“You see thing s; and you
say, ‘Why?’ But I dream
things that never were;
and I say, ‘Why not?’”
George Bernard Shaw,
quoted in the Salt Lake City
Deseret News
“People always say
revenge is a dish best
served cold. No. It’s good
any time you can get it.”
Humorist Fran Lebowitz,
quoted in The Sydney Morning
Herald (Australia)
“A sure way to lose
happiness, I found, is to
want it at the expense
of everything else.”
Bette Davis, quoted in the
Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch
“Old men delight in
giving good advice as a
consolation for the fact
that they can no longer set
bad examples.”
Writer François de La
Rochefoucauld, quoted in
The New Yorker
“The simple truth is that
truth is hard to come by,
and that once found it
may easily be lost again.”
Philosopher Karl Popper,
quoted in TheOutline.com
“Fish and visitors
stink in three days.”
Benjamin Franklin, quoted
in The New York Times
“Enemies are
so stimulating.”
Katharine Hepburn, quoted
in Lapham’s QuarterlyTalking points
Wit &
Wisdom
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NEWS 17
Poll watch
QMichelle Obama ranks
as the world’s most ad-
mired woman, followed
by Oprah Winfrey and An-
gelina Jolie. Hillary Clin-
ton took eighth place, and
first lady Melania Trump
placed 19th. Among the
world ’s most admired
men, Bill Gates ranked
first, followed by Barack
Obama, Jackie Chan, and
President Xi Jinping. The
Dalai Lama was eighth,
Vladimir Putin came in
10th, and President Trump
ranked 14th.
YouGovPlastic straws: New culture war symbol
President Trump has struck a major blow
against “the nanny state and the tyranny
of the paper straw,” said B rad Polumbo in
WashingtonExaminer.com. In response to a
spate of “paternalistic policies banning plastic
straws” in liberal cities and states, the Trump
campaign has begun hawking “red plastic
straws with the Trump logo” on its
website. The marketing slogan
that accompanies the straws—
“Liberal paper straws don’t
work”—is both strategically clever
and true. And while “$15 might
sound like a bit much for 10 Trump-
branded straws,” can we really put a
price on liberty? It appears Trump is
onto something, said Owen Daugh-
erty in TheHill.com. His campaign
says it sold 140,000 straws in the first
four days they were available. Who
knew this vast, untapped market for
liberal-baiting plastic straws existed?This is not just a culture war issue, said
Neil Vigdor in The New York Times.
Environmentalists have pushed for
reusable straws made of metal or other
hard materials, but in November, a 60-year-old
disabled woman from England fell on a metal
straw she was carrying and was fatally impaled.
Some caregivers and advocates for the disabled“have voiced worries about the safety of rigid
straws.” Oh, come on, said Mariel Garza in
the Los Angeles Times. The British case was
a “classic freak accident.” You could also die
if you fell on a spoon or knife. You want to
know what the real danger is? Americans use,
and throw away, an estimated 170 million
straws per day. While straws are
just a small part of the “unholy
amount” of plastic garbage that
winds up in the ocean, “the bans
have been useful to call the pub-
lic’s attention to the problem of
single-use plastic.”No doubt about it: “Plastic straws
are now an issue in the 2020 cam-
paign,” said Christian Britschgi in
Reason.com. For us libertarians,
however, it’s sad that plastic straws—
“once a noble symbol of resistance
to government tyranny”—have been
appropriated by Trump, “who thinks
the Bill of Rights is just one more
invoice he doesn’t have to pay.” Ameri-
cans should side with the resistance
to paper straws not “to win another
battle in a toxic culture war” but because plastic
straws are “unfairly maligned as an environmen-
tal menace.” Also, it’s much harder to drink iced
coffee without one.“Yet another legal cloud over President Trump
has lifted,” said Andrew Prokop in Vox.com.
Federal prosecutors from the Southern District
of New York (SDNY) revealed last week that
they’ve closed their investigation into the Trump
campaign’s hush payments to Trump’s alleged
mistresses, ye t why that probe “fizzled out in
recent months remains mysterious.” Trump fixer
Michael Cohen is in prison partly for breaking
campaign finance laws, which he said he did at
Trump’s “direction”; newly unsealed documents
show that Trump had a flurry of phone calls with
Cohen about payments for Stormy Daniels and
Karen McDougal days before the 2016 election.
Yet prosecutors reportedly felt handcuffed by
Justice Department guidelines against indicting a
sitting president, which also would have required
proving Trump knew the payoffs were illegal—
“a tall order.” Still, with Attorney General Wil-
liam Barr getting confirmed just before this probe
died, Democrats are right to be asking whether
“everything’s aboveboard here.”Trump isn’t the only one who escaped justice,
said Elie Honig in CNN.com. Hope Hicks, his
confidante and former communications aide, told
the House Judiciary Committee that she “had no
direct knowledge about Michael Cohen’s pay-ments to Stormy Daniels,” but the phone logs
show she checked in with Cohen constantly as he
spoke with Trump and executives at the National
Enquirer about plans to pay off the porn star.
After a news article detailing the arrangement
failed to provoke much attention or outrage,
Hicks texted Cohen, “Keep praying!! It’s work-
ing!” What a huge letdown for the Left, said
David Rutz in FreeBeacon.com. Some liberal
pundits were certain that the SDNY was digging
into the Trump Organization itself, because it
made the payments to Daniels, and claimed that
investigation “was of greater peril to Trump than
Mueller’s Russia probe.” The danger turns out to
be wildly overhyped.Trump seemed genuinely petrified by the Mueller
probe and Cohen case, said Paul Waldman in The
Washington Post, but he “won’t be so worried”
next time. He has now seen that his sexual assault
of women, payoffs to mistresses, massive tax
fraud to get his father’s money, and eager accep-
tance of Russia’s election interference did not get
him indicted or impeached, or hurt his popularity
with his ardent fan base. Whatever shocking new
information emerges in the future, Trump will be
confident the scandal will quickly fade, and that
“he’ll survive it just as he has all the others.”Hush payments: How did Trump avoid charges?
Trolling the Left