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.

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Brother Jonathan on Primary Season

So, does ‘draining the swamp’ still resonate in America? Well, last I looked the Potomac wasn’t in flood stage, so maybe. In fact, I think it is getting worse. Paul Mirengoff at PowerLine has some polling for us.

It does. So finds a poll commissioned by Ear to the Ground and conducted by McLaughlin & Associates.

The poll (of 1,000 likely voters) found that 55 percent of Americans are “concerned” or “very concerned” about “the Swamp,” with 36 percent very concerned. 59 percent of those who identify as “very conservative” said they were very concerned.

Levels of concern increased when the Swamp was defined in terms of “the influence of the network of DC-centric professional bureaucrats, media, and insider elites.” 60 percent said it was important “to eliminate the influence” of that network.

To what extent do voters blame Republicans, who after all now control the White House and have majorities in both chambers of Congress, for the failure to curb the Swamp? According to the poll, almost half of Americans (46 percent), and 41 percent of all conservatives, blame Republicans for not draining the Swamp.

Indeed, when asked what is the top impediment to draining the Swamp, 42 percent of voters said it was the GOP. Republicans thus ranked just behind lobbyists.

Well, it’s nice that so many agree with me, but if the Democrats and the Republicans are the cause, what might be the solution? Paul is worried not so much about a blue wave, but that the red tide may stay out next November. He’s right, I’m monumentally uncaring about whether my Senator gets reelected. I’ve had worse, to be sure, but she doesn’t exactly vote as she talks. Well, I supported her in 2012, and that seemed the best thing.

Well, Washington is a seductive place, Hollywood for the not-good-looking, that will be so until they don’t have so much power and money to play with. That’s the problem, isn’t it, if you have power, you can trade it for money, or drugs, or sex, or whatever you want, and you can probably keep yourself out of jail, as well.

It’s not that crude of course, although I bet sometimes it is. But don’t think anyone, including you and me, isn’t subject to it. We all want to be the cool kids.

So solutions, what might they be?

First, vote for people whenever possible with a strong moral underpinning, usually that means an orthodox Christian or Jew, of whatever flavor, but it doesn’t rule out other faiths. But we are not simply strong enough on our own to stand up to temptation.

My personal second rule (for everything from dog catcher to president) is to default to new blood. Quite often I think someone is doing well enough to continue them, but mainly I think it more important to keep them off balance, so they don’t forget who the boss is.

That is advice mostly for the primary, it’s a major advantage we as Americans have, that nearly anyone can run for office. Part of the reason that the British swamp is even more impenetrable than ours is the tight control the parties have over who can run. Remember how many desperately opposed Trump during the primaries? Yeah, he won. Far from perfect, especially as a man. but a man who knows who he is, and has enough money that he cannot be bought. And so he becomes a moral man. And you wonder why the British elite like the denizens of our swamp detest him so – well there is your answer. Brother Jonathon, an English friend called him yesterday. It is apt.

[H]e was ill-mannered and ill-spoken—a boor, a braggart, a ruffian, a bigot, a hick, and a trickster. His name was Brother Jonathan.

Today he is all but forgotten—eclipsed by his upstanding uncle, Sam. But after the Revolutionary War, Brother Jonathan was the personification of the newly independent American people: clever, courageous, not all that sophisticated and proud of it. He was the everyman incarnate. It was the everyman who had led America to victory. And now America looked to the everyman to lead them out from the bloated shadow of Great Britain.

And so like Gadsden flags, tricorn hats, and so much more, our history provides answers for the present. We need an entire Congress of Brother Jonathons. We won’t get that, of course, but the closer we get, the better the result will be.

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!

 

 

Get Woke, Go Broke.

The title is stolen from a commenter at Ace’s because it is the perfect summary of the story. From Hot Air.

At what price does Twitter fame come? Corporate brands that offered virtue signaling to online mobs might discover that it’s more expensive than they thought. A new Morning Consult survey shows that every major brand that disaffiliated themselves from the NRA has suffered overall damage to their standing with consumers:

After the Parkland, Fla., high school shooting, several prominent companies ended their businesses relationships with the National Rifle Association — and some are facing backlash in public opinion, according to a new poll.

A Morning Consult survey of 2,201 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 23-25 found increases in negative views of businesses that severed ties with the NRA after consumers learned of them. The poll’s margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.

MetLife Inc., the insurance giant that ended a discount for NRA members last week, had a 45 percent favorable rating, compared to a 12 percent unfavorable rating, before survey participants were informed of that move. After learning of it, respondents with an unfavorable view of the company doubled to 24 percent, while its favorability rating was unchanged.

The chart’s left column shows the overall impact

All of these companies did get a boost from Democrats, but it turns out that it’s not enough to offset the overall damage to their reputations for tossing the NRA under the bus. That’s even more remarkable considering that only 14% of the sample had NRA members in their households. There is a distinct partisan split on this question, with that number rising to 23% among Republican respondents and only 8% for Democrats. Still, the relatively low numbers of NRA membership fall far below the backlash shown overall to these corporate moves.

On the other hand, 42% of all households in the survey own a firearm, including 28% of Democrats and 42% of independents; over half of all Republicans surveyed have a firearm in the house (55%). Twenty-one percent of all Democrats surveyed had more than three firearms in the house (38% of Republicans), showing that gun ownership is not partisan nor is enthusiasm for firearm ownership. A bigger differentiator is geography; only 15% of all urban respondents own more than three firearms, while 41% of all rural respondents do.

What about the millennials that these companies tried to woo this week with their virtue-signaling? Well, 43% of respondents below 30 years of age report having firearms in their households, roughly the same percentage as the other age demos, and 24% report having more than three of them. Twenty-one percent report that their household includes at least one member of the NRA, a higher percentage than any other age demo. They are more likely to want corporations to take public stances on social issues, but only slightly so when combining “very important” to “somewhat important,” and they’re slightly lessinterested corporate takes on political issues.

And when it comes to gun control, they turn out to be less interested than other age demos, too:

More at the link, but it seems to me there is a very old saying that applies here. “Shoemaker, stick to your last.”

The point of a corporation is to make money for the shareholders, anything that intentionally detracts from that is malfeasance by the management of the firm, and the employees bear the brunt of the cost. That is one reason why I tend to be slow with boycotts, but I’ve reached my limit, and these companies that intentionally insult my beliefs, and my fights, will have to do without my trade. For most of them, that’s an easy decision, I have no reason to deal with them in the foreseeable future. But they are no longer on my list of acceptable vendors.

From what I read, I’m not the only one, either. I wouldn’t be all that much happier if they were coming out in support of the NRA, by the way. If it’s in their interest to support the organization, fine, like say, Colt, for example, but if it’s just a generic corporation, well, why are you doing this? Yes, it is different for a company wholly owned by an individual (or family), it is quite appropriate for their organization to reflect their beliefs. While a corporation is (and has to be) a person for legal purposes, it is a limited thing. General Electric is not a citizen with a right to vote.

Best we keep it that way.

Lincoln at Cooper’s Union

Steven Hayward over at PowerLine reminds us that there is nothing new under the sun, and also that Abraham Lincoln was a very wise man.

Lincoln noted toward the very end of the speech that the pro-slavery faction in the South wasn’t content with Republicans allowing slavery to exist in the South: it was necessary that everyone change their mind and express publicly their positive support for slavery. In other words, the pro-slavery forces demanded that everyone else submit to their opinion. Sounds like the left today on every social issue in sight, no?

Here’s the key language from the end of the Cooper Union address about the demand for uniformity of opinion:

The question recurs, what will satisfy them? Simply this: We must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, convince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by experience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them, is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any attempt to disturb them.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly–done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated–we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas’s new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

I suspect that sounds very familiar indeed to my readers in both the US and the UK. I don’t think it’s going to happen anymore today than it did in 1860. So there is going to be a lot of anguish for them. Hopefully, they won’t act out as badly as their forebearers did in 1861.

Worse Than Watergate

NBC News

Chris Buskirk at American Greatness:

The FISA Abuse Memo is out and now we know why the Democrats were desperate to keep its contents hidden from the public: it confirms the worst fears not just of President Trump’s supporters but of everyone concerned about the abuse of police power, government corruption, and the sanctity of our elections.
The memo shows interference in the 2016 presidential election by hostile elements within a United States intelligence agency. It wasn’t the Russians we had to worry about — it was rogue actors at the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice. Left unanswered is to what extent the West Wing knew about or was complicit in this gross abuse of power. . . .
We now know that almost every accusation leveled against the president with regard to so-called “Russian collusion” actually reflects the actions of what amounts to a cabal of Democratic Party operatives working with FBI and Justice Department fellow-travellers. . . .

R.S. McCain adds:

There was no actual “Russian collusion” because the people who arranged the Trump Tower meeting weren’t working for the Kremlin, they were working for the Democrat Party.

It’s like what they used to say down South: If you ever go to a meeting of five Klansman, one of them will be an FBI undercover agent and at least two of the others will be confidential informants. In the case of the make-believe “Russian collusion,” it appears that practically everybody involved in trying to get the Trump campaign tangled up in this embarrassing mess was, in one way or another, working for FusionGPS, which was being bankrolled by the Clinton campaign and the DNC.

That’s the size of it. Trump’s people come off as a bit credulous, they kept talking to stray people wandering in, but that’s not criminal, merely foolish.

Chris Buskirk again:

Nearly 50 years ago, the Watergate scandal forced a president from office. The Left thought it could do it again. But the Nunes memo—and the millions of documents and hundreds of hours of interviews behind it—makes clear that rogue elements within the FBI and Justice Department broke the law in an attempt to use the police power of the United States government first to throw the election to Hillary Clinton and then to destroy the presidency of Donald Trump.

This cannot stand. There must be consequences. And they must be swift, public, and severe.

Why is this worse than Watergate?

Because Watergate (the crime, not the coverup) was done by private individuals acting on their own. Foolishly, stupidly, and several other adverbs apply, but they were working for themselves and a private group.

However here we have high-level government law enforcement figures acting in an official capacity to corrupt the election process of the United States.

This is the problem that arises with any self-selecting elite (you may read experts if you choose), the time always comes when they conclude that they know better than the people they work for. Even if it is true, they have not the right to usurp their lawful superior (in this case the electorate). But almost always, it is not true, people have an innate sense of what is most likely to benefit them. And as we’ve seen in this matter, the experts are not acting in the people’s best interest, invariably they are acting in their own.

Indeed, this cannot stand, and the consequences must be swift, public, severe, and permanent.