The #YangGang: Foreskin Fetishist Will Debate Ben Shapiro on Circumcision

Posted on | March 22, 2019 | Comments Off on The #YangGang: Foreskin Fetishist Will Debate Ben Shapiro on Circumcision

How much craziness can you handle?

Democratic presidential contender Andrew Yang agreed on Wednesday to have a debate with conservative radio host Ben Shapiro on the issue of circumcision.
The two came to an agreement on Twitter to have a conversation about the issue, which Yang is opposed to.
‘Would be happy to have a convo – my team will follow up,’ Yang tweeted to Shapiro.
‘Terrific! Look forward to it,’ Shapiro replied.
No date has been announced yet.
Shapiro discussed Yang’s long-shot candidacy on his radio show Tuesday, describing Yang as a candidate with ‘millennial appeal’ who is ‘developing a cult following.’
Yang, who is polling at about 1 percent, has garnered attention for his detailed campaign platform — particularly his call for a universal income plan — but recently came in the spotlight for coming out against circumcision.
Millennials in particular have been drawn to his idea to give every individual a $1,000 in income. He’s also promoted universal health care and a government ombudsman.
Shapiro joked Yang’s policy page ‘has more positions than the karma sutra.’

It has long been my contention that anti-circumcision activists are always either homosexuals or porn addicts who, through their exposure to “uncut” penises, have developed a foreskin fetish. There is no other reason a man would care whether he (or any other man) was circumcised, unless he had engaged in “comparison shopping” between the alternatives. Beyond the matter of Jewish ritual custom, the arguments in favor of circumcision in terms of hygiene and health are obvious enough, and certainly there is no functional advantage involved, in the grand scheme of procreative success. It is unseemly to obsess about such things, and the fact that Andrew Yang cares about this “issue” suggests to me he needs to stop watching so much porn. But the candidate’s #YangGang cult following consists of a lot of millennial guys who’ve never had sex with an actual woman — more incels than a high-school chess club meeting — and who therefore know nothing about procreative success.

In terms of political success, Yang’s popularity strikes me as evidence of how Trump has succeeded in driving Democrats crazy:

Four years ago, Democrats were gearing up for a pre-determined outcome, the anointing of Hillary Clinton as the party’s presidential candidate. Convinced they were “on the right side of history,” Democrats believed Hillary was destined to succeed Barack Obama, America’s first black president, by becoming our first female president. The only real opposition to Mrs. Clinton’s nomination came from Bernie Sanders, the socialist senator from Vermont who had never previously identified as a Democrat. The weakness of Hillary’s candidacy was exposed in the 2016 primary campaign, when Bernie and his wild-eyed supporters very nearly derailed her nomination, being foiled by the Clinton machine’s control of so-called “super-delegates.” Meanwhile, Donald Trump stunned the Republican establishment by running roughshod over a field of 16 other GOP hopefuls, then shocked the world by upsetting Mrs. Clinton on Election Day.
As the Democrats prepare for 2020, the number of entries for their presidential primary campaign is expanding rapidly and whoever gets the nomination to face Trump next year will first have to defeat more than a dozen rivals. There is no pre-anointed front-runner this time, changes to the party’s rules have diminished the power of super-delegates, and rage against the incumbent Republican has inspired a lot of Democrats who almost certainly have no chance of winning to throw their hats into the presidential ring. The announced format for the first televised debates among the Democrat hopefuls will include as many as 20 candidates, randomly divided into two separate debate groups, with such criteria as fundraising and poll numbers determining who gets on the stage. So while most of the national media coverage has focused on a handful of big names — Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, California Sen. Kamala Harris, former Texas Rep. Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke, and the long-rumored candidacy of former Vice President Joe Biden — there is a furious scramble among lower-tier candidates to qualify for those first TV debates, now barely three months away. Given the prevalence of identity politics and left-wing policy ideas among Democrats, their 2020 field is beginning to resemble a parade of clowns emerging from a circus car. . . .

Read the rest of my column at The American Spectator.

Category: Democrats, Election

Ace Destroys ‘Retard’ AOC

Posted on | March 21, 2019 | Comments Off on Ace Destroys ‘Retard’ AOC

This is so deliciously good I don’t want to spoil its laugh-out-loud awesomeness by attempting to excerpt it. Honestly, I’ve tried to ignore the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez phenomenon, mainly because there are so many others who daily point out her remarkable stupidity, and it feels like unnecessary dogpiling for me to join in.

Category: Democrats

In The Mailbox: 03.21.19

Posted on | March 21, 2019 | 1 Comment

— compiled by Wombat-socho

OVER THE TRANSOM
Ninety Miles From Tyranny: The 90 Miles Mystery Box, Episode #565
357 Magnum: Portland Government Doesn’t See Its Part In The Police Shortage
EBL: John Podhoretz Banned By Twitter, But Apparently Has New Account
Twitchy: Maxine Waters’ Frustration With House’s Refusal To impeach Trump Starting To Boil Over
Louder With Crowder: Watch Seattle Man Scold “Rude, Elitist” City Council

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
Adam Piggott: Native Pilots, also, Helping Friends With The Red Pill
American Thinker: Blankenship is Right – Sue The Mainstream Media Out Of Existence
Animal Magnetism: Animal’s Hump Day News, also, Travel Day Rule Five
Babalu Blog: Castro-Loving Cristina Kirchner hit With More Corruption Charges, also, US Military Begins Recon Flights Off Venezuelan Coast
BattleSwarm: Why Renewables Can’t Save The Planet, also, Caliphate Kaput Take Three
CDR Salamander: I Don’t Miss Rains Or Anything Else About Africa – But I’m Watching It, also, The Russian Navy – When Inertia Runs Out
Da Tech Guy: Lenten Reflections – Social Media 1 & 2, also, How Will Electing Socialists Transform Chicago?
Don Surber: Democrats Blame Obama Mistake On Trump, also, Who Needs Fox News?
Dustbury: Gouge Potatoes, also, We’re Only Trying To Help
First Street Journal: This Is Why We Have, And Need, The Second Amendment
The Geller Report: Muslim Migrant Hijacks Schoolbus With 51 Children, Sets It On Fire, also, Gillibrand Suggests We Give Social Security To Illegals
Hogewash: Green Nude Eels & Old New Eels, also, Team Kimberlin Post of the Day (Featuring Johnny Atsign! -ws)
Hollywood In Toto: Will The Left Melt Down Over Best Of Enemies?
Joe For America: CPS Chekist Keeps Job After Drug Conviction – Something He Took Children From Parents For
JustOneMinute: The Power Of Positive Thinking
Legal Insurrection: Biden Considering Stacey Abrams As VP, also, Meet Some Of The UN’s “Civilians” Killed In Gaza Border Clashes
Michelle Malkin: Never Forget – CAIR’s Dirty Deeds
The PanAm Post: Bachelet’s UN Commission Exposes Serious Human Rights Violations In Venezuela, also, Bolsonaro & Trump Mark A New Chapter In Brazilian-American Relations
Power Line: Our Adversarial Press, Then & Now, also, The Curious Case Of Ilhan Omar Revisited
Shark Tank: FL Lawmakers Want Accessible LNG
Shot In The Dark: Hate Group, also, Harvard’s Everlasting Shame
STUMP: The Undeniable Corruption of Chicago – Some Followup On Brian Hynes
The Political Hat: Sixth Circuit Rules No Right To Perform Abortions, also, World Down Syndrome Day
This Ain’t Hell: Escape To New York, also, Andrew Yang, Upstart Democratic Presidential Candidate
Victory Girls: Cory Booker Teases About A White House Wedding, also, Democrats Stack The Electoral Deck For 2020
Volokh Conspiracy: Dangers Of Growing Support For Court-Packing
Weasel Zippers: Jihadis Kill Christians In The Congo, Almost 500 Families Flee Violence, also, NZ To Ban All “Assault Weapons”, Institute Forced Gun Buyback
Megan McArdle: Anti-Irish Bigotry Is Mostly Gone, But We Shouldn’t Forget The Gift Of Being Irish
Mark Steyn: The Last Copier In The Woods, also, Courting & Curling

H&R Block Deluxe Tax Software With Refund Bonus
Amazon Warehouse Deals

Category: Linkagery

Just Got Off the Phone . . .

Posted on | March 21, 2019 | Comments Off on Just Got Off the Phone . . .

. . . with the press spokeswoman for Marianne Williamson’s presidential campaign, to whom I found it necessary to explain:

How I managed to pick not one, but two dark-horse candidates (first Herman Cain and then Rick Santorum) who became contenders in the 2012 Republican primary campaign;
and
I don’t do “gotcha” journalism. I’m not hunting for scandals, I’m a guy doing old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, and my biases are so obvious, I can’t be accused of having a hidden agenda.

As I explained, I believe the way to cover a presidential campaign is to start with a candidate that all the big-name pundits don’t take seriously. This means I don’t have to worry about being one of 30 reporters in a scrum following the candidate around on the campaign trail, and can thus cover the grassroots effort at close range.

This is the Gonzo way, and there’s no reason a conservative journalist can’t cover a Democrat primary, considering that the liberal media expect to be taken seriously when they cover Republicans. So this morning, I booked my hotel (two nights in Myrtle Beach for $165.76) and reserved a rental car ($175.68 for four days, Friday through Tuesday) for a South Carolina trip made possible by the tip-jar hitters.

Great minds think alike, and Professor Ann Althouse also took notice of Marianne Williamson’s campaign yesterday. There is an inarguable logic to this: If the Republicans could nominate an outsider from the world of business, why can’t Democrats nominate Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru”? Last month, ABC’s Nightline featured Williamson:

My wild hunches have a strange way of becoming reality, and you never know where my ambition to become ambassador to Vanuatu might lead. I’m already looking at the April calendar for an Iowa trip, where I’ll save money by crashing on Cynthia Yockey‘s sofa, but airfare and a rental car will still be necessary for that trip. Meanwhile I’m on deadline for my next American Spectator column, so I’ll conclude quickly by reminding you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

Readers in South Carolina should sound off in the comments. It’s possible I might get thirsty Saturday night in Myrtle Beach.

UPDATE: Just by the way, the cheapest round-trip flight to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a departure April 1, if I booked it today, would be $428. So if you guys want to send me racing around Corn Country chasing Democrat candidates, that’s the next fundraising target. As I say, Cynthia’s offered to let me crash at her place in Fairfield, “a rural town that is home to the Maharishi University of Management and has a thriving community of practitioners of transcendental meditation,” i.e., the natural habitat of Marianne Williamson supporters.

Category: Democrats, Election, Shoe Leather Fund, South Carolina

Media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome So Bad, Ted Koppel Is Complaining

Posted on | March 20, 2019 | Comments Off on Media’s Trump Derangement Syndrome So Bad, Ted Koppel Is Complaining

Readers under 40 may need to be reminded who Ted Koppel is, but he used to be a pretty important TV news guy:

Iconic news anchor and former “Nightline” host Ted Koppel recently fired a shot across the bow at the mainstream media — particularly the New York Times and the Washington Post — saying that President Donald Trump’s perception that the “liberal media” is “out to get him” is not without merit.
“I’m terribly concerned that when you talk about the New York Times these days, when you talk about the Washington Post these days, we’re not talking about the New York Times of 50 years ago,” Koppel noted to journalist and author Marvin Kalb earlier this month. “We are not talking about the Washington Post of 50 years ago. We’re talking about organizations that I believe have, in fact, decided as organizations that Donald J. Trump is bad for the United States.”
Koppel added that “we have things appearing on the front page of the New York Times right now that never would have appeared 50 years ago. Analysis, commentary on the front page.”
The legendary anchor recalled the infamous Trump “grab them by the p***y” audio hitting the news cycle a month before the 2016 election and told the audience, “I will not offend any of you here by using the language, but you know exactly what words were used, and they were spelled out on the front page of the New York Times. I turned to my wife and I said, ‘The Times is absolutely committed to making sure that this guy does not get elected.'”

(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)

Koppel is not a right-winger of any kind, but he became famous hosting Nightline during the Iran hostage crisis, which was the historic nadir of American prestige. Koppel saw Jimmy Carter lose to Ronald Reagan, whom every liberal believed was certain to be a disaster as president, but who instead became one of the greatest presidents in American history. All that is to say, Koppel knows that liberals can be wrong — and wrong in very important ways — which probably explains his concerns about the liberal media’s current anti-Trump rage.

Category: Media Bias

#Marianne2020: Let’s Make This Happen

Posted on | March 20, 2019 | Comments Off on #Marianne2020: Let’s Make This Happen

Lawrence Person has a roundup on the emerging Democrat 2020 presidential field and, buried deep down in his massive linkfest is the news that Hillary Clinton’s former “spiritual adviser” Marianne Williamson has launched a campaign for president. He links this news article from the Keene (N.H.) Sentinel Source:

Hoping to bring “a massive infusion of love” into the country’s politics, Democratic presidential candidate Marianne Williamson held town halls in two area communities Sunday.
Roughly 60 people filled Keene State College’s student center for the late-afternoon event, which was sponsored by the Campus American Democracy Project. Williamson also stopped by the Hancock Town Library earlier Sunday and spoke to a similarly sized crowd. . . .
[M]uch of Williamson’s stump speech at Keene State centered on how to “wage peace” and ensure the country’s international and domestic policies are morally sound.
She offered four steps in a quick how-to guide to world peace: expand economic opportunities for women around the world; expand educational opportunities for children globally; reduce violence against women; improve unnecessary human suffering wherever possible.
“But as we know, doing those things does not produce corporate profits,” she said.
The U.S. needs an integrative model of politics that considers how hope, despair and love operate, she said. “We need a massive infusion of love for our children, a massive infusion of love for each other, a massive infusion of love for the rest of the people in this world, which is the only way we will survive the next century.”

The Concord (N.H.) Monitor reports:

Author Marianne Williamson built her career providing guidance on relationships, health and work to Americans through her writing, which caught the attention of celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, who calls her a “spiritual guru.”
Now, she’s hoping to apply that same knowledge in her campaign for president.
“Whether you are healing a life, or healing a nation, the same spiritual and moral and psychological principles prevail,” Williamson said, speaking to a crowd of about 50 people at New England College in Henniker on Tuesday. “All a nation is, is a group of people.”
Williamson, the author of 12 books who announced her candidacy for president in January, said she thinks about taking care of American democracy a lot like she thinks about taking care of the human body.
A healthy democracy, like a healthy body, needs to be nurtured and continually monitored over time, she said.
“You can’t take your health for granted, or you just might lose it,” she said. “You have to take care of your democracy too or if you’re not careful you just might lose it.”
Williamson said America has come very close to losing its healthy democracy. She described President Donald Trump as an “opportunistic infection” the country became exposed to because of its “weakened immune system.”

After being interviewed on CBS Interactive, Williamson wrote:

I’m delighted to be sharing a different political conversation than the one we have been having, and grateful for the opportunity to do so. America is in crisis and our politics is a symptom as much as a cause. Addressing our deeper problems only on the level of what we currently think of as the issues 1) will not fundamentally put our country on a different track, and 2) will not defeat the current occupant of the White House. We need a whole-person, multidimensional discussion of what truly ails is. What we think of as the issues are not always the deeper issue. Americans are in chronic tension and anxiety, often exacerbated by economic conditions, chronic injustices, the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the lack of moral compass guiding our journey as a nation. “Qualified politicians “ have brought us to where we are, and we should think about what qualifications are most needed now. What we could use in a president is someone who understands the deeper crisis, and has had a decades long career in helping people and groups transform conditions from the inside out. We need more than a new president. We need a new political conversation, a new dimension of citizenship among all of us, a new awakening of the American spirit, and a recognition that this country should not be run like a business. It should be run like a family. We need someone to connect the dots, to bring wisdom into the conversation, and break the chokehold of our current political mentality. We have turned market forces into a false god, and the corruption is destroying us. The corruption could never have taken hold had women been more empowered, and freer to say what we truly think and feel. Our children, our health, our families, our very earth are suffering under the weight of a late 20th Century political and economic mentality that puts the short-term profits of large multinational corporations before the well-being of people and planet. We should be saying this and standing for this. I am willing to do so, and I hope you will too.

To put it bluntly, Marianne Williamson makes Beto O’Rourke seem like a paragon of gravitas by comparison. She is exactly the kind of lightweight “fringe” candidate who needs to make it to the Final 8 round of the Democrat primary campaign. She’s got more than 2.6 million Twitter followers, and if she can leverage her Oprah-certified celebrity status into an effective fundraising operation — say, $75,000 a month in small donations — she could run a grassroots campaign appealing to a core constituency of “feminist spirituality” enthusiasts who, it must be said, are no more irrational than people who think Bernie Sanders could be elected President. It’s like when Jesse Jackson ran for president; there was no way he could win, but his campaign was symbolically important.

A bit of Googling is all that is needed to find fundamentalist Christians denouncing Marianne Williamson as a “New Age Witch.” If ever there was a candidate whose influence could convince evangelical voters that the Democrats are beholden to satanic powers, she’s the one.

All Marianne Williamson needs is a chance to connect with her natural constituency by appearing in the televised Democrat debates. But gosh, what could help boost her candidacy? If only some veteran journalist could give her campaign the kind of coverage she deserves . . .

You see, Marianne Williamson has announced a schedule of events this weekend in South Carolina, and it’s been a while since I’ve been out on the campaign trail, but if readers want to send me out on the road again to cover the 2020 Democrat primary race, this would be a nice start.

It’s 491 miles to Myrtle Beach, S.C., where Marianne Williamson will be speaking Sunday to the Horry County Democratic Party, so that’s a 1,182-mile round trip, and at 20 cents a mile, that’s $263 in the Shoe Leather Fund. Two nights in a Myrtle Beach hotel would cost about $175, so there’s no reason I couldn’t spend three days following Marianne Williamson around — she’ll be at the South Carolina Democrat Party executive committee meeting Saturday, and appearing at two events Monday in Georgetown, S.C. Next month, she’ll be traveling to Iowa, where a friend has offered me couch-sleeping privileges, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves, eh? It should take about $450 to make this South Carolina trip happen, so if 30 readers could contribute $15 each, or if 15 readers could contribute $30 each, I can go ahead and book that hotel.

Is it possible Marianne Williamson could emerge as an unexpected dark-horse challenger in the 2020 Democrat campaign? It’s not impossible, considering what a clown-car crowd of flakes and phonies are being taken seriously by the media as 2020 contenders. South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg is polling at 1.3% in the Real Clear Politics average, and his sole qualification is, he’s gay. John Hickenlooper, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand — when you get down into the lower tier of 2020 Democrats, none of them poll as high as 3% nationally. Also, none of those candidates have 2.6 million Twitter followers and are on a first-name basis with Oprah Winfrey, both of which qualifications Marianne Williamson brings to this campaign. She’s a bestselling author whose campaign has been written up by BuzzFeed and, as I say, all she needs to do is qualify for the televised debates in order to get her shot at connecting with a larger audience of Democrat voters. My hunch is that, in such a format, her mystical rhetoric and charismatic personality will earn her a surprising amount of support and favorable media coverage. She is the most serious of un-serious candidates and, if she can clear the first hurdle, its entirely possible she could make it to the Final 8, where the cutoff might be as low as a 5% national-poll number.

The best way to cover a presidential campaign is at the grassroots level with a long-shot candidate so low in the polls that they’re not surrounded by a swarm of major media. So I’m looking at this South Carolina trip, and the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:

HIT THE FREAKING TIP JAR!

What splendid mischief — let’s make this happen.

UPDATE: “Just Got Off the Phone . . .”

Category: Democrats, Election, Shoe Leather Fund, South Carolina

News Media: Our Moral Superiors

Posted on | March 20, 2019 | Comments Off on News Media: Our Moral Superiors

David Sirota is a “journalist” in the same sense that George Stephanopoulos and Chris Matthews are “journalists,” i.e., Democrat political operatives employed by the liberal media. Like all members of the media elite, journalists think of themselves as Our Moral Superiors. They’re better than us, and expect us to be grateful for their tutelage, as they condescend to share their enlightenment with us.

In his role as a columnist for The Guardian, Sirota played the grassroots populist, taking aim at “corporate-friendly Democrats” who “protect the status quo and serve corporate donors,” naming two potential 2020 Democrat presidential candidates — Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker — among these villains. In December, Sirota twice wrote Guardian columns attacking Beto O’Rourke, first for having “frequently voted for Republican legislation” in Congress and then for being the favored candidate of “Washington elites.”

Remember, David Sirota is morally superior to you and me. He cares about the Little People. He’s got journalistic ethics:

Shortly before he gave speeches launching his 2020 campaign earlier this month, Bernie Sanders emailed his supporters, urging them to “do our very best to engage respectfully with our Democratic opponents — talking about the issues we are fighting for, not about personalities or past grievances. I want to be clear that I condemn bullying and harassment of any kind and in any space.”
What he didn’t include was that one of the people already advising him and helping him write those launch speeches is one of his most famously aggressive supporters online.
Since December, David Sirota has, on Twitter, on his own website, and in columns in The Guardian, been trashing most of Sanders’s Democratic opponents — all without disclosing his work with Sanders — and has been pushing back on critics by saying that he was criticizing the other Democrats as a journalist. He centered many of his attacks on Beto O’Rourke, but he also bashed Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Michael Bennet, John Hickenlooper, Mike Bloomberg, and even Andrew Cuomo.
Sirota’s hiring as a senior adviser and speechwriter was announced by the Sanders campaign on Tuesday morning after The Atlantic contacted the campaign and inquired about the undisclosed role Sirota held while attacking other Democrats.
Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s campaign manager, confirmed in an interview on Tuesday afternoon that Sirota had been in an advisory role prior to his hiring on March 11. “He was advising beforehand,” Shakir said, explaining that Sirota’s informal work for Sanders goes back months.

(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.) In other words, Sirota has “informally” been a member of the Sanders campaign team since last fall and, while this doesn’t necessarily mean that Sanders was paying Sirota’s bills, it does mean that Sirota’s attacks on O’Rourke and other 2020 Democrat hopefuls were disingenuous and unethical, as his conflict of interest was undisclosed. Notice also that as soon as The Atlantic started asking questions, Sirota was “announced” as a campaign staffer. What this tells you is that Sirota’s services were considered sufficiently valuable to the Sanders campaign that they couldn’t afford to dump him, so they were forced to be honest about his role as a hired attack dog.

They are Our Moral Superiors.