Great, but. . . .

On the surface, this sounds like a positive development:

Carol T. Christ, UC Berkeley’s 11th chancellor and the first woman to lead the nation’s top public research university, unveiled plans Tuesday for a “Free Speech Year” as right-wing speakers prepare to come to campus.

Christ said the campus would hold “point-counterpoint” panels to demonstrate how to exchange opposing views in a respectful manner. Other events will explore constitutional questions, the history of Berkeley’s free speech movement and how that movement inspired acclaimed chef Alice Waters to create her Chez Panisse restaurant.

“Now what public speech is about is shouting, screaming your point of view in a public space rather than really thoughtfully engaging someone with a different point of view,” Christ said in an interview. “We have to build a deeper and richer shared public understanding.”

The article further details upcoming visits from Milo Yiannopolous, whose earlier foray into the cradle of the Free Speech Movement was met with violence, and Ben Shapiro, among others.

So it's Free Speech Year. Great. What happens next year?

Who is more likely to put a boot on your throat, if given the opportunity?

These people?

Deplorables

Or these people?

Is that a hardwood dowel, or are you just happy to see me?

Does it make a difference? I'm being told it does.

UPDATE: Apparently we have the wrong view of Antifa, so Andy Marlette sets us straight:

The dude with the dowel is really G. I. Joe

Make sure you have your mind right.

Submitted without further comment

The statue was getting wobbly

. . . and had a great fall:

A protest in downtown Durham on Monday night left a statue of a Confederate soldier erected nearly a century ago crumpled on the ground.

Sheriff’s deputies recorded the event but did not intervene as a protester climbed a ladder and slipped a yellow, bungie-like cord around the soldier’s head and arm and a group pulled the cord.

The statue did a somersault, collapsing against the stone pedestal in front of the old county courthouse on East Main Street.

Protesters cheered and started to kick the crumpled mass.

So who were the "protesters?" Bet you recognize some of the names:

Groups at the rally included members of the Triangle People’s Assembly, Workers World Party, Industrial Workers of the World, Democratic Socialists of America and the antifa movement.

You know, the people who loved the people who ran the gulags. And they're taking names, brother:

“This is a really an opportunity, this moment of Charlottesville to see what side of history we are choosing to side with,” [Eva] Panjwani said. “This is not a call to make someone to feel guilty or ashamed. This is a call to say this is an ask from people of color to say which side are you on.”

Eva Panjwani is on the right in this picture, holding the megaphone. I'll bet her side is a lot of fun:

Alles klar, fraulein commissar

So what happens if you're a person of color and you're on the wrong side? That question does not get asked. Of course, these worthies will tell you:

Some of the protesters started to yell at sheriff’s officials standing on the steps of the old courthouse recording, and then Durham police officers blocking the street.

Pierre Faulkner waved a sign in front of them that said “cops and clan go hand in hand” on one side and “Black Lives Matter smash white supremacy” on the other.

“If y’all aren’t going to help us, we are going to help each other,” said Faulkner, 27, a student at Durham Technical Community College. “You understand that. Do you understand that? You look like you voted for Donald Trump.”

It would be great if the mouth breathers of the alt-right crawled back under their rocks and stayed there. Really, it would. Lucky Pierre and his pals are no better, though. Faulkner wasn't done:

“The message that they are trying to explain to these police is it doesn’t matter about your skin color. Everybody is one person. Everybody should be treated equally,” he said. “They’re standing out here with guns and bullet proof vests. We have no weapons. This is a peaceful protest. All we want is our voice to be heard.”

That's crap, of course. Peaceful people don't vandalize and don't go around smashing anything. Pierre wants his voice to be heard, but anyone else's voice is less important. Pierre's problem is simple -- we've heard what he's had to say. He's not saying anything different than the Wobblies had on offer a century ago. And when the Left gains control, the people aren't empowered, but the self-appointed leaders eventually have excellent bankrolls elsewhere.

We should have no illusions. None of this is about justice, or making the world a better place. It's all about power. If you want angry people with megaphones to run the world, by all means run to their banner. Just know they don't give a shit about you.

Charlottesville

Anyone who claims to be a Nazi in 2017 is contemptible. There's no future in it, only the lingering stench of evil. It's a path to ruin in this world and perdition in the next.

The Nazis came to Charlottesville this past weekend. It did not go well:

Brittany Caine-Conley, a minister in training at Sojourners United Church of Christ, arrived in downtown Charlottesville on Saturday morning expecting that there might be violence. She did not expect things to get out of hand so quickly.

But what began as a rally of white nationalists in a city park soon spun out of control, resulting in melees in the streets and the death of a 32-year-old woman after a car rammed a group of counterprotesters. The police have charged a 20-year-old Ohio man described as a Nazi sympathizer, accusing him of intentionally driving his car into the crowd.

The police didn't do much to stop the violence, it appears. More from the New York Times:

But if Charlottesville was grieving on Sunday, it was also questioning. Governor McAuliffe fiercely defended the police in an impromptu sidewalk interview, noting that many of the demonstrators were armed, and saying the officers had done “great work” in a “very delicate situation.” And he said Ms. Heyer’s death, which he called “car terrorism,” could not have been prevented.

“You can’t stop some crazy guy who came here from Ohio and used his car as a weapon,” Governor McAuliffe said. “He is a terrorist.”

But others, including Mr. Kessler and Ms. Caine-Conley, openly wondered if the violence could have been prevented.

“There was no police presence,” Ms. Caine-Conley said. “We were watching people punch each other; people were bleeding all the while police were inside of barricades at the park, watching. It was essentially just brawling on the street and community members trying to protect each other.”

It got ugly:

As the white nationalists massed in the park, Ms. Caine-Conley and other members of the clergy locked arms in the street. Behind them were hundreds of protesters, including black-clad, helmet-wearing members of the far left known as antifa.

Brian Moran, Virginia’s secretary of public safety and homeland security, was watching the events from a command post on the sixth floor of a Wells Fargo bank on the downtown mall. There were sporadic fights. “I compare it to hockey,” he said. “Often in hockey there are sporadic fights, and then they separate.”

Suddenly, people were throwing water bottles, some filled with urine. Some used pepper spray; from his perch on the sixth floor, Mr. Moran saw smoke bombs being thrown. People started clubbing one another. The clergy retreated to a “safe house” — a restaurant nearby.

But according to many witnesses, the police waited to intervene. Ms. Caine-Conley called it “fascinating and appalling.”

Fascinating and appalling is an apt description of this entire moment. Look at the faces of two people who have been involved in hurting or killing others in the name of their ideology: first the accused driver of the car in Charlottesville, James Alex Fields:

Then, Linwood Kaine, a son of Sen. Tim Kaine who was arrested for his role in attacks of Trump supporters at the Capitol in Saint Paul earlier this year:

The dazed yet baleful expressions are the same. The only obvious difference is tonsorial. Is one young man more worthy than the other? It's easier to predict their fates. Fields will be going to prison, and maybe death row. Kaine won't. Fields may not have had a great future before he drove his car into a crowd, but he has no future now. Kaine will have the opportunity to leave his past behind.

It must be said again. Fields is not a victim; he's chosen perdition. Still, the sound of John Fogerty's "Fortunate Son" blends in with the stench of Fields. Even as we make a point of condemning Fields and his ilk, we ought to remember he's hardly the only combatant in this war.

Wiring

As in how you're wired. Megan McArdle, explaining why she left the tech field early in her career:

No, the reason I left is that I came into work one Monday morning and joined the guys at our work table, and one of them said “What did you do this weekend?”

I was in the throes of a brief, doomed romance. I had attended a concert that Saturday night. I answered the question with an account of both. The guys stared blankly. Then silence. Then one of them said: “I built a fiber-channel network in my basement,” and our co-workers fell all over themselves asking him to describe every step in loving detail.

At that moment I realized that fundamentally, these are not my people. I liked the work. But I was never going to like it enough to blow a weekend doing more of it for free. Which meant that I was never going to be as good at that job as the guys around me.

McArdle is now a successful writer for Bloomberg. And good for her. She found her people and she has prospered.

The current contretemps involving Google and its highly public firing of one of its workers, James Damore, because he shared his opinion a little too freely, is an example of trying to force a culture that would otherwise happen organically. You can read the memo that got Damore fired here.

It's always seemed common sense to me -- do what you love and, if you can get paid for it, even better. My day job involves writing, but it's supervisory and in the main, I spend much of my day trying to remove obstacles from the path of the other writers on my team. I'd prefer to write more, but it turns out I'm good at managing the work of other writers. So that's what I do. It's how I'm wired.

Google's corporate culture is currently going through a period where they are trying to rewire their people. It will not end well.

Subject for further research

File this one under "huge if true":

Time stamps in the metadata provide further evidence of what happened on July 5. The stamps recording the download indicate that it occurred in the Eastern Daylight Time Zone at approximately 6:45 pm. This confirms that the person entering the DNC system was working somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. In theory the operation could have been conducted from Bangor or Miami or anywhere in between—but not Russia, Romania, or anywhere else outside the EDT zone. Combined with Forensicator’s findings on the transfer rate, the time stamps constitute more evidence that the download was conducted locally, since delivery overheads—conversion of data into packets, addressing, sequencing times, error checks, and the like—degrade all data transfers conducted via the Internet, more or less according to the distance involved.

If the hack of the DNC server didn't take place remotely, who did it? There's a ton to read at the link, and I'll be getting back to it later, but if the Russians didn't hack the DNC server, much of what has happened in Washington since Donald Trump was inaugurated is based on a lie.

I hope they've stopped beating their wives

I don't write about the Second Amendment all that often. We have a number of excellent organizations in Minnesota who are dedicated to ensuring that those who would render the Second Amendment a dead letter are held in check. And the most prolific blogger in Minnesota, my friend Mitch Berg, is eternally vigilant on the matter.

We also have feckless and dishonest organizations in Minnesota who would disarm the population if they could. Among these organizations is Protect Minnesota, the latest iteration of a long series of groups under the same general umbrella. These folks have a tendency to periodically rebrand themselves, because they are, in the main, feckless and dishonest.

Protect Minnesota had an astonishingly dishonest post out there on Facebook yesterday, which they subsequently changed. Fortunately, Facebook allows users to see the edit history of a post, so check out what they originally posted, versus what appears now:

Slander

In the original post, Protect Minnesota insinuates that Second Amendment defenders would have knowledge of whoever was responsible for bombing a mosque in Bloomington, and an affirmative responsibility to share what they know with the FBI. Let's think about this. Why would Protect Minnesota assume that GOCRA, to use one example, would know about the bomber? Are Second Amendment protectors known for bombing mosques? Is there any evidence that GOCRA has abetted bombings, anywhere? Is it because GOCRA members are fearful and violent? What evidence does Protect Minnesota have to back up that assertion?

We don't know much about what actually happened in Bloomington over the weekend, but it's clear that local and federal law enforcement will devote ample resources to find out and the individual (or individuals) responsible will be called to account. What we do know is Protect Minnesota is willing to issue baseless attacks to further its agenda. Why anyone takes them seriously is quite another matter.

Glen Campbell, RIP

His heyday was long ago, but he left a lot of wonderful music in his wake, especially in the late 60s. A taste:

He also played on some big hits as a session guitarist, including this:

And this:

And this:

A tremendous career. RIP.

You Dropped the Guam on Me

Getting all bellicose up in here:

North Korea and the United States traded escalating threats, with President Donald Trump threatening Pyongyang "with fire and fury like the world has never seen" and the North's military claiming Wednesday it was examining its plans for attacking Guam.

The comments follow reports that North Korea has mastered a crucial technology needed to strike the United States with a nuclear missile.

Despite regular North Korean threats against Guam, a U.S. territory in the Pacific about 2,100 miles (3,400 kilometers) from the Korean Peninsula, it is extremely unlikely that Pyongyang would risk the assured annihilation of its revered leadership with a pre-emptive attack on U.S. citizens.

Two things about that last statement. First, I suspect the Norks don't have a death wish, so a pre-emptive strike is unlikely. Second, reverence toward the the leadership isn't necessarily a given. I'm not worried. Yet.

Odd headline of the week

I have heard many writers complain about the headline a publication chooses for their article. This headline from the Star Tribune might be the worst one I've seen in a while:

So what does this mean?

If people in one place feel unsafe, no one else gets to feel safe? Is that what this means? We don't yet know who attacked a mosque in Bloomington over the weekend. I wish people wouldn't attack mosques, or synagogues, or churches of any sort. It happens, though. Being a member of a faith community means you have faith. I'm not sure the headline writers at the Star Tribune understand that.

The Crony

It's good to be Elon Musk:

A study published two years ago by The Los Angeles Times revealed that just three of Musk’s ventures – SolarCity Corp. (which manufactured and installed solar energy systems before its 2016 merger with Tesla Motors Inc.), Tesla Motors Inc. (which manufactures electric vehicles), and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX (which builds rocket ships) – had received $4.9 billion in government subsidies to that point in time. By now, Musk’s various ventures have sucked well over $5 billion from government coffers.

So do you want your tax dollars used to subsidize this guy? Or do you want the federal government to subsidize the purchase of an electric car by providing a $7500 rebate? Set aside the relative merits of electric cars, especially since a lot of electricity comes from fossil fuels, especially coal. Does it seem smart to subsidize the enterprises of one guy with that much money?

Milestone

There are now 5,501 posts on this blog, counting this one. Thanks for reading!

So much for that

City officials in Baltimore vowed this past weekend would be free of murders. Didn't happen:

Two fatal shootings on Saturday put an end to a weekend cease-fire in Baltimore, NBC News reported.

Police said a 24-year-old man and a 37-year-old man were shot and killed in separate incidents.

The need to get things under control is real:

Although it has less than a tenth of New York City's population, Baltimore has suffered 48 more homicides in 2017, according to police statistics.

The Maryland city's murder rate is also on the rise, 20 percent higher compared to the same period last year.

A lot of people don't trust cops in Baltimore. The Freddie Gray incident a few years back is a huge consideration, and brutality is only one issue:

A number of criminal cases in Baltimore have gone up in smoke over the past two weeks after two Baltimore police body-camera videos have allegedly shown officers planting drugs on residents of the city.

The most recent video, released Tuesday by Baltimore defense attorney Josh Insley, has led the Baltimore City States Attorney’s Office to refer two officers to Internal Affairs and postpone all cases involving the officers.

Five cases have also been dismissed — including Insley’s client, Shamere Collins, 35, whose car appears in the newly released video.

You can't get trust back quickly. And because Batimoreans don't trust their government, they are at risk for other predators. Human life is either precious, or it isn't.

The new bridge

I traveled over the new bridge over the St. Croix river on Saturday. It's an impressive structure and it will make life easier for people in western Wisconsin to get to Minnesota, but unless current conditions change, it may not have a huge impact on travel in the region. On either side of the bridge, the infrastructure to match it does not currently exist.

The amount of development on the south edge of Stillwater, on the approach to the bridge, means you need to go through multiple stoplights, which will back traffic up substantially. On the Wisconsin side, drivers encounter a series of roundabouts that impede traffic even further. If you want to head south from the new bridge to get to Hudson, prepare to go through three roundabouts and then slog down an underdeveloped 2-lane highway into town.

The I-94 bridge over the St. Croix is 10 lanes wide and is built for a lot of traffic. The effect of the new bridge on the I-94 crossing may be less than people imagine.

It's a coup

Call it what it is:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury in Washington to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, a sign that his inquiry is growing in intensity and entering a new phase, according to people familiar with the matter.

The grand jury, which began its work in recent weeks, signals that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry will likely continue for months. Mr. Mueller is investigating Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign or associates colluded with the Kremlin as part of that effort.

A spokesman for Mr. Mueller, Joshua Stueve, declined to comment. Moscow has denied seeking to influence the election, and Mr. Trump has vigorously disputed allegations of collusion. The president has called Mr. Mueller’s inquiry a “witch hunt.”

It's not a witch hunt, Mr. President. It's a coup. How Trump responds in the coming days will determine his fate. The people trying to take Le Grand Orange down are talented, ruthless, and motivated. They don't care what Trump's supporters think about any of it, nor are they particularly concerned about the long-term ramifications of what they are doing. They just want to win and they assume they will.