I CAN SEE WHY AP RAN WITH THIS, HER PHOTO OOZES CREDIBILITY: “JAILED INSTAGRAM MODEL WANTS TO TRADE SECRETS FOR FREEDOM.”
Archive for 2018
February 28, 2018
See, here’s the thing. There’s a fair amount of soft support for gun control, but only a small number of gun control supporters do so with any intensity. On the other hand, there are a lot more gun-rights supporters with high intensity. So it’s bad for companies. Trouble is, the high-intensity gun control supporters are disproportionately found among the people who run companies and those they associate with. This tends to cause them to virtue-signal to their own crowd at expense of the businesses they’re in charge of.
Related: CEOs Choose Sides on Gun Control at Their Own Risk.
In some cases, companies’ responses have unleashed an online backlash as heated as the initial social-media firestorm—a reminder to companies that in placating one consumer group, it’s easy to alienate another.
A recent survey found companies that have ended discounts for National Rifle Association members in recent days lost more than they gained in reputation. For example, while MetLife Inc.’s 45% favorable rating didn’t change after respondents learned it ended its NRA discount, the proportion of respondents with an unfavorable view of MetLife doubled to 24%. The poll of 2,201 Americans was conducted by market-research firm Morning Consult. A spokesman from MetLife declined to comment.
Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines Inc. incurred the wrath of several prominent Georgia conservatives, including Casey Cagle, the lieutenant governor, after dropping its discount on flights to the National Rifle Association’s annual convention. The lieutenant governor also threatened to kill a pending bill that would provide a jet fuel tax break at Atlanta’s airport, Delta’s main hub.
Remember the rule: Get woke, go broke.
OPEN THREAD: I hope, on yet another slow news day where hardly anything happened, you will be able to find something to talk about.
JOHN HINDERAKER: Once Again, The Democrats Are Losing On Guns. “Finally, this is a serious topic, but I can’t resist a moment of levity. This is a video of CNN’s Gary Tuchman firing an AR-15 at a range. Why he allowed himself to be filmed, I have no idea. I hadn’t realized it was possible to shoot a rifle so incompetently.” This is CNN.
Let’s just hope Trump doesn’t screw things up by falling into a “bipartisan” trap like Schumer lured Marco Rubio into. Related: Watch Dianne Feinstein Erupt With Glee After Trump Seems to Endorse Her Assault Weapons Ban.
Nothing that makes DiFi gleeful will be good for Trump’s presidency, or for America.
USA TODAY EDITORIALIZES: Get NASA out of the rocket business.
SIGN OF THE TIMES: How To Destroy A Man Now, a step-by-step guide to fabricating false rape charges. Excerpt here.
HOW BOISE STATE became Social Justice U.
HOLLYWOOD IN ONE SENTENCE: “You sent me to whore school!”
“MISTAKENLY:” YouTube’s New Moderators Mistakenly Pull Right-Wing Channels. “YouTube’s new moderators, brought in to spot fake, misleading and extreme videos, stumbled in one of their first major tests, mistakenly removing some clips and channels in the midst of a nationwide debate on gun control. . . . In the wake of the Feb. 14 school shooting in Parkland, Florida, some YouTube moderators mistakenly removed several videos and some channels from right-wing, pro-gun video producers and outlets. . . . Shutting entire channels would have marked a sweeping policy change for YouTube, which typically only removes channels in extreme circumstances and focuses most disciplinary action on specific videos. But YouTube said some content was taken down by mistake. The site didn’t address specific cases and it’s unclear if it meant to take action on the accounts of Frost and Corsi.”
Hard to trust these guys when the “mistakes” always seem to go the same way.
Related: More Americans Want Big Tech Regulated. “A majority of Americans are now concerned that the government won’t do enough to regulate how U.S. technology companies operate, according to an Axios-SurveyMonkey poll. Across the board, concern about government inaction is up significantly — 15 percentage points — in the past three months.”
THE ANCHORESS PLACES A PAIR OF SAFE BETS: God will tell Oprah to run, and Joy Behar will not call her mentally ill when he does.
Plus some thoughts on what Oprah’s white light-style spirituality could mean for more traditionally religious Americans. Read the whole thing.
TRUMP’S TRYING TO BE BIPARTISAN, but if he wants to flush his presidency, the surest way to do it is to separate from his base on the gun issue. Like Schumer suckering Marco Rubio into joining a lethal “bipartisan” immigration deal, it’s a trap!
CABOTAGE! After Delta and United’s entry into politics — and their supporters’ boast that unhappy customers don’t have much in the way of alternatives — it’s time to revisit this idea from Matt Yeglesias! (No, really). How to Revive Airline Competition: Let foreign-owned airlines fly in the United States.
And while it has a funny name—“cabotage”—the basic concept is simple: Let foreign airlines fly domestic routes in the United States.
This is one of those ideas that’s so commonsensical, people tend not to realize it isn’t permitted. But if you’re wondering why it is that, say, Emirates will fly you from Los Angeles to Dubai or from Dubai to New York but not from California to the East Coast, that’s the reason. It’s illegal.
On a practical level, this creates obvious problems. Many international travelers are bound for cities that aren’t large enough to host substantial transcontinental operations. Thus, the invention of codesharing. A traveler bound from Copenhagen to Tulsa would fly on SAS to O’Hare, Newark, or Dulles and then switch to a United flight to Oklahoma with booking done on a single website and baggage transferring smoothly thanks to a partnership between the airlines.
Over the years the industry has evolved a mode of deep collaboration among airlines from different countries. Many major global airlines have joined the Star Alliance, the Oneworld Alliance, or the SkyTeam. The different members of an alliance remain separate companies with separate ownership, separate labor unions, and separate flight operations. But across an alliance, you can generally accrue frequent flier miles, access airplane lounges, transfer elite status, and count on smooth handling of multi-airline bookings.
But while alliances reduce practical problems associated with anti-cabotage rules, they do nothing for competition. In fact, by encouraging collaboration on major international routes, they reduce it.
To bolster competition, you need to let foreign airlines actually operate domestic routes.
Endorsed!
Related: More competition is answer to shoddy airline treatment. “If American consumers wish to enjoy improved service quality in air travel, they should demand that Congress repeal 90 years of anti-competitive federal law. Less regulation of air travel, not more, is the solution.”
NEW YORK TIMES: Trump Stuns Lawmakers With Seeming Embrace of Gun Control Measures.
To the surprise of many in the room, Mr. Trump urged the bipartisan lawmakers to start with a bipartisan bill put forward in 2013 by Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat, and Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania, a Republican. That bill died months after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., after intense Republican opposition.
Mr. Trump repeatedly suggested that the dynamics had changed, in part because of his leadership in the White House, a sentiment that the Democrats in the room readily agreed with as they saw the president supporting their ideas.
“It would be so beautiful to have one bill that everyone could support,” Mr. Trump said as Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, sat smiling to his left. “It’s time that a president stepped up.”
As Glenn likes to remind people, watch what Trump does rather than listen to what he says. But clearly, this is an issue to watch.
Update: ‘Take the guns first, go through due process second.’
This one is from The Hill:
“I like taking the guns early, like in this crazy man’s case that just took place in Florida … to go to court would have taken a long time,” Trump said at a meeting with lawmakers on school safety and gun violence.
“Take the guns first, go through due process second,” Trump said.
Trump was responding to comments from Vice President Pence that families and local law enforcement should have more tools to report potentially dangerous individuals with weapons.
“Allow due process so no one’s rights are trampled, but the ability to go to court, obtain an order and then collect not only the firearms but any weapons,” Pence said.
“Or, Mike, take the firearms first, and then go to court,” Trump responded.
Developing…
APPARENTLY, WOMEN CAN’T BE TRUSTED TO CHOOSE CORRECTLY: How freedom of choice contributes to the gender wage gap.
Plus, this evergreen observation, from Christina Hoff Sommers:
With hate speech like that, it’s no wonder she’s been targeted by the SPLC.
IT’S NOT AN ACCIDENT, IT WAS A GOAL: If Boys Are Broken, It’s the Left’s Fault.
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Oprah Talks to God, But It’s Okay Because She’s Not Mike Pence. “I don’t know how Democrats resolve the cognitive dissonance, but it’s fun to watch them try.”
SLOW-MOTION MAGIC: Creating Parkinson’s awareness one magic trick at a time.
This is the latest from magician and Parkinson’s suffer Dovid Rabotnick, who I introduced you to a while back. If you haven’t seen him in action, you’re missing out on something special.
BURIED LEDE: CHRIS MATTHEWS SAYS SOMETHING ACCURATE. Chris Matthews Nominates the Parkland Activists as the New Cronkites.
Considering Cronkite’s ceaseless ability to toe the DNC party line on all issues (he would go even further to the left after he left the anchor desk at CBS), that’s not the complement that Matthews intended.
REVIEW: 2018 Nissan Leaf.
NEWS YOU CAN USE? 5 Easy Ways to Ruin Your Life. “With enough hard work, anyone can turn their life to garbage.”
LESSON FOR NRA BOYCOTTERS: Cave to the politically correct pressures, then watch customers disappear into the mist.
I’M NOT SAYING IT WAS ALIENS, BUT IT WAS ALIENS: Freaky Theory Offers Totally New Explanation of the Moon’s Origin.
Their theory involves an entirely new type of astronomical object called a synestia (no, not synesthesia, that’s something entirely different). The word is an amalgam of “syn”, meaning “together,” and “Hestia,” the Greek goddess of architecture. The idea was first proposed in 2017 by Stewart and Simon Lock of Harvard University, a co-author of the new study.
A synestia happens when young, planet-sized objects smash into each other, creating a rapidly spinning mass of molten and vaporized rock. Significant portions of this volatile cloud orbits around itself, and it puffs out into an object that looks like a gigantic donut floating in space. A synestia only lasts about 100 to 200 years, shrinking quickly as it loses heat. The rock vapor first condenses into a liquid, and then into a molten planet.
“A synestia is an astronomical body that exceeds the rotation limit of a planet,” Stewart told Gizmodo. “Synestias are created by the high energy and high angular momentum of a giant impact.”
According to this latest research, the Moon may have formed within the Earth-synestia. Following a collision and the formation of the synestia, a “seed” formed within it from chunks of molten rock. As the Earth-synestia began to shrink, vaporized silicate rock began to rain onto the proto-Moon. Eventually, the Moon emerged as a discrete celestial object, trailing its own atmosphere of rock vapor.
Related? A 4G network is headed to the moon.