February 27, 2018

At the Ambiguity Café...

IMG_1964

... it's all a matter of interpretation, no? Write about whatever you like.

The photo is from the boardwalks of Lake Wingra.

And please consider using the Althouse Portal to Amazon.

38 comments:

Humperdink said...

Which season?

Earnest Prole said...

The New York Times struggles to expose its readers to other people’s opinions:

“The Newsroom Feels Embarrassed”: Backfires and Explosions at The New York Times as a Possible Future Chief Re-Invents the Paper’s Opinion Pages

YoungHegelian said...

Holy Bejeepers, the story on the 2/8/2018 battle between American & Kurdish forces & Russian mercenaries & Syrians troops just keeps on getting worse & worse!

It's not the response of the Americans/Kurds to the attack. I mean, when attacked by an armed force, you strike back with everything you've got. Maximize their casualties, minimize your own.

But, the callousness on display by the Russians towards their own "irregulars" & the Syrians is just horrifying! For Russians to attack an American position is YUUUUUUGE in geo-political terms! YUUUUUGE! Why do something this amazingly stupid & poorly done? I mean, if your guys have nothing but rifles, it's pretty much over when the artillery shells start landing, isn't it?

Here's one link where one mercenary describes what happened. Even more chilling is the utter contempt for the life of his men shown by this "commander/recruiter" of the Wagner Corp in Russia.

The only thing I can think is that someone in the Russian hierarchy wanted someone in the chain of command of this operation to take a really big fall.

tim in vermont said...

The Charge of the Lightly Armed Brigade.

D 2 said...

A Russian with a callous attitude towards life & death??!?

Well I never!

D 2 said...

That said, your take that someone wanted someone else to fail sounds quite plausible. And Russian!

Megaera said...

Speaking of armaments, why has no one asked Sheriff Israel, or any of the Broward deputies/onlookers at the high school shooting exactly what weapons they had on hand at the time? My semi-rural small city, with nowhere even close to the tax base in Broward County, manages to equip its sheriff's department - not to mention police - with shotguns and/or rifles (carried in the trunk of their vehicles). Hard to believe Broward couldn't spring for similar equipment, and that at least one long gun wasn't at hand for the deputies at the school. And we managed to update (twice in 10 years due to advances in comm gear) the police/emergency communications system that covers police, sheriffs and EMS: what in the name of all that's holy is Broward County doing placing all its reliance on a 25 year old system that has long since proved to be grossly inadequate, and frankly, dangerous? What exactly are they actually spending their tax dollars on down there? Anybody know?

MaxedOutMama said...

Megaera - probably pensions. The last couple of years before retirement, you work a whole lot of extra hours, and all of a sudden your 75K pension turns into a 95K pension.

MaxedOutMama said...

Regarding the picture, I think Zeus would not be deterred. Sometimes its an advantage not to be able to read.

bolivar di griz said...


The chronicler of the wilderness of mirrors

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/02/the_real_clarice_feldman_shines_in_conversation_with_peter_boyles_of_knus.html

Nothing much happened

https://mobile.twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/968629851338039297?p=v

bolivar di griz said...


Reality revealed

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/02/27/brutal-murder-of-french-jewish-pensioner-sarah-halimi-will-be-prosecuted-as-antisemitic-hate-crime-after-all-french-court-decides/

Narrative defeated:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/02/university-study-schools-safer-than-in-the-90s-and-school-shootings-not-more-common/

Hagar said...

AA is interested in language.

Anyone noticed that the media has steadfastly persisted in calling modular semi-automatic rifles "assault rifles," and this has now gotten into peoples' heads to the point that even the "gun people" are talking about "assault rifles" ?

And if Congress go to banning "modular weapons," note that the venerable Colt SAA ("Gunsmoke," "Tombstone") is very much a modular design? Everything on a SAA comes apart and can be replaced with different parts to suit your needs or taste - even to adding a shoulder stock and turning it into a rifle.

Hagar said...

Can President Trump be indicted while holding office?
Aaron Burr served as vice-president of the U.S. while indicted for murder in the State of New Jersey.

bolivar di griz said...

This just in:
http://defenseone.com/technology/2018/02/russia-claims-it-now-has-lasers-shoot-satellites/146243

Amexpat said...

Cross country hurdling.

walter said...

"Megaera said... What exactly are they actually spending their tax dollars on down there? Anybody know?"
--
Pensions..

Left Bank of the Charles said...

I'm waiting for Althouse to blog on Monica Lewinsky's #MeToo. For example, what did Ken Starr mean when he told Monica, "I know. It was unfortunate." And there is this:

"'I'm so sorry you were so alone.' Those seven words undid me. They were written in a recent private exchange I had with one of the brave women leading the #MeToo movement. Somehow, coming from her—a recognition of sorts on a deep, soulful level—they landed in a way that cracked me open and brought me to tears. Yes, I had received many letters of support in 1998. And, yes (thank God!), I had my family and friends to support me. But by and large I had been alone. So. Very. Alone. Publicly Alone—abandoned most of all by the key figure in the crisis, who actually knew me well and intimately. That I had made mistakes, on that we can all agree. But swimming in that sea of Aloneness was terrifying."

Kathryn51 said...

So, Hope Hicks, a mid-level Trump campaign employee, testified for NINE hours today with the House Intelligence Oversight Committee. I guess she wasn't as special as Hillary (ELEVEN hours, remember - except for the potty breaks, lunch breaks, etc. etc).

She - like every single Obama appointee - claimed Executive Privilege for any thing that may have occurred after she became part of the administration.

But, like clockwork, here's the lede on my Bing page: "Hope Hicks resists House investigators’ questions about Trump admin."

But she resisted!

This is why we got Trump.

wildswan said...

Students walking out from schools over gun control should be marked as students in detention. Work should be assigned in every class missed to be turned in the next day. If the work isn't done they get zero. What this would do keep the walkout from being a police matter. It just would be a question of the student's record as they apply to college. These are duped kids. They simply cannot believe that Sheriff Israel would get up and talk about gun control on stage with Parkland kids if he was responsible for deputies and EMT not going into Parkland and saving lives. They don't think anyone could be that cold and calculating - because they are kids. They don't think an adult would trick them on such an issue - because they are kids. Being kids they simply can't see the world they are living in. They listen to Sheriff Israel because they are kids and that's why it's no use listening to them.

Drago said...

The only thing better than firing a "full semi-automatic" weapon is having a "white hispanic" fire a "full semi-automatic".

sane_voter said...

The Parkland TV teens are now getting help from major progressive organizations, including Everytown, Move On, Planned Parenthood, and the Women’s March LA.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/maryanngeorgantopoulos/parkland-teens-organization

Yancey Ward said...

Andrew McCarthy drills down to the core of the problem with the Carter Page warrant, and uses Schiff's Memo to make the point.

The problem is this- to get that warrant, the FBI and the DoJ needed probable cause that Page was an active agent for a foreign power, and was committing crimes as judged by the US penal code. If the Steele Dossier was the only evidence supporting this probable cause, it fails because the dossier's information is not only uncorroborated by anything else in regards to those specific allegations, there is literally no evidence at all that the FBI, DoJ, or the FISA court had any information as to who was making the first hand allegation that Page made those specific meetings. In other words, if this is the bar of probable cause, then there is no 4th Amendment protection against searches and seizures since all that is apparently required is for the government to claim there is a witness making such an allegation, and they don't even have to support this by demonstrating that the witness even exists. Remember, Steele isn't the source or the witness- he is a conduit. Really, this is why you have to show probable cause- it was supposed to make the government provide a good faith effort to prove to a judge that a warrant was necessary because the witnesses were in a position to know the truth, and that the witnesses exist. That wasn't done here, and the Schiff Memo pretty much confirms this, though Schiff is perfectly happy to have such a toothless form of probable cause in this particular case.

cf said...

Belatedly, i am haunted at that fashion show latest attempt to normalize beheadings here, treating them as another accessory option. It is noteworthy to me that beheadings are so alien to our American habit, and that makes me glad.

But what really creeped me out this week was the "do not share my talk" by Barack Obama, oof! Makes me see anew the Serene media Police State that we would be swaddled with by now had his successor succeeded.

Thank enlightenment Goodness for the electoral college.

Yancey Ward said...

In other words, the bar is supposed to be set so that it isn't possible to make up probable cause easily, nor for it be easy for a personal enemy to ensnare you in an investigation by lying about you. This is why you have the hearing in front of a judge who has to sign on the warrant- he has to be convinced that the witnesses against you aren't imaginary, don't have known biases against you, and probably aren't telling knowing lies about you. Most of the time, you will also have an addition layer where you can challenge warrants and the evidence collected if you are charged with a crime, so the government agents have an incentive make sure they are on the up and up with their warrant applications. In this particular case, though, they were likely willing to play fast and loose since Page was never really a target for prosecution, and so would never challenge them to produce the true sources Steele was representing.

Yancey Ward said...

That the warrant application appears to come no where close to being probable cause is evidence itself that the target was Trump and his campaign all along. It will interesting when the FBI is eventually forced to hand over the material collected using the Page warrants- I bet little of it has to do with Page at all.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Can we put this in the catalog of bourgeois unawareness?
[Marx's] fellow author, Émile Zola, reports that Flaubert was infuriated by bourgeois blankness in the face of great art.
According to Wikipedia Flaubert was born on 12 December 1821, in Rouen, in the Seine-Maritime department of Upper Normandy, in northern France. He was the second son of Anne Justine Caroline (née Fleuriot; 1793–1872) and Achille-Cléophas Flaubert (1784–1846), director and senior surgeon of the major hospital in Rouen.
What social class did Flaubert think was not blank before before great art? Illiterate peasants? Aristocratic nobles & churchmen? Nabakov believed that both fascism and marxism were creations of the bourgeois. Can't we real people do something about this dreadful social class?

Michael McNeil said...

The Charge of the Lightly Armed Brigade.

They weren’t that lightly armed. They had tanks and armored personnel carriers. It’s just that all of those (except for one each) were destroyed in, like, the first 2 minutes. Nor is it clear that even if they’d had, say, RPGs (which one of them complained about not having), it would have helped all that much. Against an artillery barrage — much less a B-52 bombing run — what can a rocket propelled grenade do?

Michael McNeil said...

Michael Yon just announced (from another account) that he has been banned for 30 days from Facebook.

Yon included Facebook's message indicating the cause of the ban was a one-line posting reading:

“Koreans sure are easy to fool. They even think Chong Dae Hyup* is on their side.”

*Chong Dae Hyup: a leftist group which pushes the fake “comfort women” mythos trying to divide South Korea from Japan and the West — which even CNN described as “a prominent organization believed to have ties to North Korea.”

As Yon said: “Imagine changing the name ‘Koreans’ to ‘Americans’. Facebook is a player in the information wars.”

exiledonmainstreet, green-eyed devil said...

"They simply cannot believe that Sheriff Israel would get up and talk about gun control on stage with Parkland kids if he was responsible for deputies and EMT not going into Parkland and saving lives. They don't think anyone could be that cold and calculating - because they are kids"

They are, however, perfectly willing to believe that Dana Loesch and 5 million other NRA members don't care if kids die. So yeah, they do think people can be that cold and calculating.

rhhardin said...

Radio Japan takes comfort women as true but already settled. Korea is trying to renegotiate for more money or something, and Japan is taking the position that an agreement is an agreement and that's that. A new administration can't reopen a contract with a previous one.

Humperdink said...

cf said: "But what really creeped me out this week was the "do not share my talk" by Barack Obama, oof! Makes me see anew the Serene media Police State that we would be swaddled with by now had his successor succeeded."

And yet, and yet ....... Trump is the Fascist.

Bay Area Guy said...

Chappaquidick - The Movie is finally out.

It's a political thriller. A rich famous powerful, married Dem Senator throws a party with his married male friends and 6 young ladies (not their wives), gets drunk, drives one of said ladies to beach for late night romp, drives off a bridge into the drink, saves himself, lets girl drown, tries to hide it, uses powerful ex-DOJ staffers and attorneys to subvert criminal investigation, saves own skin politically, goes on to run for President - but girl is still dead.

I give it 4 stars. Check it out.

Curious George said...

What exactly are they actually spending their tax dollars on down there? Anybody know?

Well, on things like this:

https://i.redditmedia.com/GNx8Pw3TvgkXj2zNxUceZ85nPO3Mgy7B3sR21PPqT7I.jpg?w=1024&s=97acd0413241e25881f7b033b0ec2b5f

tim in vermont said...

”’I’m so sorry you[Monica] were so alone.’ - Liberal Woman in a private message.

A “private” exchange, private. Look at our trolls here, not a one of them will recognize how they sold themselves and their purported values out for Bill Clinton. The She Troll was adamant on this point. “Lous CK was worse!”

grackle said...

Recently I posted a comment revealing that I was plagued by the worry that President Trump might be assassinated. I don’t much worry anymore whether he will succeed as President. It is becoming obvious that Trump is going to out-think and out-maneuver his opposition. He’ll make mistakes; he HAS made mistakes and no doubt he’ll make more. Even a genius can be occasionally wrong. Einstein was wrong about certain aspects of quantum physics but he also changed the world of science (and probably everything else). He was WAY more right than he was wrong.

Now I have a new candidate for worry. It’s Jordan Peterson. Like Trump he burst upon the public scene out of nowhere and almost everything he says enrages the SJWs. Peterson dashes their victimology worldview against a wall of science, logic and commonsense. He is fueled by an apparently encyclopedic reading of such diverse disciplines as philosophy, history and literature as well as his own professions – which are clinical psychology and as a full-tenured university professor. Like Trump he is transformative.

His influence is growing rapidly but so is the hatred directed his way. Peterson, like Trump, is a game-changer. Game-changers are almost never appreciated by those whose game is being changed. And it IS a game, a deadly game, that they play in the cesspools of identity politics into which much of our academic community has become mired. If the SJWs succeed it will mean the end of freedom as we have come to know it in the West and in particular, America.

I frequently lose my concentration while viewing his videos because so many things he says sends my thoughts into so many directions. I’m forced to pause and mull. Very few figures have ever affected me to this degree. I worry that this brilliance could so easily be snuffed out.

grackle said...

The only thing I can think is that someone in the Russian hierarchy wanted someone in the chain of command of this operation to take a really big fall.

Putin was testing Trump’s resolve. Now he knows … Trump shoots back.

Michael K said...

"Very few figures have ever affected me to this degree. I worry that this brilliance could so easily be snuffed out."

Another Psychology professor in Canada who follows his lead is under attack.

Mehta bills himself as a free-speech advocate trying to build bridges across political divides, but critics say he perpetuates harmful stereotypes and is simply seeking attention.

"He's just sort of parroting the much more popular Jordan Peterson. He's very clearly just trying to piggyback on that to gain a certain notoriety," said Matthew Sears, associate professor of classics and ancient history at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton.


Well, we can't have that, can we?

grackle said...

Another Psychology professor in Canada who follows his lead is under attack.

Peterson’s example will no doubt encourage others in academe to speak up against all the malicious nonsense that happens on campuses these days. He believes bullshit departments like Feminist Studies, which are SJW factories with no valid methodology or scientific basis, should be de-funded. It’s all watered-down Neomarxism 101, taught from the “feminist viewpoint,” with a generous portion of man-hatred, especially against “white male privilege” recipients, thrown in for good measure.

So he represents a danger to their livelihood as well as their fucked-up so-called “philosophy,” their unearned social status and their stranglehold on the debate. We would never have heard of him without the existence of YouTube. Otherwise he would have been just another guy fired from his job for mouthing off.