Firehose #179: The Ice Storm

Also: A taxonomy of Fifth Column recordings

Seems like every time I’m about to hit “send” on one of these weekend updates, some terrible piece of news flashes across the transom, rendering the usual frivolities tonally dubious. So it is this morning with the awful, awful gunning down of a man in south Minneapolis by one of more than a half-dozen ICE agents who were otherwise busy beating him up. This is truly sickening stuff, and before we get to the usual japery, I’ll just tap the sign: How would policymakers (and the rest of us) act if we truly believed political violence was an urgent problem in this country? Not bloody well like this. Back to your regularly scheduled Firehose.

Are you people prepared? D.C., I know from experience, is panic-buying the shelves empty and getting ready to binge-watch the original State of Play. New York, Chicago, Midwest: World-weary shrugs and grunts, shovels and scrapers at the ready, a cocked eyebrow toward whatever the local school system is cooking up. Southeast, though, man, not gonna lie, we’re all worried. You are to ice as Southern California drivers are to one inch of rain, or Hawaiians to ice cubes…. What even IS this?? At least you have Waffle Houses for refuge.

Over in the Chat, which is one of the key perks available to paying subscribers, excitable righty and known Canadian Justin Fouranno offers some helpful tips:

For snowfall, you need to be aware of the time of day, wind, and sunlight, not just accumulation. The temperature will affect the weight of snow, not just as it lands but throughout the day, and it’s not obvious until you try and move it.

If the snowfall is heavy where you are but it’s not a blizzard/snow squalls (I.e. windy as fuck too) then try to maintain a clear doorway and path to the road throughout the day.

Sunlight will melt the snow even if it’s freezing out, but not in a good way. It’ll harden and throw a further fucking into your situation. Obviously the road clearing will be an issue but if you decide not to worry because it’ll be 12-24-36 hours before a plow can make the roads drivable (or walkable, because shoveling a wider path for a car is a bitch, especially if the plow isn’t removing the snow but shoving it to side and into your driveway like we do here). Don’t forget about how you’re going to get out of your house and off your property, and how the snow will change based on rapid temp changes and sunlight.

Here’s the upside: during the worst of the storm, it’ll be substantially easier to kill your enemies and make it look like an accident.

* In a week of ICE contention, Iceland confusion, and ice-related memeing, it should come as zero surprise that the 23-year-olds who apparently run the federal government are nervous about using the word “ice” to describe the coming ice storms. Per CNN (citing two anonymous sources reportedly in the know):

[Department of Homeland Security] officials told [Federal Emergency Management Agency] staff they worry that certain phrasing – like “watch out for ice” – could be misinterpreted or quickly turned into internet fodder, especially as ICE operations remain a flashpoint in cities like Minneapolis and beyond. That would take away from the purpose of the messages, meant to protect people in danger over the next few days, the officials said.

“If FEMA says, ‘Keep off the roads if you see ice,’ it would be easy for the public to meme it,” a source with knowledge of the guidance told CNN. “I think it’s a dangerous precedent to set. If we can’t use clear language to help prepare Americans, then people may be left vulnerable and could suffer.”

Instead, FEMA staff have been encouraged to use terms like “freezing rain” in their public messaging, the sources said.

* Let’s try to divvy our tour through the week’s output between Ice/Greenland and ICE. Tuesday’s Reason Roundtable, featuring special guest star Kat Rosenfield (veteran of Episode #448) covered both topics; here’s a social media edit/chop from me positing that the Trump’s-losing-his-mind analysis needs to contend with (among other things) his Greenland fantasies last time around:

* On Tuesday night, Moynihan did one of those iPhone livestream Substack deals with our Aussie pal Josh Szeps (#25, #80, #103, #117, #196, #328, #423, #445, Members Only #231), talking NATO collapse and Trump accents. Then he doubled his pleasure with the irritatingly handsome Swedish economist Johan Norberg (#419), covering tariffs, future trade wars, zero-sum thinking, misplaced Swedish envy, and “the geopolitical fallout of U.S. aggression toward Greenland, which Norberg suggests marks the end of the American world order.” No biggie!

* On Wednesday there was our own regular episode of the week, talking mostly Greenland/Davos. Then on Thursday I elaborated some of those points in a Reason piece about the Mark Carney/Donald Trump back and forth. Alert readers will not be surprised that I ended it with a rumination about a certain Czech playwright/prisoner/president:

One of the main reasons Carney’s speech landed with such force was his strategic framing device of Václav Havel’s classic 1978 anti-totalitarian essay, “The Power of the Powerless.” But Havel’s post-communist career contains contemporary lessons as well, above all regarding a word and notion that too many American allies have long since let slip: Responsibility.

“For many years, Czechoslovakia, as someone’s meaningless satellite, has refused to face up honestly to its co-responsibility for the world. It has a lot to make up for,” Havel told a joint session of Congress in February 1990, just three months after the Velvet Revolution. “If I dwell on this and so many important things, it is only because I feel, along with my fellow citizens, a sense of culpability for our former reprehensible passivity and a rather ordinary sense of indebtedness.”

Havel, back then, wanted something that Donald Trump no doubt wants now: A Europe responsible for Europe.

“For another hundred years, American soldiers shouldn’t have to be separated from their mothers just because Europe is incapable of being a guarantor of world peace, which it ought to be in order to make some amends, at least, for having given the world two world wars,” he said. “Sooner or later, Europe must recover and come into its own and decide for itself how many of whose soldiers it needs so that its own security, and all the wider implications of that security, may radiate peace into the whole world.”

It is appalling that 36 years after those words, nearly a dozen into the Age of Trump, and almost four since Russia began pulverizing Ukraine, Europe and other NATO allies have not yet taken that responsibility to heart. Carney’s speech, if it is to last into next week, let alone next month or year, should be the first steps of a toddler learning to walk, rather than yet another tantrum from an understandably irritated baby.

* Then on Friday, Kmele and his Tangle News bros talked Davos + Trump 2.0’s first year:

* Seeking the other side of Trump/Davos analysis? Try Douglas Murray (#390) and Niall Ferguson.

* OK, onto ICE-ice. I saw someone in the Chat (too hard to scroll all the way back for a link!) tiptoe in the direction of hypocrisy projection with an open wonder whether the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) would criticize the church-disruption by Don Lemon and other ICE protesters. As usual, trust (but verify!) FIRE chief Greg Lukianoff (#216, M.O. #183, #427, M.O. #276), who wrote a Free Press piece this week about the Minneapolis speech-squelching on – yes! – both sides:

The speech [by Governor Tim Walz and Mayor Jacob Frey] that federal officials have criticized in Minnesota seems like protected political dissent, not obstruction or conspiracy. That raises the discouraging possibility that the point of the Justice investigation isn’t to bring charges that will stick. Rather, it may be to use the threat of prosecution to chill speech.

That’s not law enforcement. It’s ideology enforcement, backed by mob-like bully tactics. […]

Some law enforcement activity violates the First Amendment even though it’s nonphysical. For example, there are credible reports that ICE agents have led civilian observers back to the observers’ homes. The message couldn’t be any clearer: ICE knows where you live. Assuming there’s no law enforcement reason to go to those homes, it’s a pure intimidation tactic designed to create a chilling effect, and the First Amendment is meant to protect us from that kind of retaliation for speaking out.

And then there’s the moment where the First Amendment lesson goes completely off the rails.

Across the river in St. Paul, protesters entered a church and disrupted a worship service. Journalist Don Lemon filmed the event, and while interviewing a member of the congregation, was told: “Our church had gathered for worship, which we do every Sunday. We asked them to leave and they obviously have not left.” The next thing we hear is Lemon saying, “So, this is what the First Amendment is about.”

No, it is not.

* We talked at the top about Minneapolis and ICE during our YouTube livestream Thursday, which was a big hoot all around. Unlike the Second Sunday experiment from earlier this month, this one is available to the public, though not poured through our usual audio channels:

The above, and some of the Chat/Comments chatter about it, suggests that we could all benefit from a refresher taxonomy of the types of recordings we do around here:

Regular episodes: These, available to anyone who would listen (or watch on YouTube), come out every Thursday morning nowadays, and are currently numbered in the mid-500s (do not peer too closely into the consistency of our past numbering conventions).

Members Only episodes: Available to paying subscribers (with non-payers able listen to the first 15 minutes or so) every Tuesday morning. Previously named Special Dispatches; currently numbered in the high 200s. With some subcategories thrown in, including One-Hitters, “The Historians,” and my (currently outside of the normal M.O. numbering convention) “Revolutionaries” mini-series. We typically throw a free clip or two up on our socials (as they say), including from this week’s wide-ranging conversation with Chuck Klosterman:

Livestreams: A rarer category (we did a handful in 2024), though after Thursday’s fun we’ll certainly be coming back for more. These are not categorized as “episodes,” and therefore not spooled out through our podcast feeds, but the default will be that widely public livestreams will be kept public, and subscribers-only or Never Fly Coach-only livestreams will be treated on a case-by-case basis. Speaking of which….

Second Sundays: An always-confusing category! Technically promised only to Never Fly Coach members, in fact made available to all paying subscribers 90% of the time, these are almost always conducted on Zoom, and have been for nearly a year not rebroadcast as Members Only episodes, as they typically had been previously. This is for several reasons: 1) The audio is an absolute bitch to edit; 2) the content can meander or be of hyper-niche interest; 3) sometimes it’s nice to have a private conversation, ya know? 4) We are more than exceeding our twice-weekly posting quota without repurposing these; and 5) I got outvoted. I would presume that the next Second Sunday will revert to Zoom, and we will reserve the YouTube option for more public-facing livestreams.

* OK, speaking of livestreams and YouTubes and whatnots, Moynihan on his Report Thursday did one of those A.M.A. deals:

* And here’s one last Roundtable edit/excerpt from me, ping-ponging from we’re-fucked to don’t-panic:

* Speaking of which, The Reason Roundtable will be doing a live show in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 4. And Never Fly Coachers near NYC should save the date of Feb. 24.

* Time for Episode II of Producer Jason’s Video Vault!

Earlier this week I found myself in a conversation with Kmele about what exactly qualifies something as pornography. My twisted brain immediately went to Don Knotts and a scene from the 1969 film The Love God? in which he plays the unlikely publisher of a smut mag who is being defended on this very question by an bombastic ACLU-style attorney (played by James Gregory):

This is a dirty case, and a dirty little man. It is with disgust to the point of nausea that I find myself sitting next to this filthy little degenerate. But when I see this filthy little degenerate’s constitutional rights being threatened, then I must take this filthy little degenerate into my arms, clasp him to my breast, and fight for this filthy little degenerate’s constitutional rights and liberty with my very life!

The Love God? is a forgotten classic with Knotts as an accidental Hefner, the great Edmond O’Brien presaging Larry Flynt, B.S. Pulley as a gangster on a quest to improve his vocabulary, and a title track by Darlene Love! Is it politically correct? It is not! Is it funny as hell? Yes, yes it is. Buy it at this link! Trailer:

* Comment of the Week comes, once again, from Justin Fouranno:

I’m floored that this is presented as a dig against people who listen despite disagreeing. The cherry on top is that listening despite disagreeing is played as if it’s *antithetical* to the ethos of the show.

You’ll note the guys never suggest that people who disagree not listen, only those who are hateful toward them. Of all the unhealthy ways people consume content, hate listening is the worst and most perplexing.

I listen to one podcast that is consistently supportive of the admin and it’s the one I skip most often. I’ve met dozens of incredible people I consider friends through the chat and I’m to the right of all but maybe 3 of them.

Not shocked that someone who hates the admin can’t comprehend this, but it still surprises me when they don’t get what the show or its listenership is about.

Walkoff comes care of Olive Branche: