LIZ WOLFE: El Paso Beto Rally Showed Just How Little Voters Care About Policy.

They have very little in common, but that might be irrelevant. When pressed for more specifics, hardcore Beto fans at his hometown rally couldn’t point to much. Some said they believed Beto and Bernie Sanders share good character and values. Others did not care much about the difference in economic policy (Bernie being a legitimate socialist and all, with Beto being roughly pro-free trade) when asked whether that bothered them. Still others cited a need for change and anti-corporation animus that seemed satiated by the vaguely grassroots, anti-PAC money aesthetic of both candidates.

That’s not to say people didn’t have their reasons for supporting O’Rourke, but the message was clear throughout: O’Rourke is the new Obama, a positive campaigner, young and new on the scene, who provides necessary contrast to the current guy in charge. He gives them the warm fuzzies. Maybe that’s all it takes. Warm fuzzies should not be underestimated.

Shauna and Joe, from Greenville, Texas, drove more than 600 miles to see O’Rourke in El Paso. Like devoted groupies, they’ll be following him to his third rally today in Austin, Texas (that’s about 570 miles across Texas over the course of nine hours). When asked who their second choice was, Shauna answered decisively, “Bernie.”

It’s April Fool’s all election season long.

ALSO: An idea or two for improving the voter pool.

MEANWHILE, OVER AT VODKAPUNDIT: Surprise! NYC Losing Restaurant Jobs to $15 Minimum Wage.

Some people stockpile food and ammo. My basement has a freezer filled with Sarah Hoyt Shocked Faces, and several crates of Unexpectedlys.

HMM: Turkish lira turns positive; Istanbul slips from Erdogan. “The Turkish lira firmed on Monday, clawing back early losses after President Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party lost control of the capital Ankara in local elections and trailed in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, as the last votes were tallied.”

The economy wins when Erdogan loses.

NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS: DEA collected data on purchases of money-counting machines in US.

WELL, GOOD: Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Bill in Nevada Would Eliminate ‘Policing for Profit’ Incentive.

UNEXPECTEDLY: Dick’s Sporting Goods Loses $150 million On Gun Control Crusade.

Now Bloomberg’s own media outlet, Bloomberg.com, is reporting that Dick’s itself estimates the price of its anti-gun advocacy at $150 million in lost sales in 2018, or almost 2% of the company’s annual revenue.

And while anti-gunners insisted they would reward Dick’s with increases in their own business, the same article mentions a new Stanford University study that casts doubt on that premise. According to that research, “Respondents said they were more likely to buy a product to support a CEO’s political stance than they were to boycott in disagreement, but their actions revealed the opposite.” The article continued, “When asked for specific examples, 69 percent could name a product they’d stopped buying, and only 21 percent could recall a product they started buying.”

So it seems, unsurprisingly, that being boastfully anti-gun is a dumb idea for a gun store, as is counting on the professed loyalty and support of anti-gunners (who, let’s face it, probably aren’t likely to be the most athletically inclined people and to need the other types of wares that Dick’s sells anyway).

Nevertheless, Stack remains defiant. “It was worth it,” the article quotes him as saying.

Shareholders ought to sue.

BRYAN PRESTON: The Mueller Report’s SHOCKING Evidence of Trump’s Russia Collusion – It’s All Here! “All the evidence of Trump’s collusion in one place. Rachel Maddow, our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

What’s today’s date again?

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS: Tutoring Eric Holder on American Greatness. “From Apollo to Dachau to Berlin, America is great.”

MATT TAIBBI: On Russiagate and Our Refusal to Face Why Trump Won. “Faulty coverage of Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign later made foreign espionage a more plausible explanation for his ascent to power.”

There’s a lot of stuff in this article which shows Taibbi himself hasn’t fully understood or embraced why Trump won, but when he’s right, he’s right.

TALK TO THE MEN AND WOMEN WHO FLY IT: F-35: What The Pilots Say.

One of the marvels of this airplane is the digital flight control technology. You are telling the airplane to go up or down, speed up or slow down, go left or right. And the computers figure out what’s the best way to do that, and they’re going to move the flight controls to do it. And the interesting thing is, they may not do it the same way twice. So let’s say the airplane gets damaged, and one of the flight controls is no longer available. A legacy airplane would still try to use that surface because it doesn’t know any better. The F-35 digital flight control systems will say, “That surface isn’t doing much for me anymore, so I’m going to have to compensate by using some other things. Maybe I’ll have to move them a little bit more to get the same effect because the pilot still wants to turn left.”

And every time I took somebody out for a first flight, when we came back—I was usually at plane side when they were coming down the ladder—I was waiting for the minute when they lifted their visor to see the expression on their face. And in every case, that expression was a smile. And when you ask people, “Do you feel like you need to practice landings?” they say, “No, not really.” And that’s something that you did in all of your legacy airplanes. It’s not great empirical data, but it was enough to convince me that we had gotten to where I had hoped we would get to.

In the Harrier, I needed to practice hover because hovering was hard, especially if it was windy out. In this airplane, hovering is so easy that there have been pictures of pilots with their hands above the canopy rails showing, “Look, no hands” because once you put it where you want, it’s going to stay there until you tell it to move or it runs out of gas.

Nifty.

It’s a longer piece from Air & Space, but a good read.

1919 MEETS 2019: Lenin Evaluates Democratic Candidates for 2020.

I know what you think I, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, have risen from my mausoleum by Kremlin Wall Red Square as amusement for Day of Fools of April.

Not so! Trust me, bolsheviki, I do not play idle game in honor reactionary bourgeois holiday invented to drug proletariat with bad jokes.

We are at moment history very grave. Mueller Report is disaster and orange-haired robber baron who tweet imperialist lies to working class will once again be president American States.

Our old comrade John Brennan promised this would not happen, swore so, but, alas, tovariches, as I told Zinoviev at Second International, even best friend not to be trusted. The revolutionary checks twice!

So now… “What Is to Be Done” – part two….

Read the whole thing, comrade.

PUNCH BACK TWICE AS HARD: Lindsey Graham Reveals AG Bill Barr ‘Pretty Upset’ Over Hillary Investigation And What He May Do About It.

LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Shutting down the border and much, much more. “Handsy Uncle Joe is taking some heat after a Nevada politician came forward to say Joe creeped on her. People on the right have been pointing out Biden’s predisposition for touching lady strangers but the Democrats only picked up on it after they decided to trash due process and use the #metoo gang to beat up on political adversaries.”

Make ’em play by their own rules.

OLD BOYS’ CLUB: Sanders on Accusation Against Biden: ‘I’m Not Sure That One Incident Alone Disqualifies Anybody.’

AND: Durbin: One Allegation Against Joe Biden Is Not Disqualifying.

BUT: 10 Times Joe Biden Has Touched People Against Their Will.

You’re gonna need a bigger list.

IT ALSO HELPS TO BE INTERSECTIONAL: Dropping Jussie Smollett Charges Says It’s Okay To Lie If You’re Woke.

Smollett may have been a sloppy criminal, since the police easily discovered his deception. But he was not wrong to think that the country would believe his bizarre story without hesitation because the media is hungry for stories that will “prove” that their anger and disgust with Trump and his supporters is justified. Smollett understood that, in this hyper-partisan and divisive moment in our history, many Americans are all too ready to view politics through a racial lens that will not merely bring attention to discrimination and hate but also discredit everyone with whom they disagree.

Hoaxes like this or the ones that falsely accused the Duke Lacrosse team and a University of Virginia fraternity of racist and sexual violence may discourage victims of genuine hate crimes from coming forward. Whether or not that is true, what is at stake here is that, by essentially clearing someone who manufactured a hate crime, the Chicago prosecutors have validated the notion that so long as the purpose of a lie about race is to bring attention to hate against blacks and gays, it is not something for which anyone truly needs to apologize.

Once the struggle against racism and violence gets mixed up with notions about race in which truth is subordinated to political theories, cases like Smollett’s are inevitable.

And to those pushing “social justice” instead of actual justice, desirable.

THAT’S NOT HOW THAT WORKS: Pope Decries US Border Wall, Says It Will Make America A ‘Prisoner.’

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE: This Colorado sheriff is willing to go to jail rather than enforce a proposed gun law.

The controversial “red flag” bill aims to seize guns temporarily from people who are deemed to be a threat to themselves or others.

Colorado’s state Senate passed the bill Thursday by a single vote, without any Republican support, and the bill is expected to pass the House, possibly this week. With Democratic majorities in both chambers, state Republicans have too few votes to stand in the way.

But more than half of Colorado’s 64 counties officially oppose the bill. Many have even declared themselves Second Amendment “sanctuary” counties in protest.
Failure to enforce a court order to seize a person’s guns could mean sheriffs being found in contempt. A judge could fine them indefinitely, or even send them to jail to force them to comply.

Reams says it’s a sacrifice he’d be forced to make.

I wonder how long before we’ll need First Amendment sanctuaries.

NYT: As Venezuelan Economy Unravels, Maduro Opponents Hope Downturn Will Topple Him.

Venezuela is experiencing a “downturn.” This is the same paper that went along with Team Clinton in describing the minor 1991 recession as the worst economic calamity since the Great Depression.

Anyway, here’s what a downturn looks like in Venezuela:

Venezuela’s better-off citizens have tucked into dollar savings to buy portable power generators, imported canned foods and taken respite in hotels and steakhouses. The less fortunate saw a signal of possible respite on Friday with word that the Red Cross would soon undertake an emergency relief campaign in Venezuela.

For many people, however, the only palliative to the ever-growing hardships is the hope that the worsening conditions will topple Mr. Maduro.

The blackout drained about $1 billion from Venezuela’s gross domestic product, or about 1 percent, according to investment bank Torino Capital. It left a wake of more than 500 looted businesses, at least 40 hospital patients who died and at least a half dozen shuttered factories.

Oil production equivalent to the entire output of a small petrostate like Brunei was irretrievably lost to the damage caused to oil fields by the sudden loss of power, according to IPD Latin America, a consultancy.

Obligatory page search:

MATT MARGOLIS: Activist Judge Throws Out Trump Executive Order, Restores Obama Drilling Ban. “Obama-nominated judge ignores the Constitution to protect Obama’s legacy.”

YASHAR ALI: “I realized that @DafnaLinzer, the head of all political coverage for NBC News and MSNBC wasn’t calling to advocate for her network, she was calling to advocate the DNC’s position. She wanted me to wait so they could call state party leaders.”

This is a Twitter thread about how Ali scored a small scoop on the dates of the first Democratic debates (my liver is already groaning at the forthcoming drunkblogs), and how deeply in bed the DNC is with MSNBC.

Or as Karol Markowicz tweeted, “I’ve had a few of these ‘this is how people think it works’ moments in the last week and those people turned out to be right. This is a must-read thread of egregious behavior by an MSNBC staffer helping out the DNC.”

You’ll want to read the whole thing.

DID ANYONE EVER THINK THAT IT WAS? ‘Justice Is Not the Goal:’ NAACP Image Awards Host Wants Jussie Smollett to Win. “Empire star is still a nominee despite calls for his removal.”

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Too Many Are Ignoring The Rise of Anti-Semitism On The Left.

WEARABLE TECH: I Now Have a Cardiologist.

I want to encourage those of you with Apple Watch [Series 4] devices in those supported regions to go grab the update and try out the ECG. Not just because it’s extremely cool tech. But because, well, let me put it this way:

I now have a cardiologist.

That isn’t a statement I was planning to make in my forties. But there it is. And it’s only true because of Apple Watch.

There’s a little too much progressive virtue-signaling in this piece for my tastes, but the story is a good one — and illustrates that we’re going to get a lot of health benefits from wearable tech. Onboard ECG tests are just the beginning.

FINALLY: Mystery of plastic Garfield novelty phones washing up along French coast solved after 30 years.