Katie Halper of Salon – is she stupidly malicious? Or just plain stupid?

When someone, in this instance Katie Halper of Salon, is caught out playing fast and loose with facts in a transparent attempt to whip up a little progressive mob action, how are we to judge the author and her intentions?

Barely sublimated narrative malice is after all, the common coin of progressive political narration. The disposition toward malice is taken for granted by most alert readers as being part of the architecture of the run-of-the-mill leftist mind.

So, when we come across news articles which in passing misrepresent the facts of  some leftist cause de jour, we tend not to blink.

When however, the construction of the false narrative is rather more elaborate than usual, we pause.

Wandering from news link to news link recently, I came across this mess ,

” ‘Stand your ground’ law helps white defendants a lot more than black ones“

Double standards and all of that.

In her essay, Halper poses two Florida cases, “Wald” and “Alexander”, as examples of notorious and especially invidious legal outcomes resulting from what is generally called a no retreat self-defense or “stand your ground” plea.

Wald, who was a white male, got off on a justifiable force plea after killing an intruder in his house. This was bad. Alexander, who is black, went to jail for  for assultively firing a gun in a house she had once shared with her spouse. This is however not good, but also bad.

But perhaps we are getting a little ahead of ourselves …

The relevant Florida statute reads in part:

1) A person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another if:

(a) The person against whom the defensive force was used was in the process of unlawfully and forcefully entering, or had unlawfully and forcibly entered, a dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle, or if that person had removed or was attempting to remove another against that person’s will from the dwelling, residence, or occupied vehicle; and

(b) The person who uses defensive force knew or had reason to believe that an unlawful and forcible entry or unlawful and forcible act was occurring or had occurred. 776.013 Home protection; use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm.—

Halper’s narrative strategy is to illustrate her double standard contention with descriptions of what she offers up as two relevant paradigm cases.

Halper concludes that the divergent outcomes for defendants Ralph Wald and Marissa Alexander (in these purportedly legally comparable events) is attributable to the race of the defendants.

Halper writes:

“The disparity between these outcomes should be shocking. But, sadly, it’s not, once you take into account the fact that Wald is white and Alexander is black.”

Now,  it soon enough becomes apparent that Halper’s real purpose is not so much retrospective and legal as proactive and political. She wishes to use these cases to sound a more particular alarm: warning the progressive troops that while no “stand your ground” claim has yet been made in the Martin-Zimmerman case, as ” Zimmerman waived his right to a “stand your ground” pretrial hearing …”  she nonetheless considers it ” is likely that ‘stand your ground’ will come up during the actual trial.” And, Halper wonders, ” If it does, [and ] … the defense is successful. Will Zimmerman end up a free man, like Wald?”

So it’s to prime the troops for a little, or a lot of, anti-Zimmerman street action as much as any other reason that this is written.

But the obvious poisoning of the well aside, what author and left-wing activist  Katie Halper more overtly purports to do, is to draw a contrast in supposedly egregious judicial outcomes between two putatively legally alike cases.

So, just as an exercise, let’s place Halper’s preemptive attempt to de-legitimize a defense which Zimmerman’s defense team has not in fact made, aside for a moment. Let’s instead consider whether the two exemplar cases she cites are even truly alike.

In aid of doing so, we ask: is her presentation of the material anything like honest or evenhanded?

Let’s review the first instance in Halper’s parable of racial disparity, injustice, and unequal treatment, which centers on Ralph Wald.

Katie Halper introduces Wald thus,

“On March 10 of this year, around midnight, Ralph Wald, 70, of Brandon, Fla., got out of bed  to get a drink and found Walter Conley, 32, having sex with his wife, Johanna Lynn Flores, 41, in the living room. He immediately went back into his bedroom, grabbed his gun and shot Conley three times.”

Now, the “Think Progress” site, which Halper cites twice in succession as an authority for Conley being Flores’ lover, establishes the background somewhat differently:

“Ralph Wald, a 70-year-old Vietnam veteran, walked into his home around midnight, and less than ten seconds later, fired three shots at Walter Conley, according to ABC News.” Italicized divergences.

Halper, unfortunately,  does not bother to inform us as to why she believes the Think Progress site was a trustworthy source for information on Conley and Flores’ status lovers, but not for a description of the exact circumstances proximate to the shooting.

1. Did Wald walk into his house as Think Progress has it, or did he arise from sleep?

Halper does not follow Think Progress there, but does not say why.

2. We also note that as part of the process of establishing context or characterization, Think Progress thought fit to include the factoid that Wald was a Vietnam veteran.

This, Halper either also fails to notice, or dismisses without explanation. Her mind is obviously focused elsewhere.

But, as we see when reviewing a number of other articles, besides being as Halper describes him, an impotent 70 year old white man, Wald was 1. a Vietnam veteran, 2. a retired Lieutenant Colonel, and 3. the father of a then 20 year old daughter from a previous marriage.

To then recap the fact situation somewhat more comprehensively (and comparably, as we will see later): It was midnight and retired Lieutenant Colonel Ralph Wald, a 70 year old Vietnam veteran, and father of an adult daughter, had been sleeping in his house.  Wald awoke from his sleep only to find a man on top of his wife in his  own living room. Wald reportedly retrieved a gun from his bedroom, returned, and shot the man three times. The man was apparently so preoccupied with his activities, or indifferent to their discovery, that he never bothered to decouple and decamp when Wald retreated to his bedroom in order to arm himself against the intruder.

The sticking points for Halper’s moral slide rule seem to be Wald’s age and impotence, along with the reported fact that the man having sex with, or raping, Wald’s wife on the living room floor of Wald’s house in the middle of the night, was a sometime current neighbor, and her one time boyfriend.

Apparently Halper believes that this past association somehow made the neighbor’s presence in both Wald’s house and wife, excusable; or at least nonthreatening in some way.

Unfortunately for Halper’s insinuated no-harm no-foul thesis, Wald’s wife Johnna Lynn Flores,  the actual recepient of Conley’s living room floor delivered sexual attentions, is not of much assistance in granting us this particular progressive reassurance.  The Tampa Bay reports:

“Flores, the surviving central actor in the episode besides Wald, testified she was “black-out” drunk the night of the shooting after consuming a large quantity of cognac and remembered almost nothing.”

Halper seems wary that this “minor detail” might imply trouble for her theory, as she defensively admits,

“… while the fact that the two were lovers doesn’t imply consent, Flores has never accused Conley of rape — nor do prosecutors buy that that’s what Wald actually thought was happening.”

No, she is right in this; it does not imply consent. Flores was, on her own testimony blacked out and incapable of remembering anything.

We naturally suspect that if this sexual episode had taken place on, say, a college campus, with Flores an alcohol or drug besotted and blacked out coed, that Halper would be asserting there was a prima facie case that Flores had been de facto , if somehow not legally, raped. We would tend to agree.

And note too, Halper’s trust of the prosecutors’ judgment with this statement:

” Flores has never accused Conley of rape — nor do prosecutors buy that that’s what Wald actually thought was happening”.

This trusting attitude will be much less evident later, once Halper begins work arranging her version of the Alexander case.

And, while Halper makes much of the fact that the deceased was a former boyfriend of Flores, and an apparently occasional next door neighbor whom Wald might have recognized – and then presumably spared – Wald’s wife Johanna Flores, the recipient of Conley’s sexual attentions, had a somewhat different view of the outcome.

What was Johanna Flores’ own verdict on the verdict? “

“I am elated, absolutely elated,” Flores said outside the Tampa courtroom where her spouse, retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Ralph Wald, 70, was acquitted of second-degree murder Thursday.

Once Wald was released from jail, she said, he had promised her a special celebration. “Because my husband puts me first, he’s taking me to the Waffle House,” Flores said.”  Tampa Bay Times

What then of Conley?

In the second instance of Katie Halper’s parable, the moral character of both Marissa Alexander the shooter, and Rico Gray the abusive husband will become hammering points as she labors to establish exculpating factors in the Alexander case which will help to prove racial bias.

So, what of Conley’s character then? Why has that not been introduced more thoroughly? We do remember him. He is after all, the dead “lover” in the Wald case. And Halper even thought fit to include the fact that he had a tattoo honoring Johanna.

Well, in the words of a Mail Online article which Halper cited for the authority that Wald showed no remorse in killing Conley, but which she failed to actually quote, we find this eminently quotable nugget:

“Ms Flores was arrested last October – just two weeks before she and Wald were married – for allegedly firing a shot of Conley.

She said he came over and refused to leave. Conley told police Flores invited him back to the home they used to share.

She and Conley, who had a record of petty thefts and worked as a laborer, had shared a house next door to Wald in the community of Brandon.

Flores allegedly shot at Conley at 3am on October 19. She and Wald were dating then and he bailed her out of jail. Those charges were later dropped.

Ms Flores and Wald married on October 25.

Wald, a U.S. Army veteran, has a 20-year-old daughter with a previous wife.“

So, in order to drive him away, and in a period prior her marriage to Wald, Johanna Flores had herself shot at Conley – months before her husband finally killed him using the same technique.

Wald, a retired – if 70 and impotent- Lieutenant Colonel; Conley, a petty thief killed while shagging the “blacked out” wife (who had already shot at him) of another man, in the middle of the night, in that man’s own house, in that man’s own living room.

In the Alexander case, as sad as the eventual legal outcome was for Marissa Alexander, the facts on the ground, and the proximate circumstances, are clearly different.

But before we start in on the physical facts, let’s make specific note of how Halper introduces Marissa Alexander:

“On Aug. 1, 2010, Marissa Alexander, a 31-year-old mother of three, with a master’s degree and no criminal record, was working for a payroll software company in Jacksonville.”

Compare that again with the treatment she delivers Wald,

“On March 10 of this year, around midnight, Ralph Wald, 70, of Brandon, Fla., got out of bed  to get a drink and…”

Again, for Wald, no “Vietnam veteran”; no, father of a daughter; no, retired Lieutenant Colonel; and no mention of a previously clean legal record. Just a description of a supposedly cuckolded and impotent old man, who killed his wife’s lover in a fit of jealousy, when in search of a drink, he got out of bed and discovered them.

On then, to the description of setting in the Alexander case.

First, although the way Halper describes the context in Alexander’s case is jarringly sketchy and telegraphic, it is still clear enough to show that when Marissa Alexander committed aggravated assault with a firearm, the location in which the event occurred was not her current home, and she was not confronting  an unrelated midnight intruder.

Instead, Alexander (on testimony and report) went to a dwelling which she had once shared with her spouse Rico Gray.

Thus, according to Halper’s own account, Marissa Alexander  ” … went to their former house to get some belongings.”

Halper asserts Marissa Alexander did this thinking, “he [Rico Gray] was not at home”.

However, “he”, her estranged husband Rico Gray, was home; whether she knew it or not.

Halper, now switching to one of those really neat passive voices wherein shit just magically happens, says, “The two got into an argument.”

And, “Alexander says that Gray threatened her and she feared for her life.”

Ok …

Halper then does something seemingly odd for anyone looking to present an objective and informative version of events, but something which makes sense for a polemicist trying to be clever. She angles to base her exculpatory recounting of Marissa Alexander’s actions not on neutral police reports, but on the testimony of the formally aggrieved party: performing a little rhetorical judo so to speak.

In this instance the legally aggrieved party of record is ostensibly Rico Gray, the husband of Alexander. It is Gray who is posited (his kids actually are) as the victim of the aggravated assault charge involving Alexander’s felonious use of a firearm.

Halper aims to undermine the State of Florida aggravated assault charge against Alexander by impeaching her husband Gray with his own words. But now remember, it is really the kids who are the state’s main motivation in bringing charges.

Halper then, ostensibly referencing Rico Gray’s deposition of the encounter, tells us,

“When Alexander retreated into the bathroom, Gray tried to break the door. She ran into the garage, but couldn’t leave because it was locked.  She came back, he said, with a registered gun, which she legally owned …”

At a glance, we therefore assume Halper is quoting Gray’s damning admissions in the deposition document directly. The elisions are naturally taken to be all Halper’s.

Thus Halper, superficially quoting Gray’s deposition, writes:

” I called her a whore and bitch and … I told her … if I can’t have you, nobody going to have you,” he said, in a deposition.”

But for anyone who actually bothers to check the link under the words “he said”, he finds not a legal deposition, but  an outraged opinion piece written by Fred Grimm of the Miami Herald.

Here is how Grimm wrote it up:

“Sitting in the State Attorney’s Office, Gray described how he had erupted in anger when he discovered text messages on his wife’s phone to another man. (Alexander had moved out, but had come home briefly that day to retrieve her clothes.) “I was in a rage. I called her a whore and bitch and . . . I told her, you know, I used to always tell her that, if I can’t have you, nobody going to have you. It was not the first time of ever saying it to her.”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/28/v-print/2821403/you-call-this-justice-not-if-its.html#storylink=cpy

Halper did then add an ellipsis to those Grimm used; but she  might better have helped the cause of truth  if she had quoted Grimm a little more extensively rather than elliptically:

“Marissa fired the gun twice that day into the wall. No one was injured. But the State Attorney’s Office said the reckless discharge of a firearm endangered the children. A jury (never told about the mandatory 20-year sentence) agreed. Circuit Judge James Daniel, handing down the verdict, noted that because of the state law, the sentencing decision “has been entirely taken out of my hands.” emphasis added.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/28/v-print/2821403/you-call-this-justice-not-if-its.html#storylink=cpy

Oh yeah, there were those kids in the room.

Halper does of course mention them as being there; almost in passing as part of Grays self-critical depositional assessment of his own behavior. But she does not clearly stipulate why Alexander was really charged as she was: which was because the shots were discharged in a dwelling in the presence of kids (one of whom a little research will show was apparently next to the man whom Alexander was trying to impress with her no retreat seriousness of purpose).

Or as one news source put it:

“Alexander, 31, claims she fired a shot from a handgun into the wall to protect herself during a confrontation with her husband, who she said had abused her. Because his two children were with them when she fired a shot in his direction, she was charged with three counts of aggravated assault.”2012 by News4Jax.com. All rights reserved Emphaisis added

Nor in Halper’s attempt to establish this as a legally comparable case to Wald which ended in racially motivated and disproportionate justice, does Halper mention the following “little fact”.

After the shooting event of August 10 2010, and after her booking on the aggravated assault charge, Marissa Alexander was freed on bond.

Ordered to stay away from her ex husband, she nonetheless, 5 months later on December 30th of the same year violated her probation, and was arrested on a charge of domestic violence for assaulting Rico Gray at his Brockett Way home address. Photographs were taken into evidence of his [in my view relatively minor] facial abrasions and swelling.

Marissa Alexander was then contacted by the police via phone; and, after initially claiming she had an “alibi”, eventually consented to meet with an officer:

She was arrested and remained jailed until her trial over the aggravated assault charge involving the children.

In perusing the various news accounts it appears that Alexander could have made a defensive pleading at trial on a basis other than “stand your ground”, but chose not to do so. She opted to try for the so-called “stand your ground” defense instead.

However,

” …  a Duval circuit judge rejected her Stand Your Ground defense. The judge decided that Alexander could have fled instead of running into the garage and fetching the pistol from her car. “This is inconsistent with a person in genuine fear of his or her life,” the judge ruled — illustrating, if nothing else, that the effectiveness of the controversial self-defense statute varies wildly from one Florida circuit to the next.”

Whether it affected the judge’s decision or not, it is interesting to note how the law  reads regarding the presumptive coverage of the right. It says,

(2) The presumption set forth in subsection (1) does not apply if:

(a) The person against whom the defensive force is used has the right to be in or is a lawful resident of the dwelling, residence, or vehicle, such as an owner, lessee, or titleholder, and there is not an injunction for protection from domestic violence or a written pretrial supervision order of no contact against that person; or …

It should also be noted that despite all this, Alexander was offered a reduced three year sentence plea by the same prosecutor who is in now charge of the Zimmerman case, Angela Corey.

Corey further indicated that she might have offered an even greater reduction (than three years instead of a potential 20) but it was Marissa Alexander’s violation of the terms of her probation over the outstanding aggravated assault charge, a bond violation which also resulted in her arrest for domestic battery, which made an even greater reduction of sentence offer on the part of prosecutors problematical.

In any event Alexander turned the 3 year offer of reduced time down. And now, unfortunately, she is in jail, sentenced to 20 years.

But it is not because she’s black.

Where does all this leave Katie Halper?

It leaves her holding title to what can only be, given the sources she herself cites, a deliberately deceitful narrative; a narrative intended to poison the well of public and perhaps even judicial opinion, in order to harm a third party’s interests.

That Halper has done this, is clear evidence of malice. That she has done it so blatantly, and expected it to pass, is persuasive evidence of stupidity.

Halper certainly looks guilty on both counts.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/28/v-print/2821403/you-call-this-justice-not-if-its.html#storylink=cpy

Horrible History

 

 

YouTube has some amusing vignettes from a BBC series for kids, called Horrible Histories.

 

The Guardian, left wing socialist rag that it is, has this to say,

 

“CBBC’s Horrible Histories is a wonderfully curious thing: wildly praised, yet woefully undersold as really funny … for a kids’ show. But Horrible Histories isn’t just the best show on children’s television – it’s one of the smartest comedies on TV.”

 

 

Some clips are annoying, but most have some redeeming humor quality, though surprisingly, the humor in a fair number is pretty pathetic. In the case of the Aztecs and their bean and corn diet for example.

 

Worth 20 minutes of sorting through.  The video embedded above to appears to have been a smash hit overseas.

Advertising tracking

We all assume that our Internet searching and web browsing is being tracked. In fact advertising tracking software is pretty well known and there are ways of defeating it if you are willing to go to the repeated trouble.

This is not about that. This is: http://live.wsj.com/video/how-advertisers-use-internet-cookies-to-track-you/92E525EB-9E4A-4399-817D-8C4E6EF68F93.html#!92E525EB-9E4A-4399-817D-8C4E6EF68F93

This is about considering what shows up and when.

And sometimes the very rapidity with which the system responds  or does not respond leaves one wondering, not only about the methods, but about the filtering protocols which must be used. Can there be a politically correct advertising subroutine included?

Not long ago, I was researching wooden frame leather cushion couches. Call the style I was looking for Danish Modern for the Hunting Cabin. I looked at a couple of sites, one of which looked particularly promising, and voila! Next time I clicked a link to a page in my science news e-mail update, there was one of the very sites I had visited staring back at me. What a coincidence!

Wooden furniture

wooden furniture

 

 

 

 

Just so happens that I also spent some time looking for a Gibson L5 style acoustic guitar either as a  knock off or used. I had seen a Loar (U.S. company, Chinese made) in a guitar store I had been in recently, and was amazed at the low price. Scanning reviews which were so-so early on and very positive more recently,  I then visited their American web site.  And golly, no sooner done, than “said” – as an insert in Drudge.

 

 

Of course I needed to check on something industrial related. Having gone to the company website, I later found that Amazon was issuing me a tailored invitation through the Washington Times …

indicator

 

 

I also was looking for a calculus book on tape. Having used a particular company for their DVD series of lectures, I checked them out again. Soon after Drudge was selling their stuff.

 

 

Ater a few days of this I began to make screen shots of the ads, thinking they might make an amusing post.

Then I checked my history of commercial website visits in order to compare. I hadn’t gone to all that many, and apart from a floor tile site which had already filled the ad spaces in the month previous, there were a limited number of identifiable commercial sites to be scanned. There were the four above of course. And then these..

Remington, Savage, and Mossberg bolt action rifles … and Bulleit Rye Whiskey …

No ads. I guess they don’t pay.

Or something.

Recommended reading, Rorty in a nutshell

In a nutshell

There are some books, whether you agree with the perspective or not, that are just so useful in epitomizing a particular matter or worldview that they become necessary reading.

This book, “Contingency, irony, and solidarity”, published way back in 1989, is one of those books. In it Rorty does the average man an immense favor by clearly and unambiguously laying out the operating assumptions of at least one version of the post-modern liberal project.

Of course just what post-moderrnism is, is somewhat in dispute, as a glance at the Wiki editorial history shows. Nonetheless, with an appropriate shrug at the disciples of irony and deconstruction, this 2010 Wiki description (and post modernists are all about description and subversive redescriptrion) serves as well as many I have seen:

Postmodernism is a tendency in contemporary culture characterized by the problematisation of objective truth and inherent suspicion towards global cultural narrative or meta-narrative. It involves the belief that many, if not all, apparent realities are only social constructs, as they are subject to change inherent to time and place. It emphasizes the role of language, power relations, and motivations …

This blurb from the back of the book may help as well.

 

So, what else is new, you ask? This book was written 24 or more years ago!

We’ve (you say) been confronting modern-liberals for decades now who seemingly cannot or will not explain how it is that they derive their conclusion that we must yield to their direction, from their seemingly – or so we infer – ultimately nihilistic worldviews.

Yet it is a fact that we continue to ask how it is that they think this all works. How, we want to know, do they get an affirmative conclusion, or an imperative statement, from what must be, when we take their other descriptions of reality into account, negative (metaphysical, ontological, logical, take your pick)  premisses?

Well, this book explains how it is done. Here’s the secret. The secret is that there is no secret. There are no inferences derived. There are no deductions believed to be entailed. It’s all just what they want according to their own, particular sensibilities. Just as we figured.

The point of view is anti-foundational, anti essentialist, nominalist, i.e., anti essential natures and natural kinds, in extreme. Therefore there are [so they believe] no real and objectively existing universals to even fill their places in universal categorical propositions.

Nice to see one of the princes of the pack admit it so clearly.  Yet, the blithe nature of the admission made those decades ago, confirms what nearly everyone – not just intellectuals – by now intuits directly: that the modern political left, so steeped as it is in this theory of meaning,  cannot really be argued with.

Let Limbaugh fume that words have meanings. The opposition shrug and say ‘our meanings are different from yours’.

With them, it’s not as we have repeatedly inferred, a matter of dis-covering an objective reality and reasoning from axioms based on it . What is at issue as far as they are concerned are their sensitivities and their imaginations and their desires: and your reality will bend to their narrative and program, or else.

This is not the place to examine just where their belief system degenerates into incoherence.  I am not sure that incoherence or what is an admitted self-reference problem is even a troubling issue with someone whose notion of “truth” is,

” … that since truth is a property of sentences, [notice it doesn't say 'propositions' or arguments*] since sentences are dependent for their existence upon vocabularies, and since vocabularies are made by human beings, so are truths.”

Why should it? He just previous to that writes,

“The very idea that the world or the self has an intrinsic nature … is a remnant of the idea that the world is a divine creation, the work of someone who had something in mind, who Himself spoke some language in which He described His own project … [then later] On the view I am suggesting, the claim that an adequate ‘philosophical’ doctrine must make room for our intuitions [meaning immediate apprehensions of reality] is a reactionary slogan …”

As I said, you will probably not find a more concise,  lucid, and unabashed exposition of the doctrines we confront every day as the solidarity pedlars steadily gnaw away at our formal liberties in the supposed name of relieving suffering and humiliation and exclusion -  but of just what exactly, they cannot and feel they need not, say.

Thinking back, many of us will say that this entire matter feels like a rehash. Wasn’t the debate over the bankruptcy of post-modernism and deconstruction held back in the early nineteen nineties in the universities, the important journals, and the big papers? Didn’t Alan Sokal make public fools of them? Didn’t they fold up their tents and kind of go away?

Yes, yes, and no. They not only didn’t not go away, the theorist of 25 years ago has clearly written the psychic program that the modern-liberal Democrat runs today.

From academia to the street and polling booth  in a couple decades.

Once upon a time, even Democrats referred to a common reality, imagined that humans had a moral center in addition to inchoate urges, and could be thought to understand the difference between truth and falsehood and to at least know in their consciences if they were lying or not.

Only a fool  would make that assumption now.

 

* Note. Rorty was involved, his curriculum vitae reports, in analytic philosophy before abandoning it for a kind of deconstructive and ironic pragmatism. Therefore he well knows the traditional conceptual difference between a proposition and a sentence, and his use of “sentence” is, for those of us not yet familiar with him, pregnant with meaning and intent and back references. Get the book … cheap from a remainder bin or used book shop if you can.

So who’s Ashley Judd?

I was not, and I am still not, certain who Ashley Judd really is, or why she has gained as much notoriety as she has. The facts don’t seem to be entirely clear.

In order to get some perspective, I Googled her name and in so doing, came across a number of entries; some of which featured a relatively unattractive dull eyed woman. Which I suppose, has only the most indirect and inferential bearing on her potential fitness for public office, but which does fit the general genetic profile when it comes to leftie females as compared with normal and healthy women.

Here is a screen capture:

Anyway, as one can see from the profile box on the right of the search results capture, she appears – at first glance -to have some very impressive academic and professional credentials.

 Ashley Judd
Actress
[snip]
Education: Harvard University, Sayre School, Franklin High School, John F. Kennedy School of Government, University of Kentucky, Paul G. Blazer High School
Siblings: Wynonna
Parents: Naomi Judd, Michael C. Ciminella

However clicking on Wikipedia, it seems to be a different story.

“Judd attended 13 schools before college … An alumna of the sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma at the University of Kentucky, she majored in French and minored in anthropology, art history, theater and women’s studies.”  … [then later]  “On May 9, 2007, it was announced that Judd had completed her bachelor’s degree, in French, from the University of Kentucky.”

So what she apparently has is a bachelor’s degree in French and women’s studies awarded a decade or quite a bit more,  late.

What then of that Harvard mention, which tops the list of her educational achievements? You know even over and above the “John F. Kennedy School of Government”?

Golly … this Ashley must be a gen -u- wine genius!

Here we go, as per Wiki …:

Judd [received] … a Mid-Career Master of Public Administration degree (MC/MPA) from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2010 through the Mid-Career Master of Public administration program (MC/MPA) (an eight credit program with a summer mentorship which typically takes a year to complete in contrast with the traditional MPA program which typically takes at least two years of study).

So then, despite what the quick view profile insinuates, Judd did not graduate from Harvard as people usually understand it.

Instead, and according to Wikipedia and its sources, Ashley Judd took eight credit hours of a curriculum which bestowed upon her something called a Mid-Career Master of Public Administration, from …. drumroll … The John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Therefore, what we see listed as implying, at a cursory glance, credentials or even degrees garnered from what is arguably the premier American Ivy League university as well as a famous school of government studies, turns out instead to be  eight credit hours worth of an adult education certificate. (Note how Harvard is listed in the capture image above in such a way so as to minimize the drawing of any immediate inference on the part of the unfamiliar viewer, with the fact that the Kennedy School is within Harvard, and that Ashley Judd’s  eight credit hours of adult education there count as the official sum and matriculating substance of her entire connection with either institution.)

I don’t think that there has been such a pathetically transparent attempt to burnish a not very sterling curriculum vitae since the obtrusively gynecomastic Keith Olbermann held up his Cornell agricultural station degree (or whatever)  before his billowing pinstripes, and blusteringly announced to Ann Coulter and the world that his degree was just as good as her Ivy League version was. And cheaper too! … nah nah nah.

Now as regards Ashley Judd. There is undoubtedly much more one could say about this diminished capacity crackpot and her view of life, and what that view of her’s reveals about her fitness to direct her own life, much less anyone else’s … “It’s unconscionable to breed, with the number of children who are starving to death in impoverished countries” … but she bores me, and seems now to have receded as a threat to edified humanity.

So, I’ll leave it at that for the present.

Any Guitarists Out There?

 

Ok. Been awhile. I’ve been busy tilting at metaphysical windmills, in an ongoing and probably futile attempt to get to the core, you know the real crux of the collectivist mindset.

You think after ten years I might have learned that deep down inside, there is no there, there, to their there. After all, they admit as much … as self-proclaimed moral nihilists and eliminative materialists. Leftism: a caravan to nowhere.

Speaking of caravans, and something a bit more positive in the way of one, I went to Youtube the other day to pull up a  video wherein Frank Vignola the amazing jazz guitarist  had guested with the Hot Club of Detroit jazz group. As I may have mentioned before, when I first saw that particular 90.3 FM WCPN video, I didn’t know who Vignola was, nor of his reputation.

I thought Evan and the Hot Club boys had some local to Cleveland rock band mop top sitting in [far right] as a courtesy gesture. Then I heard Vignola’s lead solo during Nuages. The reaction of the band members tells you all you need to know about Vignola’s musicianship. You might want to listen to the first 40 seconds of the clip which I have started with the lead handover.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7ZIF9f1pO8&feature=player_detailpage#t=315s

So anyway, despite the fact that I don’t much care for – to put it politely – French accordion, I thought I’d take another listen. That’s when I stumbled across a related subject matter video put up by a fellow named Jay Cunningham. He’d attended a luthiers’ convention (that’s ‘guitar builders’ to us civilians) in Woodstock.

What Jay Cunningham captured with his battery powered video camera was what looks to be an impromptu acoustic jam featuring Vignola, backed by his sideman, and one Julian Lage.

As with Vignola earlier, I had no idea who Julian Lage was. I figured he was some obscure grinning Frenchman having a turn at the guitar at a trade show jam. I was wrong. Turns out he’s an American, and quite famous – having been an official child prodigy, who somehow, he reports, had a more or less normal upbringing.

If you don’t like guitar work, skip the video. If old standards bore the hell out of you, skip the video. If you have never played any kind of musical instrument, skip the video. You won’t have any idea how amazing what he is doing is, since you will have no context in which to locate it.

If, however you know anything about musicianship, take a look. There are many fine and highly talented musicians in the world. This, is a little different. You are watching real genius. Take note at the 2 minute mark.

And thanks to Jay Cunningham and his video camera with its dying battery, some of that genius, apparently spontaneously expressed before what seems to be a small, casually gathered audience of trade show attendees, was captured for posterity.

 

 

 

For Eric

A couple of interesting things that fell out of an old book on the general topic. Posted for John’s companion in ideological arms, Eric; and anyone else interested.

Should be self explanatory. You might want to note the list at the bottom of image 2.

 

 

 

//

Hvad har dig, der er ny?

Or something …

I don’t know. I feel alright. Pretty good in fact. So what am I doing putting this up for?

See I was exploring the odd corners of the Internet and dragging a line through YouTube for jazz tunes, when one link led to another – as so often is the case – and I came across this image of a little Euro-Nebbish (alright so I’m not an expert in Yiddish) looking guy and a woman who I took to be a late 1960′s Nashville Grand Old Opry star.

 

Was Gotta Fertig Gnew

 

Well, it turns out that the guy is a Belgian harmonica and guitar player who had a brush with fame in the US at one point, and that the woman is Danish. Toots Thielemans on that most annoying of instruments, the harmonica, and a quite good singer whose name  sounds something like Brigitte or Bridget Lustig.

Fertig Gnewww!
So what’s the point? Other than that she does have mighty big hair piled atop of a very attractive face?

If  you are willing,  give a listen (that’s  Nashville inspired talk) to her speaking voice, and then contrast it with her  singing accent.

I don’t think that even a dialects expert could be certain that this woman was not an American. And, if you tolerate Samba flavored early 1960′s pop music well, you might want to watch the video for a little longer than it takes to do only that.

 

 

 

 

Oh,  what I was looking for, which I think I may have already placed in a comments section. Well, you won’t want to miss it.  John Coltrane, Germany, 1960.

“You didn’t build that …” revisited

By now we all know that what the Prez was intending to say was that it was some enabling infrastructure, material and presumably social as well, that the proud entrepreneur didn’t build.

No, while Mr. Businessman might have, you know, taken an idea provided to him by others and run with it, his success was the result of a collective effort channeled through taxes and enabled by the grace of a supportive government harnessing the collective and synergistic energies of every last one of us, no matter how humble.

Why, so it is now and so it always has been …  for everything important at least.

Another Government Sponsored Enterprise?

 
Well, no actually. Ok they used  Weather Bureau data for information on where to find a windy spot in the region Chanute suggested, and a Coast Guardsman took the picture.

On the other hand …

He didn’t build that alone. The government helped.

“It will be remembered that Dr. Samuel P. Langley, while Director and Secretary of the Smithsonian, with a $50,000 government fund at his disposal for experiments (besides $20,000 from the Hodgkins fund …”

 

Allegiance to what?

As I only have a couple of comments to drop off I am going to try out the new QuickPress publication window.

Dana Pico’s recent post on the essence of liberalism, struck a familiar chord for those of us here.

Because of the peculiarly shifting claims of Progressivism, it’s a topic, in all of its aspects, we have been giving more thought to in recent years as we ponder the question of what they really want, and when if ever will they be satisfied.

But covering this topic comprehensively and with full references would involve me in an extremely time consuming project which, in the final analysis, would merely represent comments and arguments I have made elsewhere; particularly on John’s sister site.

So I am instead going to cut to the chase here – almost – with my question, and I’ll assume that any of the folks who might read this are already familiar with the key intellectual and anthropological concepts that mark the fracture line between the bent of conservationism, and libertarianism, and traditionalism, on the one hand, and intellectual progressivism, on the other.

Philosophically, the prime concepts which the militant progressive endorses as settled matters of fact (though they may be logically contradictory once extrapolated) and as being properly conditioning for the resolution of all question of human value and social ordering, are principally the following: monistic materialism (only matter whatever that is, is real, and it is all that exists); radical nominalism (there are no real essences or categories, just arbitrary names applied to disparate individuals); values nihilism (moral values are unreal as objective imperatives); the instrumentality of reason (reason is properly understood as a servant of impulses, not their judge); the illusion of an enduring self (self-explanatory); and, the denial of (a) that teleology is a real phenomenon, or, (b) that insofar as it exists, that it is useful for arbitrating any important questions.

Anthropologically – loosely speaking – they would include: evolution not so much as a description of a material process, but as a grand explanatory paradigm; the primacy of the unconscious as the wellspring of motivation, whether the Freudian unconscious, or the evolutionary psychology version, or some other. (remember what I said about internal contradictions); ethically descriptive and morally prescriptive utilitarianism (which no liberal pretends to believe in anymore but which nonetheless serves as their primary social interpretive principle) and, spanning all of these as an overarching axiom, the ontological primacy of appetite per se for all “sentient beings”.

Now, assume all of the overt and implied premises above to be “true”, or at least as deployed in a kind of web-like filter which conditions the sorts of conclusions which sift out when we pose questions about what is, and about what ought to be.

What, in light of all of this, and at core, is all the liberal/progressive talk of community, and sharing, and sacrifice, and evolving values, really supposed to be about?

What (given that the concept of the human person is itself largely dissolved by their own conceptual acids) is it all – the progressive agenda – supposedly in aid of?

What is it, that they are demanding our unconditional allegiance to?

And if they cannot say for certain where they are going, or what they will find when “they” get there, or even if “they”, once they get “there” will be anything resembling the “they” that begins the journey: why should they expect that anyone would want to follow them “there” anyway?

Politically, they ask for, they demand, our “allegiance” and our “solidarity” with them.

Considering the corrosive and deconstructive logical implications of their own interpretive principles, they demand allegiance to what, ultimately, and solidarity with what, exactly?

Who would have thought it

Despite not being a “collector” type myself, a number of years ago I decided to make a collection of something that I thought would be both useful,  and potentially one day, have some modest economic value or interest .

Some people collect stamps. Others, collect coins. Well-heeled or highly motivated types often collect motorcycles or automobiles.

My notion, was not to make a “gun collection” in the usual sense of the word, but merely to obtain a representative selection of off the shelf, lever action rifles, of a bore suitable for big game on the order of deer and bear and possibly elk.

At the time there seemed to be an unusually broad selection of available models, some of which, the Winchester Model 1895 for example, had been reintroduced, after years of suspended production.

Other models, like the Savage Model 99 were rumored as destined for discontinuation. Minimal investment, maximal utility (for a hunter) and substantial technological interest from an historical point of view, made it all  seem like a good idea.

I never followed through.

But the idea of relatively inexpensive collectible items, representing a particular or modest niche, is not an uncommon one it turns out. People do collect almost anything, and almost every child has the start of his own collecting hobby in his or her toy train or race car set, or barbie or other dolls, or comic books …

The problem with these kinds of items is that their value as a collectible depends in part on the fact that they are not treated as such from the start.  If every comic book every kid bought was saved in a wrapper, if no ungrateful boy deliberately drove his train set off the ping pong table just to watch it crash over a “cliff”, then these things would be anything but rare.  And while landfills would be considerably less full our dwellings would be considerably more so.

Grown-ups are aware of this process of natural and necessary attrition, and this realization may be part of what is behind parents or grandparents starting kids off with stamps, or pennies, or as my mother did with my much younger kid sisters, a series of expensive but probably now worthless American Something or Other dolls bestowed upon them every Christmas for years. That latter example kind of defeats the purpose of the whole exercise though. What’s the point of buying an expensive “collectible” when every example issued is stored away on a closet shelf for two decades in the wan hope that it will represent a small fortune someday?

Anyone want a set of Franklin Mint commemorative “coins”?

So if the average man is going to collect he might as well do so for pleasure. And adult people experience harmless fun in collecting all kinds of things – even obsolete business machines or manual typewriters, for example. There are of course the better known farm tractor collectors, and lawn mower collectors, and 1930′s dinnerware collectors.

I don’t know if there are collectors of those 8mm formatted films of 1930′s cartoons which were used to demonstrate home movie projectors to potential buyers in the 1950′s and 1960′s, but I would not be surprised if there were.

Now guitars are of course, are something that we would expect people to collect. The best of them are beautiful, functional, and in many cases economically valuable from the time of their creation; only to grow more so with time.  Check out the going price of a 1954 Les Paul Gold Top, or a 1962 Fender Stratocaster in pristine condition if you need convincing.

But what about those “other” guitars? What about those  economical, second-tier, private labeled, entry level player kinds which were advertised in the department store catalogs right up through the 1980s? Would anyone really want, say, a 1965 Danelectro?

Or how about a Sears Silvertone hollow body made by some company like Harmony or Kay? [These are sold but you can still look] It turns out they do and the answer is yes.

People do collect these items with some obvious enthusiasm and even whimsical reverence.

And if you think about it, there are many worse hobbies, than that.

Here’s a fellow that put his interest in guitars to a good use.  I don’t think he is playing an Harmony or a Kay, but I think he is doing rather well all the same even though I don’t care for this tune by and large. The old guy on the fiddle is someone famous from years ago. An Italian aristocrat who took up with some Belgian Gypsy guitar player and with whom he had some success before WWII.

I don’t know. There’s probably something worth investigating there too.

A “birther” accusation against Obama that is more difficult to ignore

 

 

The controversial but popular Drudge Report has linked to  articles both on the more controversial and less popular World Net Daily site, and to the Washington Times, which is reporting on the results of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s agreement to entertain the complaint of a number of Arizona citizens regarding Obama’s eligibility to appear on the ballot in that state.

 

Although  Arapaio has been careful to refrain from rendering a negative judgment on Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen”,  the analysis presented on World Net Daily (and Youtube) of at least one document pertaining to Obama’s life story,  is interesting enough to cause one to do an actual double take … as the case against the validity of Obama’s selective service card post office stamp, seems to be so convincingly argued.

Let’s hope that an example of a 1980 post office stamp from Hawaii is found with what looks like a two digit segment of a 2008 stamp, which has been excised and then placed into a stamp holder upside down so as to poorly mimic the last two digits of what should have been a 4 digit year stamp. And let’s hope that such a maverick stamp is discovered sooner rather than later.

 

 

 

Give him a “G”

 

Those who have an interest in prehistory will want to note, if they have not already, that the Y chromosome of the Tyrolean Iceman is now being reported, and while having been hinted at recently, it involved something of a surprise initially.

It appears that the portion of the continental landmass that we know as Europe has had a relatively complex post-glacial population history. Trying to reconstruct what the “original” Europeans “looked like“, or exactly where they  came from at the point wherein these particular populations may be said to have had anything resembling a distinctive cultural kit,  is an ongoing project.

What seems to be the case however is that there are a multitude of distinct genetic lineages within the classification “European”, and that these distinctions run deep into history.

Otzi himself is an example of this complex history. And indeed his own story, a long time in unfolding since the discovery of his mummified corpse, has changed substantially since it was first reported that he was probably a wayfarer who had died of hypothermia as a result of being caught in an unpredictable change of weather.

He was according to recent reports killed in fact by an arrow which severed a subclavian artery, some days, it appears, after he had been in a fight which had left him with serious hand wounds, and the blood of four other individuals on his clothing and weapons.

 

Penn Museum lecture

 

 

Maybe not quite so dead a letter

 

One of the most important activites the government can engage in when protecting the free market, is ensuring that it is in fact, and remains, free.

Unfortunately, then,  some minimal regulation of the market-place and its participants must take place merely in order to ensure that it is an honest market, and that it reflects to some extent the same sense of right and wrong traditionally reflected in the law of torts.

 

 

The Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890 was written to do just that. Unfortunately enforcement of it seems to wobble between over-zealous and partisan on the one hand, and deliberately lax on the other.

Teddy Rosevelt is reported as saying, “When I took office the anti-trust law was practically a dead letter and the interstate commerce law in as poor a condition. I had to revive both laws. I did. I enforced both.”  At Milwaukee, Wis., October 14, 1912.) Mem. Ed. XIX, 448; Nat. Ed. XVII, 326.

 

 

 

 

At other times, of course government policy seems to view the Sherman Act as an impediment to efficiency. As one participant wrote:

“The first Clinton administration acknowledged strains on the defense industrial base and put into place two policies to address this problem: acquisition reform (1) and an industry consolidation policy. Although much remains to be done, there has been considerable progress on acquisition reform. On the other hand, the success of the consolidation policy that attempted to balance the number of competing firms with efficiency has been more controversial.

In 1993, analysts assigned by Secretary of Defense Les Aspin to conduct a “bottom-up review” of U.S. defense posture concluded that the defense industry needed to be restructured. Then Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Perry announced to industry leaders, at what has come to be referred to as the “Last Supper,” the Department of Defense (DoD) policy to encourage consolidation.

In July 1993, serving as the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, I introduced rules for sharing savings from consolidation between DoD and industry. The Defense Science Board formed a task force, composed of defense industry executives and government lawyers, to address the antitrust issues raised by the consolidation policy. In the five-year period of 1993-1998, many major defense firms merged or were acquired.

In 1998, DoD unexpectedly reversed the pro-consolidation policy and urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) to reject the proposed merger of Lockheed Martin and Northrop and the proposed General Dynamics acquisition of Newport News Shipbuilding. The absence of a clear signal ending the consolidation policy is unfortunate because it left several defense firms stranded on a different course. In the spring of 2001, both General Dynamics and Northrop! Litton made offers for Newport News Shipbuilding, thus re-opening the industry consolidation question for the Bush administration.”  Acquisition Review Quarterly / Fall, 2001 Consolidation of the U.S. Defense Industrial Base by John M. Deutch

 

This next case however, seems to be pretty clear cut. An instance it appears where the government is doing just what it should do in order to preserve the integrity of the economic system.

 

So: So  Sorry,  a  most regrettable error in judgment …

Denso, Yazaki to plead guilty in supplier bid-rigging case, U.S. says

Yazaki to pay $470 million fine, Denso $78 million; 4 executives from Yazaki to serve prison time

Larry P. Vellequette
Automotive News — January 30, 2012 – 1:35 pm ET
UPDATED: 1/30/12 6:14 pm ET

Yazaki Corp. and Denso Corp., two of Japan’s largest auto-parts suppliers, have agreed to plead guilty in a widening multicontinent bid-rigging case, the U.S. Department of Justice said today.
Yazaki and Denso will pay a combined total of $548 million in criminal fines as part of a plea agreement, the department said in a statement. Four of Yazaki’s Japanese executives also have agreed to plead guilty and serve prison time in the United States.

Denso was charged with conspiring to charge higher prices on heating-control panels and electronic control units. The Yazaki charges involved wire harnesses and related products.

Yazaki will pay a $470 million fine — the second-largest criminal fine ever for a Sherman Act antitrust violation, according to the Justice Department. Denso will pay $78 million.

The four Yazaki executives were identified as Tsuneaki Hanamura, Ryoji Kawai, Shigeru Ogawa and Hisamitsu Takada. They have agreed to serve prison time ranging from 15 months to two years.

The two-year sentences would be the longest term of imprisonment imposed on a foreign national voluntarily submitting to U.S. jurisdiction for a Sherman Act antitrust violation, the Justice Department said. The fine amounts and prison sentences are subject to court approval.

Yazaki ranks No. 13 on the Automotive News list of the 100 top global suppliers, with total estimated sales to automakers of $12.5 billion during its 2010 fiscal year. Denso ranks No. 2 on the list, with total estimated sales to automakers of $32.9 billion during its 2010 fiscal year.

In a statement, Denso said it cooperated in the investigation and will continue to do so. The company said its chairman (Koichi Fukaya), president, certain board members and executive directors will voluntarily return 10-30 percent of their compensation for a three-month period beginning in February. Eight executives are taking the pay cuts, a company spokeswoman said.

“It is Denso’s policy to comply with all applicable antitrust laws,” a company statement said.”

 

 

Public law of the US
Sherman Anti-Trust Act (1890)

Fifty-first Congress of the United States of America, At the First Session,

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Monday, the second day of December, one thousand eight hundred and eighty-nine.

An act to protect trade and commerce against unlawful restraints and monopolies.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
Sec. 1. Every contract, combination in the form of trust or other- wise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is hereby declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, at the discretion of the court.

Sec. 2. Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof; shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

Sec. 3. Every contract, combination in form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce in any Territory of the United States or of the District of Columbia, or in restraint of trade or commerce between any such Territory and another, or between any such Territory or Territories and any State or States or the District of Columbia, or with foreign nations, or between the District of Columbia and any State or States or foreign nations, is hereby declared illegal. Every person who shall make any such contract or engage in any such combination or conspiracy, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding five thousand dollars, or by imprisonment not exceeding one year, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

Sec. 4. The several circuit courts of the United States are hereby invested with jurisdiction to prevent and restrain violations of this act; and it shall be the duty of the several district attorneys of the United States, in their respective districts, under the direction of the Attorney-General, to institute proceedings in equity to prevent and restrain such violations. Such proceedings may be by way of petition setting forth the case and praying that such violation shall be enjoined or otherwise prohibited. When the parties complained of shall have been duly notified of such petition the court shall proceed, as soon as may be, to the hearing and determination of the case; and pending such petition and before final decree, the court may at any time make such temporary restraining order or prohibition as shall be deemed just in the premises.

Sec. 5. Whenever it shall appear to the court before which any proceeding under section four of this act may be pending, that the ends of justice require that other parties should be brought before the court, the court may cause them to be summoned, whether they reside in the district in which the court is held or not; and subpoenas to that end may be served in any district by the marshal thereof.

Sec. 6. Any property owned under any contract or by any combination, or pursuant to any conspiracy (and being the subject thereof) mentioned in section one of this act, and being in the course of transportation from one State to another, or to a foreign country, shall be- forfeited to the United States, and may be seized and condemned by like proceedings as those provided by law for the forfeiture, seizure, and condemnation of property imported into the United States contrary to law.

Sec. 7. Any person who shall be injured in his business or property by any other person or corporation by reason of anything forbidden or declared to be unlawful by this act, may sue therefor in any circuit court of the United States in the district in which the defendant resides or is found, without. respect to the amount in controversy, and shall recover three fold the damages by him sustained, and the costs of suit, including a reasonable attorney’s fee.

Sec. 8. That the word “person,” or ” persons,” wherever used in this act shall be deemed to include corporations and associations existing under or authorized by the laws of either the United States, the laws of any of the Territories, the laws of any State, or the laws of any foreign country.

Approved, July 2, 1890.

No Comment at present …

Not to jump to any conclusions, but what a coincidence …

” http://www.truthbeforedishonor.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi “

Counterfeit of John's Truth Before Dishonor blog is suspended

“http://iowaliberal.com/cgi-sys/suspendedpage.cgi“

They must have forgotten to pay the bill?