Transcendent

Forget politics, did you watch the eclipse? The best description I have heard was Bill Whittle's who said he totally forgot himself and was merged into an immesaurably larger moment. It was an awesome experience and a moment that I shared. It was amazing how much light was emitted by even a sliver of the sun and when it blacked out altogether, the light went cold, if that be possible. Then it was back with a sudden diamond-shaped burst of pure light that you could view for a fleeting second before it became too bright. A foreshadowing of seeing the face of God. 

Until Death Do We Part

And yet another example of you can't fix stupid: Ami Horowitz has a must-see video in National Review where he leads street Lefties in NYC down the primrose path, giving them plenty of opportunity to believe their own eyes, but N-o-o-o-o, they instead stay with the herd:

Well, if you want to lose faith in humanity and see the stupidity of hipster liberals in New York City, this is the video for you. Ami Horowitz took to the streets to talk about income inequality with some of the most insufferable people on the planet: progressives. Of course, they all felt it was a critical issue. One man was a member of the Working Families Party in the state. So, which country can we look to for guidance in solving this issue? How about socialist hellhole Venezuela? It’s the nation with rolling blackouts, inadequate medical supplies, no toilet paper, no food, and rampant crime. Venezuelans are looting to survive, where people are eating pets and eating out of trashcans. With food supplies running low, government-run committees have been set up to assisted with distribution, but for those who have criticized the government, no food for you. That’s 21st Century Socialism.

Watch the video. Facts don't matter - are you going to believe your own lying eyes or what the latest Party line is spewing? Well, I guess we now know. 

townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2017/08/23/young-progressives-on-socialist-hell-hole-venezuela-hey-its-better-than-the-us-n2371772

Pol Pot Would Be Proud

Victor Davis Hanson asks in his column what are the rules for the Progressive Left in assaulting the dead like Robert E. Lee, Jefferson, etc. I suspect he knows the answer - there are no rules. The Left is trying to erase history except for whatever is convenient for their cause du jour. If history is what you say it is, you are always on the right side of history! Pol Pot would be proud - power is the only truth and it justifies anything done in its name. 

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2017/08/24/the-progressive-war-against-the-dead-n2372320

Time to Turn Down the Heat to Simmer

I was in Colorado last week and had the opportunity to talk at some length with a retired military officer who served several tours in Iraq and Afghanistan about what the U.S. should do in the latter country. President Trump has now decided that we're sending in more troops, but that was definitely not the advice of the retired officer who had served high up in the command structure. 

According to this officer, we cannot win in Afghanistan short of nuking the whole country because it is a boiling cauldron of tribes who hate each other with a dash of terorists thrown in. At best he thought that if we hired mercenaries to work with tribes whose interests aligned with the U.S. (at least for now) we could probably keep an eye on the bad guys and take them out when necessary, meanwhile leaving the tribes to their games. This is the strategy that worked so well when we went in after 911 and cleaned house. Air power would still be necessary but not ground troops. It is not a country that is geographically suited to the "Big War" approach with armor and large troop movements, etc. but he thinks that this is the war that high level military leaders insist on fighting. 

David French in National Review comes to the same conclusion from a strategic angle:

“Killing terrorists,” Trump says. Afghanistan has its share of terrorists, but what it mostly has is an endless civil war being fought among rival tribal interests in a rugged and empty part of the world that mostly has served only to get in the way when you’re marching your Macedonian army toward India. “Killing terrorists” in Afghanistan is not a national military goal with a defined set of conclusory conditions and a working definition of victory — it’s an eternal game of Whac-a-Mole using U.S. forces as the toy mallet. If concluding our efforts in Afghanistan before Islamic radicalism has been exterminated there means handing a victory to the ghost of Osama bin Laden — who is, let’s keep in mind, dead — then we are never leaving Afghanistan."

www.nationalreview.com/article/450719/trump-afghanistan-war-enough-enough

He's right. We're not going to be able to "nation build" and we're not going to embed democaracy. We need to have enough presence to identify the bad guys, go in when necessary and take them out, and then leave. It's time to learn from out past mistakes. 

Observation Point

“To not know what happened before one was born is to live as a child.”

                                                                             

Cicero

Nicely Done

On a classier note, the Chicago Cubs have awarded a World Series ring to Steve Bartman. Steve who? Bartman was the fan who reached out and grabbed a probable catch of a foul fly from the out-stretched glove of Cubs' left fielder Moises Alou in Game 6 of the 2003 National League Championship Series. The Cubs had the wheels fall off after that and the entire city blamed Bartman for the Cubs' el foldo and bombing out of the series. He received death threats and all sorts of continuing invective for years afterwards. The Ricketts family, who now own the Cubs, say they wanted to finally put an end to this unfortunate chapter and did so very visibly by awarding Bartman a ring. To err is human; to forgive divine. Well done Ricketts family!

www.breitbart.com/sports/2017/08/01/chicago-cubs-award-controversial-fan-steve-bartman-world-series-ring/

Things Do Indeed Look Different Here

Oregon used to have an advertising slogan promoting travel to our state: "Things look different here!" No kidding. How different? Well, the Senate just confirmed Christopher Wray as the new FBI Director on a vote of 92-5. That's an unbelievably bipartisan vote in these days of hyper-partisanship but guess which state's senators - both of them - were on the short end of the vote? Yup, Wyden and Merkley from Oregon. I guess when you have your head where they do it does look different. Not better, but definitely different. 

www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/08/oregon_sens_wyden_merkley_vote.html#incart_river_home_pop