Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque.
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Apr 7 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
A lot of people currently sure tariffs will Bring Back American Manufacturing and right some moral wrongs or other *and* sure there won't be any significant long-term impact suffer from an illness I've come to call Tea Party-itis.
The Tea Party famously began in the wake of and in response to the massive bailouts and Fed monetary easing of 2008-2009. The complaints were manifold, some good, some ... highly theoretical. I do want to note, however, what drove those bailouts.
Feb 1 • 33 tweets • 5 min read
I can't remember if it was during or just before the pandemic (I think it was the very early stages but I may be in error) that my wife, the engineer, said something brilliant that I wish I'd noticed before.
She, who thinks our financial system has become so stupid that the response is a return to barter, looked at Disney's financials and concluded that it's a merchandise licensing and park company that generates IP in the form of movies and TV to drive those primary businesses.
Dec 22, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Amusing story: As the Creed developed, it did so in Greek, because the bishops (as did all educated people of the time) spoke Greek. But one word (ὁμοούσιος) was a real problem for the West because there was no equivalent concept in Latin, the language of the ... common laity.
See, by the fourth century, most Romans (of whatever ethnic group) of any education spoke Greek as the language of erudition, and in the East, Koine was the common language. But in the West, Vulgate Latin(s) was/were the lingua(e) franca(e).
Jul 5, 2024 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
Because we collectively have the attention span of fleas, NYT hack prattling on about the election is what caught my and most people's eyes, but consider: If he's a terrible candidate because he's mentally absent, why is Joe Biden a sufficient President?
Others have asked this but stay with me here, I figure only 20,000 other people on Twitter have teased out the logical progression here.
There are two problems here, one partisan and one national.
May 28, 2024 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
No. Just no. A state might, out of generosity, move its electoral calendar to accommodate the entirely stupid act of a major political party; it does not, however, owe such a move to any political party. That's just dumb.
Alabama and Ohio: Um, that means you'll miss our ballot deadlines.
Dems: Because we are one of the two major political parties, you owe us a change in your laws to make our lives easier!
National Review: Good point, there.
May 22, 2024 • 41 tweets • 6 min read
This is one of my favorite old hobbyhorses. He's absolutely right, but the impulse of "the Dark Ages weren't actually dark" is both correct and incorrect and requires that we parse out that to which we're referring when we speak of shades of light.
Untangling the threads here is vital because literally everyone is right in some way in their staked-out position about a time that usually only vaguely and indirectly affects their day-to-day lives.
May 13, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
One of the reasons I used to do free self-defense classes for women is that -- a growing problem in my youth and a real and very large one now -- video and popular fiction have given girls the idea they have a chance toe-to-toe with a full-grown and angry man.
They don't. This nice young woman is apparently a fourth dan in tae kwon do, which makes her a master. She is therefore proficient in a number of melee weapons, can probably do tornado/hurricane round- and spin-kicks to make your jaw drop, etc.
Mar 26, 2024 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
The study of hegemons is one of those guilty pleasures of modern academia, and journalists are just dumb, so it's probably worth noting that this reflects much worse on Clinton and Biden than on Netanyahu.
We have enormous amounts of history on hegemonic control and governance from across the globe, and the consistent lesson is that well-governed hegemons tend to get what they want without breaking with, attacking, or openly undermining their client states.
Mar 16, 2024 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
So I flagged a couple of parts to come back to, and I want to point one out for special attention. I'll stop after this one.
The part that elicited the most rage on the left and most jaw-dropping on the right, the when did that son die? part, is, and I say this as someone with more than two decades of experience taking depositions, the hardest part to read.
Mar 15, 2024 • 20 tweets • 5 min read
Reading the transcript of Hur's interview of Biden (on top of breaking news since the summer of 2002!), I'm struck not just by the weirdness and meandering confusion, but by the fact that every major gaffe comes as Biden tries to Biden his way into not answering questions.
Seriously, there would definitely be some moments where Biden's advancing senility combined with his own starting sub-100 IQ would have tagged him, but if you've watched this guy for four decades, you can watch the trademark verbal spew filibuster degenerate into incoherence.
Feb 26, 2024 • 14 tweets • 3 min read
Feb 13, 2024 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
The thing about this stuff is that because we are governed by roughly two generations of morons, with the generations following that determined to unthrone the champs, decent policy dies either as the victim of the perfect or as the result of well-intentioned well poisoning.
Foreign aid is a powerful means of achieving ends we want done in the world at minimal cost in blood and treasure. That's a good thing! Smearing poo in a Russian dictator's face is also a good thing, as are making sure Israel and Taiwan continue to exist.
Jan 9, 2024 • 118 tweets • 17 min read
Riffing on this and the poor Zoomer girl video from earlier: I sometimes like to talk at length about how being a father of twelve, married for over 20 years, goes because Twitter tends to reward IT'S ALL PEACHES AND CREAM and THEY'VE TAKEN THE FINAL KEEP FALL BACK FALL BACK.
Americans of my generation were taught and internalized that our country had made a promise not to let another Holocaust happen, and to be a safe place for Jews to live; that Jewish Americans should be treated like everyone else.
Oct 28, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
"Downfall" was a truly amazing movie, simply one of the greatest of this century, but its greatest value may be showing to people who only learn from movies what a siege collapsing around a group of genocidal lunatics and their captive population looks like.
Nowhere in the law of nations of which the left is so fond when that law isn't benefiting the US or Israel is there a custom or proscription against sieges, destroying supply lines, or cutting communications unless one is targeting civilians; and "they'll get hurt" doesn't count.
Oct 24, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
Wait until he discovers how many Americans died at Pearl Harbor and how many Japanese died by the time the Pacific War was over.
Rather than just say, "FAFO, dipwad," because after all, the people of Gaza chose Hamas to be their government, I'd simply again note that "proportionality" in war refers to the [licit] military objective and not the casus belli.
Oct 23, 2023 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
There's a lurking issue we've all sort of skirted around is that the atrocities of October 7 are a reversion to the historical mean of human civilization, and a large fraction of the West -- the part proudest of the departure from the mean -- excuses or applauds it.
As one of the Men Who Thinks About the Roman Republic/Empire daily, i can tell you with enormous certainty how the Romans made war when non-combatants were in the way or at the end of the objective and the only difference from 10/7 is the lack of regimental standards.
Oct 2, 2023 • 19 tweets • 4 min read
Back in the early 2000s, when somewhere around a third of Democrats believed that George W. Bush either knew about 9/11 ahead of time, helped initiate/undertake it, or both for (oil/revenge on Hussein/Haliburton/pick), I thought this was partisanship and low trust come to roost.
When a non-trivial fraction of Republicans thought Barack Obama was a foreign national instead of, y'know, born in Hawai'i, I thought, ok, you've fallen for a Hillary Clinton ploy and you're letting him troll you but whatever.
Jul 10, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
As someone over the age of 45 who has actually paid attention to the news since the age of 4 or so, let me fill in some gaps for people who had better things to do with their time or were born after Clinton's inauguration.
Joe Biden once tried to get into a fight with, and, lying through his teeth about his academic credentials, got in a shouting match *with a potential primary voter in front of other potential primary voters and the cameras*.
Lots of cameras.
Jul 6, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One of the problems with legal commentary -- this isn't a shot at Megan, who doesn't get outside of her lane -- is that there's a profound mismatch between expertise and commentary, and it shows in things like the 303 after analysis.
It isn't even slightly puzzling to me that Colorado would have stipped to what turned out to be bad facts. Without repeating a thread from earlier, this probably made a lot of sense as a way to get a fast win in what they perceived was a favorable environment.
Jul 4, 2023 • 24 tweets • 5 min read
Holy crap on a stick it's a brain virus and it's spread through Twitter memes
I'm sure roughly a billion people have done this before but I am trying to finish out an operating agreement with an impossible condition set so what the heck, here we go. Let's play Supreme Court Opinions for Dummies/Angry Lefties/I Repeat Myself.
