A blog by Dan Brooks
I’ve disabled comments on new posts, in keeping with my across-the-board policy of not reading internet comments sections. I like to read comments from you, my good friend or especially intelligent reader, but the opinion of JoeInternet69 is not interesting to me. If you are excited by something you read on Combat! blog and want to talk to me about it, please email me. If you don’t know my email address, read the blog more carefully. I love you! Let’s keep living separately, though.
Anti-Muslim protests over the weekend in France
In November 2001, the Los Angeles Times ran a short piece compiling uses of the phrase “…then the terrorists have won.” Hawkeye football earned a dubious mention after a letter to the Iowa City Press-Citizen claimed that long security lines at Kinnick Stadium were “letting the terrorists win.” The New York Times opined that the terrorists win if we “don’t send the marching band from Frank Scott Bunnell High School in Stratford, Conn., to the 2002 Rose Parade.” Disrupting Big Ten football was probably not the impetus behind the September 11 attacks, or behind the series of massacres and bombings in Paris Friday. So why kill all those people? Now that we have been at war with terror for 14 years, we should probably be able to say what the other side’s objectives are. “They hate our freedom” is not a goal we can stop terrorists from achieving. For the Islamists who keep killing civilians around the globe, what does winning look like?
Donald Trump addressed supporters in Fort Dodge, Iowa for more than 90 minutes last night, during which time he promised to “bomb the shit out of” oil fields that produced revenue for ISIS and called a male supporter “baby.” Mostly, he marveled at the recent success of Ben Carson. “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” he asked, presumably rhetorically. Likening Carson’s self-advertised temper to the pathology of a child molester, he admonished the crowd, “Don’t be fools, okay?” Speaking as a voter: where was that message three months ago? Sure, now Donald Trump doesn’t want us to be fools—now that he’s not the only foolish candidate in the race. Today is Friday, and the fool vote is split. Won’t you toss a coin with me?
The Griz, uh, lineup
For a thrilling 48 hours last week, it looked like the county attorney might make Missoula weird again. That was the period after Kirsten Pabst intervened in the case of three Grizzly football players and two other UM students arrested for felony, but before we knew what they did. The hearing was rescheduled for Tuesday, then Wednesday. Meanwhile, local news ran player stats instead of information about the crime. Only the Kaiman—the University of Montana’s student newspaper, recently cut back to a weekly—knew the circumstances of their arrest.
It turned out those three big, dumb kids and one regular dumb kid thought the house was unoccupied, and confined their burglary to the part that was under construction. They climbed a ladder to get in, whereupon the homeowner dialed 911. Literally one minute later, their ride arrived, and they left the house with a case of beer. Then came the cops.
Was that felony burglary? I hope not. They seemed to think they were stealing beer from a construction site, which is bad but maybe not felony bad. People who steal beer from construction sites should probably be allowed to vote. The should be allowed to finish college and pass criminal background checks when they apply for jobs. Kirsten Pabst made a just decision when she reduced those kids’ charges to misdemeanor trespassing.
So why didn’t it feel good?
I can think of some reasons why not, and you can read all about them in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent. We had a perfect snafu in our little mountain town the weekend before last, and it reminded us how crooked this place feels, even when it isn’t.
Three people who could become president and Carly Fiorina
About an hour into last night’s Republican debate, Ohio Governor John Kasich excoriated Donald Trump’s mass-deportation plan, calling the idea that we might deport 11 million undocumented immigrants “not an adult argument.” We have to do it,” Trump replied. “We have to.” But how would he do it? Once he had removed the immigrants from their homes, would he put them in camps while he determined their countries of origin? Or would he just deport them all—Guatemalans, Uighur Chinese, Nigerians, French—to Mexico? Will the deported immigrants fly commercial, or will there be some kind of train? These are the questions no one asked at the fourth GOP debate, while we waited for a real candidate to take the stage. But this is it. These vague, impossible ideas are not ciphers for real policy different Republicans will tell us about later. There is no one behind the curtain.