The Trabuco Canyon Airport Fire

 

This fire was touched off yesterday from sparks when an Orange County Public Works crew were using heavy equipment to move large boulders. Efforts to put out the flare-up failed, and the fire quickly began to consume hundreds of acres along the hillsides of the Trabuco Canyon area near the City of Rancho Santa Margarita. At about 5 pm yesterday (Monday), the fire had consumed about 700 acres. By this morning the fire had consumed some 9,300 acres and is still 0% contained.

Today isn’t just the day after the debate

 

Other than tiny blurbs on what the current candidates are doing to mark the date, I have found very little to commemorate or solemnify the date. Even on Ricochet, there is one post that mostly just states our lack of progress in defeating Islamist terrorism.

Today is the anniversary of one of the worst attacks on US soil. Civilians were killed in an attack that forever changed the political landscape and our daily lives.

9/11: We are Still Losing

 

We lost the war to transform Afghanistan and the Arab world.  Our leadership class still refuses to accept the truth that the Islamist ideologues continue to make material and ideological war upon us and our allies. We cannot bear to fully accept that Iran is making war in Yemen, Lebanon, Gaza, Ukraine, and Syria with plans to attack other targets–including us.

We are not permitted to notice, much less discuss, the fundamental problems of trying to integrate Muslim populations into secular Western culture.

She Won; He Lost

 

You can analyze the presidential debate as much as you like, but the data isn’t relevant when you look at how both candidates were perceived by the viewers. And it wasn’t good for those of us rooting for Trump.

Trump came off as a curmudgeon (is his age finally catching up to him?), bitter and whiny; unable to stay on track to make the arguments that would have effectively dismantled Harris. He was stuck in past disappointments (as she pointed out), and he wasn’t able to demonstrate dignity and presence. And his bragging (an old habit that raised its ugly head) was annoying and ineffective. Viktor Orban?

The Squirrels’ Tale

 

In early May of this year, I was taking out my garbage cans to the front curb the day before they are picked up, just like my neighbors do in the late afternoon with their garbage cans. When I turned to head back into the house, I heard a faint chirping sound and looked up and noticed this little guy clinging to the trunk of my tall palm tree. (right)

He was clinging to the tree at about seven feet off the ground and stared at me intently. He didn’t look sick or in distress (though I’m not a certified squirrel whisperer), and I wondered where his mom might be. After some time had passed, I assumed that perhaps a predator like an owl or a hawk had snatched his mom and flown away. The other predatory birds that keep an eye on the critters in our neighborhood are turkey vultures. A few years back, a turkey vulture snatched a rabbit that had been frequenting my backyard, then flew over the house with it and set it down in the middle of the street in front of my house, and within seconds had torn it apart…while momma and baby turkey vulture watched from a nearby tree across the street. So, it’s certainly possible that the little squirrel’s mom had been met with a similar fate.

As I stood talking to this little guy, it was starting to get late, and I had to check on my son and think about turning in for the night. I phoned my local Animal Control office and was instructed by the woman answering to leave the squirrel alone and that he would find a way to survive. Well, while I wasn’t convinced that she was correct, I also wasn’t really inclined to handle the little squirrel or bring it in the house, and thought that if a bird had spotted him, he would likely burrow further into the palm tree’s bark for protection…at least I hoped he would.

Jeff is joined by Drs. Chris Burkett and Rob Wyllie, professors of Political Science and Political Economy, respectively, in this recording of a special live episode of The American Idea. Is there a connection between free enterprise and national prosperity? What is free enterprise, anyway? What kind of economy did the Founders envision for America, and how would that shape Americans and our public life and politics? Consider these questions and others that sit at the foundation of America and our experiment in free association and self-government.

#freeenterprise #liberty #jefferson #hamilton #americanfounding

That Debate Thing

 

If you lived it, this was a somewhat similar morning to this on 23 years ago. The sky was clear like it is today. Temperature is cool but comfortable. For those who went to work in Manhattan or over at the Pentagon or in that field in Pennsylvania- we have been to all three locations, one of them that morning, it was a bracing and refreshing day of the new season. Until it wasn’t.

About this time on a bright morning in 2001, nearly 3,000 innocent people were brutally murdered. Two of them were shipmates from other places. Things changed.

Quote of the Day: Politics Everywhere

 

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion.
C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory

One of the most annoying things about the left is how it has infected every aspect of our lives with politics. Ask yourself: “Compared to 20 years ago, how many ‘politics-free’ spaces do I enjoy now?”

Donald Trump has debated President Joe Biden this cycle – and Tuesday night had the task of debating Vice President Kamala Harris and David Muir and Linsey Davis of ABC News.

Ann and her guest Ryan Girdusky break it down.

Pool Night’s Been Postponed

 

This is the text that my husband got today.  It seems the “debate” of all debates managed to move that sacred evening to tomorrow night.  Several of the male neighbors get together to play, but the proper name is Billiards, Bourbon and Beer with a few dark pretzels thrown in.  Everyone wants to tune in, since it seems the only time Harris will talk to Trump.  In fact, they supposedly have never met.  I heard they like to play-act in California, so someone dressed as a Trump has been her practice partner.

Newsom play-acted as governor and ordered the massive tent cities to be cleaned up and dismantled when Harris, their Senator from California, won—I mean, was positioned—the Democratic nomination for President in 2024.  He spiffed up the place just at that moment.  The drugs, homelessness, mass illegal border crossings, and lawlessness are all still there, but there isn’t a big enough rug to sweep these problems under that she has ignored as a senator.  It looks better, though.

Haitians Taking Nine Lives from Harris Campaign?

 

Fifty-one present and former intelligence officials have signed a report that stories of disturbing behavior by illegal aliens in Springfield, OH and Aurora, CO are consistent with Russian disinformation.  Bill Kristol has suggested that these towns may not even exist.

The Aurora, Colorado story of local officials surrendering buildings to Venezuelan gangs has been given professional MSM treatment–mandatory silence until it goes away. However, the story of Haitians eating cats has been much harder to suppress from social media and has sparked enormous pushback from the Harris-Walz campaign and its media surrogates.  I suspect this is because their internal polling has confirmed Sen. Vance’s observation that their core constituency really is the single cat lady demographic.  Additionally, liberals actually care about whales, cats and puppies rather than the poor and minorities they only pretend to like.

Trump and His Bulletproof Wall

 

How did we reach this point? Why does a President, who is failed terribly by the people who are supposed to protect him, consigned to speak behind bulletproof glass? Is the glass a legitimate solution to the pathetic performance of the Secret Service?

I don’t have the desire or strength to list all the errors and oversights that resulted in the assassination attempt against Trump. There are far too many details to be confident that it was only carelessness and not taking the situation seriously for us to be reassured that only ineptitude was at fault.

Joe Selvaggi talks with Travis Fisher from the Cato Institute about the rising costs and increasing fragility of the New England power grid, as green capacity incentives distract from neglected infrastructure.

Guest:

Washington’s Weak Excuses For Restraining Israel

 

We are less than a month away from the first anniversary of Hamas’s bloody breach of a cease-fire, which launched war in Gaza. This war should have ended months ago with a decisive win by Israel, and would have done so if not for the interventions of the Biden-Harris administration. By putting all the pressure on Israel to reach a cease-fire on just about any terms, so long as they are acceptable to Hamas, the Democrats have strengthened Hamas’s bargaining position while delaying an end to the conflict.

Representative of the administration’s mindset is the latest apologia for the Biden-Harris regime, written by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, grandly titled “How Netanyahu Is Trying to Save Himself, Elect Trump, and Defeat Harris.” This hit piece begins by accusing Benjamin Netanyahu of dragging out negotiations with Hamas over the release of the hostages, and purports to hold him accountable for the death of six Israeli hostages (one with dual American citizenship) who were shot in the head by Hamas leaders. Later in his essay, Friedman does briefly refer to the real villain of the situation, Yahya Sinwar, as a “murderous Islamo-Fascist leader” to make the point that it is “also” (along with Netanyahu) in Sinwar’s interest to prolong the war for two ends: first, to create massive strains in the now fragile US-Israel alliance, and second, to provoke internal discord in Israel.

Election and Campaign Fatigue

 

We are fortunate to have some newcomers posting insightful and intriguing posts to balance out the dominance of politics that has taken over most of us in this election cycle. It’s wonderful to read some new “voices” and get a mix of perspectives.

I am fortunate to have loyal followers and I deeply appreciate them. But how many times can those of us who compose posts write about Kamala or Walz or Trump or Vance? How many different ways can we write about the border or the economy or Marxism or lies or the media (but I repeat myself)?

What Maria Theresa Taught Me About Ruling

 

In the Shadow of the Empress is a long Kindle read that moves from the Austrian queen Maria Theresa’s life to those of her daughters in France and Italy and then back again to royalty’s doings in Austria. Besides some dense historical background up front, the story is immersive and turns these figures from the past into warm human beings. So I’m glad I soldiered through and learned what it took to be in charge back in the 1700s.

1. It’s possible to take your job seriously as a monarch. Somewhere, I got the impression that monarchs pretty much hung out in the castle, used up the national treasure on exquisite objects, languished as sickly heirs, did cruel stuff, contracted syphilis, went insane, beheaded people on trumped-up charges, and had mistresses. Power and riches just went to their heads. And I wasn’t wrong; all this did happen. However, there was actually important work to be done, and kings and queens undertook these tasks to varying degrees.

Quote of the Day: Robert E. Wood on the Classics

 

One summer a student of mine was working as assistant to a Texas Utility lineman who discovered that he was majoring in philosophy. “Philosophy!” he said. “I love Plato’s Republic!” When asked what else he read in philosophy or even in Plato, he said, “Nothing, just the Republic. Whenever I finish it, I start all over again, rereading and rereading.” The man had discovered a classic, a work that has been reread innumerable times by reflective readers throughout the centuries. As I tell my students, Aristotle gets smarter every time I read his work.

Robert E. Wood in this book, page 181

The five things Trump must do when debating Harris this week, plus three bonus predictions!

Stuck in Marcus Aurelius’s Time

 

You are a mad scientist with a time machine. You learn that a massive thermonuclear war is going to destroy the world in the very near future. What do you do?

In To Turn the Tide, a science fiction novel by S. M. Stirling, you pick a time in the distant past to disappear to, like Roman times. You misappropriate research funds to buy everything you need to be comfortable and to play “Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” in your new home.

As a physicist you know little about the period. You need translators and subject matter experts. Since you are in Vienna, the best time for you to go back to is Second Century Rome. The Empire is at its apogee, but you will be distressingly close to the Marcomanni War and Galen’s Epidemic.

Propaganda Under a Dictatorship

 

The following is quoted from Chapter 5 of Aldous Huxley, Brave New World Revisited, published in 1958.  The chapter’s title appears above.  It’s the first paragraph of the chapter.  Note that after the introductory sentences, the entire paragraph is Huxley quoting Albert Speer.  We begin:

At his trial after the Second World War, Hitler’s Minister for Armaments, Albert Speer, delivered a long speech in which, with remarkable acuteness, he described the Nazi tyranny and analyzed its methods.  “Hitler’s dictatorship,” he said, “differed in one fundamental point from all its predecessors in history.  It was the first dictatorship in the present period of modern technical development, a dictatorship which made complete use of all technical means for the domination of its own country.  Through technical devices like the radio and the loudspeaker, eighty million people were deprived of independent thought.  It was thereby possible to subject them to the will of one man. . . . Earlier dictators needed highly qualified assistants even at the lowest level – men who could think and act independently.  The totalitarian system in the period of modern technical development can dispense with such men; thanks to modern methods of communication, it is possible to mechanize the lower leadership.  As a result of this there has arisen the new type of the uncritical recipient of orders.”

Call Them on Their Lies

 

The repeated lies by the legacy media in defending Kamala Harris range from annoying to outrageous. They will do almost anything to support her and her supposed positions (which mainly are copied from Donald Trump).

As Eddie Scarry points out in an insightful The Federalist article, Republicans need to engage with these interviewers in a whole new way. He suggests two strategies for calling out Kamala’s defenders:

Quote of the Day – Results

 

This outfit has been getting a lot of publicity without having really accomplished a hell of a lot in bombing results.
– Curtis LeMay to his public relations officer before committing the XXI Bomber Command to a low-level nighttime fire raid against Tokyo.

NASA needs a Curtis LeMay. Especially after the Spaceliner kerfuffle.

Visit our website: https://arkmedia.org/
This conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/O7F7Pq-XI40

Show Notes:

What Does Success Consist Of?

 

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened.

Gandalf: …Bilbo was meant to find the ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.