Fish Fear Me

The Realpolitik Of Egypt

More violence in Egypt today. All of the players are locked and loaded according to the various reports I've read this morning. Supporters of the coup are armed and manning their own checkpoints to augment the police and Egyptian Army ones as Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters have brought their own weapons to their continuing protests and marches. It's anyone's guess how much worse it will get today than the 17 reported dead so far, but the conditions are there to exceed the 600+ dead from Wednesday. 

We rightly recoil from the violence in Egypt, but we also have to be realistic about the complicated factors driving it and the limited ability for the US to positively influence events right now. In fact, ill-advised statements and empty threats to the current regime are far more likely to do harm to our own interests while doing nothing for the Egyptian people. Given what is on their plate right now, it is no surprise that the Egyptian military scoffs at the frankly stupid reactions from Obama, Kerry, and Hagel the last couple of days.

As we watch the grim news from Egypt, here are some points to keep in mind:

• The coup was inevitable. President Mohamed Mursi's massive blunders in his first year brought Egypt to the brink of chaos. He had lost control of the bureaucracy, the police, and the army. The ability to just feed the people was in grave doubt. I don't think people understand how close Egypt was getting to total collapse. The coup has brought in massive aid from other Arab states, money that would never have been pledged with Mursi in office. That has forestalled economic collapse and starvation for now, but it is only temporary. Egypt must get on a track to long-term economic recovery and stability.
• The Muslim Brotherhood is not a moderate group. It never has been and it never will be. Just because they chose to not use violence in the past does not change the fact that their Islamist ideology is profoundly oppressive, intolerant, and ultimately anti-democratic in the Islamic state and caliphate that they envision. This is their motto and it is not just some empty slogan:

“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Read each of those five points and dwell on their deeper implications. They believe that anything outside of those statements, anything, must not just be opposed, but eventually forbidden everywhere. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood has not directly sponsored terrorism and is realistic about their ability to achieve their goals at this point in time does not change their core philosophy. No matter what they say or how they hide it, they hate the Jews, they hate the Christians, and they hate the United States and everything we stand for. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

• I think the Muslim Brotherhood wants this fight in hopes of forcing the army itself into the fray. The regime is using the civilian police forces against the pro-Mursi forces and wants to avoid dragging the army into direct attacks against civilians. The fear is that a significant number of troops will refuse to fire on their own people and the army will split apart. It's a realistic fear and the Brotherhood sees it as a way to beat the regime, despite the enormous damage it would cause to all of Egypt. I don't think the Muslim Brotherhood cares about that anymore. Their taste of power has driven them mad.

What Egypt needs right now is control and stability. In a perfect world we could all rightly get on our high horses about peace and love and democracy, but Egypt right now is far removed from a perfect world. It's terrible to see hundreds or even thousands killed and injured in these clashes, but if Egypt collapses then millions of lives may be lost in the resulting chaos.

That's the big picture in Egypt. Instead of spouting platitudes that are actually counterproductive and destroying what little influence we have left with the Egyptian military, the Obama administration should be urging restraint on both sides while working with the regime to stabilize the situation. As unpleasant as that regime may be, they are the only power that can keep Egypt from spinning completely out of control. In the meantime, the Muslim Brotherhood has to be told in no uncertain terms that they must concede or be crushed. There is no other alternative that doesn't leave millions of Egyptians dead.

North Shore Scenes

Shore-fishing Mink Lake again, I had company for about an hour:

It didn't even laugh at me. Much.

Lichen Lake:

Crescent Lake:

Fall River, just before it empties into Lake Superior:

Of Texters And Shushers

I only came across it today, but former Google executive Hunter Walk sparked a bit of an internet firestorm about a week ago when he proposed a separate, and separate is the key word here, type of movie theater where talking and using electronic devices during the movie showing would be perfectly acceptable. I would expect such an idea to go over like a lead balloon with most theater-goers, after all it wouldn't be my type of good theater experience either, but the cascade of negativity at even contemplating such a separate venue from normal theaters was so histrionic that it became comical. Equally comical is the inevitable backlash to the backlash that showed up yesterday from the supremely idiotic Anil Dash. But let's start at the beginning.

Walk's initial spitballing can be found here. The gist of it is that he no longer goes to see some movies these days because following the normal theater etiquette is annoying to him. In those cases he would like to be able to stay plugged in and multitask in whatever manner with the movie in the background. Making it very clear that he does not wish to impose that on the rest of theater-goers as the norm, he wonders if there's a market to reconfigure one or two separate theaters of a multiplex to accomodate that sort of very different theater experience.

Well, from the reaction you would think he was calling for mandatory cigarette smoking in every theater in America, including for kiddie movies. Check out the comments there. I understand people who say they would hate such a theater, but what many are saying is that they are offended by the very idea, even if it would have no impact them. "How dare anyone even consider such a thing!"

So tell me, when did a significant number of theater-goers turn into the Rev. Shaw Moore from "Footloose"? 

As if the backlash against Walk's idea wasn't ridiculous enough, Anil Dash had to go to the other extreme and demand that "the shushers" should simply give way to the barbarians and just deal with the distractions. Besides, politeness in a theater is some sort of social conservative oppression. Or something.

And maybe racism, because there's gotta be a racism angle if social conserv........zzzzzz.

Dash concludes with this:

But those of us who are okay with movie theaters sometimes having distractions are here. We’re the majority. We’re normal. Your bullying hasn’t worked. The only logical next step is to find a way to accommodate us. Or you could do that thing where you turn around and glare really fiercely—it seems to be working great!

Or I can get the usher and he can either knock it off or get thrown out. Or I could go all George Costanza on his ass:

 

As emotionally satisfying as I know that would be, I really don't want to get thrown in the clink if some numbnuts decides that he really does want to fight about it. Thankfully I haven't had to make that decision yet.

We should be able to deal with stuff like this more rationally. If you think playing with your phone or texting in the middle of a typical theater showing is okay, you're an asshole. There's really nothing to talk about. The theater staff should kick you out and you don't get your money back. See ya.

On the other hand, if some theater wants to show a movie in theater 1 in the traditional manner and in theater 2 as a texting/surfing-friendly environment, as long as people are aware of the difference what's the problem? I doubt there's that big a market for it, but if somebody wants to try then let him. 

A "Real Men Of Genius" Kind Of Day

Yesterday the hits just kept coming: 

"Real Man of Genius" #3: Sen. Dick Durbin.

Remember those debit card transaction regulations that Dick Durbin and friends made a part of the so-called Financial Reform a couple of years ago? The first round of unintended consequences were stalled by some compromise measures put in place by the Fed. However, a federal judge has recently ruled that the compromise violates the plain wording of the law and not only must fees be drastically reduced even further, the banks must pony up for expensive programming changes to the system overall. You can read all about it here.

Either the judge will be overruled on appeal, Congress legislatively fixes what Durbin completely fucked up, or debit card users will be hit with additional fees from every bank that issues them. Forget about competition, no bank is going to provide debit cards solely at the transaction rates the court has ordered, and apparently the law demands. It's just a matter of the other fees they'll charge.

"Real Man of Genius" #2: Tom Friedman.

It astonishes me the many ways that our pundit class contorts themselves to avoid or ignore the primary impediment to peace between Israel and the Palestinians. That is, the Israelis want a peace agreement, the Palestinians want Israel destroyed. Until the latter changes, fostering negotiations about settlements or anything else is not "Daring to Fail" on the part of John Kerry and the US State Department, it's completely pointless and stupid. 

If the Palestinians really want to immediately freeze Israeli settlements on the West Bank and immediately bring enormous international pressure on Israel to remove the most objectionable, all they have to do is concede Israel's right to exist. Not as far as any particular border arrangement or anything, just the simple right to exist.

They won't. They can't, because their hatred of Jews and Israel is greater than their love for their children and their future. The rest is all just pointless theatre.

One special bit of assholery from Friedman at that link is this bit:

Let’s start with a small item in Britain’s Independent newspaper on July 24, which began: “He once sang, ‘You Gotta Get Outta This Place,’ but now Eric Burdon is not even turning up at all having deciding to withdraw from a planned concert in Israel. ... The Animals frontman, whose hits include ‘House of the Rising Sun,’ and ‘San Franciscan Nights,’ had been due to perform alongside local Israeli bands in Binyamina. ... However, in a statement, Mr. Burdon’s management, said: ‘We’ve been receiving mounting pressure, including numerous threatening e-mails, daily. ...’” Burdon was just the latest of a rising number of artists and intellectuals who have started boycotting Israel over the occupation issue.

When I read that this morning, that last line ended with quote marks, attributing it to The Independent article. It has since been corrected to show that those were Friedman's words instead. 

Giving Friedman the benefit of the doubt that it was simply a misplaced quote mark initially, what kind of a mental midget would take threats and intimidation, enough to make the artist's managers want to cancel out of fear for his life, as a sign that he's joined some boycott? Instead of covering for them, Friedman should have come down on the side of decency and condemned the thugs. 

For the record and to his credit, Burdon went to Israel anyway and rocked the house. Meanwhile, Tom Friedman is still rocking the outhouse that The New York Times has become.

Real Man of Genius #1: Barack Obama.

Can you imagine the endless airtime and ink this would have received had George W. Bush said it when he was the POTUS?

  

"If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, South Carolina, or Savannah, Georgia, or Jacksonville, Florida — if we don't do that, those ships are going to go someplace else."

Curious how so many in the media who love to play "gotcha" with Republicans are silent now.

Even dumber is Obama's fixation about "supertankers." With Leno he said "The Panama Canal is being widened so that these big supertankers can come in." He also mentioned supertankers two weeks ago in Jacksonville. The thing is, the American ports Obama mentioned need to be deepened because bigger container ships will now be able to transit the Panama Canal. The East Coast ports in question are all being deepened to 50' or so, still allowing far less draft than tankers in the coastal class or smaller.

But hey, crude oil or TV sets, what difference – at this point, what difference does it make?

Whoa

I don't know about you, but this is straight out of one of my childhood nightmares:

Two children died after a python got into an apartment in Campbellton, N.B., RCMP say.

"Police are investigating two sudden deaths of two young boys," Const. Julie Rogers-Marsh said Monday.

It's believed the snake escaped from a pet store called Reptile Ocean. The victims were boys aged five and seven. They were visiting a friend in the apartment above the store, police said in a statement released Monday.

Rogers-Marsh said the preliminary investigation led police to believe that a python snake escaped its enclosure at the store sometime overnight. Initial information indicates the snake got into the ventilation system and then into the apartment upstairs.

If you want to add to your horror just google death by python and note the disturbingly large number of cases where these reptiles have escaped and killed someone.

I don't get why somebody would keep a pet like that. Or animals such as big cats that end up being too much for their owners and taken to sanctuaries, which I think we've talked about here before. 

You all know me and my libertarian leanings, but I don't get why we don't ban these sorts creatures being sold. I don't mind so much if somebody kills himself with this sort of stupidity, it's when their stupidity escapes and starts killing others. Enough of this sort of horrifying nonsense.

True Or False?

Feel free to rate the following statement:

Visiting a car dealership is a miserable experience that probably ranks somewhere between an IRS audit and a colonoscopy on many people's activities' list. 

It doesn't have to be true or false, I can see the possibility of some nuance in quite a few answers.

I don't think I've ever had a miserable dealer experience. The key for me has been letting the salesperson know what I want and having the willingness to walk away. And homework. You have to do your homework on what's out there and at what price. Back when, that meant scouring the newspaper ads and walking the lots. Now we have the internet.

And "haggle-free" dealerships. The last two vehicles have been used and bought from haggle-free dealerships. You like the price or you don't. If you don't, keep looking. Both places had their inventory online too, so I could check features and prices before I even set foot on the lot. 

So the answer for me is "false." I would much, much rather walk the lot and listen to some salesperson drone on than get an IRS audit or a colonoscopy.

As for the main point of the article, dealership requirements for manufacturers, I guess I don't really know enough to have an opinion. My default position is governments shouldn't dictate the distribution channel unless there's a compelling and constitutional argument for doing so. How that fits I with the article I haven't read far enough to know.

Magnificent Monday

We've had a nice summer here so far, though it has been a bit dry lately. That was fixed by a nice band of showers that swept through overnight and dropped about .75" of rain. I walked out the door this morning and everything seemed cool and refreshed.

It appears my hopes that Vikings QB Christian Ponder would come into training camp and tear things up are all for naught. I've read multiple stories that are consistent in noting his inconsistent throwing so far. It appears there are two main concerns with the team at this stage: A young secondary on defense that could get regularly torched until they gain some experience and Christian Ponder's ability to be a real passing threat. Some people are already predicting that backup QB Matt Cassel will take over at some point. I'm not going to jump on that bandwagon yet, but like a lot of people, I'm poised.

How a baseball player can strike out on one pitch.

I'll pass on the test tube hamburger. The effort to try to figure out how to grow meat artificially is supposedly because the demand for it is growing so fast that it will become environmentally unsustainable within decades. You want to make beef herds more sustainable? Stop sending the corn that could feed them to ethanol plants. Oh wait, we can't do that because it could very well pop the bubble in farm land prices and spin us into another financial crisis. Trapped by yet another policy screw-up from the supposed geniuses we've put in charge.

The sad story of a fawn named Giggles had a little bit for everybody looking to get their outrage on. Animal rights folks could get outraged that the fawn was killed. The anti-cops folks from around the political spectrum could get outraged about the dozen officers "armed to the teeth" who descended on the animal shelter. The hunters could get outraged at the stupidity of the animal rights folks and the anti-hunters could get outraged at the callousness of the hunters.

Lost in all of that is that this whole thing could have been avoided if the Illinois family that "rescued" the fawn had done the right thing and instead called the Illinois DNR if they thought the animal was in distress. They might have euthanized the fawn or more likely they would have let nature take its course, one way or the other. That sounds harsh, but that's nature's reality. I'm open to discussing whether the Wisconsin DNR could have handled the situation better, but I'm sympathetic with the overall policy that takes into account the bigger picture. 

Really?

Perhaps it is my mostly vanilla Minnesota upbringing, but I've never heard of this until now:

"For a lot of particularly African-American community members, the phrase brown bag does bring up associations with the past when a brown bag was actually used, I understand, to determine if people's skin color was light enough to allow admission to an event or to come into a party that was being held in a private home," Bronstein said.

People used to calibrate skin color that closely? Really? 

Oh, I guess it was a black thing back in the day.

Please pardon my vanilla white, knee-jerk thinking that it had something to do with white discriminatory practices.

Bobos And Bubbles

Mathew Continetti skewers the New York Times in today's Washington Free Beacon:

A sort of pep talk to the liberal bourgeoisie, Democrat and Republican, is what the New York Times under Jill Abramson has become. One reads it to confirm rather than challenge one’s perceptions of the world. No mystery what those perceptions are: The Republicans are no good, the president is doing the best he can, equality marches on, America is powerless to influence other countries, illegal immigration has no downside, the government should not be trusted except when it regulates the economy, “institutional” (i.e., invisible) racism plagues contemporary society, traditional religion is a curiosity, etc. Reading the transcript of the president’s interview is valuable because it allows you to see just how self-contained the bobo world is. The paper and its intended audience, in this case the president, form a closed circuit.

Read the whole thing.

It was all the rage three years ago to talk about how "epistemic closure" was ruining the conservative movement, but there is probably not a thicker information bubble in the world than the one surrounding your average New York Times reader. That's because the Times no longer sells information, it sells narratives, regardless of their basis in reality.

That's not to say they don't present their readers with facts, they do everyday. They've just scrubbed out most of the ones that might be inconvenient to any desired narratives. Or if they do manage to present an inconvenient fact or two, it's with a skepticism reserved only for them.

All the news that's print to fit.

People are fearful these days for any number of reasons, but they're pissed because they don't think our intellectual, political, business, and academic elites and leaders are listening. And they're not, partly because they have been able to build an economic reality for themselves that is fairly insulated from the trials and tribulations of most Americans and partly because the Times and others give them a false sense of what is important. 

Gas prices? Who gives a shit about gas prices? Jobs? No, let's put all of our efforts into gun control and immigration reform. Obamacare turning America into a nation of part-time jobs? Krugman says no, so that's good enough for me. So thinks the NY Times reader.

Reality in flyover country is this:

We don't want food stamps, we want an end to government agricultural policies that make food so much more expensive.

We don't want a government subsidy to buy a hybrid that's still out of reach for most Americans, we want energy policies that will put energy prices back toward their historic levels and not the new normal that is squeezing the average consumer and small business alike.

Instead of gun control for law-abiding individuals, how about fixing the Democratic Party-controlled ghettos where the vast majority of gun murders take place?

We don't want more student loans that turn the next generation into wage slaves before they even get their first real job, we want an end to the policies that have driven higher education costs through the roof.

And on and on. 

I'm pretty sure that your average New York Times reader doesn't even come close to getting that perspective. 

Sorry Devin

If I cared about the NFL Pro Bowl to begin with I might feel his pain:

The NFL and NFLPA are billing the modified Pro Bowl as "the ultimate fan-friendly celebration of the game" but Devin Hester says he never has seen a football game begin without a kickoff.

Kickoffs have been removed from the league's all-star game and captains now will select the teams after players from both conferences are voted into the event as usual. There no longer will be a spot for return specialists as an extra defensive back for each team will replace them.

I think they should just turn the Pro Bowl into a multi-player first-person Playstation game. The players and refs could just log on to Madden 3000 and we could all watch it online from whatever perspective we chose.

Let's face it, there would be a heck of a lot more action and it would have the added benefit of being more realistic.