I was talking with an old law school and army friend who has a solo law practice in New Mexico.
He did not know about FutureLawyer.
[Shock. Sighs. Gunshots.]
I encouraged him to check it out. [He particularly liked the RV Lawyer angle. He's even receptive to smartwatches.]
Television is filled with commentators who know next to nothing about their subjects.
Out in the real world, people who have worked very hard to gain jobs and promotions turn on the switch and watch individuals who are grossly overpaid continue to receive such pay despite poor performance.
In a similar vein, news reports routinely contain stories of mess-ups and disasters. Think of the last time someone was sacked for incompetence. There are some instances, but they are a small fraction of what should be the case.
That too is noticed by the average citizen.
They eagerly await the chance to correct matters.
Commentary magazine: John Podhoretz looks at the danger of reading tea leaves. An excerpt:
“Jimmy who?” was the classic DC scoff. People stopped scoffing and began celebrating at the Democratic convention, at the end of which the Gallup poll had Carter leading Ford by 31 points. Sure seemed like a runaway victory. It wasn’t. On election day, Carter won by 2—and if Ford had eked out another 100,000 votes in California, he would have secured the electoral votes necessary to retain his presidency.
The New York Times: How the current Supreme Court would look under Biden's term limits plan.
It's hard to think of a worse time to make such a proposal. Hugely divisive.
Victor Davis Hanson on the coups by the "democracy dies in darkness" cabal.
I try to watch TV, I swear. But every time I sit down to find a new show, I brace myself to run an exhausting digital gauntlet. The viewing experience, which used to be relatively straightforward and, dare I say, fun now feels as overwhelming and unpleasant as walking into a dimly lit, warehouse-size dollar store in search of one decent spatula.
- Priyanka Mattoo, "Here's Why You Hate Watching TV Right Now" (The New York Times, July 26, 2024)
[Note: Excellent article. She recommends trying Tubi, a free service that's much simpler.]
It is disappointing to see people who rush to blame others for their troubles and who rarely take personal responsibility. At the same time, however, those who usually blame themselves can go too far. Sometimes, other people are indeed the cause and should be called to account.
Accuracy, not the willingness or strength to assume burdens, should be the goal.
It would be a mistake, though, to see yesterday’s wet, lame spectacle as irreligious. For in truth, it represented the ascendancy of a new religion: woke.
Jonathan Turley gets a message from NewsGuard. An excerpt:
Yet, NewsGuard appears to believe that I should label myself as conservative or libertarian as a warning or notice to any innocent strays who may wander on to my blog. It does not appear that NewsGuard makes the same objection to HuffPost or the New Republic or MSNBC, which run overwhelmingly liberal posts. Yet, alleged conservative or libertarian sites are expected to post a warning as if they were porn sites.
The mocking of Christianity at the Olympics ceremony in France should result in some people getting sacked, but nowadays the likelihood of that happening is small. If the ceremony had mocked gays or minorities or Islam, then official retribution would have been swift.
What will happen is Marine Le Pen's political movement will be strengthened. President Macron looks like another wimpish CEO who lacks the courage to defend not just decency (the mocking was cruel) but civilization.
As I watched an offensive portion of the Olympics ceremony, the judgment of one of the great fictional moral philosophers, Ignatius Reilly, came to mind:
"An egregious display of bad taste."
Those who have never read A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole need to seize a copy to understand our times.
Some memorable excerpts:
The last Gallo living at 51 President Street is the grandmother, Mrs. Big Mama Nunziata, who is 77 and never scared easily before and sees no reason why she should start backing off now. She lives alone in a bare, four-room apartment on the second floor of the empty three-story building which once housed the Gallos, and their armed gang. The door to Mama Nunziata's apartment has a peephole cut into it so you can see if anybody is coming up the stairs to kill you, but she regards this as nonsense. Leave the door open, she tells you when you leave. Mrs. Big Mama Nunziata would spit at a forest fire.
- From "The Last Gallo Living at 51 President Street" by Jimmy Breslin
The Paris Review interview with Jim Harrison is like a novel of its own.
A threatening sign outside—DO NOT ENTER THIS DRIVEWAY UNLESS YOU HAVE CALLED FIRST. THIS MEANS YOU—is belied by the inside of the farmhouse, a hospitable home with bookcases lining the walls, dogs and cats comfortably reclined on the furniture.
You have a dream in which you have to take the final exam in an English class tomorrow.
Unfortunately, for some unexplainable reason, you have forgotten to attend and study for any of the class sessions. You have no idea of how to proceed.
And then you remember that you have been out of school for years.
In addition to Social Security, the national debt, and border security, the months extending from now to far beyond the presidential election may well include detailed examinations of the following subjects:
"There was something just more than a teensy bit Bolshevik about all of this. This piece of information that was once considered a fact - as in, a week ago - has in the past 48 hours been deemed politically unhelpful, and so we're just going to make it . . . disappear."
Read all of Peter Savodnik's column in The Free Press.
It was long after midnight. The bartender was falling asleep, and the only sound in the hotel was the whine of a vacuum cleaner in the lobby. Casey Stengel banged his last empty glass of the evening on the red-tiled bartop and then walked out of this place the Chase Hotel in St. Louis calls the Lido Room.
- From "Worst Baseball Team Ever" by Jimmy Breslin
Politico: The Justice Department has announced that it has discovered the previously unlocatable transcripts of President Biden's biographer.
Questions about the VP's Office.
If the stats are correct, is there a credible explanation that does not indicate leadership problems?
The Biden administration's latest jobs report is another example of how all that glitters is not gold. What looked like 206,000 jobs added to the economy were actually less than half that, with terrible internal dynamics. All while the labor market enormously flashed a recession warning sign with a perfect 50-year track record.
Read the E.J. Antoni and Peter St. Onge article about the job market.
The mission statement won't tell me. The organization chart won't tell me. The pronouncements from the executives may be helpful and yet they are rarely comprehensive.
It takes time and effort to gain an accurate answer to the very simple question:
How does this organization work?
He looked at Tom Rourke for a long while and he was in no rush to offer comment one way or the other. He was a calm old dude maybe in his high fifties with a serene and piercing foxlight to his eyes. He wore a heap of weather and a troutbrown corduroy longcoat. He made a slow diagnosis of the situation and at last remarked -
You got the look of trouble times, son.
Tom Rourke acknowledged that such was the case and he climbed down also and they smoked for a while.
- From The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry
As the campaign heats up, it will be fascinating to hear how the Border Czar assignment worked out.
Jonathan Turley on President Biden's withdrawal.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali compares Kamala Harris with J.D. Vance.
Abigail Schrier on California's new law restricting parental rights.
Itzu Diaz on the birth of a folk hero.
John Podhoretz on Biden's departure.
If you are teaching courage, have your students do courageous things.
If you are teaching persistence, introduce them to failure so they can study its lessons.
If you are teaching a subject, present the material and then have them explain the subject as informally and yet as clearly as possible to an audience.
Explore how some items are best attained through indifference or indirection.
Consider the dangers of patience and impatience, candor and caring, and ambition and envy.
Discuss both/and versus either/or with regard to people and events.
Bring passion to all of these. If you don't care, why should they?
I was out shoveling on Sunday morning, making a path for the irrigation water to flow under the north gate and into my back yard. Our house is in a neighborhood that still gets irrigation and so every two weeks in the summer the lawn is entirely flooded. Great deep watering for the trees but you have to plan around the schedule because the delivery times vary.
The birds love it and I have flashbacks to childhood chores when irrigation arrived in the middle of the night.
On the 4th of November, 1827, I sailed from London, accompanied by my son and two daughters; and after a favourable, though somewhat tedious voyage, arrived on Christmas-day at the mouth of the Mississippi.
From Domestic Manners of the Americans by Frances (Fanny) Trollope
The Democratic National Convention will start on Monday, August 19, and finish on Thursday, August 22.
The clock is ticking.
And it will be in Chicago.
Ben Sasse is stepping down as president of the University of Florida.
And for a very good reason.
On December 5, 1955, a young Black man became one of America's founding fathers. He was twenty-six years old and knew the role he was taking carried a potential death penalty. The place was Montgomery, Alabama, former capital of Alabama's slave trade.
- From King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
Living on the land, the historical central tenet of American homestead legislation, also fosters a rural chauvinism, a notion that your wife's work regimen, your children's desire to go to the mall, your own inclination to hit the bar - all the urban distractions that cost money and waste precious time - are secondary to the salubrity of the farm. Are not they simply obstacles in the way of the no-nonsense farmer, who pumps his own drinking water and stores his own sewage? Pass by the blacksmith's shop, Hesiod wrote twenty-seven centuries ago. Can these unproductive diversions not be clipped out of the working day, every day, when town, not the farm, is a glow on the nighttime horizon? Keep your children away from town, exhausted on the tractor and in the packing shed, arms at work with the shovel, and their perilous voyage between twelve and twenty might pass in tranquility. Where else can you announce to them in March, "Don't plan anything this summer, you are all in the fruit shed between eight and eight every day." When the Greeks began to live on the land they farmed, the entire history of the Greek city-state, of Western culture, was altered.
- From Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea by Victor Davis Hanson
Were Biden now ahead in the polls by five points, these same backroom machinists would be insisting that he was still Pericles.
- Victor Davis Hanson
I knew a union leader who worshiped "The Godfather." He quoted from it. He drew lessons from it. He had his associates study the print and film versions of the wisdom of Don Corleone.
Are there any works of fiction that have influenced your leadership and management practices?
The Free Press: Olivia Reingold on "You Can Be Any Demographic You Want and Be a Conservative."
Some of the greatest fiction has come to us via very short novels called novellas. Some examples are:
At 7:07 a.m., the last Tahoe reaches the end of the assembly line. Outside it is still dark, 15 degrees with 33 inches of snow - nearly a December record - piled up and drifting as a stinging wind sweeps across the acres of parking lots.
- From Janesville: An American Story by Amy Goldstein
I have left the trenches and am cutting through the barbed wire of papers, boxes, and files. There is mud as well as confusion. As some old files are tossed, I can hear their cries.
My mission is to be done by Friday, but today's progress will be formidable.
"If in doubt, throw it out!"
“That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point,” Cheatle said in an interview that aired on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Tuesday morning to the outlet’s Pierre Thomas. “And so, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”
Amazing. The fact that she would accept that as a reasonable course of action means she should be gone. Her superiors, however, are keeping her on.
From The New Criterion in 2014: "The ambiguous witness of Dietrich Bonhoeffer."
I am terrible at predicting vice presidential choices.
Kennedy-Johnson? Brilliant choice. Helped to win Texas.
Nixon-Lodge? Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. was such a lethargic campaigner that his nickname was Henry Sabotage.
Johnson-Humphrey? Smart ticket.
Goldwater-Miller? One of the worst VP picks of all time.
Nixon-Agnew? I thought Nixon would pick Senator Charles Percy. Agnew was from out of the blue.
Humphrey-Muskie? An inspired choice but, as I recall from those misty days, not on my list.
McGovern-Eagleton? That quickly imploded and Thomas Eagleton was replaced by Sargent Shriver. The ticket went down in flames.
Ford-Dole? Solid but not very innovative. Jokesters said Bored-Dull.
Carter-Mondale? I confess to a hope that Morris Udall would be the VP choice but there were rumors that Carter disliked him. Mondale was a strong choice.
Reagan-Bush? Bush had an impressive resume.
Mondale-Ferraro? Out of the blue. The joke was that she talked like Archie Bunker but voted like The Meathead.
Dukakis-Bentsen? Big surprise. Good choice. Losing ticket.
Bush-Quayle? Total surprise. I thought Richard Lugar would get it.
Clinton-Gore? This was fairly predictable.
Dole-Kemp? Good choice but a surprise.
GW Bush-Cheney? Cheney headed the selection committee.
Gore-Lieberman? A surprise but a good ticket.
Kerry-Edwards? Perhaps it seemed good on paper.
Obama-Biden? Safe at the time.
McCain-Palin? Never thought of it.
Romney-Ryan? This was predictable.
HR Clinton-Kaine? Lacked punch.
Trump-Pence? Smart move.
Biden-Harris? Cory Booker would have been a much stronger choice.
Trump-???
The word "boxes" sounds so much friendlier than "walls" and yet many of them can be just as sturdy. There are boxes of job responsibilities, degree boxes, background boxes, childhood experience boxes, boxes of failures, boxes of achievements, boxes of expectations, and countless more.
"Boxes" also sounds much better than "traps."
[Photo by Michal Balog at Unsplash]
Prayers for President Trump, his family, and the nation.
President Biden should approve Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The New Criterion: Gary Saul Morson on the masterpiece of our time.
A book that should be read and discussed in high schools throughout the world.
This machine measures what you are doing. That one measures the effects of what you chose not to do. This noisy one identifies the overall benefits and losses you've made by your choice and the one with restricted access reveals what you are becoming via your successes and failures.
As for the one that's humming away in the corner, it projects what all this will mean in ten years.
We try to ignore that one.
[Photo by imgix at Unsplash]
What was this paperwork of which you speak, asks the Gen Z worker. And this "pushing papers" people once supposedly engaged in?
- Pamela Paul, 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet
City Journal: Dr. Joel on medical conditions and paying attention to the vice-presidential choices.
Lawrence of Arabia's strategy against the Turks. A city's dispute with the federal government in the 1980s. New York city government over the years. German Army strategy after the Versailles treaty. The Peloponnesian War. Rural versus urban cultures. "Bowling Alone."
All contain lessons for some current projects.
Management consulting firms have two sales reps that are not on the payroll.
Prevention is our mild-mannered favorite by far, but many people prefer to wait until Disaster makes a sales call.
From Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry:
You know the tragic thing, Maurice?
What's that, Charlie?
I haven't enjoyed a mirror since 1994.
You were gorgeous in your day, Charles.
I was a stunner! And sharp as a blade.
Stop worrying about the special programs, the ones that were launched after discussion, debate, and focus.
Start examining the standard practices, the ones followed every day as if their wisdom is true and their effectiveness is beyond challenge.
Management termites blend in. They don't wear flashy jackets.
[Photo by Duc Van at Unsplash]
At least according to the language used by some of the White House staff.
They did their boss no favors with that.
City Journal: Heather Mac Donald on a new activity by the New York Times: fact-checking President Biden.
We are on the verge of learning much more about highly questionable operating procedures in organizations which we once assumed were beyond reproach.
This doesn't mean those organizations are steeped in conspiracies but that many of them are riddled with what I'll call sophisticated incompetence.
The Great Clarification is about to begin.
Commentary magazine: Joseph Epstein reviews the new book by Doris Kearns Goodwin.
JFK, LBJ, RFK, assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon: the list goes on.
Too busy for people. Too busy for thought. Too busy to question goals. Too busy to foster positive relationships. Too busy to revisit the mission. Too busy to consider changes. Too busy to rest. Too busy to research.
We are awash with busyness.
No wonder we're less effective.
Check out the list at Melville House.
Less can be more. Consider:
The BBC is choosing a racially diverse cast for a program on the Battle of Hastings.
In doing so, they show contempt both for history and the intelligence of their audience.
"Walking back to Interior's massive headquarters on C Street, I recognized that the president's words, if true, meant that my tenure, no matter how short, would be very different from those of the two secretaries I had worked under in the George W. Bush administration. White House staff had played a major role in overseeing the cabinet then, at least at Interior."
I've said this before but it's worth repeating: World history is defined by the following simple rule. There are two groups on either side of a river. Each covets various resources from the other group. The only thing that stops a perpetual conflict between the two groups is the realization by each group that the other will respond in equal measure (or worse) if attacked. Now imagine that the West has decided to throw away this defining dynamic that shapes this fundamental historical reality. Defending what is ours is rooted in our genes; it is a central feature of our human nature. But the West has said that we are so progressive, so empathetic, so enlightened that we are not bound by pedestrian biology. Hence, we will not defend our culture; we will not defend our heritage; we will not defend our religion; we will not defend our women; we will not defend our children; we will not defend our values. According to our Western leaders, only barbarians worry about such defensive concerns. We are open, tolerant, kind, compassionate, welcoming. No amount of evidence can convince us that other groups might do us harm. And hence, we brainwash our children who become our politicians; we rejoice in the rape of our societies because this proves that we are kind. It is a mixture of what I discussed in The Parasitic Mind and what I'll be presenting to the world in my next book Suicidal Empathy. I frankly am running out of optimism; I'm bereft of hope. I fight every day at great personal and professional cost. But how can you change anything when your society is hellbent on committing orgiastic suicide?
- Gad Saad, professor and author of The Parasitic Mind
[Execupundit note: Spelling corrections made from the original X post.]
"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."
- Joan Didion
"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet."
- Damon Runyan
"Miami is a melting pot in which none of the stones melt. They rattle around."
- Tom Wolfe
"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."
- William F. Buckley, Jr.
"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is."
- Allan Bloom
Mark Steyn on the British elections.
Watch for the French elections tomorrow!
"My two favorite scenes of John and Abigail Adams come from their retirement years at Quincy. In the first John is out in the fields working alongside his hired hands, swinging the scythe as he murmurs curses under his breath against Tom Paine and Alexander Hamilton. Abigail is duly recording his murmurings, seconding his denunciations, noting that Thomas Jefferson should also be added to the rogues' gallery. In the second scene, Abigail has descended to the basement of the Quincy house to shell peas. John accompanies her, bringing along a copy of Descartes to read to her while she prepares dinner."
- From My Dearest Friend: Letters of Abigail and John Adams, edited by Margaret A. Hogan and C. James Taylor with a foreword by Joseph J. Ellis
The Hill: law professor Jonathan Turley presents counterarguments to the view that the US Supreme Court just gave American presidents a license to kill.
Freya India on why friendship has become another joyless thing to do on a screen.
An excerpt:
"As well as having fewer friends, members of Gen Z spend much less time together in-person than did those in previous generations. American teens meet up with their friends far less than those in the '90s did. Three-quarters of UK children spend less time outside than prison inmates."
In order to beat the heat today, I started mowing my back yard at 5:30 AM. There's no risk of waking the neighbors since they are ultra-early risers plus waiting for a more civilized time is to risk heat stroke. I'm probably the oldest guy on the block who is still mowing his own lawn and, for all I know, there may a running lottery on when I'll drop.
The advantage, of course, is that I get a little exercise in an activity that shows immediate results. Unlike so much in life where results can be invisible for years, a yard files an immediate report on how well you're doing.
That is to be sought and honored.
New York magazine: "The Conspiracy of Silence to Protect Joe Biden" by Olivia Nuzzi. An excerpt:
In January, I began hearing similar stories from Democratic officials, activists, and donors. All people who supported the president and were working to help reelect him to a second term in office. Following encounters with the president, they had arrived at the same concern: Could he really do this for another four years? Could he even make it to Election Day?
The work is hard and dirty ... where mayhem and dismemberment are not rare; you are alone where help is distant and compliment rare. Yes, but such toil is never monotony - the real bane of the modern American. You do not stand upright or sit down for hours, for weeks, for months, for years - for life - engaged in rote assembly or married to a plastic, squeaking machine, where the air for the hapless captives inside is stale and the conversation reduced to the varieties of marital infidelity and the comparative value of certain species of garage doors.
- Victor Davis Hanson, Fields Without Dreams: Defending the Agrarian Idea
I wrote this several years ago and post it each 4th of July:
The document is on the table.
Although some of your colleagues are making jokes, each one knows that the signature places the signer's head in a hangman's noose. To sign means you will be regarded as a traitor by the nation that has held your loyalty since birth. Your livelihood may be destroyed and your family doomed to a life of isolation and poverty. Many of your friends and associates will be under suspicion. Others will shun you. Your side, which has feeble and poorly-trained forces, will be fighting the greatest military power in the world. Despite all of the grand talk, the odds of success are small. Even if your side is successful, your new nation will be vulnerable to internal disputes and attacks from predatory powers. This theory of self-government, however attractive, might not work.
It's your turn. Will you sign?
Commentary magazine: Arthur Herman on the Cold War We're not fighting.
"In September 2020, Brian Armstrong, the CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange platform Coinbase, did something unthinkable in Silicon Valley: he said there would be no politics at his company."
