January 28, 2018

At the Pump Track Café...

P1150859

... you can talk about whatever you like.

(And if you've got some shopping to do, consider using the Althouse Portal to Amazon.)

18 comments:

Achilles said...

Mueller investigation is going to be spinning like a top by the end of the week. Half the "team" was directly involved in the Fusion GPS/Crowdstrike FISA warrant application fraud used to get the warrant to spy on Obama and Hillary's political opponents. There will be more resignations/firings like Strzok's in July.

After the democrats "recover" from the memo release and pretend it is partisan the IG report is going to come out. The Inspector General that Obama fired is going to finish his work.

There will be no hiding then.

Big Mike said...

I don't see any rabbit tracks this time.

chickelit said...

I'm surprised there isn't a tire swing hanging from that oak limb. Just for the sake of bucolic aesthetics.

rehajm said...

Wisdom about Bitcoin.

rhhardin said...

Trump is in real trouble about firing Mueller, according to the lefty-leaning top of the hour radio news.

As Scott Adams put it, he'll be impeached for obstructing a witch-hunt.

Anonymous said...

A Russian ballet company was in town the other night, and we went to see their performance of Giselle. My husband remarked that it should be the official ballet of #MeToo. (Overlooking the anti-male animus motivating the procedure in the ballet, I do kinda like the idea of being able to dance one's enemies to death in a forest glen, and then toss them into a convenient nearby bog.)

Also, apropos of my remarking that this ballet has the stupidest story ever, he observed that ballet and opera are a lot like porn that way - the silly plots just exist as an excuse for the action you really want to see or hear.

Full of the aperçus he was, that evening.

Michael K said...

Some one here might be interested in this

This is a war over who runs the country. Do the people who vote run the country or does this network that can lose an election, but still get its agenda through, run the country?

We’ve been having this fight for a while. But this century things have escalated.

They escalated a whole lot after Trump’s win because the network isn’t pretending anymore. It sees the opportunity to delegitimize the whole idea of elections.

Now the network isn’t running the country from cover. It’s actually out here trying to overturn the results of an election and remove the president from office.

It’s rejected the victories of two Republican presidents this century.

And if we don’t stand up and confront it, and expose it for what it is, it’s going to go on doing it in every election. And eventually Federal judges are going to gain enough power that they really will overturn elections.

Trumpit said...

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man's permission when we ask him to obey it. Theodore Roosevelt

"Above the law" means you can break the law with impunity for some reason. What does "below the law" mean? Can anyone explain it? The law is not holy scripture (unless it is, i.e., the prohibition on murder). A law may be bad, cumbersome, foolish, unfair, evil, etc. In that case, one should endeavor to circumvent it, change it, or even outright disobey it with due consideration to the consequences.

Jupiter said...

Heh. I clicked over to National Review, to see what Andy McCarthy has to say about Trump and Mueller. There, across the top of the page, were some photo links to other NR articles. Front and center is a headshot of Jonah GOldberg, with the caption;

"Still An Idiot"

I am fairly sure that if I clicked this link, I would encounter yet another attack upon the man who prevented Hillary Clinton from taking over the country. But I am not going to do that. I am just going to marvel at how regularly, almost endearingly, his hapless enemies beclown themselves.

Jupiter said...

Trumpit said...

"Above the law" means you can break the law with impunity for some reason. What does "below the law" mean?

It means that just because you don't own a house, and don't have a job, so you can't rent one, that doesn't mean you have a right to camp out on public property. But of course, it has been a long time since any Progressive believed *that*.

Achilles said...

That is an excellent link Michael.

"Under Obama, states weren’t allowed to enforce immigration laws. That was the job of the Federal government. And the states weren’t allowed to interfere with the job that the Feds weren’t doing.

Okay.

Now Trump comes into office and starts enforcing immigration laws again. And California announces it’s a sanctuary state and passes a law punishing businesses that cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement.

So what do we have here?

It’s illegal for states to enforce immigration law because that’s the province of the Federal government. But it’s legal for states to ban the Federal government from enforcing immigration law."

Sprezzatura said...

Jupiter,

They've been highlighting that Jonah thing for a while.

I, too, thought it was pretty funny when I first saw. And like you, I also didn't click on it. No upside to finding out the context.

Kevin said...

Conflict theorists naturally think mistake theorists are the enemy in their conflict. On the object level, maybe they’re directly working for the Koch Brothers or the American Enterprise Institute or whoever. But on the more fundamental level, they’ve become part of a class that’s more interested in protecting its own privileges than in helping the poor or working for the good of all. The best that can be said about the best of them is that they’re trying to protect their own neutrality, unaware that in the struggle between the powerful and the powerless neutrality always favors the powerful. The correct response is to crush them.

What would the conflict theorist argument against the Jacobite piece look like? Take a second to actually think about this. Is it similar to what I’m writing right now – an explanation of conflict vs. mistake theory, and a defense of how conflict theory actually describes the world better than mistake theory does?

No. It’s the Baffler’s article saying that public choice theory is racist, and if you believe it you’re a white supremacist. If this wasn’t your guess, you still don’t understand that conflict theorists aren’t mistake theorists who just have a different theory about what the mistake is. They’re not going to respond to your criticism by politely explaining why you’re incorrect.

victoria said...

All this stuff about Mueller and the investigation being a "witch hunt" is a bit of wishing by the right. When all the bad stuff comes out and Trumpy is in trouble, they will be howling. Can't wait. Don't like the lefties but i can't stand most of the righties.


Vicki from Pasadena

Etienne said...

What does "below the law" mean?

I think he meant that any man should expect the law to apply to him, just as any other.

An illegal immigrant is below the law, because they have no respect for the law, or feel the law will be changed, and he will be able to steal his citizenship in the end.

After all, if Americans destroy 600k fetuses a year, what's a few thousand a month coming in to take their place?

rehajm said...

When all the bad stuff comes out

So far there’s been nothing but allusions and soft weasel words. What is this bad stuff? Articulate it for those of us who don’t see it.

tim in vermont said...

Magic Eight Ball Sez!:

When all the bad stuff comes out and Trumpy is in trouble, they will be howling. Can't wait.

tim in vermont said...

It should come as no surprise that the woman who got the FEC to ban a movie by Citizens United got the FBI to turn her oppo research project into a witch hunt against a sitting president.