Author: Jonathan Mitchell

So quick to pass moral judgements on others but blind to themselves. They criticize the US for changing a policy about recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, while they are negotiating removal from the EU. They change the policy of Europe in actual substantial form, while the US changes a mere form: much of the city called Jerusalem is within the 1967 borders of Israel and that is what the US has recognized. Now of course the Arabs don’t want to recognize Israel at all, so they conflate ‘Jerusalem’ with the Old City and they, of course, threaten violence if they don’t get their way (because they are the people incapable of sharing), but that has nothing to do with what the US recognized, which is the label of Jerusalem inside Israel. So what gives Britain the right to criticize the US over a change in policy that was a sham? If you go to visit the Israeli government, as Britain does, you go to Jerusalem. If you give a speech in Israel, it is in Jerusalem. That’s different from the actual, substantial withdrawal from the European Union, meaning the British (typical) pass judgement on others while being unable to look in the mirror to see themselves. That is what they are. That is what they always have been.

I tend to harp on this because Americans don’t grasp the essence of actual ‘American exceptionalism’. It isn’t ‘we’re the greatest’ but that our Founders decided after much discussion and argument that it was important for the American people to be responsible for our own moral destiny. That is what Lincoln referred to at Gettysburg: government of the people, by the people and for the people. That is what he meant about fighting a war to see if that form of government could survive. Britain, by contrast, gave its moral sovereignty to the Crown and through the Crown to Parliament. It is no accident the British were ruthless imperialists, ruthless slavers, ruthless exploiters of the Chinese drug trade, ruthless occupiers of Ireland: they as individuals are ‘moral’ if they follow the ‘moral’ directives of the Crown, when they do their duty as Englishmen or whatever as the Crown morally imbues them with the obligation and power to do. By contrast, when the US took over the Philippines, that was only because Germany would have taken it if we hadn’t and we gave it up after some years of unhappy rule because we as a people are uncomfortable morally with imperialism. We decide our moral destiny. People – especially the British of course – like to refer to the American Empire but it’s not one of occupation at all or of ‘Empire’ in the colonial sense of Britain. It’s influence and trying to do the right moral thing. We put troops in W. Europe, almost entirely at our expense, because we didn’t want Europe overrun by the USSR. That was in our interests but it was also rather obviously about spending the money because we were morally invested in freedom.

I’m bothered that the press, at least nationally and in the northeast, doesn’t talk about the moral trade-offs they are essentially demanding from people in Alabama. They want people to vote against Moore, but the issue is that Moore’s opponent is very pro-choice, that he says there should be no limits on a woman’s right to an abortion. Alabama is perhaps the most anti-abortion state and huge numbers there believe strongly that abortion is government-sanctioned murder of innocent children, that it is unforgivable. They face a real dilemma: do they vote for a guy who has hit on teenage girls or for a guy who wants to murder children? It’s not simply that Alabamans will vote for a repugnant Republican over a decent Democrat but that this decent Democrat is also indecent to many Alabamans. The press barely touches this aspect.

I have an iPhone X. I put a case on it – a terrific one by a company called Mous Unlimited – and then put on a screen protector. The case takes away a layer of elegance: the phone feels and looks like jewelry and, though the case is nice, it can’t approach that level. The screen protector takes the beautiful, absorbing screen and makes it ordinary. I need the case. I ditched the screen protector, in part because I just can’t take the difference between the real screen and the protected version, and partly because I ‘bought’ the phone from Apple and it comes with AppleCare, which means I only pay like $29 to replace it if I crack it. With the protector on, the elegant gestures remain but they felt like a knock-off, as though this weren’t an X but was instead a phone pretending to be an X. With the protector off, I don’t get the visual and tactile sensations of beauty of form but I get those in the screen images and through the elegant interactions with that screen.

Walking out of the gym today with a friend of that name, so I adopted the Agent Smith voice and he immediately complained that people bugged him with that all through high school. Funny.

I’ve long believed in jarring the body with impact. Some of that is hitting, which also frees up motion in joints and across connected muscle chains, and some is literally jumping. I’ve done a few searches and can’t find anything intelligent about why this is good. It is, to me, the ability of the body to absorb impact shifted to your legs and core. It strengthens the joints and teaches the body how to align itself for ‘falls’ or other impacts. Remember, when you jump down, you decelerate when you hit the ground and that means you absorb not only your resting weight but the ‘weight’ added by gravity accelerating you down. I’ve also been doing more bunny hops up stairs, meaning jump both legs at the same time without hand assist – though sometimes with a guide hand touching a hand rail to make sure I don’t fall on my face. This is more ‘plyometric’, though to me the benefits are largely in getting the mind to recognize the efficient motions for jumping are essentially the same as a kettlebell swing, a deadlift hip snap, etc. I seem to be alone in this but I think there’s more value in jumping down because absorbing impact is more useful, as in you need to get away from something or need to get at something and that is more likely to require changes in elevation that include jumping down because you’ll actually tend to clamber up something instead of bunny hopping. I mean jumping down is efficient real world stuff, but bunny jump up is an exercise for a gym. This is why I practice stepping up and over obstacles, and stepping up and jumping off obstacles.

I found 10lb ankle weights in a drawer at the gym and put them on. The effect was different than expected: I didn’t get more tired but I generated more power hitting. Thought about what I expected and realized not being materially more tired makes some sense because I was moving my feet and legs more slowly to account for the extra weight. Thought about what I experienced and realized – this is the neat part – that I hit the bag with my weight and it hits back at me until my weight is canceled and that means when I put on ankle weights my body now weighs more from ground up through core so when I hit the bag doesn’t hit me back equally hard unless I hit harder and I can hit harder because the bag doesn’t ‘negate’ my punches until I hit harder. Love this. Have to be careful with the weights on the ankles: move the legs more up and down to avoid a knee strain.

Interesting watching them on SNL because they seem to desperately want to be relevant though they are not relevant. I split infinitives on purpose.

I saw half the Democratic senators want Al Franken to resign. This leads to these thoughts. First, do they know more? That is, the stuff I’ve seen is pre-politician, so why are they demanding he resign? Has he done more they know about while in Congress? Second, is this a purity drive? Can’t tell and those are unproductive in general so I downgrade the possibility, though I accept the idea it may be one. Third, is this a strategy? As in, make one of ours resign to increase pressure on Trump, leading to resignation or impeachment for his past conduct with women. That has some appeal but it has risk: it’s not given the GOP won’t win the seat after a short-timer is appointed to fill it. And there’s risk of course that Trump won’t resign because he was elected President and what the other party says is meaningless to him.

I found these two paragraphs interesting. Note the first makes it sound like there’s been a massive increase in arrests away from the border, and then the second paragraph clarifies that 92% had criminal convictions, were a fugitive or had already been deported and had re-entered. I saw a graph in one paper that said 92% is the highest percentage ever.

‘Overall, in FY 2017, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) conducted 143,470 arrests and 226,119 removals. Notably, from the start of the Trump Administration on January 20, 2017 through the end of the fiscal year, ERO made 110,568 arrests compared to 77,806 in FY2016 – an increase of 40 percent. During the same timeframe, removals that resulted from an ICE arrest increased by 37 percent, nearly offsetting the historically low number of border apprehensions, a population that typically constitutes a significant portion of ICE removals. Total ICE removal numbers for FY17 (226,119) reflect a slight decline (6%) from FY2016 (240,255), largely attributed to the decline in border apprehensions.

ICE continued to prioritize its resources to enhance public safety and border security, which is demonstrated by the data, which reflects that 92 percent (101,722) of aliens ICE administratively arrested between January 20, 2017 and the end of FY2017, were removable aliens who had a criminal conviction or a pending criminal charge, were an ICE fugitive, or were an illegal re-entrant.’

I’m not a fan of many of Donald Trump in general but I respect some things. One is that he seems willing, that he has the personal courage, to do unpopular things because the status quo is not producing results. One example is his continued pushing forward of healthcare. I have complicated points about that but I respect that he’s essentially forced the GOP to do something. What we end up with is a question mark but the cobbled together crap of Obamacare couldn’t last and we need to have a real conversation about healthcare as a nation but couldn’t if we were unwilling to take a step. In my opinion, for example, a single payer is the right choice but I don’t see how one is constitutional given the limit on Congressional power and the need to ‘take’ entire industries by nationalizing them. The heath insurance business alone has hundreds of thousands of jobs – not counting family, related businesses (like marketers, etc.). There is nothing in the Constitution that says Congress has the power to nationalize industry. So I believe we need to talk this through. Maybe we won’t.

I’m also interested in the seeming move of the US embassy to W. Jerusalem. That it’s West Jerusalem is often not mentioned: that’s inside the 1967 borders so it doesn’t affect East Jerusalem at all. But more importantly, the Arab world relies on threats of violence to maintain a status quo of paralysis. That has to be broken up. I also think the US should defund UNRWA. I just saw a report in which ‘Palestine’ is listed as containing the 10th most ‘refugees’ though all these people are Palestinians. How can they be refugees in their own country? The fiction of permanent refugees maintains the conflict that everyone says must be solved, which of course means they don’t actually want to solve it. Prior Presidents haven’t had the courage to upset the apple cart, to call the Arabs on their threats. I remember when Saddam Hussein promised the mother of all battles when we invaded Iraq. Maybe they mean it this time, but not a day goes by without threats from the Arab world so why do we choose to take this one seriously?

Another is that I like the idea he’s himself. I gather people want their President to appear reasonable, meaning to keep his unreasonable behavior behind closed doors. All those self-righteous pundits at news organizations that have protected sexual predators in business and Hollywood and in their own companies want a President like Bill Clinton. You know, articulate and reasoned as he abuses women in private. And the continuing media love for manwhore John Kennedy. JFK was articulate and reasoned and brought Mafia-connected prostitutes to the White House and everyone in the press covered up for him because they prefer their men to act one way in public and another way in private.

And I like the way he upsets the idea of ‘daylight’ in an Administration. I mean the stupid way the media has covered politics for years has been to report how people say things to note if there’s ‘daylight’ between positions. Which the administration then denies. Trump openly criticizes his people and they openly acknowledge disagreements. But again, people want an appearance of conformity because that’s reasonable and articulate and predictable instead of seeing the reality that people disagree and still do their jobs.

I wish I agreed with more of his actual positions.