In The Mailbox: 03.22.19

Posted on | March 22, 2019 | 1 Comment

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

Category: Linkagery

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.”

Category: Sex Trouble

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 . . .”