Chalkley took none of this seriously. Who would? As Wales Online described the inquest testimony, Chalkley “said she put the comment down to Mrs Sabine making it up, because she had heard nothing on the news which would tally with what she had said during their conversation.†After the telephone call, Chalkley said that death by stone amphibian — “Watch out or I will frog you†— became something of an in-joke among her family members. …
For 18 years, no one believed the woman who said she killed her husband with a stone frog. Then…
“It is beyond doubt in my mind,” a coroner concluded Thursday, “…that foul play was at the cause of his death.”
At Ricochet, the King Prawn is simultaneously pessimistic and consolatory.
Even by the time of the formal creation of the governmental structure employed in this nation we had already started on a long downward slope, pulled inevitably through decline and toward destruction by the great weight of human nature. This trend should come as no surprise to conservatives because we have studied history. We know that from the pinnacle of our founding everything else would be downhill. At the close of the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin said:
In these Sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its Faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the People if well administered; and I believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.
The cry for socialism and despotism has been long coming, but not unforeseen. The problem for Franklin wasn’t that we had created an inadequate government but rather we would become an inadequate people. He was right. He looked to the past and saw what had gone before, then looking to the future he foretold what would be the fate of this nation.
While arguing in favor of our new form of government even its most ardent supporters feared the havoc which would be wreaked by those entrusted with power. As James Madison stated it in Federalist 51:
But the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others. The provision for defense must in this, as in all other cases, be made commensurate to the danger of attack. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. [emphasis mine]
We could imagine the founders would be shocked if they saw the state of our nation and our people today, but I doubt they would find it so surprising that we proved them wholly correct. Government is a reflection of human nature, and the government we have (and are about to get) reflects perfectly the character of those who inhabit this nation and make up a majority of the votes cast. We elected a despot with his pen and his phone because we’ve become incapable of electing any other kind of leader. In a few short months we’ll elect another, only this time our choices are limited to an even more corrupt and criminal politician or a conman who promises to be an even more effective despot than the last. Neither candidate sees as the problem the concentration of power in one branch or one person. They believe the only flaw is the concentration of power in the wrong person.
I said in the beginning that conservatism acts as merely an anchor. Some may see the nation foundering on the rocks of human nature and believe that conservatism has failed. It has not. In any other time or place the crash would have come sooner, the destruction more violently, the catastrophe more severe. We’ve done the job well, and we will continue to do what we can until the whole thing comes apart, or until the chain breaks and we lie useless on the bottom as the nation sails unhindered across the seas of time to its inevitable end.
Ben Schott, in the Spectator, imagines The Man of the Hour putting in an appearance in the World of P.G. Wodehouse. Trump inevitably reminds Bertie of Roderick Spode.
I sat alone at breakfast, forking my E and B …, when a haircut burst into the room closely followed by a bovine gentleman the colour of turmeric.
‘Ah, you must be Worcestershire! Your uncle Tom has told me all about you.’
‘It’s Wooster, actually, but call me Bertie, everyone does.’
‘And you can call me The Donald,’ barked Trump, setting about the breakfast dishes like a haystack in search of a needle.
Taxes ? Healthcare? Trump is on the record on both sides on nearly all of these issues but, although he does talk about reducing some taxes on businesses and lowering the top tax rate, he has also been promising to raise taxes on the wealthy, and he has, more decisively than on any other issue than the Wall, come out for single-payer Universal Health Care. “I’m going to take care of everybody. … The government’s gonna pay for it.” (Breitbart)
Immigration? Well, Trump plans to build that ridiculous and symbolically-atrocious Wall, and I believe he would probably do that, but he also (unrealistically) has promised to deport 12 million people. The vision of weeping women and crying children being herded at bayonet-point to deportation cattle cars probably does please some of the Alt-Right Nativist crowd, but artfldgr is overlooking the fact that Trump has also, in the course of making those promises, repeatedly also promised that “the good ones,” i.e. the illegal immigrants lacking criminal records, would be allowed to return on “an expedited basis.” (Hot Air)
Pro-Life? Planned Parenthood? Well, the old, pre-presidential candidate Donald Trump was a basically religion-free, high-living playboy, who was, as of 1999, “very pro-choice” and probably a donor to Planned Parenthood. (On the Issues) What with running for the GOP nomination and all that The Donald “has evolved.” But he hasn’t evolved so much that he did not have five different positions on abortion in three days.
The argument that Trumpshirts most commonly employ in demanding that more discriminating conservatives should fall in line and start supporting Trump has to do with the alleged superiority of his Supreme Court appointments to Hillary’s, and just yesterday Trump released a list. That list was a good list, but… did that list really mean anything?
Ilya Somin, this morning, responded, pointing out that you just cannot trust Donald Trump about those appointments, any more than you can trust him on anything else:
When he discovers that most, if not all, the people on the list would be at odds with his longstanding commitments, a President Trump could decide to nominate other jurists, who are more in line with his own longstanding preferences. And he could easily find any number of excuses for deviating from the list.
Longstanding commitments count for more as an indication of Trump’s (or any candidate’s) real intentions than campaign ploys. Moreover, as co-blogger Orin Kerr points out, Trump admits that the list is not a true commitment but merely one that he plans to use as a “guide†because it is “representative of the kind of constitutional principles I value.†A “plan†to use the list as a “guide†is not the same thing as a commitment to choose only people whose names appear on the list.
In sum, we should not be fooled. Trump’s list is not a true commitment, and it does not outweigh a consistent record of opposing important constitutional rights and limitations on government power. There is still every reason for principled advocates of limited government to continue to oppose Trump.
Strong Defense? Under Trump, it’ll be Yuge. It’ll be the greatest, the absolutely best Defense. Trump will have a wonderful Defense. After all, he was sent as a teenager to military school, and he has the equivalent of combat experience, he has assured us:
Draft-dodger Donald Trump once said that the danger he faced from getting sexually transmitted diseases was his own “personal Vietnam.â€
In a 1997 interview with shock jock Howard Stern, Trump talked about how he had been “lucky†not to have contracted diseases when he was sleeping around.
“I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era,†Trump said in a video that resurfaced Tuesday on Buzzfeed, “It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.â€
Israel? Well, Trump has doubtless promised to be a friend to Israel. (He certainly is not going to offend Jewish voters in New York City.) But… Trump has also associated himself with Isolationism, and invoked the (thoroughly discredited) pre-WWII America First movement. There obviously a certain large quantity of historical illiteracy at work here, but that kind of talk was quite adequate to alarm a large number of US allies (Reuters) including Israel (Haaretz).
Basically, when you come right down to it, Trump has been on both sides of most issues. Trump has only the dimmest understanding of policy issues. Trump is poorly educated, not well-informed, and un-intellectual by temperament. Trump is unprincipled. He values fame, money, and success, and he is indifferent to ideology and ideas. Trump is very, very obviously extremely selfish and the crassest kind of pragmatist. He isn’t conservative, because he isn’t anything in the political ideology department. He is just for Trump. If he slipped into office, Donald Trump would have a great time. He’d bang more White House interns than Bill Clinton ever did, possibly occasionally on live television. He would feather his own nest, and he’d do things for people in a position to assist him or the Trump Empire.
He would probably forget everything on artfldgr’s list the morning after the Inauguration, and when it came time to appoint the next Supreme Court justice, he’d be about as likely to name his sister, former Apprentice Omarosa, Judge Judy, or Kim Kardashian as anybody on the list some right-wing expert drafted for him to release yesterday. By then, Trump will have forgotten all about that list and lost the original copy. He will have completely different fish to fry, and he will no longer need your vote. Once he no longer needs you, the Art of the Deal says you are irrelevant.
The Bridgeport Rig was patented by Louis S. Flatau of Pittsburg, Texas in 1882 and manufactured by the Bridgeport Gun Implement Co., of Bridgeport, Connecticut. One’s Colt Peacemaker could be drawn quicker by simply sliding it in a straight line forward from its clip, and it could even be fired potentially faster still by leaving it attached and just swiveling the gun.
I’ve heard of this before, but Fred Sinclair has some details I didn’t know. Apparently, they actually sold 500 of the rigs to the US Army. It’s not hard to see that soldiers wouldn’t like them. A Bridgeport Rig could be just the thing tucked away under your long coat for a night gambling in the town saloon, but it would be a trifle insecure, bouncing around on top of a horse, and for field duty you’d want a holster with a flap, not an arrangement that left your expensive revolver completely exposed to the weather.
Elmer Keith wore a Bridgeport rig as did James Gillett when he was Marshall of El Paso, Texas in the 1880s; it is sometimes referred to as the “Gillett Rig” for this reason.
Casanova’s detailed recollections of half a century of restless activity is one of literature’s frankest and most honest self-portraits. He was not without vanity but in his writing he is open about his qualities and failings. He emerges as a man of many contradictions: a freethinker and staunch Catholic, a sceptical rationalist and a practising necromancer, a free spirit and establishment boot-licker, a man of principle and an opportunist, a scoundrel, a snob, both coward and hero, at ease with persons of every class, generous, mean, clever and stupid, a cheat who was gullible, a con man who was easily fooled.
If his bouncing optimism makes him such an engaging picaro, his observant eye and openness to experience qualify him to be an exceptional witness to the world of the Enlightenment. Casanova was comfortable with himself and at home wherever he went. Rome, Vienna, Prague and Paris were stops on a circuit frequented by the same church dignitaries, ambassadors and bankers, the same travelling merchants, actors and singers and the same cast of itinerant scoundrels, prostitutes and outcasts. His Europe was cosmopolitan vertically and horizontally, a permanent travelling circus where high and low rubbed elbows in the same salons, gambling houses, theatres and bagnios. His stamina was phenomenal and not limited to his endless machinations and amours. He crisscrossed Europe from Venice to Moscow to Paris and Madrid covering many thousands of miles in unsprung, unheated coaches on unmade roads at 6 miles an hour. A modest day’s travel in a carriage meant five or six hours’ trundling towards a night’s lodging in a flea-bitten inn. Yet he loved to travel. Travel offered adventure, new sights, the chance of meeting new people and, not least, time to keep up with his reading. In 1759, in a chaise from Paris to Amiens, for example, he read d’Holbach’s deterministic essay, De l’Esprit. He did not think much of it.
Intellectual curiosity and an appetite for books led him to an eclectic view of the world derived from writers ancient (from which he quoted constantly) and modern. He drew his moral ideas from Horace and Pierre Gassendi, and his rational view of God’s universe from Locke, Newton and their Enlightenment successors. He never developed a philosophy of his own, but was quick to see the flaws in the philosophies of others. He told Voltaire to his face that his war on superstition was wrong-headed: teach a man to believe in nothing and he will, as Chesterton would later observe, believe in anything. Rare among his contemporaries, he saw that Rousseau was a masochist who planned a world tailored to suit his failings. Politically, he loved kings, but conceded that whatever the regime the common people invariably suffer. He loathed the French Revolution, which destroyed his world, and hated the violent terrorist RobesÂpierre whom he regarded as the fundamentalist spawn of the disturbed “visionaryâ€, Rousseau.
Katherine Timpf, at National Review, reports on a new record in something-or-other set by students at Cal State-LA.
Students at California State University–Los Angeles have set up a “healing†space to deal with pain they were caused by having Ben Shapiro speak on campus — even though that speech was three months ago and most of them didn’t even go.
“On February 25th, our campus experienced immense hurt and trauma,†states the description for the event, which will take place on Tuesday night.
“Almost two months later, students are still feeling the emotional, mental, and physical effects that this event posed, and nothing has been done to facilitate our healing,†it continues. “How can we help each other heal and move forward? How were you affected emotionally, physically, psychologically?â€
Here’s the real kicker: According to Young Americans for Freedom program officer Amy Lutz, who attended the event, most — maybe even all — of the kids involved in this event didn’t even go to the damn speech.
