Unpopular Maybe, But Lucky

One of the things about Trump that many people in the traditional media do not understand is that he probably  does not have to score very well in “approval rating” polls to be reelected.  The reason for this is simple. He likely will benefit more than is usual by being seen as the less bad of two poor choices.

There are many people who do not approve of  the man as a person because of his arrogant, blustering, rude, dishonest, demagogic, and grossly un-presidential behavior, but  will vote for him in a race against a leftist Democrat.  (A poll taken after the election in 2016 attributed Trump’s victory to his doing better than Hillary Clinton among voters who disliked both of them.) I did not vote for Trump in 2016, but I would have if Texas had been in play. Since it wasn’t, I cast a protest vote for Gary Johnson.   If Texas is in play  2020, I will vote for Trump  against any of the candidates now running as Democrats. Their policies, plans, and “aspirations” are so bad and dangerous as to make such a decision easy. However I don’t like it, and I do not think I am alone.

 If the Dems could come up with a Jack Kennedy or even a Jim Webb as a nominee,  I  think many people who usually vote for the Republicans would be ready to vote for him against  Trump.  However that is so unlikely as to be nearly impossible.  Trump was lucky in his opponent in 2016 and seems on track to be even luckier in 2020. Considering both his base of those who are his fans and  the many others who are not but will vote for him as the lesser evil, he looks pretty salty.

Omar and Exile

On the evidence Ilhan Omar is a vicious, mendacious, vulgar, bigoted,  America hating  leftist authoritarian  and fool who fully the deserves the contempt in which people hold her. She is also an American citizen with the same rights as any other -  including the right have whatever opinions she likes. This is still a free enough country that Americans do not have to worry about being exiled for their beliefs.   Chanting “throw her out” is not merely crude or stupid. It is deeply un-American. 

It was wrong for Trump to tweet about her going back to where she came from since she does not like it here, but that was only bad manners and another example of Trump’s difficulty with propriety and  self-control.  He did not bring up exile. Some of his followers have. That is disturbing. It is also ironic, since most of the people who did it probably also would say there is a profound difference in terms of having a right to be in this country between American citizens and illegal aliens.  They should think about  the question of consistency there. They should also be ashamed.

Making Fun

A few days ago Congresswoman   Frederica Wilson  declared that people who make fun of members of congress should be prosecuted. Her claim is sufficiently absurd that there is no need to refute it, but there is a need to do something. So I offer the following oldies from various sources:

Reader, suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.

Question: How do you tell a real cowgirl from a Democratic Party congresswoman from Florida wearing a cowboy hat?

Answer: Out on the range, the cowgirl is smart enough to get the steer manure only on the outside of her boots.

We have the best Congress money can buy.

An embarrassed fellow did not want to let his elderly mother know that he was a congressman. So he told her he got his living playing the piano in a whorehouse.  

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native American criminal class except Congress.

See you in court.

Trump's Fourth of July

I am among those who do not like what Trump is planning to do for the Fourth this year.  It is not merely that it is vulgar and overbearing.  It is that it goes against the spirit of the day. Independence Day  commemorates the Declaration of Independence and its principles – the principles that people have rights to their lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, that governments  properly exist to  respect and secure these rights,  and that when  governments become destructive to those rights, people have the right to alter or abolish them.  The holiday celebrates  the still radical notion that the inalienable rights of individual human beings put limits on the actions of governments, and that there is nothing sacred or suprahuman about the state.

Tanks, warplanes, and boasts about military power just do not belong on the Fourth. It is not that we should not honor the armed forces. We should, and there are two national holidays specifically for that – Veteran’s Day and Memorial Day. It is that Independence Day is about the rights and liberty of the people, not the power of the government or the glory of the nation state.  It is bad enough to have pronouncements from present day politicians of either major party on a day when reason and decency would suggest  that most of them should hide their faces in shame. This thing is worse.

Vacation

In June we spent several days in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. We had a really good time. The weather, except for one day on the road to Beartooth Pass, was fine.  The scenery was spectacular as always. The hiking was good. The streams and rivers were full, and the animals were plentiful.  The only exception on the scenery was a result of the government’s burn-baby-burn policy on forest fires.  Trees have grown back in the areas damaged by the catastrophic fires of 1988, but several areas remain devastated from more recent fires. The excuse for the policy is that forest fires are natural. Well so are cholera, high infant mortality, smallpox, and recurring famines.  Sensible people realize that natural does not imply desirable.  (To the extent there are valid needs to manage  forests, there are less destructive ways of doing so.)  Yellowstone was created for the “benefit and enjoyment of the people”.  Few people enjoy or benefit from landscapes resembling parts of Flanders in 1917.  This is another example of the green obsession or religion making things worse.

Far less seriously, it also makes things annoying.  In the lodges, stores, and restaurants in both parks we were constantly hit with greeny directives, boasts, suggestions, propaganda, and simple inconveniences. The trash cans in the rooms had three bins – one for recycling, one for rotting stuff nominally to become compost, and a sinister one labelled “landfill” for plain old trash which will be thrown away.  The stores did not sell bottled water because virtuous people bring their own bottles and refill them from water fountains, though of course all sorts of other things were sold in bottles.  The lights in one room where we stayed  were purposely ridiculously dim.  Menus in the restaurants touted how sustainable and/or organic the ingredients in the mediocre, overpriced meals were. The kicker for me was a notice in our room in Yellowstone informing people that water is a precious resource in “dry Yellowstone” and asking them not to run the faucet while shaving.  Our room was a few hundred yards from the second largest alpine lake in the world, just down the road from a massive river, and within view of mountains still covered with the remains of huge winter snowfalls. That one was a hard sell.

It can be easy to laugh off that sort of nagging and posturing.  It would be a mistake to laugh off  the movement behind it. The faithful of the green religion are serious and fanatical. They mean us harm, and they are aided and supported by a lot of opportunistic, power hungry politicians and officials. It is something of a  jihad or crusade, and it is not hard to figure out who the infidels are.