Pictures of the Week, After the Fourth

Might be ‘fake news’!

And finally, a Kaitlin Bennett encore

From PowerLine, Bookworm, and PA Pundits, mostly.

Advertisements

The Left: Unmasked

This is getting a  bit worrying:

* Protesters disrupting the Mexican restaurant meal of a Cabinet Secretary, forcing her to leave.

* The owner of an innocent-sounding “Red Hen” restaurant in Lexington, Virginia boasting that she refused to serve the presidential press secretary Sarah Sanders and asked her to leave. Sanders quite politely did. Now we learn from Sanders’ Dad, Governor Mike Huckabee, that when Sanders did as requested and went to another nearby restaurant — the angry Red Hen owner followed and kept harassing her.

* A Florida Democratic Party activist threatened Republican Congressman Brian Mast’s children, saying to one of the Congressman’s interns: “If you are going to separate kids at the border, I’m going to kill his kids.” News reports note that the man had called the Congressman’s office 478 times.

* A Member of Congress calls on supporters to confront and harass Trump administration officials when seen in public. Said Maxine Waters: “They’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them.”

* Florida’s Attorney General Pam Bondi, a Republican and Trump supporter, needed a police escort to get through hecklers who had confronted her at a movie theater in Tampa. The movie she had seen? It was about Mr. Rogers, the late Fred Rogers whose motto of his kids show was “Won’t you be my neighbor?” Questioned by a reporter one of the protesters snapped: “I’m not Mr. Rogers.” Indeed. Reported Bondi: “Thugs cursed me one inch from my face…”

* White House aide Stephen Miller was, per the New York Post, “accosted at a Mexican restaurant by a patron calling him a ‘fascist.’”

And more, as outlined by Jeffrey Lord at The American Spectator.

But what has brought on this continuing paroxysm?

The real problem is that the left has nothing left, they’ve lost, but can’t admit it. Roger Simon at PJ Media, lays it out.

The problem is that it’s not just Hollywood lamebrains and jejune social justice idiots that have been infected, it’s the entire liberal/progressive side of the country, starting with the literary/media elites who give them their marching orders.

They are all having a nervous breakdown and it keeps getting worse, because… because… because Trump.

But I have news for them. It’s not at all about Trump. It’s about them.

Trump is what the shrinks call the “presenting complaint.” The real problem, as is often the case in psychotherapy, is something entirely different. And it is this: The left is dead. It’s not only dead, it’s decomposed with no there there or anywhere.

Only dopes or con artists believe in socialism anymore (hello, Venezuela!) and identity politics has been exposed as the racist shell game it is with blacks and Latinos actually doing better than they have in decades under the current pro-capitalist administration.

So the left has nothing to say, only most of them don’t quite realize it yet. But this blockage, this reluctance and even inability to deal with what is actually happening shuts down the brain and emerges as anger, the hamster wheel of constant rage against Trump.

Emphasis from the Speccie.

And never forget that the Fake News Media, which is dying itself, because of its lying, is fully complicit. Not of covering this stuff up, but of throwing gasoline on the fire.

So if you ever wondered what Italy and Germany were like in the 1920s now you know, except that this is happening in midst of an economic boom, which makes these Fascists even more unhappy. If you still harbor thoughts that anybody on the left gives a damn about you, no matter which group you belong to, that should be enough to cure you, if you have any rationality left.

The only parallel in American history is Reconstruction, when the Democratic Party’s enforcers, the Ku Klux Klan tried to enforce the removal of civil rights from the black citizens, especially in the south.

But that leaves the real problem, sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt or killed. Some fool is going to physically attack, likely a leftist fool, but that is not guaranteed, there is plenty of stress to go around. And the victim (or his bodyguards/friends) will respond, and if we are not very careful, then the chocks are out, and we’re off to a bloodbath.

Perhaps that is the only cure, but it is not a palatable one, and so I think tamer measures should be tried.

I have little sympathy for these Fascists, they are simply too stupid to function in a proper society, but that doesn’t mean they should be put down in the streets.

I have no idea of the solution, the targets are certainly entitled to self-defense, and yet that could well be the proximate cause of a real mess.

It’s a time for cool heads and lots of thinking, and as Sgt Esterhouse always reminded us,

“Be careful out there.”

Thugs Gonna Thug

President Trump early Thursday welcomed three Americans who had been held captive by North Korea.CreditDoug Mills/The New York Times

Heh! Well, we all know David Brooks from way back, don’t we? He’s what passes for a conservative at the New York Times, which usually makes him a fellow traveler with the progressive left. But he has his moments. He had one recently in his column titled: Donald Trump’s Lizard Wisdom. Via PowerLine.

He starts by describing the amazingly corrupt, mob and union infested construction scene in New York and New Jersey, which makes North Korea seem benign sometimes.

And yet I can’t help but wonder if that kind of background has provided a decent education for dealing with the sort of hopped-up mobsters running parts of the world today. There is growing reason to believe that Donald Trump understands the thug mind a whole lot better than the people who attended our prestigious Foreign Service academies.

The first piece of evidence is North Korea. When Trump was trading crude, back-alley swipes with “Little Rocket Man,” Kim Jong-un, about whose nuclear button was bigger, it sounded as if we were heading for a nuclear holocaust led by a pair of overgrown prepubescents.

In fact, Trump’s bellicosity seems to have worked. It’s impossible to know how things will pan out, but the situation with North Korea today is a lot better than it was six months ago. Hostages are being released, talks are being held. There seems to be a chance for progress unfelt in years.

Maybe Trump intuited something about the sorts of people who run the North Korean regime that others missed.

The second piece of evidence is our trade talks with China. Over the past few decades, the Western diplomatic community made a big bet: If we all behaved decently toward Chinese leaders, then they’d naturally come to embrace liberal economic and cultural values and we could all eventually share a pinot at the University Club.

The bet went wrong. . .  The president has pushed back harder on the Chinese and has netted some results. After some Trump swagger, Xi Jinping promised to “significantly lower” Chinese tariffs on imported vehicles.

And then there is Iran.

Maybe Trump is right to intuit that the only right response to a monster is to enclose it. Maybe he’s right that when you sense economic weakness in a potential threat, you hit it again.

Please don’t take this as an endorsement of the Trump foreign policy. I’d feel a lot better if Trump showed some awareness of the complexity of the systems he’s disrupting, and the possibly cataclysmic unintended consequences. But there is some lizard wisdom here. The world is a lot more like the Atlantic City real estate market than the G.R.E.s.

I think that disclaimer at the end reduces the power of his logic quite a lot. But in the main, he’s right. Those of us that grew up in the real world, rather than the posh precincts, know perfectly well that the way you fix bullying (and that’s what a lot of the NorKs, the Chinese, the Iranians do) is to punch them in the nose, hard and repeatedly until they learn the lesson, at least as it applies to you, and those you care about. That this is done with armies, navies, and air forces, instead of bare knuckles only changes the scale. Teddy Roosevelt (who did quite well in foreign policy) referred to it as “Walk softly and carry a big stick”. You may have noticed that TR never had to use that stick.

Brooks is not a leftist, he lives in what could well be called the squishy middle, never quite joining one side or the other, rather like walking straddling a jagged ridgeline with slippery slopes on either side. Better him than me, but it pays better than writing this blog, so you pays your money and takes your choice.

On the other hand, Willie Brown, a very intelligent politician and a legendary former Speaker of the California Assembly, is a decided leftist. He recently wrote this:

It’s time for the Democrats to stop bashing President Trump.

It’s not going to be easy, given his policies and personality. It might even mean checking into a 12-step program. But setting a winning agenda is like maneuvering an aircraft carrier. It takes time to change course. And if they want to be on target for the November midterm elections, the Democrats need to start changing course now.

Like it or not, a significant number of Americans are actually happy these days. They are making money. They feel safe, and they agree with with the president’s protectionist trade policies, his call for more American jobs, even his immigration stance.

The jobs growth reports, the North Korea summit and the steady economy are beating out the Stormy Daniels scandal and the Robert Mueller investigation in Middle America, hands down.

So you are not going to win back the House by making it all about him.

Quoting from Steven in the above-linked PowerLine article.

He’s pretty much right, from where I sit. Things are hardly perfect, but there is a sense of optimism in the air, and Stormy and Mueller, whose principles rather resemble each other, are seen as merely an attempt to distract from what is increasingly good news.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

 

Week in Pictures, Make-up Edition

So, Sunday, again.

The President wants us to be healthy!

Hamas: “Can we use rock slings?”
Us: “Sure, knock yourselves out.” pic.twitter.com/4FzEkBcMwS

— The Mossad (@TheMossadIL) April 27, 2018

Concealment can be difficult.

From PowerLine and Bookworm, and other diverse wonderful places.

Another Wild Sunday Morning!

And a joke, from Ace’s

Two engineering students were biking across a university campus when one said, “Where did you get such a great bike?”

The second engineer replied, “Well, I was walking along yesterday, minding my own business, when a beautiful woman rode up on this bike, threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes and said, “Take what you want.

The first engineer nodded approvingly and said, “Good choice: The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”

From the Speccie:

On Tuesday Captain Shults contacted air traffic control shortly after 11AM and, after identifying her Boeing 737 as Southwest 1380 and noting that it was carrying “149 souls,” she calmly advised them that she had a serious in-flight emergency that required her to put the plane on the ground immediately. ATC then asked, “Where would you like to go? Which airport?”

The following is a condensed version of Captain Shults’ response:

The closest one, Philadelphia. We’re single-engine descending… We have a part of the aircraft missing… If you would have them roll the emergency trucks. It’s on engine number 1, captain’s side… could you have the medical meet us there on the runway, as well? We’ve got injured passengers.

Shults conveyed all of this in the same unemotional tones most people would use to order a ham sandwich. She then landed the plane as smoothly as if she were putting it down after a routine flight. Her next act, after graciously thanking the ATC guys for their help, was to go back and speak with each of the passengers as she and the rest of the crew helped them off the aircraft.

If I read correctly, she is also the first woman pilot of the Navy’s F-18. I’d fly with her anytime, anywhere. BZ Captain.

 

Of course!

Mostly from Bookworm and PowerLine as always.

And you know, for the last 53 weeks (about) we have managed at least one post per day, and I’m tired. So, I’ve lined up some of my best posts (in my opinion, anyway) for you, and I’m gonna take a few days mostly off, although I’ll look in some, so comments are welcome. Enjoy.

Ah, here’s my ride, I’m outta here!

 

 

A Stormy Teacup

John Hinderaker at Powerline makes a very valid point, I think. Is this light breeze about Stormy Daniels leaving you unmoved? It sure is me, here’s why.

 

Worst case, Trump paid Stormy Daniels. But he didn’t kill her. That distinguishes him from the Liberal Lion of the Senate. If you want a scandal, and a cover-up that succeeded to a remarkable degree, look no further than Chappaquiddick. The Democratic Party conspired to cover up Ted Kennedy’s crime–manslaughter, in a particularly vile form–to preserve his political viability, at the cost of an innocent young woman’s life.

To this day, most people have no idea what the Chappaquiddick scandal was all about. That is how successful the Democrats’ cover-up has been. Most Americans assume that Kennedy was guilty of drunk driving and negligently causing the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. But the truth is much worse.

Several books have told the real story, but the movie Chappaquiddick may finally blow the lid off the Democrats’ cover-up. Based on the trailers, it apparently will tell the truth: that Ted Kennedy, after driving off a bridge into Poucha Pond, escaped from his car but made no attempt to save Miss Kopechne. That Kopechne didn’t drown, but eventually suffocated for lack of oxygen as she waited for Kennedy to rescue her. That Kopechne could have been saved if Kennedy had simply called the local rescue squad. That Kennedy was such a self-centered coward that he left Kopechne to die, concerned only for his own political future. That instead of calling for help, he walked back to the house where his party was still in progress. That when he arrived, he tried to convince his cousin Joe Gargan to say that he had been driving the car. That he never did call the police to report the accident, but rather spent the night trying to concoct an alibi. That the Democrats fixed the legal process so that Kennedy would pay no meaningful penalty for the death he callously caused. That Kennedy pretended to have been injured in the accident in order to excuse his cowardice, and wore a neck brace to Kopechne’s funeral to further that lie.

Frankly, I was disgusted at the time, and I’m as close to outraged as I get that anyone, anyone, who thinks Teddy Kennedy was or should be, a role model, or even a decent human being thinks they have the ground to criticize anything anyone else does both risible, and absurd.

How silly is this whole thing? This silly.

Looks to me like all this crap fake news thrown up by the Democratic press machine has a very definite odor about it – it stinks of fear. The fear that the American electorate has seen through them, and their hypocritical charade.

They should be scared, cause I think it’s true. There’s room for an opposition party in America, but I’m not sure there is room for a purely anti-American party. Time (and elections) will tell, I suppose. But I’m not overly worried about it these days. I mostly ignore the cloud of dust the left made by the Democrats running in circles very fast, so should you, and to a point, so should Trump, there are things needing doing, and when we’re dealing with nonsense, we’re not doing them.