A Sunday Blessing in South Carolina
Posted on | March 24, 2019 | Comments Off on A Sunday Blessing in South Carolina
“May this pittance help as you go to look madness in the face. It should make for some very interesting reading. Remember, as a wise man hath said, crazy people are dangerous. Be careful out there and God be with you.”
— Roger C., who hit the tip jar this morning
GEORGETOWN, South Carolina
To “look madness in the face” is a fair description of my job, I guess, and it’s true that crazy people are dangerous. Readers have warned me that Bill Schmalfeldt is somewhere in this vicinity, so your prayers on my behalf are certainly welcome. Typing away here at my undisclosed location (hint: they serve crispy golden french fries and the wifi is free), I might not even notice that neckless freak if he came through the door, and who knows what might result from such a confrontation, especially if the deranged cyberstalker catches me by surprise? God forbid!
The Lord’s protection is always helpful when you’re out on the campaign trail, and so it was that I found myself in the pews of historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church on Broad Street, which is right across the street from the historic Jewish cemetery.
There were Jews in South Carolina before the Revolution, and Abraham Cohen was on the committee that welcomed George Washington to this town in 1791, to give you an idea of how highly esteemed that prosperous merchant was. In a largely agricultural society like the Old South, the skills possessed by Jewish settlers made them valued citizens. The effect of the color line was such that Southern Jews (mostly of Sephardim ancestry) were both better integrated into their communities and, generally, far more conservative than their northern kinsman (mostly Ashkenazi) so that, for example, Judah P. Benjamin became a U.S. Senator from Louisiana and served in Jefferson Davis’s Cabinet. And that’s today’s Southern history lesson, boys and girls . . .
Marianne Williamson in the pulpit at Bethel AME Church.
Did I mention Marianne Williamson is Jewish by birth? “Should she win the presidency, Williamson, 66, not only would be the first woman president but the first Jewish one,” reports New York Jewish Week.
So she’s got that going for her, and all she needs to qualify for the first televised debates, according to the Democratic National Committee’s official criteria, is 65,000 unique donors. Her campaign is driving steadily toward that number — they say they’re already past 25,000 — and if she gets her spot on the stage, she’s got a natural appeal to those Democrats who are deeply disillusioned with the status quo.
While I don’t want to say much here about her sermon at Bethel AME this morning — you’ll get that in tomorrow’s American Spectator column — it is fair to say that Ms. Williamson speaks for the Religious Left. She is against the military-industrial complex, and mentions U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen in every stump speech. If the Bernie Sanders voters in Iowa and New Hampshire lose faith in their hero and start looking for a fresh face, a lot of them will like Ms. Williamson’s message.
Marianne Williamson talks to a local Democrat at Sunday’s luncheon.
Meanwhile, there’s the grassroots retail politics side of the operation. The Williamson campaign’s signup table at the after-church luncheon collected names and contact information from about 40 people, and her state campaign chairwoman, Dr. Gloria Bromell Tinnubu, is an experienced political professional who has twice gotten 100,000+ votes in congressional elections in South Carolina’s 7th District. Oh, and here’s a look at the candidate’s campaign literature:
You can click that image to enlarge and read it, e.g., “Politics . . . should be, as everything should be, an expression of the heart.” My conservative readers will shudder in horror at such gooey emotionalism, but this is about Democrat primary voters, remember? There’s plenty of policy talk out there among the 16 or so candidates running for 2020, and also plenty of anti-Trump rage. While there is no shortage of anti-Trump rhetoric in Ms. Williamson’s stump speech, her campaign is offering voters something very different than the rest of the candidates, and she’s aiming to own a particular niche overlooked by the various senators and governors and a Certain Former Vice President running for the Democrat nomination. Did I mention she’s been called Oprah Winfrey’s “spiritual guru”? My hunch is that’s gonna count for something.
Also, my hunch is I’d better get cracking on that column for Monday, which I’ve got to finish before either (a) this fine dining establishment closes for the evening or (b) the deranged cyberstalker Bill Schmalfeldt comes staggering through the door. Pray for me, and please remember the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
Saturday Scenes from South Carolina
Posted on | March 24, 2019 | Comments Off on Saturday Scenes from South Carolina
Marianne Williamson talks to a supporter Saturday in Columbia, S.C.
MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina
The National Affairs Desk is located at a McDonald’s on Kings Highway today because the wifi at the hotel was down, and I’ve got about an hour to put this together before I head down to Bethel AME Church in Georgetown, where Marianne Williamson has a 10 a.m. appearance.
Saturday’s events were about as “retail politics” as it gets. First, there was the state Democratic Party’s executive committee meeting, held in an auditorium on the campus of Midlands Technical College. There were about 100 people in the auditorium, the most influential members of the Democratic Party in South Carolina. This is a deep “red” state, with Republicans controlling all statewide offices, both chambers of the legislature, and five of seven congressional seats. However, one of the metrics by which the Democratic National Committee has said it will determine candidates’ eligibility for the televised debates is the presidential candidates’ poll numbers in the first four states (Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada) to hold caucuses or primaries. Therefore, the 2020 candidates are working to build their presences in South Carolina. While I attended the executive committee meeting to see Marianne Williamson, when I arrived, Peter Buttigieg was speaking.
“Mayor Pete” is what people call him, because that way they can avoid attempting to pronounce “Buttigieg,” which I’m told is supposed to sound something like “Booty Judge,” and this is just . . . unfortunate.
The guy is a Harvard alumnus, a Rhodes scholar and an Afghanistan war veteran, but I’m sorry, America will not elect President Buttigieg. And this would be true even if he weren’t gay, but he is. A few months after being re-elected as mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg announced he was gay and married Chasten Glezman two years later. My hunch is that his presidential campaign is either (a) actually a bid for the vice-presidential nomination or (b) a warm-up for a future run at statewide office — senator or governor — in Indiana. So, if the governor of Colorado gets the presidential nomination, maybe your Democrat neighbors will have “Hickenlooper-Buttigieg” bumper stickers on their Volvos.
Buttigieg can talk, man. You can click and watch that video, where he’s talking about “white nationalism” as a national security issue, to get an idea. As crazy as his ideas may be, he expresses them cogently and the Democrat audience gave him a standing ovation at the end. There was hearty applause when Marianne Williamson made her entrance at the executive committee meeting, as you can see from the video:
That’s just the first four minutes. She talked for about 15 minutes. She seemed a bit nervous at the start, talking too fast, but she made her points, finished strong and did much better, I thought, in her shorter speech from the stage at the Cornbread Festival in downtown Columbia.
Some diligent reader could do me a big favor and transcribe those videos in the comments, because I know I’m going to be sweating it on deadline tonight here at McDonald’s, trying to file my American Spectator column before they close the lobby. And I’ve got about five minutes now to wrap this up and hit the road for Georgetown. So there’s only time to just dump a bunch of photos from Saturday’s events in Columbia.
You see there a picture of the drum line of the Benedict College marching band, whose performance at the Cornbread Festival followed Williamson’s speech, and buddy, they rocked it. Speaking of which, I’d better get rocking down the highway, if I’m going to be in Georgetown in time for that event at Bethel Church. Ciao, baby.
Memo From the National Affairs Desk: Who’s Heading to the Cornbread Festival?
Posted on | March 23, 2019 | 1 Comment
COLUMBIA, South Carolina
Rolled into town at 11:30 a.m. after an eight-hour drive, and after I post this, I’ll be heading to the South Carolina Democratic Party Executive Committee meeting where Marianne Williamson will make an appearance before her visit to the Cornbread Festival downtown.
Apparently, this street festival is a big deal, because two other Democrat presidential hopefuls — New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg — will also be in attendance. Booker’s at 4% nationally (sixth place) in the Real Clear Politics average of national polls and, for reasons I don’t understand, Buttigieg’s in eighth place at 1.3%, which is better than Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (who watches porn with his mom) and New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who thinks rape hoaxes are awesome. Why is Buttgieg polling so well? Also, if your last name is “Buttgieg” why on earth would you name your son Peter? But it’s probably a better choice than Richard, I suppose . . .
Before I left home, my 16-year-old daughter Reagan came home from her spring mission trip (which is what she chose instead of an actual vacation), and I took her and my wife out to dinner ($54), driving the Subaru Outback I rented for this trip. The Outback is a fine vehicle, however, I’d expected a compact sedan, but the lady at the rental agency told me they were out of sedans, so this “upgrade” to the Outback was free. On the other hand, because we’ve got only liability coverage on our old Nissan, I had to get full-coverage insurance on the rental ($28 a day, $112 for four days), which I hadn’t previously figured into the trip cost. But just in case I hit another deer, y’know . . .
My podcasting partner John Hoge notes that tonight’s edition of The Other Podcast (7 p.m. ET) will feature me calling in from my hotel in Myrtle Beach, to report whatever the heck happens at the Cornbread Festival, I guess. Also, Hoge reports that our fellow Kimberlin co-defendant Aaron Walker got locked out of his Twitter account for calling Chris Matthews an “ignorant slut.” Apparently that’s a no-no word . . .
Speaking of no-no words, have I mentioned that a guy named “Buttigieg” is running for president? Because I don’t care what his policies are, there’s no way America’s going to elect President Buttigieg.
Liberal journalist Matthew Walther is worried:
Why are Democrats so weird? Only a few days after his long-shot candidacy had begun to attract some interest from the mainstream press, Andrew Yang came out strongly against circumcision, surely one of the most pressing political and social issues of our time. He even doubled down on this by agreeing on Thursday to debate right-wing Wunderkind Ben Shapiro on the subject. Last month Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.) told a painfully obvious lie about listening to Snoop Dogg and Tupac while smoking weed in college (she graduated many years before either of them released their debut albums). Even her own father told her to cut it out. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (Mass.) insistence on releasing the results of a DNA test in the hope of vindicating her past claims of Native American heritage was one of the most bizarre events in recent political history. . . .
Maybe Democrats even think that by embracing their inner weirdness they can channel some of Trump’s electoral magic. Or maybe they just think that the American people can no longer be bothered to care about the sorts of things that would have been career ending for any politician back in the remote past — 2014 or so. . . .
If liberals are worried, that’s good news. And speaking of good news:
The long-awaited Mueller report was submitted to the Attorney General yesterday, and to the stunned, unhappy shock of the left, he has reportedly not recommended any further indictments.
Reports are circulating that Attorney General William Barr could release a summary to Congress as early as today. . . .
With the Mueller investigation over, The Washington Examiner notes five things that did not happen.
1. Mueller did not indict Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, or other people whose purported legal jeopardy was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
2. Mueller did not charge anyone in the Trump campaign or circle with conspiring with Russia to fix the 2016 election, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
3. Mueller did not subpoena the president, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
4. The president did not fire Mueller, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year.
5. The president did not interfere with the Mueller investigation, as was the subject of intense media speculation in the last year. In his letter to Congress, Barr noted the requirement that he notify lawmakers if top Justice Department officials ever interfered with the Mueller investigation. “There were no such instances,” Barr wrote.
A big fat nothingburger, that’s what it is. Six hundred seventy-five days of investigation, inspired by a phony dossier paid for by the Clinton campaign, and Democrats got zilch, zero, nada. Meanwhile . . .
Former DNC chairman Ed Rendell (D-PA) advised 2020 Democratic presidential candidates to look toward the center and not to the far left.
“I think all of a sudden, the 2020 election went from a slam dunk for Democrats to something where we’re going to have trouble beating this guy because he’s going to make Democratic socialism swing to the left, which I don’t think is real, but he’s going to make it into the issue,” the former governor told CNN on Thursday.
“AOC does not speak for the Democratic party,” Rendell said of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and her growing influence.
Sorry, Ed, you’re too late. The governor of Colorado’s talking porn movies, a guy named Yang is talking foreskins, a New York senator is trailing in the polls behind a guy named “Buttgieg,” and my hunch is the craziness of 2020 Democrats is only going to get worse. That’s why I’m out on the campaign trail so early. Even though I swore I’d never do it again after the relentless bummer of 2012, the scent of craziness attracted me like a plate of hash browns scattered, covered and topped.
By God, a campaign this crazy requires my coverage. Have I mentioned that Marianne Williamson “was the first to discuss reparations for African Americans in this presidential campaign and it was part of her announcement speech”? Because this is South Carolina, you see, and it’s one of the early-primary states where candidates’ poll rankings will count toward qualifying for the first Democrat debates. And I’m sure my readers will say there’s no way in the world America can afford $100 billion for reparations, but that’s only 1/1,000th of the $100 trillion in spending promised by Elizabeth Warren. When you’re talking that kind of money — ONE HUNDRED TRILLION DOLLARS — what’s a measly few billion, huh? “Nurse, more Thorazine, stat!”
Who else can handle such intense craziness as this? So it’s about time for me to pack up the laptop and get back at it, with the executive committee meeting, the Cornbread Festival, and then drive 150 miles to Myrtle Beach for tonight’s podcast at 7 p.m. ET — don’t miss it — and remember The Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
Anonymous Man Claims Shep Smith of Fox News Sexually Assaulted Him in 2004
Posted on | March 22, 2019 | Comments Off on Anonymous Man Claims Shep Smith of Fox News Sexually Assaulted Him in 2004
Remember, we must believe the victims:
John Doe #1 says he met up with Smith at the now defunct Nation bar in Manhattan, a spot Smith used to frequent to play Golden Tee and hang out when he was not on the Fox airwaves.
“I wake up, and Shepard is on top of me, like, in a towel or a bathrobe. And he’s got his tongue down my throat and his hands all over me. Completely uninvited. I mean, I gave him no signal. There was nothing,” John Doe #1 says . . .
“I pushed him off. I was like, ‘Dude what are you doing?’ And he’s like, ‘what you don’t like it?’ There was like this, kind of like No!, and he kept going, he kept pushing. Like, pushing his hands on all these spots,” John Doe #1 said.
“He was just on top of me,” John Doe #1 said, calling the experience “definitely shocking.” John Doe #1 noted that “he finally stopped, but it took a lot of — it wasn’t just an immediate no, and then everything was like, so sorry.”
John Doe #1 said that Shep Smith lunged at him “three or four more times” after the initial attack.
(Hat-tip: Ace of Spades.) Democrats tried to stop Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination with allegations that were arguably less believable than what “John Doe #1” is claiming, but as for me, I think we should reserve judgment until we hear Shep Smith’s side of the story. And by that, I mean, I want to see him deny on live TV that he’s ever stuck his tongue down another man’s throat. It would be helpful if he could also provide sworn affidavits and a polygraph test.
‘Russia! Russia! Russia!’
Posted on | March 22, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Russia! Russia! Russia!’
Tucker Carlson makes an important point about the Mueller probe:
So let’s recall, for the record, what the Robert Mueller investigation is about, why we got a special counsel in the first place. The point wasn’t to discover whether the president fudged deductions on his tax returns thirty years ago. It wasn’t to find out whether he wanted to build another hotel in foreign country. From its first day, the Mueller investigation was justified by a single question: Did Donald Trump collude with the Russian government to steal the 2016 presidential election? Did the president betray his country? For close to three years, Democrats have told us that, yes, he did . . .
To this day, even the most basic questions about the Russia story remained unanswered. Meanwhile we’ve upended our entire foreign policy, we’ve put Americans in prison, all on the basis of charges nobody was willing to prove. “How do we know that, Congressman?” “Shut up. You’re a Russian agent.” The conspiracy hawks seemed totally impervious to shame or reason. You couldn’t debate them, because they wouldn’t engage. They just threw slurs. . . .
Once the Mueller report appears and it becomes incontrovertible that, whatever his faults, Donald Trump did not collude with the Russians, the many people who’ve persistently claimed on the basis of no evidence that he did collude with the Russians must be punished.
Watch the video:
(Hat-tip: Ian Schwartz at Real Clear Politics.)
In The Mailbox: 03.22.19
Posted on | March 22, 2019 | 1 Comment
— compiled by Wombat-socho
Deadline to submit links for the FMJRA is noon tomorrow; links for Rule 5 Sunday are due by midnight.
All times Pacific.
OVER THE TRANSOM
EBL: Ruthie Collins – Country Roads
Twitchy: Occasional Cortex’ Chief Of Staff’s Claim That Trump Used Electoral College To “Steal The Election” Goes Disastrously Wrong
Louder With Crowder: Occasional Cortex Whines About Fox Messing Up Her Name, Gets Rekt
According To Hoyt: Pioneers On The Wild Frontier – A Blast From The Past
Monster Hunter Nation: Interview On The Worldshapers Podcast
Vox Popoli: Rejecting AIPAC
RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
American Thinker: Abolishing The Electoral College Is Unconstitutional & Wrong
Animal Magnetism: Rule Five Terms You Shouldn’t Use Friday
Babalu Blog: Democrat Party’s Embrace Of Socialism Has Chinese-Americans Fearing Communism Has Followed Them To The US, also, Venezuelan President Guaido’s Chief Of Staff Kidnapped By Maduro Regime Thugs
BattleSwarm: LinkSwarm For March 22
CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday
Da Tech Guy: What’s Wrong With Retail (Part Three), also, Lenten Reflections – Social Media, The Kingdom of Noise
Don Surber: Time‘s April Fools Day Edition
Dustbury: Bees Covered
First Street Journal: The “Fascist” President Trump is The One Defending The First Amendment
The Geller Report: NZ Women Wearing Hijabs To Show Support For Muslims, Islam, also, Trump – Golan Heights Belong To Israel, US To Recognize Israeli Sovereignty
Hogewash: Team Kimberlin Post Of The Day, also, An Overheard Conversation
Hollywood In Toto: Highwaymen – Overdue Return Of The Good Guys
Joe For America: Octogenarian Socialist Raises $80k For Bernie, Buys Mercedes Instead
Legal Insurrection: Major Obama Fundraisers & Former Obama Aid Embrace Beta For 2020, also, Trump Signs Executive Order To Increase Transparency & Accountability At Colleges & Universities
The PanAm Post: Unions v. Technology – The Inevitable Battle And What To Do About It, also, “Words Are Not Enough…What Will We Do When They Arrest Guaido?”
Power Line: It’s Omar’s Party Now, also, Thoughts From The Ammo Line
Shot In The Dark: Cold Shock
The Political Hat: Firing Line Friday – The Future Of Conservatism
This Ain’t Hell: Vet Claims He Was Harassed At VA Medical Center Over Service Dog, also, Valor Friday
Victory Girls: The Beto Danger
Volokh Conspiracy: The Electoral College Is Just OK
Weasel Zippers: UK Denies Asylum To Iranian Christian Convert, Says Religion Is “Not Peaceful”, also, “Another Day In Trump’s America”
Megan McArdle: The 2020 Race is On Between The Commentariat & The Modelers
Mark Steyn: When You’re Woke But A Bloke
H&R Block Deluxe Tax Software With Refund Bonus
Amazon Warehouse Deals
Generation Incel: 15% of U.S. Males Ages 22-29 Had Zero Sex Partners Last Year
Posted on | March 22, 2019 | 2 Comments
A rising percentage of young American men report they are unable to find sexual partners, according to data from the General Social Survey (GSS) at the University of Chicago. The percentage of U.S. men 22-29 “reporting no sex in the past year” has increased more than 50% since 2009, from less than 10% to more than 15% of respondents in 2018, according to GSS data compiled by University of Virginia Professor W. Bradford Wilcox. The declining sexual activity of Millennial generation males has reversed normal behavioral patterns. Until 2010, young females in the GSS were more likely than males to report no sexual contact in the past year; now, the “no sex” number is significantly higher for under-30 men than women in the same age cohort.
Professor Bradford has written extensively about the trend he calls a “sexual counter-revolution,” which is related to declining rates of marriage and childbirth among the under-30 cohort. The percentage of men ages 18 to 34 who lived with a parent has increased from 30% to 34% since 2007, and the number of men 18-34 living with a spouse has declined from 30% to 25% over the same time-frame. Because of female hypergamy (the normal desire of women to marry men with higher socioeconomic status), the inability of young men to establish their economic independence is correlated with their failure to attract women — either as wives or non-marital partners — and this failure is in turn correlated with declining birth rates for women in the under-30 cohort.
The data highlighted by Professor Wilcox may foreshadow a growing threat of violence from the so-called “incel” (involuntary celibate) community, a trend implicated in several recent mass-murder incidents, including Elliot Rodger’s 2014 massacre in Santa Barbara, California. Wikipedia describes the “incel” phenomenon:
Self-identified incels are mostly white, male and heterosexual, and are often described as young and friendless introverts. . . .
Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor describes incels as “a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and…find themselves very frustrated.” In social media forums, “when they’re surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs.” . . .
On April 23, 2018, a van driver (suspected to be Alek Minassian) killed ten people and injured fourteen others in a vehicle-ramming attack in Toronto, Ontario before being arrested. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had posted on Facebook that “the Incel Rebellion has already begun” and applauded Elliot Rodger. The term “Incel Rebellion” is sometimes used interchangeably with the term “Beta Uprising”, which refers to a violent response to incels’ perceived sexual deprivation.
Emily Rothman, a professor of community health sciences at Boston University, says men in online incel forums express “extreme” loneliness and sadness. She advocates research into the problem:
There’s a fixation with their physical appearance and shame they have so little experience with women. There isn’t a middle ground of “what can I do to acquire the skills that I need to connect with women?” There seems to be a fundamental lack of understanding of how dating and attraction work and that it isn’t solely about appearance. . . .
The main problem is that we don’t know how prevalent this problem is. It could be that there are relatively few people who identify this way. On the other hand, it could be far more prevalent than we realize. At this point, there have been mass shootings by people who identify as incels. Getting at the scope of the problem would help us figure out what other kinds of harm this might be causing. . . .
It appears to be a new and emerging threat. The point is, we don’t know, but there appears to be enough accruing information about decreasing rates of sexual activity in younger populations combined with the sort of online activity about involuntary celibacy that makes you curious.
An obvious factor in the problem is the anti-male climate on university campuses. Female students are now a majority (57%) of U.S. undergraduate enrollment, and discrimination against males in the education system is driving the decline of economic opportunity for young men, who are increasingly excluded from high-status jobs that require college degrees. “Diversity” policies at major corporations also contribute to the social and economic marginalization of young men. For example, according to a lawsuit filed last year, Google illegally mandated quotas as part of its hiring policies, effectively prohibiting recruitment of white and Asian males to the tech giant’s engineering workforce.
UPDATE: One of the commenters asks about the phrase “foreskin fetishist,” which I first coined a decade ago to describe Andrew Sullivan’s unhinged crusade against what he calls “Male Genital Mutilation.” As I said at the time, it was obvious that Sullivan (who is himself circumcised) had spent way too much time thinking about other men’s penises. How obsessed was Sullivan with this absurd “issue”? When his “Daily Dish” blog was hosted at The Atlantic Monthly, he had feminist Slate contributor Hannah Rosin as a “guest-blogger” while he was on vacation, but Sully banished Rosin from the Dish after she blogged in defense of circumcision. To state what should be obvious, it’s impossible to lament the absence of something you never remember having. The only way any circumcised man could get the idea that he has been deprived of anything useful is if, either through homosexual activity or exposure to pornography, he spent time comparing himself to uncircumcised men in such a way as to become fixated — rather similar to how some guys develop foot fetishes or other paraphilias. Until a few decades ago, about 80 percent of U.S. males were circumcised at birth, and this might explain why some men (particularly gay men) became obsessed with the “uncut” penis as something exotic. Ergo, “foreskin fetishist.”
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.
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