Tweed ride

I can't believe I missed this.  Hopefully they'll be another one.  Although I would then be required to buy a bike.  Perhaps I'd be asking too much if I asked for a Tweed stroll?

Conquest’s third law

Conquest's third law of politics is: "The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies."  Let's assume a bureaucracy is passing a douchey law prohibiting genetic testing for any purpose whatsoever(!).  If such an organization was run by a secret cabal of its enemies, could such a cabal come up with a better name for the law than GINA?  I think not . . .

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The decline and fall of the American Empire

Judges edition

The decline and fall of the American Empire

Tongue-in-cheek edition:

yes, there are those in the United States who continue to believe that they would be pummeled within an inch of their lives were they seen on the street with an ascot – and we honor their concerns

Sigh

I keeping hearing Carlyle echo

Here's Professor Kling quoting something:

When you take into account the loss of means-tested benefits (e.g., cash assistance, food stamps, housing subsidies, and health insurance), and the taxes that people pay on earned income, the return to working is essentially zero for those in the lower two quintiles of the income distribution.

Here's Carlyle:

My friends, I have  come to the sad conclusion that Slavery, whether established by law, or by law abrogated, exists very  extensively in this world, in and out of the West Indies; and, in fact, that you cannot abolish slavery by act of parliament, but can only abolish the name of it, which is very little! In  the West Indies itself, if you chance to abolish Slavery to Men, and in return establish Slavery to the Devil (as we see in Demerara), what good is it? To save men's bodies, and fill them with pumpkins and rum, is a poor task for human benevolence, if you have to kill their soul, what soul there was, in the business! Slavery is not so easy to be abolished; it will long continue, in spite of acts of parliament. And shall I tell you which is the one intolerable sort of slavery; the  slavery over which the very gods weep? That sort is not rifest in the West Indies; but with all its sad fruits, prevails in nobler countries. It is the slavery of the strong to the  weak; of the great and noble-minded to the small and mean!  The slavery of Wisdom to Folly.

Carlyle and Hasan

I couldn't help think of this (from Latter-Day Pamphlets):

The scoundrel that will  hasten to the gallows, why not rather clear the way for him?  Better he reach his goal and outgate by the natural proclivity, than be so expensively dammed up and detained, poisoning every thing as he stagnates and meanders along, to arrive at last a hundred times fouler, and swollen a hundred times bigger! . . .

If  you love your thief or murderer, if Nature and eternal Fact  love him, then do as you are now doing. But if Nature and Fact do not love him? If they have set inexorable penalties upon him and planted natural wrath against him in every god-created human heart, — then I advise you, cease, and change your hand. . . .

The one answer to him [the thief or murderer] is: "Caitiff, we hate thee; and discern for some six thousand years now, that we are called upon by the whole Universe to do it. Not with a diabolic but with a divine hatred. God himself, we have always understood, 'hates sin,' with a most authentic, celestial, and eternal hatred. A hatred, a hostility inexorable, unappeasable, which blasts the scoundrel, and all scoundrels ultimately, into black annihilation and disappearance from the sum of things. The path of it as the path of a flaming sword: he that has eyes may see it, walking inexorable, divinely beautiful and divinely terrible, through the chaotic gulf of human History, and everywhere burning, as with  unquenchable fire, the false and death-worthy from the true and life-worthy; making all Human History, and the Biography of every man, a God's Cosmos in place of a Devil's  Chaos. So is it, in the end; even so, to every man who is a  man, and not a mutinous beast, and has eyes to see. To  thee, caitiff, these things were and are quite incredible; to us  they are too awfully certain; we, — send thee back into the whole Universe, solemnly expel thee from our community; and will, in the name of God,not with joy and exultation, but with sorrow stern as thy own, hang thee on Wednesday next, and so end. . . .

'Revenge,' my friends! revenge, and the natural hatred  of scoundrels, and the ineradicable tendency to revancher oneself upon them, and pay them what they have merited:  this is forevermore intrinsically a correct, and even a divine feeling in the mind of every man. Only the excess of it is  diabolic; the essence I say is manlike, and even godlike . . .

When I read this:

Hasan, the only suspect in the attack, was shot by civilian police and remains hospitalized under guard in San Antonio. The 39-year-old Army psychiatrist is reportedly awake and talking to doctors and has met with his lawyer.

PC award

If there was some sort of award for stupid journalism that has been made stupid through political correctness, sure this article would win.  Perhaps it could be named "The Hanna Rosin Award."

The actual facts presented in the article are as follows, to understand the excerpt, you must be aware that the author is blaming the housing crisis on new forms of Christianity, exemplified by the prosperity gosel:

Nationally, the prosperity gospel has spread exponentially among African American and Latino congregations. This is also the other distinct pattern of foreclosures. “Hyper-segregated” urban communities were the worst off, says Halperin. Reliable data on foreclosures by race are not publicly available, but mortgages are tracked by both race and loan type, and subprime loans have tended to correspond to foreclosures. During the boom, roughly 40 percent of all loans going to Latinos nationwide were subprime loans; Latinos and African Americans were 28 percent and 37 percent more likely, respectively, to receive a higher-rate subprime loan than whites.

Somehow she managed to forget to thank Steve Sailer for compiling the data.  Anyway, the author then proceeds to the logical conclusion that the housing crisis was caused by increased lending to minorities, particularly blacks and hispanics.  Ha!  Just kidding.  She can't conclude that, because even though it is the only logical conclusion that flows from her evidence, she's not allowed to conclude (or think) that race could be to blame.  The reason she should get an award is that she manages to take this incredibly un-PC set of facts and reach an incoherent, unjustified, incredibly PC conclusion.  She concludes that . . . wait for it . . . religion is to blame.

I am dumbfounded.  Ms Rosin, your ability to mis-interpret facts to fit PC conclusions is truly unparalleled.  If the future is just and if truth eventually prevails, then at some distant time this article will be used to explain the downfall of mainstream media.  Once again, congratulations.

The decline and fall of the American Empire

Hasan edition:

Is it too much to ask a little expression of anger that anyone anywhere thinks like this bastard, Hasan?  Can we not say, roughly, “Love it or leave it.”  If they insult us, show discomfort with the uniform, express sympathy for Islamic terrorists, or otherwise threaten the military and its need for uniformity, Muslims and anyone else who thinks like this should be shown the door.  In other words, while we should not abuse loyal and peaceful citizens, we should be profiling.  We should be demanding displays of loyalty.  And we should be kicking out bad guys like this from the military and from the country before they do us any harm.  Diversity is hardly important and its loss is not a greater tragedy than the loss of life from some of our best Americans at the hands of someone who was only here because of a misguided and reversible immigration policy.

I can't help remembering that this country – in its modern form – is based on making people take loyalty oaths.  During the Civil War, the rebelling states were put down by the most extreme force. They were then forced to re-join the country and their citizens were forced to pledge allegiance to the forces that had recently been trying to kill them.  The most interesting thing about this strategy was that it worked pretty well (all things considered).

There is no mystery about how today's strategy will work.  Instead of fighting and demanding loyalty, we basically apologize and worry that some of our citizens might not take these attacks lying down.  Our concerns are not for the victims families, instead they are for the people who may possibly sympathize with the perpetrator.  This strategy always has and always will fail.  It is evidence of a dying civilization.  Our days are numbered.  Enjoy the remaining vestiges of civilization while they last.

Absence of order

This is what the absence of order looks like.

Finally!

A court has recognized the truth – that environmentalism is not science but it is a religion.