Just how bad is the illegal immigration problem?

Libertarians have ditched their support for "free markets and free people":

I would prefer not to lose my Libertarian purity certificate. I want a political philosophy that is simple and has universal application. That way I don’t have to think too hard. For the last 30 years libertarianism has been that philosophy. Name an issue of the day and I can give you the answer. Sluggish growth? Privatise, lower taxes and de-regulate. Busy roads? Privatise. Inflation? Abolish the Bank of England or re-introduce the Gold Standard, or, er… privatise the Bank of England. OK, some issues are not quite that easy but usually they are. Until we get to immigration. Because if libertarianism means open borders then libertarianism is wrong because open borders are a disaster.

Read the whole thing, and the comments.  And remember that this is Libertarian Central.  If the Open Borders crowd has lost Samizdata, they've lost everybody.

Happy blogiversary to Dwight

15 years looking at obituaries and which coaches got fired.   Congrats, buddy!

Dad Joke CCCXXXIII

I just read a great book about glue.  I couldn't put it down.

Enjoy the Democratic infighting

There seemed to be a lot less attention to my recent post about fighting between various Democratic coalitions than to the one about Preference Cascades. That's too bad because we are seeing that fighting right out in the open, and it explains a lot about why things are happening.

Exhibit A: the firing of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.  Sure, it was the Right Thing to do, but when has anyone in Washington DC done the Right Thing?  Instead, let's look at coalitions and their current dynamics.

Cheatle was firmly in Biden's coalition, seemingly close to "Doctor" Jill herself.  But now Sleepy Joe is gone and doesn't have the stroke to protect his coalition members.  It seems that Kamala was key in pressuring Cheatle to resign - Kamala is constructing her own coalition and needs to show the world that she's the one with stroke.  Also, she needs the assassination story off the front pages, so this kills two birds with one stone.  Plus, it opens up a position in the bureaucracy that she can dangle in front of people she wants to join her coalition.  It's a threefer.

Exhibit B: The Far Left coalition is throwing its weight around, rioting in Washington's Union Station and the Capitol, and tearing down and burning American flags:

Sansour was direct. She warned the Democratic Party might lose the Muslim and Far Left votes in November. “Let us be clear. Our votes are still to be earned.”

The dynamic here will be familiar to Europeans, looking at smallish but influential parties like the Greens. Sarsour is looking after her own coalition, trying to maintain the money and plum positions she can offer to supporters in return for their support.

I think I need to update my list of the coalitions in the Democratic Party's ongoing civil war:

• The Bidens (fading fast)
• The Clintons
• Nancy Pelosi/Gavin Newsom
• The Obamas
• The Far Left 

All of these are jockeying for power right now.  We will see a lot of seemingly random events transpiring between now and at least the Democratic Convention that are anything but random.  They are about power and coalition building - and tearing down an opponent's coalition.

Quite frankly, that last is the Democrat's biggest problem - none of these factions really like each other very much.  The best that you can say is that they see the other factions as useful to their goal to get and keep power.  As more and more backstabbing occurs (as it must, there's only a month to the Convention and the time to strike is now or never), there will be less and less loyalty that they can count on from other factions after the convention.  90 days from then to the election doesn't give a lot of time to rig the results.  

That will take a deep level of commitment, which will be really, really hard for them to achieve. So enjoy the infighting. It will be going on for a while yet.

UPDATE 25 JULY 2024 11:53: This would be inexplicable without thinking about rival factions jockeying for position inside the Democratic Party: 

House Republicans and six Democrats voted on a resolution condemning President Joe Biden and his border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, for failing to secure the border.

Which faction(s) do they support? Well, not Biden's or Harris'.

Dad Joke CCCXXXII

Tom emails a Dad Joke:

Golf balls are like eggs. They’re white, sold by the dozen, and a week later you have to buy some more.

It's Funny Till It's Not

 The Democrats finally recognized that running an 81 year old man with dementia was a losing proposition. So they told us he had Covid, took him back to Washington, and announced he was not going to be the candidate in November.

So we have a President everyone on both sides agrees is unfit to run for office, still in office.

And who has the final launch authority on the U.S. nuclear arsenal for the next seven months?

Why the Democrats can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together

Well, they can't in time for the election, anyway.  There's an old saying in politics that "personnel is policy" which refers to a lot more than just having someone competent in the job.  It's a reflection that politics is about coalitions - building them and maintaining them.  The coalition members get their cut of the government largess, and pay for it with loyalty to the guy at the top.  If they're not loyal, he gives them their pick slip and they lose the largess.

This was actually Trump's biggest mistake when he was president, not filling the Federal Government with his coalition.  In his defense, he was in the middle of a Republican civil war, where there were multiple factions and multiple coalitions.

That's exactly what the Democrats face now, and why they can't put Humpty-Dumpty back together.  Because there are multiple coalitions, whoever emerges on top won't know if he (she?) can trust these coalitions because they aren't his coalitions.  They might be able to be integrated into his coalition, given time, but time is exactly what the Democrats do not have right now.

It takes time to forge a governing coalition - just look at any parliamentary system: when the government is stable it is because the governing coalition is solid.  Ministers can issue policy with a reasonable expectation that it will be supported and carried out by the coalition members.  When the governing coalition is unstable, chaos results.  Orders get ignored or slow walked or subverted because the Minister no longer has the loyalty of the coalition members.

Eventually a leader emerges who can attract key talent from outside coalitions and integrate it into his.  This will involve rewards like positions in the bureaucracy or some such - featherbedding is the name of this game.  But until this all gets sorted out and the new coalition is filled with people who think they're better off with the new leader than without, nothing is going anywhere.

Even worse, there will always be serious back stabbing between different coalitions.  Trust is not a virtue most politicians hew to, and quite frankly until they are in a position to remove perks as well as give them, they would be a fool to trust just about anybody.

Some day a leader will emerge to stitch together the various coalitions that make up the Democratic party.  It won't happen in the next 100 days, sure as God made little green apples.

The biggest implication of this is that it will be much more difficult for the Democrats to "fortify" the upcoming election via 2020-style shenanigans.  Sure, the party bosses will want to, but how much do they trust the other coalitions to support them?  Would other coalitions even go so far as to rat them out (with plausible deniability, of course) - leading to various party elders behind bars.  That certainly would make it easier for other party elders to construct a winning coalition once they've taken out some of the competition.

Like I said, these people would have to be fools to trust very many people, and an election cheating scheme requires a lot of people to pull off.  When everyone is on-side you get the 2020 election.  When lots of people are very much not on-side you get, well, the Italian government which has had something like 60 Prime Ministers in 80 years.

The best analogy I can think of is the scene from The Godfather where all the families get together to divide things up.  Nobody trusts anybody.  That's where the Democrats are right now.

I repeat: you can't put a coalition together overnight - heck, it's taken almost a decade for Donald Trump to put together a serious coalition and a lot of his party still hates him.  I think that the Democrats will come more apart before they start to come together as the various factions start putting out mob hit style rumor whispers about their Democratic competitors.  We will hear a lot about this in the next few weeks.

And this is why the only choice at all for them to to fall in behind Kamala and hope for the best in the down ticket races.  But remember, while Kamala might have inherited Slow Joe's campaign cash, she was never really part of this coalition.  It's not loyal to her at all.  It may be that she's been so ineffective in office because Joe's coalition kept sabotaging her.  She has to build a coalition, and right quick.  The cash will help her there but coalition building takes time.

She doesn't have that.  What she does have is a whole boatload of enemies in the Democratic party.  Some of these think that their best bet to get to the top of the greasy pole is for her not to get there.  They'd rather have Trump in the Oval Office because they will have 4 years to build a coalition.  If Kamala is there, things are a lot trickier for them.

I almost feel sorry for the Democrats in general and Kamala in particular.  Almost.  It's ironic that all their short term tactical maneuvering has led them to this very spot.  Couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of Mob Bosses.

Well that didn't take long

Leaked video from Rehoboth about Biden's advisors convincing him to drop out of the race.

This is really funny, and really well done.  I love how he gets names and dates repeatedly wrong.  And was Corn Pop really a Soviet General?  Who knew?

Oldest photo of a First Lady

The National Portrait Gallery has acquired the oldest photo of a First Lady, an 1846 daguerreotype of Dolly Madison.  This is a very cool picture, as it captures some of her personality - people chose very formal poses back then.  No smiling.  Except for a hint of a smile from Dolly.

The preference cascade has begun

A Preference Cascade is when a large portion of the population begins to realize - despite relentless government and/or media propaganda - that a lot of other folks think like they do and that the propaganda is, well propaganda.  This is almost always catastrophic for The Powers That Be, because Preference Cascades tend to accelerate.  As this progresses, formerly reliable underlings begin to think that TPTB are going to lose, and start to refuse to stick their necks out to protect the current order.

It's one thing to stuff ballot boxes when you think that everyone on your side is on board and your guy is going to win - and any potential investigation will be done in the most slipshod manner.  It's quite a different thing when you wonder just how many of the guys on your side are actually going to go through with this, and if the other guy wins will you be facing 20 years in Club Fed.

At the extreme, the security services join the preference cascade.  They smell an emerging winner and want to be on side when that happens.  At this point, things get pretty grim for TPTB.

I think we're at that stage now - well, not the up against the wall shooting stage - but a cascading loss of confidence and loyalty in the Democratic Party itself for Joe Biden.  This will shrink the Margin of Cheat except in the most blue of blue states, and given that it looks like New York and New Jersey may be in play, there may not really be a lot of blue left.

In other words, everyone is starting to realize that the propaganda was just that - propaganda.

Add in the drop in contributions to the Democratic Party (the preference cascade is hitting the donor class, who are realizing that this "investment" may not have a return, and hedge their bets by contributing to Trump).

Now add in the media, who start to see that they are better off trying to help the Democratic Party, rather than mean old Joe Biden.

The question is not whether Trump will win, but whether the Preference Cascade will give him coattails, and how long they will be.

My guess is that the Preference Cascade is in full swing in the Secret Service, as competent and dedicated agents there start to wonder when (not if) to throw their corrupt bosses under the bus.  There's a lot coming out about this Charlie Foxtrot in the SS, so that suggests that the lack of loyalty to Joe Biden is advancing nicely there.

Once the Preference Cascade begins, TPTB have precious few tools to counter it.  For example, cracking down on leaking from within the Secret Service will do nothing but convince the undecided there that TPTB are untrustworthy and have to go.

Which will make Donald Trump only the second President to serve non-consecutive terms.

Endorsed

BREAKING: Donald Trump calls for Robert F. Kennedy Jr to receive Secret Service pic.twitter.com/vRvxTzghvX

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) July 15, 2024

 

Well, duh. Kind of makes you wonder why they haven't so far.

Richard Strauss - Elektra

So they tried to assassinate Donald Trump.  The question is whether they will try again.  The next question will be what will be the reaction if they succeed.

It's that second question that made me think of Strauss and his ferocious opera Elektra.  That girl had family issues: Her father was Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks against Troy.  He sacrificed her sister to the Gods to gain favorable winds for the invasion fleet.  Her mother Klytemnestra murdered her father in revenge.  Her brother Orest kills their mother in revenge.  Mad with fury, Elektra dances in the blood of the guilty.

Quite a story.  The Nazis quite admired it, the necessity of bloodletting to purify the family.  Yesterday's events made me think on what might befall should they succeed in their manic desires to stop Trump by any means necessary.

May God save this Honorable Republic.

Is anyone using old D-Link DIR-859 WiFi routers?

If so, you need to replace it right away.  There is a critical vulnerability which allows a Bad Guy to dump user accounts and passwords - basically, this lets him take over the box.  Because the routers are End Of Life (EOL) there will never be a software update to fix this.

Fortunately, home WiFi routers are pretty cheap these days.

I used to run D-Link in the past (I'm pretty sure I had one at FOB Borepatch, back in the day) but those are long gone now.  If you have one then run, don't walk to get a replacement.

Details here for those who are interested.

Dad Joke CCCXXXI

What's a golfer's worst nightmare?

The Bogeyman.

Censorship: Action, Reaction

So Youtube hates guns and is trying to demonitize shooting channels.  So one of the channels decided to follow the rules, with hilarious results.

I believe that this is the first BBQ security vulnerability

Oops:

Keen meatheads better hope they haven't angered any cybersecurity folk before allowing their Traeger grills to update because a new high-severity vulnerability could be used for all kinds of high jinks.

With summer in full swing in the northern hemisphere, it means BBQ season is upon us, and with Traeger being one of the most trusted brands in grilling and smoking, there's a good chance that many backyard cookouts could be ruined if crafty crims have their way.

Nick Cerne, security consultant at Bishop Fox, discovered a few weaknesses in certain Traeger grills, ones that have the Traeger Grill D2 Wi-Fi Controller installed – an embedded device allowing a grill to be controlled using a mobile app.

Successful exploits could allow a remote attacker to execute day-ruining commands such as temperature change controls or shutting down the grill altogether.

I think that we can all agree that the definition of a Black Hat hacker is someone who changes the temperature on your smoking briskit to 400 degrees ...

But put a computer in it, expect security bugs.

 

 

Happy Birthday, Eduardo Falu!

In keeping with The Queen Of The World's birthday, here's a composer from a part of the world I had never heard of.  I grew up on classical music, and for guitar that meant Andres Segovia (with a tip of the old chapeau to Julian Bream).  I had never heard of Eduardo Falu, Argentina's great guitarist.  He's been dead these ten years or more but many of his songs are on Youtube.  This is an entire concert he gave in Seville in 1978.  He would be 101 years old today.

Aaron Tippin - Where The Stars And Stripes And The Eagle Fly

The Queen of the World and I were talking today, remembering the bicentennial celebration in 1976.  She pointed out that two years from now will be the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  Wow.

It's still worth celebrating.

Happy birthday, Queen Of The World!

 If you wanted to launch some fireworks in her honor, that would be just fine.

Britain's National Health Service throws away confidential medical information

And then blames the medical student who had to take out the trash:

A data protection gaffe affecting the UK's NHS is being pinned on a medical student who placed too much trust in their bin bags.

An investigation was launched following the discovery of confidential medical data sprawled across a back alley in Jesmond, a pricier suburb of Newcastle in the North East of England.

The medical student is thought to have thrown the documents into their domestic waste, which was placed outside for collection, but through one means or another, the documents escaped to the freedom of an alleyway off Lonsdale Terrace only to be found by a passerby.

So what can we say about the NHS from this?  Well, they have a terrible process for sensitive waste disposal.  They may actually not have any process at all.  Certainly the evidence does not suggest rigorous training and enforcement.

Also, we see Yet Another circling of the wagons, with a hopelessly weak excuse that blames the lowest guy on the totem pole.  That does not suggest that their process will be improved next week, or next month, or next year.  Remember, the Organs of the State do not self-correct.

But socialized medicine is awesome, amirite?

 

Even Hitler knows that Joe Biden is done

This is pretty well done, with Hitler watching the debate.

So what's going on with Kaskersky antivirus?

It looks like just about all of their corporate execs (other than CEO Eugene Kaspersky) have been sanctioned by the US Fed.Gov.  Oh, yeah, the software is banned in the USA after July 20:

The US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) cited national security threats in designating the 12 individuals as under sanction. In making the announcement, it also noted: "OFAC has not designated Kaspersky Lab, its parent or subsidiary companies, or its CEO."

The Treasury did, however, designate just about every other exec who reports directly to the Moscow-based firm's chief exec "for operating in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy," which under EO 14024 is a no-no.

It follows Thursday's actions by the Commerce Department that prohibit Kaspersky Lab Inc from providing its software and other security services in America from July 20 — plus years of directives and mandates to kick Kaspersky products out of US government networks.

This seems weird - maybe it's just more escalation of Great Power Politics between the US and Russia by the neocons in our government.  Kaspersky has made good products, and a scan of the Borepatch archives shows only references to what has been a quality security company. 

If you use their antivirus, it looks like you need to go shopping.