Solar eclipse a week from today. Warning!

The much-anticipated total solar eclipse takes place a week from today. A map of the eclipse path is here. Another one is here. This cautionary message by an optometrist is from a Facebook page, via Conservative Treehouse.

As an Optometrist , I want to express concern that I have about the solar eclipse on Monday, Aug 21. There are serious risks associated with viewing a solar eclipse directly, even with the use of solar filter glasses. Everyone should keep in mind if they or their children are considering this.

We have to keep in mind that some people will encounter the inability to control every aspect of this exercise. For instance, true solar eclipse glasses are made for adults, do not fit children well and should not be used without direct parental supervision. If the solar glasses do not filter out 100% of the harmful UV rays, if they are not used absolutely perfectly, or should there be a manufacturing defect in any of them, this will result in permanent and irreversible vision loss for any eye exposed. Just like sunburn to the skin, the effects are not felt or noticed immediately. I have a great fear that I will have patients in my office on Tuesday, Aug 22 who woke up with hazy, blurry vision that I cannot fix. It is a huge risk to watch the eclipse even with the use of solar glasses. There is no absolutely safe way to do so other than on TV.

The biggest danger with children is ensuring proper use without direct parental supervision. As the eclipse passes over many places, including Columbus, the moon will not block 100% of the sun. Because so much of its light is blocked by the moon, if one looks at it without full protection, it does not cause pain as looking at the sun does on a regular day. Normally if you try to look at the sun, it physically hurts and you can’t see anything. During an eclipse, however, it is easier to stare for a bit….and even less than 30 seconds of exposure to a partially eclipsed sun, you can burn a blind spot right to your most precious central vision. With solar glasses you can’t see ANYTHING except the crescent of light of the sun. Kids could have a tendency to want to peak around the filter to see what is actually going on up there. One failure, just one, where education and supervision fail, will have such a devastating consequence.

Please, please be safe. Watch it on television.

Or live stream it via NASA. Pass it on.

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Conrad Black: Choose Sides in This Civil War

image credit: tothedeathmedia

Conrad Black has a sobering if scary take on the minefields and treachery that President Trump has to deal with every day. Here are a couple of paragraphs (and considering the “Never Trump” bias of National Review, I am somewhat surprised that NR published the piece in the first place):

Trump opponents need to understand what the alternative is. The battle lines have been so sharply drawn, in what is now a bloodless civil war for direction of U.S. public policy, that the two sides cannot really communicate with each other. There is a commendable candor in Kellyanne Conway’s statement: “They hate us and we hate them.” . . .

. . .  There is now unfolding what must be the last civilized debate about the trajectory of events in Washington before the civil war moves from the heavy and frequent skirmishing that has intensified since the election to the fight to the death that seems inevitably to impend. The president said in a powerful address to a very enthusiastic audience in West Virginia last week, where he received the grace of conversion to the Republican party of the formerly Democratic governor, Jim Justice, that the entire special-counsel investigation into relations between the Russian government and the Trump campaign is “a total fabrication” and “an attempt to [reverse] one of the greatest political defeats in American history.” So it is.

. . .

Whether [Robert] Mueller conducts himself professionally or not, there is no excuse for a special counsel to have been appointed, and the president was (as he need not have mentioned publicly) badly let down by Sessions. The scramble of nominal Republicans such as Lindsey Graham, and drooling partisan Democrats such as Chris Coons, to pass redundant, grandstanding legislation to protect Sessions and Mueller is nauseating. Trump ran against and defeated both parties, the Clintons, the Bushes, and Obama, and most of their close collaborators in the Congress. The war continues and until the president has enough economic progress, or enough time without gaffes that the hostile media can amplify into a wall of noise, or a sudden foreign-policy success such as with North Korea or even Venezuela, if he wants to start moving the needle of the polls upwards, he will face the problem of cowardice and lethargy in his own party. Senator McConnell’s statement in Kentucky this week that Trump was responsible for the almost total failure of the Republican Congress to achieve anything in the past six months was just more self-serving claptrap from a familiar and very tiresome source. . . .

. . .

This is a civil war and the apostate conservatives should realize that, if Trump loses, they don’t get a new Reaganism in the Republican party and renewed importance and self-importance for themselves; they get the semi-permanent return of those responsible for the decline of America, the sleazy transformation of America into an ineffectual force in the world and into an inert, economically stagnant welfare state. The choice, for sane conservatives, is Trump or national disaster. . ..

Read the whole thing here.

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Cleveland in the headline

via YouTube: "North Korea is a template for Trump: Mark Steyn"

"Pricing in the nuking of Cleveland"

Mark Steyn is a favorite commentator and analyst. And he is funny. From his website: 

[Steyn] started the day with a full hour on one of his favorite shows, "Varney & Co" on Fox Business. Stuart was as irrepressible as ever about the way the market had shrugged off the news from North Korea, and Mark gleefully chided him for "pricing in the nuking of Cleveland". However, they also addressed the situation rather more soberly.

Click above to watch (and it’s short).

It’s worth it just to watch an exasperated Steyn kick off with: "I'm so sick of listening to Mitch McConnell explain why nothing can be done." 

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It's a start

image credit: rainbow law

Yesterday, Kathryn Covert at the Washington Free Beacon reported:

GOP Donors Respond to Obamacare Repeal Failure, Withhold Donations

Republican donors are protesting GOP lawmakers' failure to repeal Obamacare by withholding donations to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

At least $2 million in contributions originally promised to the NRSC have not materialized, CNN reported Tuesday.

The failure of Republicans to fulfill a central campaign promise particularly concerns some donors because it could disillusion core voters heading into the 2018 midterms. The uncertainty could put the Republicans' majority—especially in the House of Representatives—at risk.

The Republican majority in the Senate is widely viewed to be safe in the 2018 midterms. Nonetheless, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R, Ky.) has been privately warning his colleagues and donors that the GOP's 52-48 majority should not be taken for granted, according to CNN. A campaign donation shortfall could impact the GOP's ability to effectively campaign in states where Democratic senators are vulnerable.

. . .

Withholding contributions is a good start, but it’s just a start. Remember when Dave Brat upset Eric Cantor? We need two or three more primary challenges. 

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Creative designer dog costumes at the Warehouse District street fair

Just for fun . . .

Pekinese in ribbons

Cleopatra on her barge

Patriotic prize-winner for Cutest Dog(s)

  

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Trump and the Bottom Line

photo credit: CNN

 

It's Sunday, and as always, Clarice Feldman at American Thinker has a thoughtful perspective  ("A Consequential President in the Time of Pygmies") on President Trump’s first six month in office. Here are a few excerpts:

Once when my son was about 6 or 7 I took him to the circus with some of his friends. The acrobats, clowns, and lion tamer in the center ring enthralled the other kids. Not him. He turned to me and said, “How do you think they make money producing a circus? I think it’s the concessions.” It struck me then that among the people in the world, there are some -- too few, actually -- who are not distracted by spectacles, but, instead, keep their eyes on the bottom line.

That’s how I see the President. His stated goals have always been to make us safe, get the economy booming, enable a job-creation economy, and make life better and safer for all Americans.

As the news is filled with tittle-tattle about the phony baloney Russian collusion story and moronic punditry, the president keeps plowing on with his agenda. American Digest lists 220 things the President has achieved while in office, despite the vitriolic attacks on him and what appears to be a silent coup by the press, bureaucrats, and entrenched officeholders.    

This week, despite Democratic stalling, 78 of his nominees for office were confirmed. So the list should now run to 221 things the President has done to Make America Great Again.

With West Virginia’s Governor Jim Justice having ditched the Democratic Party for the Republican, the Republicans now control 26 state governments. Put another way, 48% of Americans now live in a state where Republicans have complete control. 17% in states with total Dem control. “

The stock market is booming although the NYT twists itself into a pretzel to deny the President’s role in this. . . 

. . .

As for the Russian nonsense, Edward Jay Epstein, a longtime credible sleuth, explains why the Russians had no particular interest in having Hillary win, but a great deal of interest in degrading our belief in the legitimacy of our elections:

. . .

In the meantime, pay attention to the bottom line. Trump is not losing. The media and the Democratic party they work for are.

She has quite a bit more to say (e.g., on Comey and Mueller, etc.); the whole article is here.

Meantime, I am wondering about the 17-day “vacation” that President Trump is taking at one of his golf clubs in New Jersey, while his staff camps out at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Apparently these temporary logistics are planned so that the White House heating and cooling systems can be upgraded and other repairs can be made. Hmmm. I hope a trusted team of experts takes out entire walls in the White House, hauls them over to some secure warehouse, and under surveillance, finds the bugs.  

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More obstruction from the Uniparty

image credit: ring of fire radio

From The Hill:

The Senate blocked President Trump from being able to make recess appointments on Thursday as lawmakers leave Washington for their August break. 

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), doing wrap up for the entire Senate, locked in nine "pro-forma" sessions — brief meetings that normally last roughly a minute. 

The move, which requires the agreement of every senator, means the Senate will be in session every three business days throughout the August recess. 

The Senate left D.C. on Thursday evening with most lawmakers not expected to return to Washington until after Labor Day. 

If anyone wondered whether the term "Uniparty" was hyperbole . . .

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