Logic, Part 2

A smarter approach to the Orlando nightclub attack:

Gun shops typically see a spike in customers after mass shootings. But this time, many are seeing shoppers they’ve never really seen before: More gays and lesbians.

George Horne, the owner of The Gun Room, Denver’s oldest firearms dealer, said Tuesday business is booming at his store.

"For this time of year I’d say its three to four times what we normally have," he said.

Background checks that once took minutes can now take hours. It's a sales surge similar to what happened after Sandy Hook and the Aurora theater shootings.

“We’re not surprised by it,” Horne said.

You don't have to love guns. I don't, particularly. But the minute you are told you can't have a gun is the minute you need one the most.

Logic

Glad someone else noticed this:

Maybe not in Ferguson

It's emotion uber alles. And what's disconcerting is that so many people I know, especially from my college days, can't figure this out.

A reminder

THERE was a child went forth every day;  
And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;  
And that object became part of him for the day, or a certain part of the day, or for many years, or stretching cycles of years.

-- Walt Whitman

We're going to be at this for a very long time.

Absorbent is he

The invaluable John Hayward pulls the thread a little more on the events in Orlando:

Even as Obama Administration officials fall all over themselves in a mad dash to label Orlando jihadi Omar Mateen “self-radicalized,” more information about the people who helped him self-radicalize is coming to light.

Fox News reported that Mateen was enrolled in the online “Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary,” recently renamed the Timbuktu Seminary, which is run by a fire-breathing cleric named Abu Taubah, a.k.a. Marcus Dwayne Robertson.

Robertson was just released from prison last year, despite “warnings from prosecutors that he would recruit people to carry out violent acts.” He was in prison for weapons and tax fraud charges. Part of his tax fraud scheme involved illegally obtaining a tax refund to finance sending one of his students abroad for terrorist training.

And what are the teachings of Abu Taubah? A sample:

In the first video, Robertson invokes the Quranic story of Lut (Lot), and Allah’s destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, before telling his audience (which consists of adult men and young boys) that the Muslim community has been “too weak and not ready” to address the issue of homosexuality “in a proper manner”. (Part 1, 8:16) Robertson criticizes the Muslim community for being “afraid” to deal with the issue, for fear of upsetting the American majority.

Robertson goes on to criticize American Muslims for providing their children with clothing and toys which he describes using the slur “f**got.” In particular, he denounces Nickelodeon cartoon character Spongebob Square Pants as “gay,” warning that it was “put into this society” to promote homosexuality. At one point Robertson puts the question to the audience: “Are you raising Muslims? Or are you raising f**gots?” (Part 2, 2:21)

He must have seen this image:

There's your proof

Don't let 'em find out about Snagglepuss.

Public service

Since we seem to have a lot of confusion about properly identifying firearms, I'd like to present this helpful guide that some highly useful person posted on the internet, so it's certainly true:

The more you know

Hope this clears things up.

Lost in the funhouse

It's always about projection, as Victor Davis Hanson reminds us:

Take the worst examples of Donald Trump’s most recent embarrassing behavior. His Trump University, like many other such transient for-profit institutions, allegedly played fast and loose with the truth in search of lucre. And the media are certainly right to fixate on all those who may have been misled by and suffered from Trump’s selfish profiteering. But the media fail at their own standards of vetting presidential candidates about profiting off higher education when they have largely ignored the far bigger con of Hillary Clinton price-gouging cash-strapped public universities like UCLA for $300,000 for 30 minutes of chatting — a per-minute rate of profit no doubt greater than Trump’s personal returns. Even worse is the con of “Honorary Chancellor” Bill Clinton garnering a reported $16 million between 2010 and 2015 from the for-profit Laureate International Universities, whose U.S. campuses have been plagued by financial controversies. During that period, Bill Clinton was perhaps the highest-salaried university “president” or “chancellor” in the world (and likely in the history of higher education) — and perhaps the only disbarred college chancellor in America. But to the media, all that is a non-story.

And double standards, as Kurt Schlichter reminds us:

And the people who aren’t in Hillary’s trick bag are supposed to care that Trump’s a jerk?

They don’t, by and large. Sure, Trump makes what we conservatives all agree is a distasteful comment insinuating that a federal judge’s rulings would be governed by an inherited characteristic, in this case his ethnicity. The mainstream media goes nuts at how horrible Trump is for assuming that an inherited characteristic might govern someone’s actions in public office. Then a day later, the media experiences a collective climax over the fact that a woman has been nominated, and they think it’s great because that inherited characteristic will govern her actions in public office.

Glenn Reynolds with a tidy summation (emphasis in original):

When the “have you no decency?” crowd demonstrates an utter lack of decency every single day, its complaints lose their sting.

One of the reasons it's been difficult for me to blog lately is the sense we're so lost in the funhouse and we're in a constant state of gaslighting. I'm trying to sort all that out, but in the current environment it's taxing my feeble brain. We've always been at war with Eastasia, apparently.

Home Truth

Michael Goodwin, explaining the stakes:

Assuming [Hillary] Clinton never has to offer a defense to the e-mails and server beyond the tortured lies she’s told in public, Americans must decide whether she, like her husband, is too big and popular for ordinary standards of justice.

If she becomes president despite the high probability that she committed the same crimes that have sent others to prison or infamy, it will be certain that we have cut our roots to the Founders, and that John Adams was wrong.

“We are a nation of laws and not of men,” the second president said. Not anymore. We would now be a nation whose laws are void if your name is Clinton.

As before, there would be copycats in politics, business and society at large, but who would stop them and declare that the laws matter? There would be nobody left.

Once the people say integrity is optional, the nation is lost. An America that gives up on integrity would not be America anymore.

I would argue that ship has already sailed. I'd love to be wrong.

No point in it

Not going to talk about the shooting in Orlando on Sunday morning. Everyone has already made up their mind about the larger meaning of it. We all made our decisions a long time ago. My social media feed tells me that, hackneyed meme by hackneyed meme.

If you're inclined, and I think most of my readership is, say a prayer for those who died and the grieving families. Prayer is significantly more useful than all the memes on the internet.

The Kangaroo Court at the New Brighton City Council

I've been meaning to write about what's going on in New Brighton for a while now. The Star Tribune has picked up on the banana republic shenanigans and has filed this report:

Tensions have boiled over on the New Brighton City Council after a council member was accused of using city resources for her own benefit.

After an animated session six weeks ago, the council voted to censure Council Member Gina Bauman and relieve her from her appointed positions representing the city. Bauman believes her punishment was personal — and the situation’s fallout threatens to affect the council’s cohesion and productivity.

“As you can imagine, this is a highly sensitive situation,” said Dean Lotter, city manager.

Lotter described censure as “a public shaming” and said Bauman’s temporary removal from two committees, including the North Suburban Cable Commission, “is punishment for going out and representing the city poorly.”

Censure — essentially creating a public record that an official erred — is rare, and the state provides little guidance on it, said Lotter.

So how did Bauman represent New Brighton poorly? She asked the city attorney a question:

The censure came after Bauman consulted the city attorney in a private conversation about a petition she created to challenge a council decision. That phone call, which goes against council policy forbidding council members to use the city attorney for personal matters, resulted in City Attorney Troy Gilchrist resigning.

The question concerned a petition to put a change to the election schedule to the people of New Brighton. The council, on a 3-2 vote, decided to change the election schedule, which had been on odd-number years, to an even numbered year schedule. By doing so, the change shortened Bauman's 4-year term to three, and increased Mayor Val Johnson's 2-year term to three.

The boisterous dialogue at the April 26 work session between Johnson and Bauman — who squared off in the mayoral election last fall — extended to the regular meeting afterward.

Johnson said Bauman’s concern should have been brought to a council meeting, where the attorney could have commented publicly.

Bauman said there is no rule against her conferring with the attorney on what she believes is a city issue — a November council decision to hold future city elections during even years instead of odd — and that it’s been done before.

It has. There's more

Changing the city’s election years from odd to even was wrong, because the city had just had an election, Bauman said, and residents could have voted on the decision then. The switch means Johnson will be mayor another year while council members’ terms will be shortened a year, something voters didn’t authorize. 

That's right. The voters didn't authorize it. Even now, I would wager most voters remain unaware of the change. Back to the Star Tribune:

“What they did was they negated an election,” Bauman said. 

Bauman was absent from the first meeting and work session in May. On May 13, she dropped off a petition saying the election-year change should have been a ballot question. Bauman had the required signatures — 10 percent of city voters — but the petition was deemed invalid because she didn’t meet a statutory requirement to include a synopsis of the question on each page.

Some people didn’t know what they were signing, said Lotter.

As opposed to most people, who still don't know what the city council did in November.

I have lived in New Brighton for 19 years. I was at the original meeting in November, when the change was made. Although the current mayor is involved now, she wasn't in office when the original proposal was jammed down, a week after the election last year. There was no public discussion of this change beforehand, although it was pretty evident that the other three members of the city council had discussed it. I'm guessing that sort of discussion is just fine; it certainly doesn't seem to bother City Manager Lotter nearly as much as Bauman's pursuit of a legitimate question that affects the entire city, not just Bauman. One might also ask about the propriety of a city manager publicly disparaging a member of the council that employs him, but apparently that's okay, too.

The bottom line here is that Gina Bauman has been elected three times in New Brighton and the other members of the council don't like her because she challenges their decisions, generally on fiscal grounds. The other members of the city council like to spend money and Bauman is standing in the way of their wishes. The other council members don't much like transparency, either; if they did, they would have made this election schedule change a ballot question in the first place, instead of jamming it through when they hoped that no one would pay attention. The censure of Bauman is a show trial move and frankly it's embarrassing. I'd expect this sort of behavior from the student council at Highview Middle School, although that's an unfair comparison, because Highview adheres to higher ethical standards.

Not exactly a BCS matchup

I'm guessing you've heard some things about Trump University, the scam that The Donald was running out of hotel conference rooms. Do you know about this story? Take it away, Jonathan Turley:

While largely ignored by the media, the Clintons have their own university scandal. Donald Trump has been rightfully criticized and sued over his defunct Trump University. There is ample support for claiming that the Trump University was fraudulent in its advertisements and operations. However, the national media has been accused of again sidestepping a scandal involving the Clintons that involves the same type of fraud allegations. The scandal involves a dubious Laureate Education for-profit online college (Walden) and entails many of the common elements with other Clinton scandals: huge sums given to the Clintons and questions of conflicts with Hillary Clinton during her time as Secretary of State. There are distinctions to draw between the two stories, but the virtual radio silence on the Clinton/Laureate story is surprising.

I don't find the radio silence particularly surprising, but let's get to the nub of it:

Laureate Education was sued over its Walden University Online offering, which some alleged worked like a scam designed to bilk students of tens of thousands of dollars for degrees. Students alleged that they were repeatedly delayed and given added costs as they tried to secure degrees, leaving them deeply in debt.  Laureate itself has been criticized for “turbocharging” admissions while allowing standards to fall and shortchanging education.

The respected Inside Higher Education reported that Laureate Education paid Bill Clinton an obscene $16.5 million between 2010 and 2014 to serve as an honorary chancellor for Laureate International Universities.  Various news outlets said that neither Clinton nor Laureate were forthcoming on how much he was paid for the controversial association.

Bill Clinton worked as the “honorary chancellor” which sounds a bit like the group’s pitchman. He gave speeches in various countries and was heavily touted by the for-profit company to attract students.  The size of this payment (which has been widely reported) raises obvious concerns as to what the company was seeking to achieve and whether Laureate received any benefit from the association with the State Department given its massive international operations.

One could argue that, ah, it's just the ol' grifter being a grifter and that Hillary Clinton isn't implicated. Well, perhaps she is:

Indeed, Laureate has come up in the Clinton email scandal.  In her first year as Secretary of State, Clinton is quoted as directly asking that Laureate be included in a high-profile policy dinner — just months before the lucrative contract was given to Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton later references “Laureate Universities, started by Doug Becker who Bill likes a lot.”

And there's this part:

Various sites have reported that the State Department funneled $55 million in grants during Hillary Clinton’s tenure to groups associated with Laureate’s founder.  That would seem a pretty major story but virtually no mainstream media outlet has reported it while running hundreds of stories on the Trump University scandal.  The stories on the grants do not name Laureate directly.  Accordingly, the company might have not received direct grants (my first column did not make that clear and, in fairness to Laureate, there is no evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement or even direct grants).  However, there are references to the International Youth Federation (connected to Laureate chairman Douglas Becker) as receiving USAID funding. 

If you give Bill Clinton $16.5M and you get $55M in grants, that's a pretty good return in investment. Maybe it's not a quid pro quo -- as Turley suggests, the evidence isn't there. Yet. One thing is certain, though -- it would be quite interesting to investigate some of the 30,000+ "personal" emails Hillary Clinton deleted from her server.

The fix is in

You'd be hard pressed to find out anywhere else but the starboard side of the blogosphere, but yes, the FBI investigation around Hillary Clinton's emails is a criminal investigation:

White House press secretary Josh Earnest on Thursday referred to the probe into Hillary Clinton's private email system as a possible "criminal investigation," which Republicans quickly seized on as a critical slip just moments after President Obama endorsed Clinton for president.

Earnest was asked whether the FBI might be pressured to go easy on Clinton in the investigation in light of Obama's endorsement, and used the term "criminal investigation" in his answer.

"That's why the president, when discussing this issue in each stage, has reiterated his commitment to this principle that any criminal investigation should be conducted independent of any sort of political interference and that people should be treated the same way before the law regardless of their political influence, regardless of their political party, regardless of their political stature and regardless of what political figure has endorsed them," he said.

Do you believe that last part?

Watch carefully

My opinion might not matter much and perhaps yours doesn't, either. But this guy's opinion matters quite a lot:

After a long hiatus, George Soros has returned to trading, lured by opportunities to profit from what he sees as coming economic troubles.

Worried about the outlook for the global economy and concerned that large market shifts may be at hand, the billionaire hedge-fund founder and philanthropist recently directed a series of big, bearish investments, according to people close to the matter.

Soros Fund Management LLC, which manages $30 billion for Mr. Soros and his family, sold stocks and bought gold and shares of gold miners, anticipating weakness in various markets. Investors often view gold as a haven during times of turmoil.

Most of us on the Right are not fans of Soros because of his work in aiding the Left, but no one disputes his financial acumen. I've been seeing big warning signs elsewhere. It could get interesting soon.

Game time

Richard Fernandez on the news media:

The argument, stripped of its self-congratulatory paragraphs, suggests they've reached the point when they're going to tell the "truth" about Trump -- in a departure from their usual practice.

But what's really going on?

The greatest fear of the liberal left is reaching the end of the road, waking up from the dream, and realizing that pounding on the door is the 300 lb. landlord looking for his rent. As Tyler O'Neil puts it, 2016 is really a referendum on eight years of Hope and Change. Obama has spent nearly a decade prepping the top hat upon the stage and now they want him to pull the rabbit out of it, like he said he would.

A lot of people, including Sally Fields, are waiting, waiting, waiting ...

Thus, every criticism starts to gnaw at the Left. Trump is offensive to them not because he is a clown, but because he is the clown they deserve. They now have to share the stage with him.

There's reason to believe the next recession has begun. It's the great fortune of our friends on the Left that the Republican primary electorate has elevated a clown to be its standard bearer. But if things turn, and they could turn quickly, it may not matter.

Hillary wins!

I think the sky writer misspelled Bernie

So the AP calls it for Hillary, the day before the California primary? Gee, I wonder what that's all about.

The guys in the back

While it's hardly the only reason I am #NeverTrump, a big part of the problem The Donald presents is the lurking "alt-right" movement that is part of of his constituency. Walter Hudson explains:

When called racist, the alt-right deflects by pointing to social justice warriors. Look at all these groups openly antagonistic to white people, they exhort. Look at the attacks on so-called "white privilege" and white men and white culture. How is it racist to push back against that?

They have a point, to an extent. Logically, it cannot be racist to oppose racism. To the extent social justice warriors are racist, and they are, they should be vehemently opposed. The problem with the alt-right is that they do not fundamentally oppose racial identity politics. They merely substitute one brand of it for another.

It matters not whether the beneficiaries -- or victims -- of your collectivist authoritarianism are white. What matters is whether you are a collectivist authoritarian and therefore categorically evil. That is why #NeverTrump conservatives remain indignant toward the Republican presumptive nominee for president, because he personifies a fundamentally un-American and immoral paradigm that is in essence no different than the regressive left.

Just so. There's more at the link.

Ali

A bout I remember

I didn't understand Muhammad Ali when I was young. I remember that, for the most part, I rooted against him in most of his fights. I don't remember any specific reasons for my feelings on the matter, but whether it was Frazier, or Foreman, or the now largely forgotten Ken Norton, I preferred the other guy.

I didn't figure out what made Ali great until later on. He was tough and talkative, but what separated him from everyone else was simple -- he was the most intelligent athlete of his era, and one of the most intelligent athletes of all time. He understood what boxing needed when he came on the scene -- Sonny Liston was a sullen, angry man and the rumors about organized crime connections were rampant. Ali seemed apart from all that, at least initially. Yes, he was a follower of Elijah Muhammad and yes, Don King was around, too. In the end, Ali transcended them, too.

Ali's fight against Parkinson's Disease defines Ali even more than his career in the ring. One by one, he had his talents taken away from him, yet he remained a revered figure and a dignified presence. Even when we was no longer able to speak, you could hear him.

The figures of our past have been disappearing in a hurry this year, especially in the popular culture. We don't know what's coming next, but it doesn't look like a particularly promising future awaits. I'm thinking it's going to be better than we can now imagine. We have a lot of Sonny Listons in our midst, but we have Alis as well. They will emerge.

A polite suggestion to Tom Horner

This will be brief.

In 2010, Tom Horner, who packaged himself as a sensible Republican, ran against the Republican Party as a third-party candidate in the gubernatorial election. Horner took about 12% of the vote. One can argue that Horner's candidacy may have hurt both parties, but he certainly hurt the campaign of Tom Emmer, who was the Republican running for governor. As you might remember, Mark Dayton became governor.

As such, Tom Horner lost any credibility as an expert on the Republican Party. Today, he's in the Star Tribune explaining why the Republicans ought to tank the election this time to save the party.

I am #NeverTrump and as such I consider myself to be estranged from the Republican Party. I am not going to offer any advice to the party or its leaders concerning Trump. It's a matter of conscience to me that I am currently estranged. Those who remain in the party will have to sort all that out themselves.

Tom Horner took up arms against the party and was instrumental in helping to put a blithering idiot into the governor's office. He has long since forfeited any right to be seen as a credible arbiter on any matter involving the Republican Party.

My polite suggestion to Tom Horner? Have the decency to stop pretending you have any credibility in this, or any other matter. You made your choice six years ago. Your advice means nothing. Sit down and shut up.

No flow

I'm low on time today and I continue to fight the ol' writers block. Points worth making? We still have two horrible candidates for president, we have a petulant child in the governor's mansion in St. Paul, and the local politicians are going all Lord of the Flies on my friend Gina Bauman. It's easy to lose heart. We can't, though. The government, at any level, isn't going to save any of us. Plan accordingly.

Meanwhile, what's on your mind?

The Wrong Messenger

If you think bashing the Fourth Estate is dangerous for our country, you might want a better spokesman for the notion than this guy:

Dan Rather took to Facebook on Wednesday to condemn Donald Trump's “tirade” against the media earlier in the week and defend the necessity of a free and critical press.

“I felt a shudder down my spine yesterday watching Donald Trump's fusilade against the press. This is not a moment to be trifled with. It wasn't his first tirade and it won't be his last,” the former CBS Evening News anchor said in a seven-paragraph post, which has already been shared more than 12,000 times.

Ahem:

CBS News apologized Monday for a “mistake in judgment” in its story questioning President Bush’s National Guard service, claiming it was misled by the source of documents that several experts have dismissed as fakes.

The network said it would appoint an independent panel to look at its reporting about the memos. The story has mushroomed into a major media scandal, threatening the reputations of CBS News and chief anchor Dan Rather.

It also has become an issue in the presidential campaign. The White House said the affair raises questions about the connections between CBS’s source, retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, and Democrat John Kerry’s campaign.

Rather joined CBS News President Andrew Heyward in issuing an apology Monday.

“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather said. “It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.”

That was twelve years ago and Rather ultimately left CBS because of his conduct. The "good faith" part? Well, that was crap. It wasn't. There's been no good faith in American journalism in a long time. And CBS wasn't misled. They were attempting to mislead.

Trump is a danger -- I remain convinced of it. But you can't defend an empire of crap and Dan Rather and his ilk are a big part of the reason why Trump is able to make headway. And the shoddy practices continue, as we have learned recently:

Katie Couric has reversed course and taken responsibility for an edit that misrepresents the response of gun rights activists to a question she poses in a new documentary.

The segment in "Under the Gun" shows nearly 10 seconds of silence after Couric asks the activists how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks.

Audio of the exchange leaked last week reveals an almost immediate response to the question.

If you have a bunch of liars attempting to call out Trump on his lies, it's just not gonna work.

Getting back into it

I've been on the road the last few days and I'm hoping to get back into a more normal blogging mode in the coming days. I've driven about 3,000 miles on various out-of-town trips over the past few weeks, so it's been difficult to get into a groove.

Your thought for the day is from Victor Davis Hanson:

Turn on an evening cable show and ask which interviewer is married to which anchor on another channel, or which of the pundits are former politicos, or how many in the White House worked for Big News or are married or related to someone who does. How many pundits were advisers to political candidates or related to someone who was? How does Ben Rhodes do an interview on CBS News or George Stephanopoulos interview Hillary Clinton or a writer expound on the primaries when he is also an adviser to a particular campaign? The problem is not just that all this is incestuous or unethical, but that it blinds a tiny elite to what millions of quite different Americans value and experience.

And even more to the point:

[Charles] Murray has a point that Trump’s crudity and buffoonery should be taken seriously, but when he says establishmentarians have “high IQs,” what exactly does he mean? Did a high IQ prevent an infatuated David Brooks (whom he quotes approvingly) from fathoming presidential success as if he were a sartorial seancer, from the crease of Senator Obama pants leg? What was the IQ of the presidential historian who declared Obama the smartest man ever to be elevated to the White House? Or the Newsweek editor who envisioned an apotheosized Obama? Or the MSNBC host who motor-mouthed about the tingle in his leg at the sound of an Obama speech? Or, yes, the conservative policy analyst (and self-confessed “Starry-eyed Obama groupie”) who wrote approvingly (“flat-out plain brilliant”) of the Obama race speech in March 2008, in which Obama revealed to the world that his own grandmother — the sole steady working breadwinner of Obama’s extended family, whose labors sent him to prep school — was a supposedly “typical white person” in her prejudices, while he further contextualized the abject racism and anti-Semitism of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright — a speech renounced by Obama himself when Wright later felt empowered to double down on his racism. Or perhaps the conservative wit who once wrote that Obama has a “first-class temperament and a first-class intellect,” and that he is the rare politician who “writes his own books,” which were “first rate”?

Establishmentarian high IQs? The point is not to castigate past poor judgment, but to offer New Testament reminders about hubris and the casting of first stones — and why hoi polloi are skeptical of their supposed intellectual betters.

We're too close to this era to understand it, but I've been convinced for years that we are living in a mendacious time. I also suspect it's why so many people don't give a shit about Donald Trump's mendacity. To pretend his lies are any more outrageous than the lies of those who act like Katie Couric, to use just one recent example, is itself a lie.