Scattershots – 23dec19

George Rebane

The persecution of Christians, almost overwhelmingly by Muslim extremists in their lands, and leftwing secular humanists in more civilized regions, is picking up steam.  The latest of about which the lamestream is silent today goes on in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country.  There the Fulani Muslims have taken up gun and machetes against entire villages of Christians.  These attacks take place all over the country and consist of the most horrendous acts of violence against innocent and unarmed civilians, leaving behind the dead and mutilated.  Lop amputations are again the favored way to leave survivors who can then relate the horrors of the ‘religion of peace’ to those yet to be visited.  The government’s military is in cahoots with the religious fanatics, showing up late, if ever, and then confiscating anything that looks like an implement with which the surviving villagers could defend themselves, citing the national law against civilians bearing arms, no matter how primitive or useful they are as a farming implement.  (more here)

Boeing’s grounded 737MAX may be the final instigation for the long-talked of conversion to take human pilots out of cockpits.  The modern commercial aircraft is so complex that it needs a lot of smart machinery to operate it.  And that requires a much more extensive training curriculum for today’s pilots than what they are used to, and of what many (most?) are capable of executing in the cockpit, especially during anomalous or emergency conditions.  We have demonstrated that large drone aircraft are capable of operating autonomously over wide areas and/or with ground-based pilots who primarily monitor flight.  The 737MAX will fly again, there is too much pressure to increase passenger air traffic, and too few airplane models and manufacturers to satisfy the demand. (more here)  But now the productive dialogue has begun between manufacturers, regulators, and airlines to plan for the inevitable advent of smart, autonomous, and much safer aircraft; especially when suborbital hypersonic aircraft are introduced with flight profiles that require orders of magnitude more complex decisions to be made and correctly executed in milliseconds.

‘American Liberty Depends on the Deep State’ argues noted historian Francis (“the end of history”) Fukuyama.  He ties his lamentably weak arguments to an unfortunately partisan definition which is more true than false.  Today’s ‘deep state’ is the ‘administrative state’ of yesteryear that is now composed of “unelected officials who are supposedly partisan Democrats ready to do anything to undermine the Trump presidency.”  In the sequel he ignores the overwhelming evidence that gives credence to such a definition.  He claims that all “modern democracies” like the US need deep state governance “because it is crucial to fighting corruption and upholding the rule of law”, ignoring the record of the wide incidence of corruption and criminality that hides in a byzantinely structured deep state.  Fukuyama lauds the supposed meritocracy of the deep state establishments of Britain, France, Germany, …, without any comparison of the relative benefits over the US that these countries have enjoyed.  The Pendleton Act of 1883 was supposed to make our civil service a meritocracy.  As we all know, it did not.  Our historian ends his apologetic for the deep state with a red herring, citing a scenario in which our president (hint Trump) refuses to leave office at the end of his term and orders the military to protect his stay.  Then it would be only through the good graces of the deep state that such a president would not be defended and would have to vacate his office.  Astounding!

More left-leaners than right-leaners now appear to make up the cohort of RR commenters.  This is apparent from just a simple count of the handles used by the progressives.  I have no idea how the total readership breaks down, but I suspect there are at least as many of the Left as of the Right.  It is certain that they follow the content of this website with great interest and attention, taking every opportunity to counter the slings and arrows we launch against their ideology cum religion.  As I have stated for years, their presence is more than welcome, else we would be an echo chamber as are almost all socio-political sites of the liberal persuasion.  A local leftwing weblog serves as an ample illustration of the effects of such censorship of opposing thought.  Well, that’s not the entire reason for its dearth of comment streams – it is also poorly edited, filled with bulletin board boring and narcoleptically numbing topics, and empty of any intellectual challenges to its occasional stasist and statist progressive mantras.  However, for completeness we do feature it in Our Links found in the left panel.

Stephen Miller, Trump administration senior adviser and a Jew, is an example of a target of leftwing attack as being anti-Semitic simply because he cited news reported on Breitbart.  These Democrat congresscritters want him fired. (more here)  They accuse him of "documented support for white nationalist and virulently anti-immigrant tropes (which) is wholly unacceptable and disqualifying for a government employee."  There is no evidence of either that they can present or that even exists.  Mr Miller is white and presumably a nationalist.  He is not anti-immigrant but simply against illegal entry into the United States.  So none of the accusing Democrat Jews can give a coherent definition of nationalism or show why embracing such a socio-political stance is somehow toxic to this country.  Neither can they defend porous borders that permit the illegal entry of hordes of foreigners with unknown diseases, crime records, skill levels, disjoint cultures, and doubtful allegiance to everything that America has stood for in the past (before our anti-American left has begun making its mark).

Comments

[Todd Juvinall]

Andrew Breitbart was a Jew. That makes Miller's opponents twice as stupid. Look at what they call David Horowitz. He was a son raised by two commies and later worked for the Black Panthers. After they murdered a woman who was their accountant he said that's all folks. And he became a conservative and a fearless one as well. He is called a anti-semite and a racist etc. He was a partner with Peter Collier who lived here for many years. The left has called Candace Ownes a racist. She is black.

[George Rebane]

Re anti-semitism and racism. We should always understand that these notions are mindsets, and not something inherent in your DNA. Jews can also be anti-semitic, and black people can be racists - examples of both abound.

[Bill Tozer]

Steve Miller, the necessity of the deep state and so much more. VDH.

The Era of ‘Good’ Fascism?

“If and when fascism comes to America, it will not arrive with jackboots, stiff arms, and military uniforms. The attempt to suppress political opposition in anti-constitutional fashion, to regiment the economy by denying constitutionally protected freedoms, and the efforts to change the Constitution to reflect political utility, will come under the auspices of “equality,” “fairness,” “saving the planet,” and “social justice”—as a way to combat “climate change,” “racism,” “homophobia,” and “sexism.”

https://amgreatness.com/2019/12/22/the-era-of-good-fascism/

Civil Liberty Abuse by Liberals? No Problem!

[George Rebane]

BillT 1000am - Mr Tozer, you beat me to it again. So many things to write about, so little time. This VDH piece will be a classic, mainly because it will outrage the command/control progressives who are and have always held near and dear to their hearts the principles of fascistic governance.

[Bill Tozer]

Dr. Rebane, sir.
“So many things to write about, so little time.”

Quite true. I could write essays of the topic of why American Jews vote left, with the exception of Orthodox Jews (minority of American Jews) who vote conservative. The writings of Jewish thinkers is unparalleled, from philosophy to conservative values.

The persecution of Christians? It has to be 20-30 years ago that I was very interested in the topic. The persecution of Christians was in full swing in various places throughout the world, Horrible events reported, massive amounts of slaughter. The cries for help reached the heavens. ****What always stuck from that period was that despite all their efforts of petition Amnesty International in Norway with facts, Amnesty Int’l refused to recognize Christians as a persecuted group. Refused.
3 years ago, our local Lefties & Company went ballistic over the thought of letting Syrian Christians in during the Muslim Ban, aka, the extreme vetting from 8 counties, one including North Korea, lol. Christians are the one group that are not protected, even in Syria.

American liberty depends on the Deep State? Well, look at the bright side. At least they now recognize the Deep State after eviscerating us conspiracy theorists and, By Golly, the Deep State is good because it protects us and our Constitution by keeping us safe from THEIR enemies.

Oh, until I learn brievity, I will keep those essays in my mind. :) some many words, so little time.

[Bill Tozer]

Dr Rebane zeros in on the big problem:

“This VDH piece will be a classic, mainly because it will outrage the command/control progressives who are and have always held near and dear to their hearts the principles of fascistic governance.”

Eveything else pales in comparison, sir.

[scenes]

re: The Deep State.

It strikes me as being too large to get a handle on, but you can certainly pick up a flavor by looking at individuals.

A quick homework assignment for anyone who is interested. Spend a few minutes looking into the career of Robert Mueller. Go back in time and check out some of the cases and their results.

[Don Bessee]

Just sayin' -

There’s no completely objective way to measure legal ability, but a common metric used by legal employers to identify the most gifted lawyers is whether those lawyers secured a federal clerkship, including the most prestigious clerkships at the Supreme Court. Approximately 40 percent of Trump’s appellate nominees clerked for a Supreme Court justice, and about 80 percent clerked on a federal court of appeals.

That compares to less than a quarter of Obama’s nominees who clerked on the Supreme Court, and less than half with a federal appellate clerkship.

In other words, based solely on objective legal credentials, the average Trump appointee has a far more impressive résumé than any past president’s nominees.

And they’re young, too. “The average age of circuit judges appointed by President Trump is less than 50 years old,” the Trump White House bragged in early November, “a full 10 years younger than the average age of President Obama’s circuit nominees.”

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2019/12/23/vox-trumps-judges-more-qualified-than-obamas/

;-)

[Bill Tozer]

Dr Rebane @ 10:52 am

A Matter of Truth

“Here the question is not whether Rowling and Gervais are right, though most people would think that they are right, albeit that they would also increasingly fear to acknowledge it in public (a mark of creeping totalitarianism, incidentally). The question is, rather, whether they had the right to say what they did as part of the normal give and take of public debate. The reaction to what they said—the veteran feminist, Germain Greer, was another object of such aggressive recrimination for having said something similar—suggests that pressure groups’ attachment to freedom of speech is very weak. They prefer issuing fatwas.”
..
“Increasingly in our times, social ideas seem to go through analogous, but different, stages. First, they are too absurd to be entertained; then they are promoted and propagandized; finally, they are made obligatory articles of faith. The cycle seems to have a built-in accelerator. But it remains true, as Bishop Butler had it, that “everything is what it is and not another thing.”

https://www.city-journal.org/gervais-rowling-transgender

[Gregory]

"Boeing’s grounded 737MAX may be the final instigation for the long-talked of conversion to take human pilots out of cockpits"

Not a chance that the failure of cockpit automation would be the start of surrendering all to the same automation and removing the pilots altogether.

"What's it doing now?" was once a signal to disconnect Otto and hand fly the plane. It should probably always be so, but it will require an industry to hire pilots able to do just that, and give them enough time at the controls to keep current.

Southwest did. Ethiopian and Lion Air didn't.

That said, the MAX seems to be a creature of the regulatory regime, as Boeing didn't want the profit dragging recertification headache of treating the MAX as something other than a 737 when the new engines were designed in.

[Bill Tozer]

Report: More Than A Thousand Christians Have Been Killed This Year In Nigeria

"Although the massacres are significant, HART does say they’ve been largely ignored by the international community and that addressing the issue has become necessary, if not urgent."

http://dlvr.it/RLtRTg

[Bill Tozer]

UN, UK Treating Persecuted Christians as "Enemies"

“The next obstacle facing those few Christians who make it past UN refugee camps are the immigration centers of Western nations themselves. The discrimination is apparently so obvious in the United Kingdom that Lord George Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, is suing the UK Home Office for allegedly being "institutionally biased" against Christian refugees and therefore complicit in what he calls "the steady crucifixion of Middle East Christians."

https://www.meforum.org/60166/un-uk-treat-christian-refugees-as-enemies