Wilderness Safety
Crazy Congresswomen from Georgia
Sen. Thom Tillis’s (R-N.C.) comments to CNN on Tuesday were particularly biting. Amid Greene’s efforts to oust McCarthy’s successor, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), Tillis called her a “waste of time” and a “horrible leader.”“She is dragging our brand down,” Tillis said. “She — not the Democrats — are the biggest risk to us getting back to a majority.”Tillis added, “I’m embarrassed to have actually lived geographically in her district at one time before she was there.”
I'm not too impressed with Tillis himself, who is reliably bad on issues of liberty like unfettered domestic spying. (My other Senator is even worse; he's on that list too, and has used his office to profit wildly from insider knowledge.) He may think he's better for the brand, but that brand looks pretty tarnished to me.
However, I would just like to point out that Greene is only the latest in a Georgia tradition -- you could even call it an Atlanta-area tradition -- of sending wild-eyed Congresswomen to Washington. Cynthia McKinney was a long-time Georgia politician, sometimes a Democrat and other times a Green Party member -- even their presidential candidate in 2008. She endorsed a metric ton of crazy ideas in her time, including a suggestion that there were widespread hidden executions following Hurricane Katrina. She claimed that 'Bush knew' about 9/11 and let it happen on purpose; separately, that "Zionists" carried out the attack. She also reliably took the side of America's enemies in her foreign policy work, and was ever-ready to support Hamas or really anyone who was against Israel. Even David Duke.
On September 11, 2023, McKinney promoted a livestream called "Can Black People and White People Work Together to Defeat Our Common Enemy" with the Star of David, indicating that the "common enemy" is Jews. The livestream was to be hosted by Ayo Kimathi, the author of Jews Are the Problem and described by the ADL as "antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ+ Black nationalist extremist" and David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and anti-semite.In the livestream, Kimathi explicitly advocated for ties with White nationalists to actively eradicate "the Jew."
That said, she was also right some of the time. She saw through NAFTA and the World Trade Organization, and she was opposed to that Gaddafi business I was just talking about in the last post. Her ideas were often way out there, but sometimes she saw things others didn't. She was an honest representative of her district, where many of those views are very popular.
There are hundreds of people in Congress. The few crazies who get in there aren't the real problem: it's the majority that are outright crooked and power-hungry. It doesn't hurt Congress to hear some wild ideas now and then, especially since just a few of them turn out to be true. At least someone is speaking what they think is true and not just parroting the approved lines.
The Perils of NPR
During the volatile Arab Spring period, under a constantly rotating series of NGO affiliations, Maher went to multiple countries that were undergoing U.S.-backed regime change. Beginning in 2011, for example, she traveled multiple times to Tunisia, working with regime-change activists and government officials. In 2012, she traveled to a strategic city on the Turkey-Syria border, which had become a base for Western-backed opposition to Bashar al-Assad. That same year, she traveled to Libya, where the U.S. had just overthrown strongman Muammar Gaddafi.During much of 2011, Maher worked for the National Democratic Institute, a government-funded NGO with deep connections to U.S. intelligence and the Democratic Party’s foreign policy machine. The organization was “set up to do independently what CIA had done covertly worldwide,” says national security analyst J. Michael Waller. While initially some distance supposedly existed between NDI and the intelligence services, that relationship has devolved back to “the gray zone,” per Waller, and it appears that they often work in concert. “NDI is an instrument of Samantha Power and the global revolution elements of the Obama team,” Waller explains. “It has gone along with, and been significant parts of, color revolutions around the world. It is very much a regime-change actor.”
The broader argument the article makes is that we have been subject to a 'color revolution' here at home. NPR is part of the information warfare apparatus of the victorious coalition, which is tied to the same power structure that overthrew Gaddafi and then endorsed as his replacement the 'Government of National Accord' (GNA) even though that required the State Department delisting several foreign terrorist groups who belonged to GNA in order to allow for our official support.
That is not to say that it is the CIA, or that the CIA is doing anything to influence American elections. It is to say that the people who learned to use the CIA and the NGO archipelago to overthrow foreign governments during the Obama administration are the people currently being discussed here. They are spread widely among the seats of power in media, government, and the tech corporations. As they all belong to the same class, they have no need of a conspiracy because they all already know what their class interests are and how to advance their membership in that class.
As Time Magazine put it in early 2021, there was a "shadow campaign" to "fortify" the election using illegal and therefore unconstitutional methods to change voting rules. The article is remembered for being eye-opening and a sort-of confession, but it was wholly celebratory of the shadow campaign and its outcomes.
Likewise we probably all remember the fervent and constant repetition in the press that there was "no evidence" of any irregularity with the election, which was the most safe and secure ever. Information warfare is an important part of this sort of effort. Controlling the terms of the debate keeps the people from speaking the truth, even when they know the truth. It's not sufficient -- the courts played a crucial role in refusing to consider any of the cases brought, dismissing them all on standing or timing grounds -- but it is a necessary condition.
The Grave of Plato
Automatic Disbarment
She told us, ‘Do not bring the Second Amendment into this courtroom. It doesn’t exist here. So you can’t argue Second Amendment. This is New York.'
In point of fact, deprivation of rights under color of law is a Federal crime. The statute is confusing in its wording, so perhaps she has a defense in claiming that she was not motivated by prejudice (but would equally deny that right to everyone, under color of law). She ought to be arrested and charged, though, and obligated to make that defense as a former judge to a jury of her peers— her fellow citizens, I mean, not legal elites.
Hawaii is trying the same thing. It’s a sort of small scale secession, refusing to be bound by the parts of the Constitution that they disapprove of existing.
A Modest Proposal
All higher-education courses could be done online via bots with no need for expensive classrooms, dorm rooms and other physical facilities.Instead of paying college costs currently approaching $100,000 a year, students could earn their degrees conveniently and inexpensively from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, they would be given access to bots that they can use to take tests and write any essays required by the instructor bots. The students’ test answers would no doubt be perfect, and their essays would be persuasive and error-free, which would allow all students to be given A grades without having to disrupt their lives by attending classes, listening to lectures or reading.
It's a clever idea, which we are likely to adopt more completely than we like to admit.
Rodeo Songs
Duty to Protect Yourself
Infinity and the Divine
There’s a lot to be said about the use of the concept of infinity in theology, which I will write about once I’m not traveling. Different major theologians have thought that it was a wonderful way to think about God; others have disliked the usage for various reasons. Nicholas of Cusa, one of the fans, had diagrams meant to convey the impossibility of finite minds grasping God. Others thought other things.
Rodeo Riding
From under a black felt cowboy hat, hair blacker than coffee runs to the collar of his black shirt. The impression of severity is relieved by blue eyes the color of his jeans and a smile crease from the habit of grinning around a Marlboro. It’s an arresting face, burnished by years of outdoor chores, smoke, roistering humor and pain soothed by shots of Jägermeister. It befits arguably the greatest rodeo bull rider who ever lived and certainly the hardest-bodied, a man who never conceded to any power. Until a bull broke his neck.“I always knew something like this was going to have to happen,” he says.
Indeed. Every rodeo rider knows something like this is a constant danger.
The Post deserves some credit for this one. It's a pretty good piece. There is some fulminating in the middle about whether or not rodeo is cruel or should be allowed to exist, given that there is no practical reason for anyone to ride bulls -- and limited need, these days, to break horses. Ultimately, though, raising that concern probably just lets readers of that persuasion feel like their perspective is understood, and allows them to engage with a moving story about a courageous man who loved to ride hard and now has to leave it behind.
Except for the bull, that is. He took the bull home, where it lives a life befitting a retired rodeo star.
Petra
Who Are You?
At least four famous, not-often-enough-repeated Aristotelian questions can be asked of any given thing when we try to figure out what and why it is. They are: 1) “What is it?” – a tree, a rabbit, a planet? 2) “Is it?” That is, does it exist rather than not exist? Does it stand outside of nothingness? 3) Who or what put it into motion or into being? 4) “Why is it in existence?” What is the reason for which it now exists?Of human beings, we can add a further question: “Who are you?” That is, each of us has a particular, singular, unrepeatable existence unlike any other being that ever existed, but we are still human. Each human “what” is a “you.”
The Army has a Navy?
What this exercise attempting to cross the Atlantic has proven is that we may not need tankers. Our poorly maintained and continually neglected naval vessels, be they Navy or Army, may not be capable of making it to the conflict to begin with.
If someone watching this circus unfold wakes the hell up realizing we are in one hell of a self-inflicted hurt locker and starts to yank chains to immediately effect change?
Then, this crackpot pier idea will be that blessing in disguise.
Home on the Mountain
They Sure Have Pretty Sunsets
The one thing that isn’t fake in this town is the beautiful Mojave sky. This was taken by the roller coaster in the same casino with the bar mentioned below.