[i]Michael R. Shannon is a Virginia-based public relations and media consultant with MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations who has worked in over 75 elections on three continents and a handful of islands.Michael's site is called: “The Whole Shebang (mostly)”.Michael can be reached at: [[email protected][email protected]][email protected][/email][/i]
Political campaigns are full of liars and fabulists. From the candidate who promises to repeal Obamacare root–and–branch, to the volunteer who lies about how many doors he knocked, campaigns attract people who are, as Mark Twain observed, “Economical with the truth.”
I know because I spent almost 40 years working in elections all over the US and in a handful of islands.
Think of all the disfunction and outrage you’ve ever endured in any organization where you’ve worked. Then condense the burned microwave popcorn in the break room, the idea–stealing colleague, the boss who doesn’t give the promised raise, the boasting braggart and the job description that changes monthly into a timeframe of only a few months.
Occasionally circumstances force me to eat lunch in the swamp. This time I was in Fairfax County, VA, formerly a reliably conservative county that has lately been invaded by swamp employees, swamp contractors, swamp lobbyists and other refugees from Washington, DC.
The county is now reliably Democrat and gave Hillary a 68 to 32 percent victory last November. Call it a pilot project for the entire country after illegals get amnesty.
During lunch I couldn’t help but overhear the conversation between a man and a woman I assumed were business associates. Most of it was background noise, “Grumble, grumble, TRUMP, mumble, mumble, TRUMP, Hitler, Hitler, TRUMP” and so on.
In all the discussion of the shooting during Republican practice for the Congressional baseball game, I was struck by the fact no one thought it odd that none of the other participants tried to help seriously wounded Rep. Steve Scalise to safety.
They knew he was hurt. They saw the trail of blood as he tried to drag himself off the field. But no one went to his aid. Like a herd of wildebeest fleeing a lion attack, the wounded and slow were left behind.
Now that the coast is clear, members of Congress are leaping out of the dugout and discussing ways taxpayers can protect them in the future.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has announced the company is going to focus on developing self–driving car “systems” instead of the car itself. In an interview with Bloomberg Television he explained this qualifies as an “MOA” effort as in “The Mother Of All AI projects.”
The decision to concentrate on software, rather than both hardware and software is a new one for Apple. Normally the company designs the hardware along with the operating software and then ships the entire package off to China for manufacturing and intellectual property theft.
Until very recently medical tourism was traveling from your home to find less expensive medical care, usually overseas. Medical tourists were leaving the warm embrace of the American Medical Association and the FDA to journey far from home. There were three motivations: Elective plastic surgery not covered by insurance, wanting to try an experimental procedure not covered or getting surgery done without benefit of any insurance at all.
That’s why breasts were being lifted in Brazil and hips replaced in India. Particularly courageous patients scheduled foreign heart transplants. I know all about this because I was almost a medical tourist myself. A few years ago we had what was laughingly called health insurance. Our deductible was so high you had to have been on life support for a week before coverage started.
Sophistication functionaries all across the nation are in a tizzy. President Trump’s budget calls for the elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts, which is a festering legacy of the Johnson administration.
From the program’s beginning in 1965 until 2015 bureaucrats at the NEA made 140,000 grants totalling over $5 billion. Outright NEA elimination could set off domino effect warnings like we haven’t seen since the last chopper lifted off from the embassy in Saigon.
Security–conscious citizens will be startled to learn that 16 years after Saudi Arabian jihadis crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the woman who approved visas for 11 of the 19 hijackers is still on the State Department payroll.
Even better, PJMedia.com reports, Shayna Steinger now works as a Foreign Service officer for the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation. There her crack diagnostic and investigative abilities will be put to use preventing “the spread of weapons of mass destruction.”
Something tells me both Iran and North Korea are lobbying to have her assigned as their nation’s senior case officer.
It’s ironic Elon Musk, one of America’s premier subsidy farmers, is also a perfect example of the difference between the private sector approach to cost and the government’s. Musk differs from earlier entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford who became wealthy by building a better mousetrap. Musk became wealthy by harvesting government subsidies.
The LA Times ran the numbers and Musk’s Tesla Motors, SolarCity Corp and Space X “have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support.”
The best part about subsidy farming, as opposed to wheat farming, is that Musk isn’t required to make a profit. Tesla and SolarCity have been in business for ten years and neither has made so much as a dime.
Many Trump supporters have been dismayed by constant Opposition Media attacks on the president. Trumpistas worry that potential administration accomplishments could be undermined or defeated by leftists before Trump has served even a single year.
My advice is to save your fretting.
The left has already won and they did it by seizing the high ground in the administration’s Human Resources office. Why spend millions on political organizing and TV ads when a new Trojan Horse reports for work every week?
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) passengers discovered what happens when government ignores the “Broken Windows” theory of policing in favor of the left’s “Let It All Hang Out” philosophy.
“Broken Windows,” introduced by James Wilson and George Kelling, held that a community starts to deteriorate when political leadership de–emphasizes enforcement of “quality of life” ordinances.
Wilson and Kelling used the example of a building with a couple of broken windows. If the windows aren’t repaired, vandals will continue to break windows until there is no glass at all. Failure to repair the first few signals that there won’t be any consequences for breaking more in the future.
How accurate is a poll based on a set of facts that don’t exist?
The WaPost’s Greg Sargent is excited about a new CNN poll claiming a vast majority of Americans essentially support open borders. But before we decide to delete the 4th of July from the calendar and add Cinco de Mayo, it’s crucial to know the entire question, so as to judge the accuracy of the result.
It reads:
“Now, thinking about how the U.S. government should treat illegal immigrants who have been in this country for a number of years, hold a job, speak English and are willing to pay any back taxes that they owe.
Would you favor or oppose a bill that allowed those immigrants to stay in this country rather than being deported and eventually allow them to apply for U.S. citizenship?”
Conservatives were wrong when they said granting alternative lifestyle practitioners special rights would put the country on a slippery slope. It wasn’t a slope at all. America jumped off a cliff.
Today sexual confusion isn’t concerned with whether a young adult should remain a virgin until marriage. It’s concerned with whether a young adult should remain a member of the sex into which they were born.
The Heartland Institute’s 12th International Conference on Climate Change was nothing like I expected. When joining a group described in pejorative terms as “deniers,” one would expect to see furtive movements and disreputable haircuts, yet the crowd displayed good humor and a welcoming attitude.
Even the dour Washington Post, which sees potentially fatal darkness around every corner, described the event as “buoyant,” which will come in handy if the seas continue to rise on Al Gore’s Titanic–like timeline.
Spending time with climate realists shows an informed observer that what he should be looking for is not spectacular climate disasters visible just prior to his agonizing death. Trying to spot herds of tornados tossing Oklahoma into the Gulf of Mexico or perpetual heat waves leaving spontaneous combustion in their wake is simply a waste of time.
How long would firemen remain the nation’s genial mascot if they forced you to move into a hotel for a few days because you smelled smoke in the garage? As you were wondering if ten years of chainsaw, lawn mower and leaf blower gas cans were about to be launched into a low earth orbit while you waited for firemen to arrive, once the truck arrived the first responders weren’t worried.
They knew in 30 seconds the smell originated in an overheating freezer, and unplugging it solved the problem. But the brass was concerned.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is preparing to offer Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the gift of a lifetime, but I don’t know if McConnell is astute enough to accept it. Mitch McClellan’s career has been defined by a gopher–like reluctance to risk anything that causes him to stray too far from the safety of his den. (To learn how McConnell earned the nickname “Mitch McClellan,” click here.)
Accepting Schumer’s gift will require Mitch to go head–to–head in the arena of public opinion, which he is evidently reluctant to do since, like most of the Republican leadership in Congress, he doesn’t believe enough in conservative principles to make a compelling case in public.
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Political campaigns are full of liars and fabulists. From the candidate who promises to repeal Obamacare root–and–branch, to the volunteer who lies about how many doors he knocked, campaigns attract people who are, as Mark Twain observed, “Economical with the truth.”
Until very recently medical tourism was traveling from your home to find less expensive medical care, usually overseas. Medical tourists were leaving the warm embrace of the American Medical Association and the FDA to journey far from home. There were three motivations: Elective plastic surgery not covered by insurance, wanting to try an experimental procedure not covered or getting surgery done without benefit of any insurance at all.
Security–conscious citizens will be startled to learn that 16 years after Saudi Arabian jihadis crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the woman who approved visas for 11 of the 19 hijackers is still on the State Department payroll.
It’s ironic Elon Musk, one of America’s premier subsidy farmers, is also a perfect example of the difference between the private sector approach to cost and the government’s. Musk differs from earlier entrepreneurs like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford who became wealthy by building a better mousetrap. Musk became wealthy by harvesting government subsidies.
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) passengers discovered what happens when government ignores the “Broken Windows” theory of policing in favor of the left’s “Let It All Hang Out” philosophy.
How accurate is a poll based on a set of facts that don’t exist?