Prof. Codevilla hits another one out of the park

Prof. Angelo Codevilla is one of the most insightful, erudite and profound commenters on events in these United States.  He's produced many outstanding articles that express the reality we're all experiencing, and place it in the context of US history, law and politics.

He's just produced another masterpiece titled "Revolution 2020".  It's long, and not easy reading - but it puts our current situation into the perspective of recent history, and shows precisely how we've got here and where things are likely to go from here.  Indispensable reading for any informed person, IMHO.

Here are a few excerpts from his very long article.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

Understanding what drives the revolution that is destroying the American republic gives insight into how the 2020 election’s results may impact its course. Its practical question—who rules?—is historically familiar. But any revolution’s quarrels and stakes obscure the question: to what end? Our revolution is by the ruling class—a revolution from above. Crushing obstacles to its growing oligarchic rule is the proximate purpose.

But the logic that drives the revolution aims at civilization itself.

. . .

In America as everywhere else, government regulation of business meant the twains’ coalescence. From the very first, the blurring of lines between public and private—the focus of government on distributing tasks and rewards—shifted decision-making from citizens who merely vote to the administrative system’s “stakeholders.” ... In America, however, this oligarchy fit Aristotle’s (or Marx’s) mostly economic criteria only superficially ... it became ever clearer that membership in the U.S. ruling class depends primarily on sharing the right socio-political opinions.

. . .

America’s growing oligarchy, however, always had a moralistic, puritan streak that indicts dissenters as bad people. More and more, America’s ruling class, shaped and serviced by an increasingly uniform pretend-meritocratic educational system, claimed for itself monopoly access to truth and goodness, and made moral as well as technical-intellectual contempt for the rest of Americans into their identity’s chief element. That, along with administrative and material power, made our ruling class the gatekeeper to all manner of goods.

Progressivism’s foundational proposition—that the American way of life suffers from excessive freedom and insufficient latitude for experts to lead each into doing what is best for all—is the intellectual basis of the oligarchy’s ever-increasing size, wealth, and power ... the Progressive critique adds a moral basis: the American people’s indulgence of their preferences—private ease and comfort, focus on families, religious observance, patriotism—has made for every secular sin imaginable: racism, sexism, greed, etc. Because most Americans are racist, sexist, un-appreciative of real virtue or refinement (these are somehow rolled together), because these Americans resist knuckling under to their betters, America is a sick society that needs to be punished and to have its noxious freedoms reformed.

. . .

Race (and sex, etc.) is yet another set of excuses for transferring power to the ruling class. The oligarchy is no more concerned about race than it is about education, or environmentalism, or sex, or anything else. It is about yet more discretionary power in the hands of its members, for whom not all blacks (or women, or whatevers) are to be advantaged—only the ones who serve ruling class purposes.

. . .

In short, the Progressive ruling class’s intensifying efforts to oppress those they imagine to be their inferiors is not reversible. It is far less a choice of policy than it is the consequence of its awakening to its own identity—awakening to the powers and privileges to which they imagine their superior worth entitles them. It is awakening to its deep resentment—indeed, to hate—for whoever does not submit preemptively.

Let there be no doubt: the ruling class’s focus on Donald Trump has been incidental. America’s potentates do not fear one pudgy orange-haired septuagenarian. They fear the millions of Americans whom they loathe, who voted for Trump, who gave his party control of House and Senate, and who will surely vote for folks these potentates really should fear.

. . .

The ruling class use of COVID-19 is medical nonsense. But the “lockdowns” made perfect political sense because they disadvantaged primarily the sort of people who vote conservative. The lockdowns also made ordinary people more economically dependent on government, while enriching those best connected with it.

Most remarkable has been the unbroken consistency with which every part of the ruling class’s entourage joined the campaign while piggybacking its own priorities to it—to the complaisance of all the others. That is the meaning of “intersectionality.” Teachers’ unions, for example, conditioned returning to the classroom on the government banning charter schools; Black Lives Matter (BLM) claimed that “White Racism” must be treated as another public health menace. All other components supported them. All signified solidarity by demanding that all Americans wear masks outdoors, and that those who don’t be jailed. Meanwhile, they insisted that persons convicted of rape, robbery, and murder be released. The world turned upside down.

. . .

In 2020, the ruling class imposes itself by Democratic officials’ arbitrary regulations as well as by all manner of corporate restrictions on dissent. Demanding that people apologize for their whiteness and show other signs of submission on pain of being fired have become routine. In 2016 it would have been difficult to imagine the 2020 level of ruling class presumption, virulence and violence. In 2020, violent bands roam America’s cities with official complaisance, acting as the ruling class’s officious enforcers of powers without logical end.

Thus, acting in the name of public health and social justice, the ruling class effectively repealed the Constitution and the laws of the United States. Freedom of religion? Filling churches and synagogues, celebrating baptisms, weddings and funerals can now land you in jail. Freedom of speech? On the contrary. You may now be punished for failing to declare what is ordered of you, even if you don’t believe it, or even for failing to attend a political re-education session or by not showing due deference therein. Freedom of assembly? Only for those on the ruling class side. Property? If you forcibly defend it against the mob, Democrat-controlled states will jail you. They will also prosecute you for defending your life.

None of this was done by laws passed by elected representatives. All was done by all manner of officials’ and bureaucrats’ edicts, and discretionary actions supported by the media and corporations. Leaderless, the American people by and large obeyed a regime that had become an oligarchy served by thousands of its clients, eager to hurt opponents financially, socially, and physically.

. . .

Donald Trump’s reelection would reduce the intersectionals’ confidence a bit and give the Right side of American life a bit more leeway as it chooses new leadership. In this slightly calmer atmosphere, the beginning of the 2024 election cycle would open a host of possibilities.

But it would not end our revolution any more than the ruling class’s victory would. The revolution’s essentials would remain and its logic would continue to unfold. The ruling class, having failed peaceably and hence firmly to establish oligarchy, remains pressed by the deplorables on one side and its chosen intersectional instruments on the other. It dares not try dismounting the tiger it rides.

. . .

Donald Trump having vaccinated the deplorables against what Theodore Roosevelt used to call “the unbridled tongue and the unready hand,” candidates for leadership of the Right side of American life will have to present themselves by actually leading their fellow Deplorables effectively to resist and reverse what officious and official policy by potentates high and low are doing, and have done, to foul so much of American life.

There's more at the link.

I highly recommend making enough time to read all of Prof. Codevilla's long and insightful article.  It's not easy going, and requires that one engage with what he says rather than just skim through it.  However, I think it's well worth the effort to do so.  He puts our entire political, social and cultural morass into perspective, and gives us clear insight into our options going forward.

Peter

You can say that again!!!

David Burge, known in the blogosphere as Iowahawk, puts the Supreme Court brouhaha in a nutshell on Twitter.

True words, those.  We have so many issues and problems to deal with:

• a confrontational China;
• the residue of the COVID-19 pandemic;
• an economy on the rocks;
• a nation divided along political, social, economic, cultural and ideological grounds . . .

yet people are losing their minds over who will be the next Justice of the Supreme Court?

Priorities.  It's all about priorities . . . but many of our benighted citizens appear to have no idea how to pick them.  Unfortunately, the same appears to apply to many of our politicians and almost all our national news media.

So much for leadership!


*Sigh*


Peter

Too many US states are balanced on a fiscal knife-edge

A few days ago, I pointed out that the economic threat to America was far more important than whether a new SCOTUS judge was to be appointed.  That applies as much to the fifty states making up our union as it does to the nation as a whole.

The latest annual "State of the States" survey bears this out.

At the end of the fiscal year (FY) 2019, 39 states did not have enough money to pay all of their bills. This means that to balance the budget—as is required by law in 49 states—elected officials have not included the true costs of the government in their budget calculations and have pushed costs onto future taxpayers. TIA divides the amount of money needed to pay bills by the number of state taxpayers to come up with the Taxpayer Burden™. If a state has money available after all bills are considered, that surplus amount is likewise divided by the number of taxpayers to come up with the Taxpayer Surplus™. We then rank the states based on these calculations.

We have also implemented a grading system to give greater context to each state’s Taxpayer Burden or Taxpayer Surplus. Based on our grading methodology, three states received A’s, eight received B’s, 14 received C’s, 17 received D’s, and eight states received failing grades.

States in general do not have enough money to pay all of their bills. The total debt of the 50 states amounts to $1.4 trillion. Our analysis does not include debt related to capital assets. Most of this debt comes from unfunded retirement benefit promises, such as pension and retiree healthcare liabilities. This year, pension debt accounts for $855 billion, and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) totaled $617 billion. Furthermore, we have estimated that the 50 states could lose $397 billion in revenue as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

. . .

States that lack the necessary funds to pay their bills are called Sinkhole States, while those that do have enough money are referred to as Sunshine States.

Top 5 Sunshine States (taxpayer surplus):
1. Alaska: $77,400
2. North Dakota: $37,700
3. Wyoming: $19,600
4. Utah: $5,500
5. Tennessee: $3,400

Bottom 5 Sinkhole States (taxpayer burden):
50. New Jersey: -$57,900
49. Illinois: -$52,000
48. Connecticut: -$50,700
47. Hawaii: -$31,700
46. Massachusetts: -$30,100

There's much more at the link.

I suggest you click over to the full report and take a look at where your state stands in the financial rankings.  I was unpleasantly surprised to note that Texas is in the lower half of the "pack", among the "Sinkhole States" (34th out of 50, with a D grading, although it's nowhere near as "broke" as some).

Peter

Self-defense in a surveillance society

I've pointed out on several occasions that the present justice system, in many parts of our country, is biased against those who seek to legally and legitimately defend themselves.  Some activist and extremist District Attorneys and prosecutors appear to be aggressively pursuing charges against those who defend themselves against rioters, whilst simultaneously refusing to press charges against the latter.  Effectively, the law in those areas has been weaponized to support extremism.

My previous articles on the subject include:

• Self-defense under a justice system that's no longer on your side
• No, I wasn't being alarmist - rather, I wasn't alarmist enough
• A protest in Milwaukee leads to a very dangerous situation
• How can I get through to law-abiding citizens that THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IS BEING WEAPONIZED AGAINST US???

If you haven't read them yet, I suggest it might be a good idea to do so before continuing here.

In the first of the four articles cited above, I noted:

Are there security cameras on businesses or buildings overlooking where you might have to act?  (Don't forget innocuous-looking devices such as smart doorbells in residential areas - video from them has been used to catch criminals.)  What about cameras mounted on light poles or buildings to cover the street?  Many big cities now have thousands of them in law-enforcement-monitored networks, as well as gunfire location systems to detect when and where firearms are used, and send responding officers straight there.  If you use a firearm to defend yourself, you may be recorded on video and audio by such systems, providing evidence that may be used to identify, arrest and convict you.

In an area where the law enforcement and/or prosecution authorities are subject to and/or promoting an extremist agenda, such photographic and video evidence can be turned against you.  The raw images alone are not sufficient to clear your name, because a competent prosecutor can describe them in very different ways to yourself, and twist their interpretation to support otherwise baseless charges against you.

For a recent example, look at the video evidence in the Kyle Rittenhouse case, and how prosecutors used it to bring murder charges against him while his defense attorneys are claiming it shows him acting in legal, legitimate self-defense.  Same video, very different interpretations.  Which one will the jury believe?  Your guess is as good as mine - particularly because the prosecution has a major say in selecting the candidates for the jury pool.

That reality has just been strongly reinforced by this news report.

From walking the dog to driving into work, researchers say Americans are being caught on security cameras at least 238 times every week ... By next year, there will be about one camera for every 4.6 people in the United States.

Safety.com finds much of this weekly surveillance happens on the road. Researchers say the average American is filmed 160 times while driving. One of the biggest reasons for this is the growing number of cameras at major intersections.

Traveling about 29 miles a day on average, researchers say motorists typically drive under 20 cameras over that span. The report cautions that it’s hard to know how many of these devices are permanently storing their recordings or just passively filming to monitor traffic data.

Once you’re done commuting, researchers find the average employee is filmed 40 times a week at or around the office. This number, the study finds, can be drastically higher if a person works in a retail store or in transportation. These workers may be on film hundreds of times every week in comparison to people working where there’s a single security camera at the entrance.

Meanwhile, the average consumer in the U.S. is under surveillance 24 times while out shopping or running errands. Researchers find security cameras are the norm in business today, as merchants crack down on theft and other criminal activity.

The study says one of the biggest increases in surveillance is right in a person’s own house. The average American is on film 14 times a week in their house and neighborhood. In the past, researchers believe this number was closer to zero ... Today, doorbell cameras are a common feature in home security systems. So a walk through your community is likely now a walk past several homes filming everything that goes by.

. . .

Researchers say for Americans who frequently travel by airplane or work in high security areas, they are likely on film over 1,000 times each week.

There's more at the link.

That should be enough evidence to convince anybody.  If you are forced to defend yourself, the odds are very high that you will be recorded on audio and video either during the incident, or immediately before or after it, making it relatively easy for prosecutors (and activists who might want to doxx you over it, which might put your home and family at risk) to prove your presence and/or your actions.  Even if the evidence doesn't show illegal conduct, that's no guarantee they won't analyze it and twist its meaning to support their allegations.  Truth, honesty and fair dealing are among the first casualties when extremism rules.

Therefore, do your very best to avoid confrontations that might lead to violence.  Better not to get into one at all, if possible.  It's not cowardice to "get out of Dodge" before trouble arrives:  in today's legal and political environment, it's common sense.

If such confrontations become unavoidable (and, let's face it, extremists will do their best to provoke them), then the advice given in my earlier articles comes into play.  Do what you have to do (within the law, naturally), but be aware that your actions can be (and in some jurisdictions almost certainly will be) analyzed from an extremely biased and unfriendly perspective.  In such jurisdictions, you'll have to decide the best way forward, bearing in mind the surveillance issues raised above and in earlier articles.  Choose wisely!

Peter

P.S. - Shooting Illustrated has just published a useful article titled "10 Best Ways to Defend Yourself Against Civil Unrest".  It covers much of the ground I've covered in articles here, but adds a few more points.  Worthwhile reading.

Boys and their highly explosive toys - again

Here's another team with too much time on their hands.  They have a lot of fun with it, and with things that go bang!

(If the embedded video fails to play, click here to watch it on YouTube.)

Looks like a good time was had by all.

Bowling ball cannons are fun.  We had one at our annual Blogorado gathering one year, converted from an old gas cylinder.  It launched bowling balls to a very satisfying distance with a loud CRRRUMP!  (We had a reproduction Civil War-era M1841 mountain howitzer another year, which was even more fun.  I wonder if one could swage a bowling ball down far enough to fit the bore of a 12-pounder cannon like that?  Hmmm . . . )

Blogorado 2020 is coming up in a few weeks. I wonder what high-explosive mayhem the boys are planning this year?  I'm going to be taking a number of new toys with me, to function-test them and sight them in.  It's going to be fun!

Peter

Election rivalry, Texas style

I had to laugh at political rivalry in Limestone, Texas (south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex).

It all started when local Democrats rented a billboard to display this poster.

Unfortunately, they ignored the vacant billboard below it.  Local Republicans didn't.  $1,200 in billboard rental later:

I daresay the situation has been reversed in other localities. If you know of examples where one political party has out-billboarded the other, let us know in Comments, with a link if possible. We may as well have something to laugh about in this overly nasty election season!




Peter

Our wildfire crisis is nowhere near as bad as climate alarmists claim

The sheer dishonesty of environmentalists' claims about our current wildfire crisis is enough to annoy any objective observer of the situation.  Sure, things are bad out west - but they're nowhere near as bad as they've been in the past, and they're not so much the fault of climate change as they are of forest mismanagement.

The Foundation for Economic Education presents the facts.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

With all due respect to the Cassandras preaching apocalypse and hell on earth, there are two points worth mentioning.

First, as I explained recently, there is widespread agreement that California’s megafires stem largely from decades-long mismanagement of its forests. As The New York Times explained earlier this month, for more than a century, many firefighting agencies have aggressively focused on extinguishing blazes whenever they occur, a strategy that has often proved counterproductive.

Other parts of the US have shown, the paper said, that less aggressive extinguishing of natural fires and targeted prescribed burning are effective at periodically clearing excess vegetation in forests and grasslands, which essentially serve as the fuel of California’s wildfires.

. . .

Texas actually has more forest and higher temperatures than California, but the Lone Star state rarely struggles with fires, perhaps because 95 percent of its land mass is privately owned and these owners act as responsible stewards of the land.

If climate change was truly the primary culprit of the wildfires, wouldn’t it stand to reason other parts of the US would be suffering similar results? Are there reasons climate change impacts California more than Texas and the Southeast US?

This brings me to my second point. There’s a perception that today’s fires are historically unprecedented ... But, the claim that 2020 is one of the worst in US history is simply not true.

. . .

So far in 2020, the US has experienced 42,809 total fires that burned a total of 7,015,956 [acres]. These numbers are indeed above the ten-year average—45,711 fires and 5,963,782 acres. However, 2020 is unlikely to exceed the number of fires or acreage burned just three years ago in 2017 ... News agencies and NIFC were simply ignoring all data prior to 1960. When this data is included, one sees 2017’s record setting fires burned about one fifth of the acreage of fires in 1930 and 1931 ... The entire data set ... shows the yearly average between 1926 and 1952 was several times higher than the peaks of today.

. . .

We’ve seen no shortage of crises in 2020, but it’s worth remembering a simple truth: pandemics, riots, and wildfires are nothing new. They have been around as long as humans have.

What’s changing is our response to these phenomena. Each crisis is presented as an opportunity to save humanity, and each requires giving more control to central planners.

Rahm Emmanuel popularized the phrase “Never let a good crisis go to waste,” but it was economist Robert Higgs who showed that crises are the mortal enemy of liberty. His great work Crisis and Leviathan lays bare the state's tradition of claiming new powers during emergencies, powers that rarely are relinquished fully when the crisis ends.

There's more at the link.

The current brouhaha about our "wildfire emergency" is being whipped up by anthropogenic climate change alarmists.  They seek to use it to grab more authority and more control over our wilderness areas and how we manage them.  Their interest lies in maximizing our alarm and concern over current events, while deflecting our attention from the (frequently much worse) events of the past that put today's wildfires in perspective.

Let's not lose that perspective, and let's be duly skeptical about those who are trying to stampede us into precipitate action that isn't warranted by the facts or the historical record.  We don't need an even Bigger Brother pushing us around!

Peter

Let's call the Biden campaign what it is: ELDER ABUSE

I'm growing more and more angry at the way Joe Biden is being treated by his family and political party during the 2020 Presidential campaign.  If any of us treated our elder scions in this way, we'd be accused of elder abuse - and rightly so!

Mr. Biden is clearly not in full control of his senses.  He rambles, loses track of what he's saying, speaks nonsense words and phrases, and requires a teleprompter to remember what he has to say - even to the extent of apparently not being able to answer questions without one.  His movements are no longer as springy and zesty as they used to be;  to demonstrate that, compare footage of him just a year ago to footage of him today.  The difference is clear.

Mr. Biden is obviously being kept in place as a campaign figurehead to unseat Donald Trump from the Presidency.  His handlers in the Democratic Party have doubtless decided that he's a relatively innocuous political figure who'll attract uncommitted voters, while others in the party - from his Vice-Presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, to other prominent Democrats in Congress and the Senate - will espouse and/or defend more controversial policies.

As soon as Mr. Biden has served his purpose (assuming the Democrats win in November), he'll doubtless be "put out to pasture", probably by invoking the 25th Amendment, or kept in place as a figurehead President while others rule in his name (shades of Mrs. Edith Wilson and her usurpation of Presidential authority during Woodrow Wilson's second term?).  Either way, overtly or covertly, Ms. Harris will succeed to the Presidency.  Who will her Vice-Presidential candidate be when the time comes to end the charade?  With our luck, probably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or someone with equally extreme views - someone who'd never normally attract enough electoral support to prevail.

Let's be clear.  I don't care about Mr. Biden's politics.  I'm just very sorry for him as a human being.  As a pastor, I've worked with a large number of people in his position.  I've watched their decline.  I know the signs.  So do many of my friends and readers, including a hospice nurse who describes his symptoms as unmistakable.  Yet, when I ask local Democratic Party officials about it, they uniformly evade my question and/or refuse to answer it directly.  They claim he's "got excellent medical care", and maintain that "if he was that sick, his doctors would have made him rest", or something like that.  They never, ever come out and admit that his clearly-visible symptoms are what they are.

Why are we, the American electorate, putting up with this?  Why are we accepting as valid the candidacy of any politician who is clearly not in full control of himself?  Why are we tolerating what de facto amounts to elder abuse?

And why are the mainstream media not all asking this question, aloud, and demanding answers?  Their complicity in this conspiracy of silence is deafening.

The Emperor-candidate has no clothes.  Mr. Biden is visibly not capable of running even his campaign, let alone the United States.  His handlers are making all the running, and we're sitting back and letting them get away with it.  As long as we do, we are all complicit in this elder abuse.

Shame on us all.

Peter

The trials and tribulations of driving with chickens

I laughed out loud as I read about Kenny's adventures with chickens the other day.  He lost a couple of his small flock, and drove to a dealer to get replacements.

I pulled into the place, told the kid what I wanted, and he netted me 2 pullets ... He put them in a raggedy box and folded the lid shut. I paid him and thanked him for his time.

Anyways, I turned on the stereo and headed for home. It was a beautiful day, nice and cool, and all was right in my world - until those ****ing chickens decided to make a break for it. They didn't just find a way and crawled out, it was like somebody hit a switch because those mother****ers just exploded out of that box as I was tooling on down the road at 60 mph singing along to David Allen Coe with my driver's side window open.

So here I am, trying to bat those bitches back into the back seat, trying to steer and roll my window up all at the same time down this curvy hilly road, cussing to beat the band. I finally found a stretch of road with a shoulder, so I pulled over and jumped out, then opened the back door and climbed in trying to corner these two birds and not being very successful. I'm starting to get frustrated and I look behind me and I'll be damned if a deputy hadn't pulled up behind me with his lights flashing.

I climbed out of the truck, ****ing chicken feathers in my beard, and he asked me just what in the hell was going on? I explained what was happening and he came over and looked inside, started laughing and climbed back into his Explorer and drove off. Hell, I could've used a hand here, partner.

There's more at the link.

I'm not surprised the deputy didn't bother to write Kenny a ticket.  It wasn't worth it.  It was only a poultry offense, after all.




Peter

Responses to left-wing hysteria over Justice Ginsburg's successor

I shouldn't have been surprised at the vitriolic level of response to Justice Ginsburg's death, but I was.  Even for the progressive left of US politics, this has taken "low" to a new level, and promises to lower that level to unheard-of depths over the next few weeks.  I'm not looking forward to the nomination proceedings for her successor - and I hope the candidate is prepared to be raked over the coals all day, every day.  I wouldn't like to be in their shoes.

The level of opposition produces a stubborn reaction in me:  "Well, if that's the way you want it, so be it!"  I can't help but note that Justice Ginsburg herself defended election-year SCOTUS nominations, back in 2016.

She lamented the Republican-majority Senate’s continued blocking of Garland from consideration, and its insistence that the next President, to be elected in November, should be the one to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice.

“That’s their job,” Ginsburg said, when asked whether the Senate should give the 63-year-old judge a fair hearing. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says the President stops being President in his last year.”

There's more at the link.

That being the case, let's do it!

I'm obliged to reader C. M. for sending me the link to this Twitter thread.  You can read it more easily at the Threadreader version.

For decades, I stated that if there was a SCOTUS vacancy within say six months of a Presidential election, then a nomination and vote should be held until after the election as that was one of the few times the voters had at least somewhat of a say. Yeah, about that.

You threaten to riot? You threaten to shut it all down? You show up at McConnell's house to protest the very night RBG dies? Fine. Do that and I'll advocate for hardball to be played right back with the ball to be hit directly into your face. You want it, you got it.

It isn't just last night. This is the accumulation of decades of ever increasing nastiness re: Republican SCOTUS nominations. This is the threats of court packing, this is hearing vileness, this is *gestures* all of it. I didn't want this game. But I'll play it to win.

Since we're going to play this stupidest possible game, then play it as hard as possible. I want the nomination Monday, the vote Tuesday, and the swearing in on Wednesday. Hearings are an insulting joke. Everyone knows how everyone will vote. Just do this thing.

BUT BUT YOUR PRINCIPLES! PRINCIPLES, I SAY! You know what my main principle is? I don't give in to threats. I'm done with this pretending that this is about anything other than pure power plays. In the era of the Golden Scalp Weasel came the Great Unmasking.

Since the masks are off, let me take off mine. I am, underneath it all, an utterly cold blooded pragmatist. I loathe to my DNA that SCOTUS is now most powerful. But it is. That's not changing. And thus I want that power to be on my side as much as possible.

If that means ramming a vote through as hard and fast as possible, so be it. So be it. I screamed my throat raw and typed my fingers bloody for decades telling everyone not to get to this point. I lost that argument. I lost that argument entirely. Will to power it is then.

I am, by the by, fully aware of what will happen when the roles are reversed. How can I not be? It's been laid bare for years. I am doing my enemies, and it is clear now they are not opponents, the favor of taking them seriously. I'm just using the power they want first.

Since this is the game that will be played, play it we shall. And play it to win. And the Senate Republicans better understand by the end of today that if they do not, they will lose and they will deserve to do so. Oh all of this is as terrible as I thought. Yet here we are.

Again, more at the link.

I can't help sympathizing with the author of that Twitter thread.  I've tried for years to be a voice of reason, rather than partisan extremism.  I've noted repeatedly that I'm neither Democrat nor Republican;  I vote for the individual, rather than the party, because I distrust both major (and all other) parties equally.  None of them are putting the needs of this country first.  Instead, they're all fighting for what's good for them, rather than the nation.  Their every action is predicated on "What will the voters think?" rather than "What does this country need?"  Principle has long since been abandoned in favor of profit - the more profit to them, the stronger the "principles" for which they fight.  (Note the net worth of politicians when they enter upon elected service versus when they retire from it.)  Money talks a lot louder to most politicians than what is good, or right, or constitutional.

I'm angry that things have come to this extreme.  It should not have happened, and the fact that it has speaks very poorly of us, the American electorate.  If we, individually and collectively had a constitutional spine, we'd have elected a better quality of Representatives and Senators and Presidents, to make sure that they "toed the constitutional line" and didn't weasel out of their obligations.  We failed in that responsibility;  and now the politicians we elected are reflecting that failure as they ignore their responsibilities.  It's basically our fault for electing them.  We allowed spineless self-seeking jellyfish to legislate our future - and just look at the job they've done!  We're all suffering under it now, and we have no-one to blame but ourselves.

Nevertheless, we're in this handbasket, whether we like it or not, and it's heading downhill faster and faster.  I don't have much doubt about its destination unless we change direction - and to do that, we need wise, principled, honest and clear-headed politicians and SCOTUS justices, to bring us back to our constitutional roots and make sure the ship of state is restored to a seaworthy condition.  We dare not leave that job up to ideological extremists or partisan party-political hacks.

May President Trump be wisely guided in his choice of a candidate to replace Justice Ginsburg on SCOTUS:  and may that candidate be prepared, and equipped, to face the onslaught of partisan hysteria that awaits them.  May the rest of us have the wisdom to encourage our Senators to vote for the wisest choice for our country, to help preserve the little we have left of our Founding Fathers' vision, and - if possible - claw back more of it from the forces, on both sides of the political aisle, that have gnawed on its bones for far too long.  We need neocons just as little as we need extreme progressives;  hard-line right-wingers just as little as ditto left-wingers.

I note that Justice Ginsburg was close friends with the late Justice Scalia, whose politics were diametrically opposed to hers.  Despite their strong differences, they respected each other, and showed it in their friendship.  That friendship should be an example to the rest of us.  Despite political differences, we can get along, and work together, and build an America in which all of us can live at peace with one another . . . if we choose to do so.

I hope and pray that President Trump nominates someone who will help us to achieve that.

Peter

Heh

Cartoonist Stephan Pastis offers this helpful health care suggestion.  Click the image to be taken to a larger version at the comic's Web page.

I'm familiar with both fairies, sad to say:  but thanks to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, not too intimately.  BC/BS has been a big help to Miss D. and I from time to time - although I've not yet noticed a fairy hovering around my hospital bed, carrying a blue shield with a blue cross on it!




Peter

Don't let SCOTUS issues obscure the real economic threat to America

With all the fuss and bother over whether President Trump should nominate a replacement Justice to the Supreme Court, and whether the Senate should hold a confirmation vote, it's easy to lose sight of the real danger threatening us right now.  John Mauldin puts it in perspective.

The point now is that many Americans are living unemployment check to unemployment check.

It’s easy to forget that the enhanced unemployment benefits helped more than the unemployed people. In many cases, the “recipients” were simply conduits. They received money from the government and immediately sent it on to their lenders and landlords. The fiscal stimulus kept those people afloat, too. And its ending will hurt them, too.

. . .

Quick math: If 20% of the adult population reduces spending 25%, the net effect is consumer spending falls 5%. That, alone, leads to an even deeper stall-speed recession. It will generate more layoffs and bankruptcies, meaning more unemployment, until something gives the economy the lift it needs.

. . .

We are in an unprecedented situation. Close to 30 million workers are on unemployment benefits, and that’s after a partial recovery that is now tapering off. Those benefits are the only thing keeping us out of an outright depression that frankly could be worse than the Great Depression (and I don’t think that’s a hyperbolic statement), and they are about to disappear. I fully recognize my own philosophical flip-flop here. But I would rather be called a hypocrite than see millions suffering.

The fact is, we haven’t seen anything like this before. It’s not just another recession. The pandemic and our efforts to control it unleashed economic demons. We need an exorcist or at least some holy water. Instead we get boring sermons. I’m alarmed and you should be, too.

. . .

I realize we are in a contentious election season. Feelings are running high. I wish more people would realize our economic challenges transcend politics. We will still be in deep trouble whether Trump or Biden is president next year, and regardless of which party controls the House and Senate. Neither side has all the answers. We need them to set aside the rhetoric and take care of all Americans.

. . .

I am not saying a recovery is years off or impossible. I am optimistic we will recover, but it is not going to be a typical 12-month cycle to see recovery begin. We have to buy ourselves and those entrepreneurs some time to figure out what a post-COVID-19 world looks like. The more time we can buy, the stronger the recovery will be.

I get that adding debt will be a drag on economic growth. That can’t be helped. There’s a hole in the boat and we have to plug it, and while doing so we have to bail and row.

The world is going to be repriced. Everything. We are going to have to find new uses for a lot of things now in surplus, like strip malls and office space, lots of equipment, and those new uses may require lower prices. All while technology is disrupting our world in ways we don’t understand. No one ever said it would be easy.

The 85% of us who are working need to help those who aren’t. Bigger tips. Donations to food banks (have you seen some of the lines for food banks? Depressing.). Look around your own community. Are there ways you can help the at-risk population? We are seeing an epidemic of depression and suicide. Reach out to your neighbors who are lonely. I am sure you can think of your own ways. Then just do it.

In the meantime, call your senators and representatives and tell them to do their @#$%# job. Don’t yell at them for compromising. Support them when they do. We can resume yelling at them when unemployment is 6%.

There's more at the link.  Highly recommended reading.

Frankly, if the US economy collapses, it won't matter who controls Congress, or the Senate, or the White House.  It won't matter whether we have 8 or 9 SCOTUS judges in the short to medium term.  We'll be too busy trying to survive to worry about such niceties.  If you don't know where your next meal is coming from;  if you've been kicked out of your home because you can't pay the rent or cover your mortgage;  if your vehicle has been repossessed because you've fallen behind on the payments . . . all those are real, in-your-face emergencies.  Even Antifa's and BLM's antics will matter a whole lot less - because they'll be trying to survive, too.

We need to get our priorities straight.  The economy should be at or very near the top of our list right now.

Peter

Private pilots get their kicks down under

Pilots of small private planes in Australia are being offered a chance that's normally blocked to them, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic.  A tip o' the hat to Australian reader Andrew for sending me the link.

Private pilot Mark Keech has flown in and out of Sydney Airport as a passenger many times, but he never thought one day he would do it from the cockpit.

That changed recently when he flew a Piper Cherokee 140 four-seater aircraft onto one of Sydney’s main runways, which stretches nearly four kilometres [about 13,000 feet].

“I can land this thing in about 250 metres [about 800 feet] and they told me to get off the first taxiway as quickly as I could [because another plane was coming],” he said.

“The first taxiway is one kilometre [about 3,300 feet] away, and I said to my daughter we’d have to take off again just to get to it.”

Mr Keech is one of many small aircraft pilots taking advantage of Sydney’s eerily-quiet airport during COVID-19.

Ordinarily, Australia’s largest airport sees at least 800 plane movements per day.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, that number has been reduced to about 60 movements, mainly of freight jets.

“Normally the airspace isn’t available, so [for hobby pilots] to be able to tick Sydney Airport off in their logbook is a special thing,” [Sydney Airport airfield supervisor Nigel Coghlan] said.

. . .

Mr Keech said he had to try and manage the excitement of the occasion with making sure he followed all the necessary protocols.

“It became surreal because on one hand it was the same as landing at any other airport, but then I thought ‘this is serious, it’s an international airport and I’ve got a 777 up my arse’,” he said.

There's more at the link.

The story reminds me of when my wife was flying her newly-restored pre-World-War-II aircraft down from Alaska to join me in Tennessee (a journey described in this series of blog posts).  She used the chain of airfields set up for the Northwest Staging Route (leading to the so-called Alaska-Siberia (ALSIB) route across the Bering Strait to the Soviet Union) from the USA through Alberta, British Columbia and the Yukon to Alaska during that war.  Some of them have very long runways, in order to handle large planes - far longer than Miss D. needed for her STOL-modified liaison-aircraft-turned-bush-plane.  At one of the airports in the Yukon, she touched down on its nearly 10,000-foot main runway, using less than 10% of its length, only to find that the FBO she needed was at the other end of the runway.  Undaunted, she simply took off again, flew down the length of the runway, and landed once more at the far end!

I'm glad the operators of the Sydney airport are encouraging their light aircraft pilots to make use of the facilities.  It must get interesting for the air traffic controllers, having to fit small, slow single-engined planes in between honking great jet airliners.  The small planes' landing speed is usually rather less than 100 mph, whereas the big beasts come in at two to three times that velocity - an interesting calculation in terms of vectors and closing speed.  The small plane pilots must find it equally interesting.  The prospect of "a 777 up my arse", as Mr. Keech put it, probably concentrates their mind wonderfully!

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 25

Harvested during the past 7 days on the Interwebs.

(For those who don't get the above meme, see here.)

And finally: not funny at all, but absolutely true. Goodness is not defined by following laws, but by doing the right thing, regardless of what the law may say or require.  Doing the right thing may put you at risk, or make you a law-breaker.

Peter

Sunday morning music

In the light of the recent death of Justice Ginsberg of the Supreme Court, I thought it would be appropriate to introduce readers who don't already know it to Pigmeat Markham's comedy song, "Here Comes the Judge".  Based on his standup comedy routine "Heyeah (here) come da judge", it was a hit in 1968, and is regarded as one of the first rap or hip-hop songs, long before that genre was officially recognized.

And here's the comedy routine that inspired the song.

One trusts the next Justice of the Supreme Court will do as well!




Peter

No snippet this morning, I'm afraid . . .

. . . Miss D. and I have house guests, and we were up later than usual settling them in and talking about everything under the sun.  I haven't had time to prepare my usual Saturday Snippet.  (Most of them I type from a printed copy of the book, as many aren't available in e-book format.  That takes time and concentration.)

Please amuse yourselves with the bloggers in my sidebar.  They all write well, too!

Peter

Gaseous gators?

Well, yes - when it comes to science!  The BBC reports:

Have you heard the one about the alligator that performed the party trick of breathing in helium so it could talk in a funny voice?

It's not that hilarious but then you'd be careful never to smile at a crocodilian.

Stephan Reber and colleagues performed the experiment to try to understand how alligators might communicate.

It was a serious piece of research but its slightly comedic aspects have just won the team an Ig Nobel Prize.

Ten such awards were handed out on Thursday by the science humour magazine Annals of Improbable Research.

The annual Igs are intended as a bit of a spoof on the more sober Nobel science prizes.

Other 2020 winners included the team that devised a method to identify narcissists by examining their eyebrows; and the group that wanted to see what happened when earthworms were vibrated at high frequency.

All this kind of stuff sounds daft, but when you dig a little deeper you realise much of the research lauded by the Ig Nobels is actually intended to tackle real-world problems and gets published in peer-reviewed, scholarly journals.

Dr Reber told BBC News he was honoured to receive the Ig.

His team's study had attempted to show that crocodilians and other reptiles could advertise their body size through their vocalisations - something that mammals and birds can do when they call out.

. . .

The Prof is something of a superstar having also won an Ig earlier in his career for levitating frogs.

There's more at the link.

When one looks at the list of those who've previously won an Ig Nobel prize, and the research that earned them the award, it's hard to figure out how they came up with the idea(s) for such experiments.  I mean, who would have thought of using magnets to levitate a frog?

One can only bow in the presence of such greatness . . .




Peter

"The Stalinization of Kansas City"

That's the title of an article in the American Spectator.  Kansas City is merely the latest example of progressive overreach.

“There’s no way you can do any homework on Black Lives Matter and not see that it’s a Marxist political organization,” Jason Whitlock, America’s bravest sportswriter, told Tucker Carlson of Fox News. BLM “is not about black death. It’s not about black men.” Whitlock, who is himself black, knows whereof he speaks.

The civic leaders of Kansas City, Missouri — where Whitlock got his start — refused to do their homework. On Saturday, Black Lives Matter murals were painted on six city streets to address “systemic racism” in a city that, although only one-third black, has a black mayor, sheriff, county executive, and congressman. Of the 13 members of the City Council, the sole Republican was the only one to vote against the project.

. . .

Like many of my fellow citizens, I now have some sense of how Ukrainians must have felt watching their overlords erect statues of Stalin in their town squares. They were forced not just to endure Soviet lies, but to celebrate them.

To be sure, the lies that sustain BLM are not as lethal as those that devastated the Ukraine under Stalin. Nor does a gulag await dissenters, at least not yet. That said, corporate citizens risk their careers should they protest the BLM shakedown, and business owners risk their shop windows — at least those that survived BLM’s “largely peaceful” protests earlier in the summer.

. . .

Reeling from the “Minneapolis effect,” cops have pulled back even further, and the thugs have reclaimed lost territory. The night before the Kansas City murals were painted, BLM bully boys and girls roamed at will through the streets of Rochester, New York, harassing sidewalk diners and turning over their tables.

On that same day, Kansas City reported its 139th homicide of the year, 30 percent more than at this stage of 2019, 60 percent more than in the entire year of 2014, and 20 times more than in neighboring Johnson County, Kansas, which has a larger population. The great majority of those killed were black. So were their killers. According to the Violence Policy Center, “Missouri now has the highest rate of homicides among African-Americans of any state in the nation,” and it is not cops who are doing the killing.

There's more at the link.

This illustrates the great lie that's been sold to the American people time after time after time:  namely, that the problem is "the system".  Accusations of "systemic racism" are used as a reason to replace the present "system" with a better one;  but inevitably, the new system will end up as flawed as the old one.

There's a simple reason for that.  Political, social and economic systems are designed, implemented and administered by human beings, all of whom, without exception, are flawed, limited and biased to at least some extent.  We can't change that.  It's human nature.  Therefore, a new system, designed by "new" human beings, will be flawed from its inception, and will deteriorate over time until it's as bad as (or worse than) the one it replaced.

H. L. Mencken put it well:

"Each party steals so many articles of faith from the other, and the candidates spend so much time making each other's speeches, that by the time election day is past there is nothing much to do save turn the sitting rascals out and let a new gang in."

Right now, the progressive left appears to be dominating local politics.  However, the new "systems" they're putting in place are as flawed, and as incompetent, as those they're replacing.  Politicians, as a breed, are mostly rascals;  and we'd probably be better served by turning all of them out.  Sooner or later, it'll be shown that the BLM emperor's new clothes don't exist.  What will replace them?  Who knows?  It'll probably turn out just as phony.

That's why the US constitution is such a remarkable document.  It was not written by politicians.  It was written by thinking, educated people who could see the flaws in their present system of government, and who had studied other governments throughout history, and sought to codify a system that would restrict their excesses and limit their overreach as far as possible.  It recognized human nature, and sought to implement safeguards against it.  Even so, John Adams warned:

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

Can anyone argue that the US population today, in general terms, is a "moral and religious people"?  No, we're not - and therefore our constitution has fallen out of favor.  As long as its system of checks and balances was maintained, its protections endured.  With the relegation of the constitution to a historical placeholder rather than binding law, as has happened in many progressive and left-wing enclaves in America, it no longer protects us against the dangers it was built to avert.

That applies to cities as much as to the nation as a whole.  It seems Kansas City is on the way down the same progressive rabbit-hole as many others before it.  That's terrible news for those who live there.

Peter

How can I get through to law-abiding citizens that THE JUSTICE SYSTEM IS BEING WEAPONIZED AGAINST US???

I'm exasperated almost beyond measure at the seeming inability of some people to recognize that we're operating in a different environment right now, as far as the justice system is concerned.  With demonstrations, protests and riots breaking out in almost all American cities, law-abiding, upright citizens cannot - dare not - assume any longer that the justice system will recognize them for what they are, and respect their rights, and work to uphold them.  Instead, in far too many jurisdictions in these United States, the justice system has been corrupted.  It's become biased and politically correct.  It now works to uphold what politicians and pressure groups dictate, not what law and common sense mandate.

I've provided many examples in previous articles, most recently yesterday.  I was startled to read comments from some readers of that article protesting their right to act in self-defense, as if nothing had changed in the past year or two.  Folks, things have changed.  We may still be living under the same laws, but they're no longer being even-handedly applied.  We're no longer operating in the same legal environment.  Forces on the left are openly campaigning to elect "progressive" prosecutors and District Attorneys, and pouring massive amounts of money into their campaigns.  Thanks to widespread voter apathy and the support of mainstream news media, they've succeeded in doing so in several major cities.  Even in Texas, where the laws are very much in favor of law-abiding individuals, there are now prosecutors who openly state that they won't charge certain categories of "politically correct" offender.  They're also trying to put legal roadblocks in the way of citizens who defend themselves in accordance with the law.  In so many words, they're looking to make examples of the latter in an attempt to put pressure on others, to stop them exercising their legal rights.  Prosecution has been politicized.

If you haven't read these articles yet, please do so (in the order shown) before continuing.  They provide essential background information.

• Self-defense under a justice system that's no longer on your side
• No, I wasn't being alarmist - rather, I wasn't alarmist enough
• A protest in Milwaukee leads to a very dangerous situation

Consider, also, the Kyle Rittenhouse affair in Kenosha, Wisconsin.  What happened is clear, but interpretations of it differ widely depending on the persuasions and perspectives of those offering them.  Much of the evidence - recorded by multiple witnesses on video, from multiple angles - suggests that in fact, Rittenhouse was, indeed, defending himself against unlawful attack.  That will have to be decided by the courts, of course, but already extremists are blackening his name and threatening his life in prison.  Prosecutors appear to be playing political games rather than enforce the laws, because they're acting against one side only - not the rioters as well, despite their clearly illegal actions.

In so many words, extremists on the left of US politics are trying to use current self-defense cases to fundamentally change US laws and how they're interpreted in our judicial system.  Archimedes famously said, "Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."  The Rittenhouse affair, the McCloskey case (in which prosecutorial bias is also clearly evident), the Zimmerman trial, and others like them are the fulcrums;  pressure from the progressive left, exercised through street demonstrations and protests, are the lever.  Politicians are taking note, and responding accordingly - to our detriment as law-abiding citizens.

There's yet another case making headlines right now.  It demonstrates my point yet again.  Bold, underlined text is my emphasis.

A Nebraska bar owner that killed a rioter has been charged with “terrorism” and “manslaughter” by a District Attorney who initially admitted it was blatant self defense.

The DA has also admitted that they were “pressured” by local activists and politicians to bring the charges.

There's more at the link.

Herschel Smith offers this blunt, uncompromising warning.

War has been declared on you, your family, and your possessions.  You’ve seen enough instances like this to know how it’s going to go down.

You behave according to traditional Western and Biblical jurisprudence, and then the unthinkable happens.

You’ve been baited into a response.  Every action has been videoed.  A prosecutor charges you with some crime, or even decides not to.

The family of the one who has been shot gets on local television and cries and talks about what a “good boy” he was, and how he had such a bright future, complete with smiling pictures of the boy and local pastors talking about volunteer work he did.  It will all be covered by local talking heads in suits and pretty dresses, who look sad while listening, and show the utmost unction during the interviews.

Local politicians, who want to get reelected and need all the votes they can muster, pressure prosecutors.  The prosecutor changes his or her mind and convenes a “Grand Jury.”

. . .

You get convicted, or even if you don’t, you spend your life savings and go bankrupt defending yourself.

This all happens if you use traditional TTPs [Tactics, Techniques and Procedures] to defend yourself and your family, even attempting to warn rioters with warning shots because you don’t really want to harm anyone, under the assumption that America is still a civilized and just society, not at war with itself.

Again, more at the link.

Friends, I'm astonished to still read comments such as some of those made yesterday.  Where do I find words sufficiently convincing to show that what we've taken as a given for so long - our lawful, legitimate right to defend ourselves - is no longer something we can take for granted?  Some people just don't seem to get it.  The forces of left-wing progressive politics have infiltrated our legal and prosecutorial system, and are seeking to weaponize it against us.  That's the hard, raw, inescapable reality of our situation right now.

Go read what I said earlier about defending yourself against such a system.  If you live in a jurisdiction where the progressive left is in control, you're in enemy territory.  You cannot take your basic rights for granted any longer.  Political correctness can and will be weaponized against you.  Therefore, if you need to defend yourself or your loved ones or your property, you have to take that reality into account, and plan and act accordingly.

• If possible, be somewhere else rather than do that.
• If that isn't possible, act as discreetly, circumspectly and clandestinely as possible, and - no matter how legal or justified your actions - don't trust the law to be on your side.

Friends, that's the current reality for many of us, depending on where we live.  Please, please, keep it in mind, and act accordingly.

Peter