the Trains Actually Run on Time,” blared the Times’ online headline for a column in which Emanuel favorably contrasted his policy of putting maintenance and reliability ahead of expansion of the city’s rail system.
Was it over when Chicago bombed Ethiopia?!
* Since they’re almost entirely Democrats with bylines at the Times, let’s go with the latter — layers and layers of fact-checkers and editors — who have no knowledge of history. Shades of Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau putting the unfortunate Neville again “Peace in our time” phrase into his boss’s second inauguration address to create a classic Kinsley gaffe.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: As Trump administration promises end to Title IX witch hunts, witch-hunters cry foul.
AT AMAZON, deals on Dishwashers.
YOU CAN’T SPELL “PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN” WITHOUT “PC:” Bride Auction Scene in Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean Ride Gets a Ridiculous PC Makeover. “This will no doubt be seen as an important step forward in repairing relations between pirates and nonfictional people. . . . Members of the Pirate Inclusion League of Landlubbers and Gender Equality (PILLAGE), a group I just made up, comment that changing the redheaded bride into a swashbuckling female pirate is an excellent idea since, even though it’s totally unrealistic, it’s less demeaning to women, which is always more important than truth.”
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Trump’s High-Stakes Tweeting.
Trump’s occasional uncouthness is a symptom, not a catalyst, of the times. Bill Clinton redefined presidential behavior when he had sexual relations with a 22-year-old, unpaid intern (so much for power imbalances as sexual harassment) in the presidential bathroom off the Oval Office, lied about his recklessness to his family and the country, smeared Monica Lewinsky, and then wheeled out to the Rose Garden feminist cabinet officers like Madeline Albright and Donna Shalala to deny and defend his unsavory predatory behavior. After that sordid episode, the apologetic Left lost all credibility as an arbiter of presidential norms.
Indeed, Clinton had brought us into new debased territory. In contrast, George W. Bush for eight years restored honor, integrity, and decorum to the White House. But he was rewarded for exemplary behavior by being branded a Nazi warmonger, as docudrama films and novels appeared imagining his assassination, and even the likes of John Glenn stooped to the Nazi slurs on his character. (“It’s the old Hitler business.”)
Out of office, Bush professionally kept quiet and busy as an accomplished artist, as Obama moved the country leftward. For that, Bush was ridiculed by the Left as reduced to a bewildered, paint-by-numbers dabbler.
The emeritus Obama, by contrast, frolics on billionaires’ yachts docked off tropical islands with the mega-rich whom he attacks in Wall Street chats for $10,000 a minute—and takes a day off from his wind surfing to weigh in on Trump’s unfitness. For all that, he remains a progressive icon. . . .
Factored into the Trump’s tweeting controversies are other variables mostly left unsaid by the media:
Trump has melted down partisan journalists and left the American progressive media in shambles. It was Obama, not Trump, who established the practice of going after journalists by name, both materially and rhetorically, from surveilling Fox’s James Rosen to using puerile hype to attack Sean Hannity (“You know, I’ll put—I’ll put Mr. Burgess up against Sean Hannity. He’ll tear him up.” [emphasis added]). Obama was angry that a few reporters did not join the cult of Obama worship; Trump is peeved almost no one in the press is disinterested. Trump saw Obama’s precedent, and proverbially trumped it.
CNN is now no longer a news organization, but has been reduced to caricature by Trump hatred. . . .
First, half the country despises the mainstream media and sees it as arrogant, corrupt, hypocritical, and in need of comeuppance. Trump is not running against a centrist populist Democrat like John Kennedy or Harry Truman, but a crude Resistance of foul mouths like Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), unhinged celebrities like Maher and Colbert, street theater, thuggery on campuses, and not very bright media talking heads imploding as they try to top their rivals’ hatred for Trump and what he represents.
Read the whole thing. But here’s one more bit: “Finally, no one has calibrated quite the nation’s deep antipathy toward the coastal media-university-political-cultural nexus, most specifically its utter hypocrisy. Half the country sees not so much Democrats or progressives, but rather a bankrupt class whose venom for others is used to excuse their own exemptions from the ramifications of their own ideology.”