Please forward [this] to people in Lakewood [New Jersey]. I gave [Rabbi] Yeruchum Olshin [May he live for many good days, Amen], [a] ride this morning and [he] said [that] I [may quote him that is, Rabbi Olshin] in his name to vote for [candidate] Trump because [the authoritative commentary on Jewish law and practice explains] [King] David [had] 2 [failings] and [David] didn’t lose [his] kingdom, but [King] Saul [had] only one [failing] and lost [his] kingdom. Why? [The] answer is [because] David’s [failures] were in his private life but Saul[‘s] [failure] was in [relation to] the [kingship] … [albeit it is all distinguishable] [Rabbi Olshin] said Trump is [low] … in his private life but Hillary [is] corrupt in public office. [quoting Rabbi Aaron of blessed memory]… Forward to everybody!!
Anglosphere
Is This Really the Ukraine?
A few years ago, Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands was both popular and esteemed. I found it an uncomfortable but powerful read. I mentioned it and two students – a Russian Jewish student whose grandfather had fought in the Russian army, been tortured in one of the Russian purges, but died loyal to Stalin and a student whose ancestors were from those borderlands ordered it. (My mention was cursory; it was after all American lit; both were hungry to know more about the obscure world of their ancestors.) I gave it to a son-in-law, who had heard Snyder discussing it with intensity and even despair. I can remember discussing passages with colleagues in philosophy and history – especially lies spoken and assented to as the truth stood (and died) before their eyes: families starved, Stalin argued, to sabotage Stalin. Snyder’s aim and success was to make that unreal world and its victims live. He eloquently countered the great arrogance of Stalin’s assumption (so often proved true) that a million deaths was merely a statistic. Of course it was futile no one person can make millions live on a page. An intense experience to read, Snyder’s research must have truly looked into the abyss. Today, I tracked references at Chicagoboyz; several praised it. I haven’t read his later works.
Seth Barrett Tillman: This Is What Is Wrong With The American Judiciary
Excerpt:
For example, judges, like anyone else in any other role, want a reasonable amount of time to meet their responsibilities. So a compressed briefing and argument schedule is onerous. But all temporary restraining orders are onerous in just this way. That being so, it is difficult to credit why this all too common fact of judicial life is among the “worst conditions imaginable.” Bybee’s overstatement here is palpable.
Even more problematic, Judge Bybee states that “intense public scrutiny” is another of these “worst conditions imaginable.” That is a problem. Judges have extraordinary public power. They are supposed to be scrutinized, and that includes scrutiny by the wider public. The only legitimate question is whether the scrutiny is fair, not how “intense” it is. The First Amendment does not end at the courthouse door, nor do parties’ First Amendment rights end because they find themselves dragooned into litigation.
Moreover, it is wholly “out of … bounds” for an American judge to instruct litigants that their out-of-court statements are inconsistent with “effective advocacy.” Even if not specifically intended, the natural, probable, and expected effect of the dissent’s language is to chill constitutionally protected speech.* It amounts to a directive, from the court** to the lawyers before it, to instruct their clients to shut up during ongoing litigation. Bybee’s extraordinary language here demands a response from the public, the wider legal community, and the elected arms of the government.
UPDATE: I Was Wrong
Dominic Cummings: How the Brexit Referendum was Won
Dominic Cummings explains how the Brexit referendum was won. Cummings was the Campaign Director of Vote Leave. He was in effect the executive director of the Brexit referendum campaign. This article explains how it happened. It is also long and rambling. But read it all anyway.
It is full of many interesting observations and various insightful, epigrammatic comments:
Most of the MPs we dealt with were not highly motivated to win and lacked extreme focus, even those who had been boring everybody about this for decades. They sort of wanted to win but they had other priorities. …
This lack of motivation is connected to another important psychology the willingness to fail conventionally. Most people in politics are, whether they know it or not, much more comfortable with failing conventionally than risking the social stigma of behaving unconventionally. They did not mind losing so much as being embarrassed, as standing out from the crowd. (The same phenomenon explains why the vast majority of active fund management destroys wealth and nobody learns from this fact repeated every year.)
This happens all the time, not just in politics.
President Trump: Hire Mike Lotus
Mr. President,
As you form your administration, I have one recommendation for you: hire my friend Mike Lotus.
Who is Mike Lotus?
Mike Lotus is a fierce and passionate servant of Jesus Christ, patriot, and father. He loves his God, these United States of America, and his wife and five children.
Though these loves are the center of his world, they might not strike you as things that should single him out as someone worthy of your attention. Great to have, you might say, but why should I care? Many of the fellow citizens of our America, the greatest nation of history, love and serve their God, love and serve this nation, and love and serve their spouse and children. Many of those, in the wise (and weary) words of my own beloved mother, herself a mother of six, have been crazy (and devoted) enough to have given this republic five citizens as Michael and Jean Lotus have.
My, you New Yorkers are a tough lot. Let me mention a few of the many things that should persuade you to hire Mike Lotus.
In his day-time job, he is Michael J. Lotus, attorney at law, practicing in Chicago, Illinois. He is an experienced warrior of law, fighting for the same overlooked Midwesterners whose love of country allowed you to pierce Mrs. Clinton’s formidable blue wall and win the presidency over the near universal scorn of those that have led this great nation into shame.
On top of the demands of his law practice and his large and busy family, Mike has also somehow found enough time to be a fearless advocate for the conservative cause and loyal volunteer for the Illinois Republican Party. This can be a lonely and thankless job, especially in the harsh blue wilderness of Mrs. Clinton’s birthplace and President Obama’s chosen hometown. Yet he continues to go out, watch the local polls, and fight the good fight for the GOP in a town run by Democrats so dedicated to civil rights that they believe that no-shows, the dead, and the fictional deserve the equal right to vote in our nation’s elections. In a town where the dead rose en mass for JFK in 1960, Lotus-scale exorcisms are too small on their own to stop legions of the dearly departed pressed into voting one more time for the city machine. But you become a determined and experienced exorcist in the face of such chronic outrages and, in the demon-haunted swamp you are descending into, you need all the great exorcists you can get.
Mike is a fighter in the arena of ideas. With his good friend James C. Bennett, he wrote America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come. In America 3.0, Mike and Jim lay out one road toward making America great again. While they differ in some details from your emerging plan to keep America great into this new millennium and beyond, in the larger thrust and spirit of their program they are in accord with the direction you want to take this country: up. It never hurts to have men of practical affairs who can double as men of practical ideas on your side. In Mike (and Jim), you’d hire a man who hits these two and other marks. Consider it a multitude-to-one deal, something well within your art.
Mike and I differ on a few points of policy. For example, I’m a mercantilist and a protectionist and he’s a staunch advocate of free trade. We’ve had some energetic debates on this and other topics. Yet Mike has always been a good sport even when, as I too frequently do, I get lost in rhetorical excess. When the tide, as it sometimes but rarely does, goes against him, he salutes and does his duty like a good soldier and carries on with your ideas as if they were his own. It is a rare quality in these days where comprehensive indoctrination is often mistaken for thorough education and a brave and uncanny ability to regurgitate the views of the entrenched and powerful on demand is conflated with intelligence and insight that Mike can mix independence of mind and loyalty without leaving either shortchanged.
You can’t fake authenticity, as your opponent in the recent presidential election so readily demonstrated.
Hire Mike Lotus. You won’t be disappointed.
Godspeed,
Lynn C. Rees
Murray, Utah, USA
December 11, 2016