Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, Let Trump Be Trump

*Bumped.*

This book's flying off the shelves, or off the delivery lines.

At Amazon, Corey R. Lewandowski and David N. Bossie, Let Trump Be Trump: The Inside Story of His Rise to the Presidency.

Sexy Santas

Via Theo Spark:

The Gift of Goats

They're so tame. I guess they'd make a nice gift to some Sudanese children?



More at World Vision, "Donate Goats":

Goats can change everything.

Their milk provides great protein to help children grow. The family can also sell any extra to earn money for medicines and other necessities.

A healthy dairy goat can give up to 16 cups of milk a day. Goat’s milk is easier to digest than cow’s milk and is an excellent source of calcium, protein, and other essential nutrients that growing children need. Goats are practical animals — flourishing in harsh climates while producing valuable manure to fertilize crops and vegetable gardens...

Excited for Christmas

Via London's Daily Mail, on Twitter:

We all have one friend who's already this excited for Christmas! 😂😂🎄 (Listen with your 🔊 on!) via @DailyMail pic.twitter.com/vXtqoETq9F

— Daily Mail Online (@MailOnline) November 5, 2017

ICYMI: Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal

I posted this book back in December. My son gave it to me for Christmas. It's excellent.

At Amazon, Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal: The Definitive Account of the Landmark Battle.

WaPo's Top 10 Books of 2016.

I'm loaded up on books to read at the moment, but I found some new offerings at this piece.

Especially interesting is Svetlana Alexievich's, Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets.

Top 10 Books of 2016. https://t.co/9bGZqeQ0sG

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) December 25, 2016

'Little Drummer Boy (Peace on Earth)'

Sweet Christmas music, via Blazing Cat Fur:

Kelly Brook 'Through the Keyhole' (BONUS CALENDAR PHOTOS)

At the Sun U.K., "KELLY Brook has admitted that she thinks she looks rough in the morning during an appearance on Through The Keyhole: The model, 37, is known for her gorgeous hourglass figure."

And at Egotastic!, "Kelly Brook Amazing 2017 Calendar."

She's still got the best body going. Hands down she's hot.

Merry Christmas!

My Calender is on Sale now!! @CalendarsUK Great Christmas Gift 😜🎅🏻🎄 pic.twitter.com/AOyq7TGOL0

— Kelly Brook (@IAMKELLYBROOK) December 16, 2016

Did Reince Priebus Just Compare Donald Trump to Jesus?

Professor Daniel Drezner about popped a vessel at this:

OMFG. https://t.co/XjJsaCc2o6 pic.twitter.com/Ng725lrY2m

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) December 25, 2016

Mollie Hemingway responds:

I get that not everybody is Christian but you should really know that Christians celebrate this good news at this time each and every year. https://t.co/CSsWMv4oI1

— Mollie (@MZHemingway) December 25, 2016

At the Bustle, "Did Reince Priebus Just Compare Donald Trump To Jesus? Probably Not, But It Sure Sounded Like It."

And at BuzzFeed. The "new king" is Jesus, not Donald Trump:

People are arguing about whether Republicans just compared Trump to Jesus https://t.co/cyknbSgPAo pic.twitter.com/Gq2M5nRDMY

— BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) December 25, 2016

Baltimore Ravens QB Joe Flacco Bought Each of His Nine Offensive Lineman an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality System

That's a Merry Christmas!

At the Washington Post, "Some NFL players went all out with gifts for teammates."

Two-Hour Delivery with Amazon Prime

That's actually pretty impressive.

Normally I don't need my stuff shipped that fast, but if you're an Amazon Prime member, you can get your last-minute gift items delivered today.

Here's the Deal of the Day, Ninja Coffee Bar Brewer, Glass Carafe, Silver (Certified Refurbished).

I'll post some book links a little later.

I've got to take my son to work and head over to CostCo to buy food for our Christmas dinner, tri-rip roast and lobster (plus baked potato).

More later.

One-Day Shipping Available Today

I don't know if anyone's that hard up for last minute gifts, but Amazon's got one-day shipping available.

And some suggestions...

Dore Gold, Tower of Babble: How the United Nations Has Fueled Global Chaos, and The Fight for Jerusalem: Radical Islam, the West, and the Future of the Holy City.

Caroline Glick, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.

Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, O Jerusalem!

Joshua Muravchik, Making David into Goliath: How the World Turned Against Israel.

Yossi Klein Halevi, Like Dreamers: The Story of the Israeli Paratroopers Who Reunited Jerusalem and Divided a Nation.

Martin Gilbert, Israel: A History.

Jed Babbin and Herbert London, The BDS War Against Israel: The Orwellian Campaign to Destroy Israel Through the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement.

Roger Hardy, The Poisoned Well: Empire and Its Legacy in the Middle East.

Benjamin Netanyahu's Christmas Message (VIDEO)

I love Benjamin Netanyahu.

His messages always make me feel so good and proud, and so welcomed in Israel.

I'm planning at trip to Israel, in fact. I'm not sure when. I have two trips on the agenda. I don't know if I can make it one big trip or not. I want to go to France, to Normandy, and I want to visit Auschwitz, in Poland. Then I want to go to Israel. That might be two trips, but we'll see. I'm not sure if my wife wants to go. She's not comfortable traveling outside of the U.S., and I don't blame her. But I'm not worried. Maybe this summer I'll be able to do some traveling. The time is right, financially as well as family-wise. I want my sons to go, especially my young son, who hasn't traveled a lot yet.

In any case, enjoy the prime minister's message, via the Conservative Treehouse:

When Native Americans Were Arms Dealers — And Powerful, Formidable Warriors

I posted a bunch of links about the American West and Native Americans last night: "Two-Day Free Shipping Before Christmas."

I didn't know of this book, however, from David Silverman, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America.

It's reviewed at the Los Angeles Times, "When Native Americans were arms dealers: A history revealed in 'Thundersticks'":

In the years after the American Revolution, Seminole Indians built an arsenal of weapons acquired from Cuban and British traders that allowed them to defend their lands as an alternate and well-armed Underground Railroad in what was then Spanish-controlled Florida. To the horror of Deep South elites, the Seminoles shielded and supplied guns to Panhandle communities of Black Seminoles, small villages peopled by plantation runaways, intermarried tribal members and freed slaves of the tribe themselves.

“Together they resolved to keep white Americans and their slave catchers out of Seminole territory,” historian David Silverman writes in “Thundersticks: Firearms and the Violent Transformation of Native America.” “An alliance of militant Indians and black maroons supported by European resources was the materialization of a nightmare that had haunted white southerners ever since the seventeenth century.” ...

For the most part, Silverman avoids anthropological explanations for Native American tribes’ fascination with guns — save for the book’s title, which comes from a literal translation of the Narragansett word for gun, pésckunk. To explain the indigenous arms race that once gripped the continent, Silverman uses military history and political economy to chip away at Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs, and Steel” narrative, in which Europeans with superior weapons technology marched triumphantly through the Americas.

Instead, Silverman uncovers a history in which Indians quickly cornered a gun market, shocking European and American militaries with the breadth and superiority of their arms, most of them made in Britain or France. This indigenous arsenal explains why the Seminoles were able to repel the U.S. Army over three wars, spanning 1816 to 1858. Unable to best the tribe on the battlefield, the American military resorted to scorched-earth techniques — burning Seminole villages to the ground, destroying cattle herds — to starve the Seminoles and drastically reduce their population.

In contrast to a military that relied on the bureaucracy of purchase orders and shipping caravans to distribute its arms, the Seminoles’ decentralized backwoods armory lay scattered across the humid peninsula in dry, bark-lined underground caches. The tribe made  dugout canoe runs to Cuba to restock guns while raiding Florida sugar plantations for their lead-lined vats, which were melted down for ammunition. As the wars raged on, tribal leaders set up pseudo peace talks with military officials as a ruse to have their younger warriors sneak off into the bushes to buy guns from the opportunistic traders who followed U.S. military campaigns. Most notorious, tribal warriors seized muskets from the battlefield dead.

Among North American tribes of the colonial period, the Seminoles were far from alone in one-upping colonial powers to master a multinational supply network of arms. Silverman calls this phenomenon “a gun frontier,” a nimble, intertribal network of trade that created an arms race on the American continent, often decades before the arrival of sizeable numbers  of Euro-American settlers...

As you'll notice, the Seminoles don't appear to be the weakling victims of which the left always portrays American Indians. The tribe held off and defeated the U.S. army for half a century. While not all tribes had the capabilities and organization, Silverman's not the only one to document the fearsome fighting power of Native Americans. I linked yesterday S.C. Gwynne's, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History, which also offers a powerful counter-narrative placing Native Americans at the center of hegemony for vast sections of the American frontier. It's important to keep this narrative in mind when you read stories of the "genocide" against American Indians, which is the left's dominant victim's narrative (and which is a lie).

Two-Day Free Shipping Before Christmas

If you're doing last-minute shopping at Amazon, today's your last chance for free two-day shipping.

So, what are you waiting for? Get cracking amigos!

Some suggestions for under the tree...

See Stephen Ambrose, Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West.

William C. Davis, The American Frontier: Pioneers, Settlers, and Cowboys 1800–1899.

Robert Bunting, The Pacific Raincoast: Environment and Culture of an American Eden.

Elliott West, The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story.

Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History.

Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America.

Bob Drury, The Heart of Everything That Is: The Untold Story of Red Cloud, An American Legend.

Dee Brown, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West.

Peter Cozzens, The Earth Is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West.

Jared Diamond, Collapse

My mom bought it for me for Christmas.

See Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.

My dad once told me that you'll never be bored if you like to read.

And I love to read. And I love to blog about books and reading.

Thanks again for all your support. I really appreciate it.

Merry Christmas!

Last-Minute Deals

At Amazon, Last-Minute Deals - There's Still Time to Find Gifts for Everyone on Your List.

More Gold Box Savings here.

BONUS: Katherine Cramer, The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker.

The Year in Reading

Following-up from early this morning, "Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth."

I was reading this fabulous roundup of luminaries and their favorite books of 2016, at the New York Times.

Of course, not that many conservatives there, but of those that are, some interesting choices. Newt Gingrich recommends Daniel Silva, The Black Widow.

And Francis Fukuyama recommends Marisa Abrajano and Zoltan Hajnal, White Backlash: Immigration, Race, and American Politics.

Junot Díaz, Ava DuVernay, Hilary Mantel, John Green and many others share what they read in 2016: https://t.co/AW0kcMSlar

— New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) December 19, 2016

Karen Dawisha, Putin's Kleptocracy [BUMPED]

A timely suggestion for your winter holiday reading.

At Amazon, Karen Dawisha, Putin's Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?

Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth

Recommended by Paul Simon, of Simon and Garfunkel (more on that later today).

At Amazon, Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life.