ICYMI: Heather Mac Donald, The War on Cops

I've basically got a smorgasbord of books going right now, which is kinda fun, compared to the series of big tomes I read starting in January. But I've got to buckle down and finish some of these books I've got going, since there's some really good stuff in the pipeline.

At the top of the list is Heather Mac Donald's, The War on Cops: How the New Attack on Law and Order Makes Everyone Less Safe.

How Gender Dysphoric Bathroom Access Became the Next Frontier in America's Culture Wars

Heh.

This issue shouldn't even be a thing. But leave it to leftists. For them, it's permanent revolution. There's never enough "progress."

At NYT, "Transgender Americans See Their Personal Battle Become a National Showdown":

.@nytimes Leftists rammed their postmodern gender dysphoria crap down our throats? #LGBTyranny

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 21, 2016

How a clash over bathrooms, an issue that appeared atop no national polls, became the next frontier in America’s fast-moving culture wars — and ultimately landed on the desk of the president — involves an array of players, some with law degrees, others still in high school.

The sweeping directive to public schools seemed to come out of nowhere. In fact, it was the product of years of study inside the government and a highly orchestrated campaign by advocates for gay and transgender people. Mindful of the role “Whites Only’’ bathrooms played in the civil rights battles of more than half a century ago, they have been maneuvering behind the scenes to press federal agencies, and ultimately Mr. Obama, to address a question that has roiled many school districts: Should those with differing anatomies share the same bathrooms?

The lobbying came to a head, according to people who were involved, in a hastily called April 1 meeting between top White House officials — led by Valerie Jarrett, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser and one of his closest confidantes — and national leaders of the gay and transgender rights movement. North Carolina had just become the first state to explicitly bar transgender people from using the bathrooms of their choice.

“Transgender students are under attack in this country,” said Chad Griffin, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based advocacy group that is active on the issue, summing up the message he sought to convey to Ms. Jarrett that day. “They need their federal government to stand up for them.”

Ms. Jarrett and her team, he said, listened politely, but “did not reveal much,” including the fact that a legal directive on transgender rights that had been in the works for months was about to be released.

When — or precisely how — Mr. Obama personally weighed in is not clear; the White House would not provide specifics. But two days before that meeting, scores of advocacy groups sent Mr. Obama a private letter, appealing to his sense of history as he nears the end of his presidency, in which he has already advanced gay and transgender rights on multiple fronts.

“Too many students — including every single transgender, intersex, and gender-nonconforming student in North Carolina — will go to sleep tonight dreading the next school day,” the groups wrote, telling him that “your legacy will be defined by the tone you have set and the personal leadership you have shown on these issues.”

The dispute in Palatine came amid increasing confusion for school districts over how to handle questions about bathroom access for transgender students. Officials at the Department of Education said it had received hundreds of requests for guidance — so many that advocates for gay and transgender rights, frustrated by the Obama administration’s failure to issue specific policy guidelines, decided to act on their own.

In August, several groups seeking protection for transgender people — including the Human Rights Campaign, the National Education Association and the National Center for Lesbian Rights — issued a 68-page guide for schools, hoping to provide a blueprint for the White House.

At the Department of Education, Catherine E. Lhamon, 44, a former civil rights litigator who runs the agency’s Office of Civil Rights — and has made aggressive use of a federal nondiscrimination law known as Title IX — was taking the lead. The department’s ruling in favor of Student A in November was the first time it had found any school district in violation of civil rights over transgender issues.

For Student A, the federal intervention has been life changing. Her mother, who requested anonymity to protect the privacy of her daughter, said she was close to finishing her junior year and had just gone to the prom with a group of friends. (She wore a “nice, expensive dress” with a lot of sparkles, her mother said.) Student A is starting to think about which college she might attend.

“She’s in her own teenaged world right now,” her mother said.

The ruling in Palatine reverberated across the Midwest. In the South Dakota Legislature, Republicans were so alarmed by the situation in Palatine that, in February, they passed a measure restricting bathroom access for transgender students — similar to the one that later became law in North Carolina. Opponents sent transgender South Dakotans to meet with Gov. Dennis Daugaard, a Republican, and they believe that influenced his veto of the bill.

Among the visitors was Kendra Heathscott, who was 10 when she first met Mr. Daugaard, then the executive director of a social services organization that treats children with behavioral problems. In his office to lobby against the bathroom measure, she reintroduced herself. “He remembered me as a little boy,” she said.

In Wisconsin last year, another Republican-sponsored bathroom bill began to work its way through the Legislature, but was beaten back by transgender rights activists, many of them teenagers.

In rural north-central Florida, a retired veterinarian and cattle rancher named Harrell Phillips was alarmed one evening in March, when his 17-year-old son reported over dinner that he had encountered a transgender boy in the high school bathroom.

“I marched myself down to the principal,” said Dr. Phillips, who believes that “you are born into a sex that God chose you to be.”

The principal, and later the school superintendent, citing advice from lawyers, said there was nothing they could do. So Dr. Phillips turned to his best friend, a lawyer in Jacksonville, who introduced him to Roger Gannam of Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based Christian organization. Mr. Gannam represented Kim Davis, the Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses last year.

Mr. Gannam had just helped block a proposed anti-discrimination ordinance in Jacksonville, with an argument religious conservatives have been lately using to powerful effect: It would endanger women and young girls by allowing men — and even sexual predators — to pose as transgender and enter women’s bathrooms.

Ocala, where Dr. Phillips’s son attends school, is now embroiled in a fight much like the one that engulfed Palatine. The school board, at Mr. Gannam’s prodding, voted in April to require transgender students to use bathrooms that correspond with their biological sex.

One transgender young man there has been suspended for using the boys’ bathroom. The A.C.L.U. of Florida sued the day before the White House issued its directive, and last Sunday night, transgender activists and their allies held a strategy session in a church — with a sheriff’s deputy standing guard outside because attendees feared for their safety.

“It’s separate but equal, so they might as well put black and white up on the bathrooms, too,” said Beth Miller, the mother of 17-year-old Mathew Myers, formerly Madison, an R.O.T.C. student in Ocala who came out as transgender this fall by asking his sergeant to permit him to switch from a women’s uniform to one for men. The sergeant accommodated Mathew on the uniform, but the school required him to use the gender-neutral bathroom in the nurse’s office.

“I go to the guy’s bathroom all the time out in public, and no one cares,” Mathew said.

It's not "separate but equal," and it's a national disgrace, and rape of history, for leftists to appropriate the legacy of Jim Crow and slavery to push the homosexual and gender dysphoric licentiousness.

Still more.

Two Horses Die in Early Races of Preakness Saturday

And a jockey broke a collarbone.

It's a rough sport, man.

At WSJ:

Two horses die and jockey injured in early Preakness races https://t.co/mDGqVcUtDG

— Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) May 21, 2016

Kristen Keogh's Cool Saturday Forecast

It's cooler than normal temperatures, and the fact is we'll be heading into the normal June gloom pretty soon, so expect more of this.

At ABC News 10 San Diego:

Obama's Transgender Bathroom Guidance Totalitarianism

From USA Today's "Q & A" on the administration's "transgender bathroom guidance":

Q: What other federal rules govern the treatment of transgender students?

A: The guidance released Friday also addressed other issues and wrapped up a number of less formal interpretations that the Department of Education has made about transgender students. For example:

• Teachers and staff cannot use a transgender student's birth name or pronoun, and school records must reflect the student's chosen name and gender identity. The Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1972 gives parents the right to challenge inaccurate records.

• Schools with sex-segregated accommodations on overnight field trips must allow transgender students to sleep with students of their chosen gender. Like bathrooms, schools can offer single-occupancy sleeping rooms, but they may not require transgender students to use them unless all students have access to them.

• Athletic teams are allowed to segregate by sex — especially for contact sports — as long as they provide equal opportunities for both sexes. The guidance allows for discrimination based on standards of fair play, but those standards cannot "rely on overly broad generalizations or stereotypes" about transgender students, or be based solely on teammates being uncomfortable with their participation.

• School-sponsored extracurricular activities and social events — such as yearbook photos, school dances and graduation ceremonies — must allow transgender students to dress and participate according to their gender identity.

And see Laurie Higgins, at the Illinois Family Institute, "Emperor Obama Mandates Co-Ed Restrooms - and More":

As I have written ad nauseum, this issue is not centrally about restrooms. It is centrally about the reality and meaning of sex differences, which the left seeks to eradicate. (Ironically, when homosexuals claim they are attracted only to persons of the same sex, they affirm and emphasize the reality of sexual differentiation. The left, however, is rarely constrained by foolish inconsistency.)

The left’s disbelief in the twoness of the sexes defies objective reality. The left’s belief that subjective feelings about objective maleness or femaleness must trump objective maleness and femaleness in every context from potties to pronouns is a philosophical, political, moral, and theological assumption—not an objective fact. And it’s certainly not true.

This, my friends, is something wicked.

Alessandra Ambrosio in Cannes

At London's Daily Mail, "Alessandra Ambrosio goes braless in Cannes."

Also, "FYI Alessandra Ambrosio, we love you!"

Plus, a photo from the lady's Twitter feed:

Blue jean baby....L.A. lady.... 🎶🌾 📷: @jerome_duran pic.twitter.com/Rt6f3zdn0q

— Alessandra Ambrosio (@AngelAlessandra) May 20, 2016

The America We Once Knew Is Over and It Ain't Coming Back

Mike at Cold Fury's got the beat on the vital importance of Donald Trump's campaign, "Clarification":

It’s my own personal belief that America That Was was forever lost—thrown away, rather—long ago anyway, and there ain’t no bringing it back short of catastrophic upheaval and, most likely, bloodshed. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of Americans today don’t want it brought back. We’re a nation of ignoramuses and soft dupes, content to allow itself to be misgoverned by knaves, crooks, grifters, and con artists, of which the Republicrats are merely the other side of a very mean coin indeed. Reversing course on the path we’re currently on will never be accomplished by mere voting. If that was possible, voting would be illegal. As it is, it’s been rendered mostly irrelevant.

RTWT.

If you're a Republican voting for Hillary, you're no conservative.

And Mike's been down for Trump since Day One of the campaign. Check the archives for more.

Googe Doodle Honors Marxist Anti-American Yuri Kochiyama

When I first saw the doodle, I searched (Googled) Yuri Kochiyama and found out she was a rather reprehensible America-hating leftist. I was at work, though, and couldn't worry about it too much at the time. Lo and behold, though, this horrible woman's loathsome ideological background didn't go unnoticed. Lots of folks spoke out against her, particularly the part about how she endorsed Osama bin Laden as a great revolutionary hero.

In any case, Sara Hoyt posted on this that night, at Instapundit, "GOOGLE, BEING EVIL: Today Google is celebrating Yuri Kochyiama’s birthday."

And now here's more from Ed Driscoll, also at Instapundit, "HATING AMERICA AT GOOGLE: Yuri Kochiyama and the strange case of her being honored with a Google splash page on Thursday for her 95th birthday are explored by Jonathan S. Tobin at Commentary...":

"Remember that consciousness is power" - Yuri Kochiyama https://t.co/BfCF6060MT #GoogleDoodle #freedomfighter pic.twitter.com/AEh0suSUhj

— Global Fund forWomen (@GlobalFundWomen) May 19, 2016

As the Washington Free Beacon notes, a sympathetic biography of Kochiyama, Heartbeat of Struggle by Diane Carol Fujino, reveals that she didn’t so much sympathize with American Muslims as support the 9/11 attackers. While all decent people should sympathize with her experience during World War Two, it turned her against this country in a way that caused her to embrace radical Marxism and to support anyone who attacked America, including bin Laden. She came to believe that “the main terrorist and the main enemy of the world’s people is the U.S. government.” She also said, “I consider Osama bin Laden as one of the people that I admire. To me, he is in the category of Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Patrice Lumumba, Fidel Castro, all leaders that I admire.”

What is most curious about the decision to honor Kochiyama is that the Google page about her noted that she was honored during March — which is Women’s History Month — by the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. So the Obama administration has as many questions to answer about this as Google.

At this late date, are there any questions left as to what Obama — and his allies at Google — think about the nation that naively entrusted them with so much power?

Now that is noteworthy, but not surprising at all. Americans elected an America-hating president in 2008, and reelected him in 2012. It's hate all the way down from the left, and this year's campaign is becoming a referendum on whether or not conservatives are willing to confront the left's ideological evil head on.

For more, go directly to Jonathan Tobin's Commentary piece, "Hating America at Google":

Yuri Kochiyama benefited from America’s freedoms and ultimately even saw the cause that affected her family — the internment issue — resolved in her favor. She agitated for many causes, some of which may have been just and others that were violent and destructive. Indeed, her biography shows backing for a laundry list of every ragtag radical anti-American, racialist, and pro-terror group to emerge after World War Two. She may have a place in the history of radicalism and even a footnote in the story of American women. But a woman who celebrated the mass murder of Americans and the admired the people who plotted that crime is not someone who should be celebrated or considered a role model for women, Asian Americans, or anyone else.

May 19th may have been Yuri Kochiyama’s birthday, but it should also have been the day that some of us started thinking a little differently about Google.

Well, that's for sure. As I tweeted:

Heh, sweet spot for today's progressive zeitgeist! You go Google, lol. #YuriKochiyama https://t.co/TcSRJqU8O0

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 19, 2016

Deal of the Day: Save Big on Select Refurbished Samsung Display Monitors

At Amazon, Samsung S22E310H 21.5" Full-HD LED-backlit Monitor with Simple Stand (Certified Refurbished).

Also, Samsung 27-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor (S27E390H) Certified Refurbished, and Samsung 23.6-Inch Screen LED-Lit Monitor (S24E390HL-R) Certified Refurbished.

More, Save Save Big on Select E-Z UP Outdoor Canopies.

And, Optoma HD37 1080p DLP Home Theater Projector (Manufacturer Refurbished).

Still more, Father's Day BLACK+DECKER $10 off $50 Promotion.

Plus, Father's Day Makita $20 off $100 Promotion.

BONUS: Helen Smith, Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters.

Jackie Johnson's Cool and Cloudy Forecast

Surprisingly chilly today.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles. (Love that black dress, by the way.)

Deal of the Day: Save Big on BioPEDIC Bed Pillow 4-Pack with Built-In Ultra-Fresh Technology

At Amazon, BioPEDIC 4-Pack Bed Pillows with Built-In Ultra-Fresh Anti-Odor Technology, Standard Size, White.

Also, Energizer Weatheready 3-LED Carabineer Rechargeable Crank Light, Red.

Still more, VIZIO SB3851-C0 38-Inch 5.1 Channel Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer and Satellite Speakers (Certified Refurbished)."

From Roger Simon's new book, I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.

Plus, from Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left.

BONUS: Mark Bauerlein, The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don 't Trust Anyone Under 30).

Donald Trump Pivots on Immigration?

This is something I've talked about in my classes, especially since Trump met with the editorial board of the New York Times (and backed off his earlier statements on building the wall and deportation).

Trump needs to be careful not to alienate his core supporters. He can't back off too much from his tough-on-immigration theme.

Here's Ed Morrissey, at Hot Air, "Time: Here comes Donald Trump’s pivot on immigration."

And at Time Magazine, "Exclusive: Donald Trump Shifts Immigration Tone in Meeting with Hispanic Evangelical Leader":

No commitments to change policy

In a clear sign of a pivot towards the general election, Donald Trump privately discussed immigration policy on May 11 with a representative of the largest Hispanic evangelical association at Trump Tower.

The representative left the meeting expressing surprise at how supportive the presumptive Republican nominee had been. “Donald Trump showed a tremendous understanding and concern for the undocumented immigrants,” evangelical pastor Mario Bramnick. “We all came out really sensing his genuineness.”

Bramnick, a Cuban-American who advised Sen. Ted Cruz during the primary, came to the meeting as a representative of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference (NHCLC), which has more than 40,000 member churches. The group’s leader, pastor Samuel Rodriguez Jr., has been openly critical of Trump’s plan to build a southern wall and deport with force the roughly 10 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States. “It’s impossible,” Rodriguez says. “You’d have to have a Gestapo sort of apparatus, in the vein of World War II, putting people not on trains but airplanes.”

But in the meeting, Bramnick said Trump suggested a clear willingness to work with the Hispanic community. While Trump did not say he would revisit any of his policies, he signaled an openness to continue the conversation, Bramnick said...

Boy, that's like threading a needle. It's going to tricky getting this just right, attracting Hispanics but not throwing your massive white working-class base under the bus.

More.

'The first man who goes into the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery...'

Oh boy.

Things are getting crazy, and there's no signs things are letting up.

At Free Beacon, "College Reverses Firing of Ex-Army General After Transgender Bathroom Comments":

An all-male college in Virginia has reversed its decision to fire a prominent retired U.S. Army general hours after reports that he was removed over political correctness provoked outcry.

Hampden-Sydney College decided to offer Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin a one-year contract, walking back its decision to fire Boykin after he made controversial comments about transgender bathrooms that angered LGBT activists.

Fox News first reported Thursday that Boykin, an original member of the Delta Force who served as undersecretary of defense for intelligence under President George W. Bush, had been fired after nine years of teaching at the school after criticizing transgender bathrooms.

“The first man who goes into the restroom with my daughter will not have to worry about surgery,” Boykin said of the debate surrounding transgender bathroom rules during a speech to conservatives in March.

The comments angered LGBT activists, dozens of whom signed a letter demanding the college fire him. They accused him of calling for violence against transgenders, he said.

“I never said homosexuals. I never said transgenders,” he told Fox. “I was really talking about these perverts who would use this as a way to get into the bathrooms with our wives and daughters.”

He said he was fired without warning and without being afforded the opportunity to defend himself. A representative for the college told Fox that his contract was “simply not renewed” and denied that the comments about transgender bathrooms were the “determining factor” in his firing. The representative did, however, expressed concern that the statement “appeared to advocate or approve of violence.”

Also at Memeorandum, "College boots ex-Delta Force hero after complaint from LGBT activists."

Here We Go, Chicago 1968 Redux: Sanders Supporters Get Permits to Protest Democrat Convention in Philadelphia (VIDEO)

Senator Barbara Boxer, at the video, whines about how she felt "scared" by Bernie Sanders supporters.

Watch, "Sen. Boxer: I Felt Frightened, Physically Threatened While Sanders Supporters Booed Me."

Well, suck it up, sweetie. There's plenty more of that coming down the pike.

At WSJ, "Sanders Supporters Secure Rally Permit Near Democratic Convention in Philadelphia" (via Memeorandum):

Sanders Supporters Secure Rally Permit Near Democratic Convention in Philadelphia https://t.co/cqtvt64oQI https://t.co/E8DsZuweRz

— memeorandum (@memeorandum) May 20, 2016

Philadelphia has approved four demonstration permits in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders at the July Democratic National Convention — including a large rally planned near the convention’s epicenter.

One of the permits is for an event consisting of four days of all-day rallies at FDR Park in support of Mr. Sanders. The city said it expects 30,000 participants, and organizers said in an interview they hope turnout will be much higher.

The park is adjacent to the Wells Fargo Center, where many of the Democratic National Convention events will be held — raising the possibility of a large demonstration in support of Mr. Sanders just steps away from where delegates will officially select the Democratic nominee. A growing number of Democrats are concerned the convention could turn out to be divisive and disorderly due to activities planned by Sanders supporters.

The city has also granted permits to three smaller demonstrations at Thomas Paine Plaza, a few miles from the Wells Fargo Center. The city says it expects 2,000 to 3,000 participants at those events.

The events — which are being organized independent of campaign by supporters of Mr. Sanders — aim to call attention to support the Vermont Senator has received throughout the primary process and push for long-term changes in the way that the Democratic Party nominates candidates.

“The whole Bernie movement is an ideology. If Bernie wins the nomination, wins the presidency, that would be amazing. But even if Hillary does win the nomination, the movement has already started,” said Steve Okan Layne, who is helping organize one of the demonstrations...

Oh goody!

It's going to be fantastic! I can't wait for the Democrat Anarchist Socialist Communist 9/11 Truther BDS Convention, lol.

More.

'America Was Never Great'

Did you read the piece on Chomsky I posted the other day? See, "The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky."

I have students in my classes that cite Chomsky as one of their main ideological influences. It gives me a pit in my stomach, because I know then the students won't be open-minded, and literally nothing I teach --- including factual, scientific data and evidence on key issues, like "global warming" --- will even be considered.

So, here comes this black lady with the "America Was Never Great" hat. And she was wearing this while working at Home Depot? She'd be fired if I was in management. You're going to lose customers. There's no First Amendment issue at stake.

Sickening.

At Big Government, "Home Depot Employee’s ‘America Was Never Great’ Hat Sparks Outrage On Social Media."

.@HomeDepot Employee’s ‘America Was Never Great’ Hat Sparks Outrage - https://t.co/4IZ8YMEUBt pic.twitter.com/J4hgk12V1C

— Kelly (@KLSouth) May 20, 2016

And at Weasel Zippers, "Home Depot Employee and Bernie Supporter Wearing “America Was Never Great” Hat Photo Goes Viral, Stirs Up the Social Media Masses…"

Home Depot Employee Wearing “America Was Never Great” Hat Photo Goes Viral, Stirs Up The Social Media Masses… https://t.co/rzDkHx7h3H

— Weasel Zippers (@weaselzippers) May 20, 2016

And death threats too? Totally out of line, but not surprising. At the New York Times and Memeorandum:

'America Was Never Great' Hat Leads to Death Threats (@melechristopher / New York Times) https://t.co/lOHKJFTIv4 https://t.co/gKuWgMbA1w

— memeorandum (@memeorandum) May 20, 2016

'The Purge: Election Year' New Trailer (VIDEO)

Well, 2014's "The Purge: Anarchy" was a cool flick.

So now we have a sequel.

I tweeted out this piece from the Verge. The video trailer's at the link:

The new trailer for "The Purge: Election Year" invites you to keep America great: https://t.co/XPiUqFzvXa #ThePurgeElectionYear

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) May 19, 2016

Jackie Johnson's Fit Tips (VIDEO)

Well, when Ms. Johnson's not doing the weather she's working out to stay in shape for the lovely summer dresses she wears.

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Jackie Johnson's Stubborn Marine Layer Forecast

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Space Shuttle External Tank Arrives in Marina del Rey (VIDEO)

The tank is slated to join the Space Shuttle Endeavor at the California Science Center.

And come to think of it, I need to go see that exhibition, dang.

At LAT, "Giant space shuttle tank arrives in L.A. by sea."

And watch, via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

April Rose Loves Muscle Cars (VIDEO)

Via Playboy:



Previously, "April Rose Seen with Alyssa Milano."

Blake Lively Under Attack for Alleged 'Racist' Instagram Caption

She's a cool chick.

And dang if she doesn't indeed have an "Oakland booty," lol.

So far she's not backing down from the leftist thugs.

At Heat Street and the Hollywood Reporter:

Culture warriors attacked Blake Lively after she quoted Sir Mix-A-Lot. https://t.co/hSOm9DxSoU

— Heat Street (@heatstreet) May 19, 2016

Sir Mix-A-Lot on Blake Lively's Instagram post: "I was a little surprised at the criticism" https://t.co/T4ntNVwfI8 pic.twitter.com/IWQQe12Lek

— Pret-a-Reporter (@pretareporter) May 19, 2016

Renegade Jew Backlash

Following-up from earlier, "Bill Kristol, Renegade Jew," and "'Little Ben' Shapiro Attacks David Horowitz for Breitbart 'Renegade Jew' Piece."

David Horowitz responds, at FrontPage Magazine, "A low-grade counter-attack":

I have been accused of being a provocateur all my life – when I was a leftist in the 60s proclaiming (God help me) that Vietnam was the fulfillment of the American dream; when I left the left declaring that, “the beginning of political morality is anti-Communism;” when I said that identity politics “owed more to Mussolini than to Marx;” when I opposed reparations for slavery 137 years after the fact because it was “bad for blacks and racist too;” and when I organized “Islamo-fascism Awareness Weeks on a hundred college campuses across the country. Now I have provoked a firestorm on the Internet through a Breitbart article that called Bill Kristol a “renegade Jew.”

According to the Internet Webster synonyms for renegade are “defector” and “deserter.” I applied the term to Kristol because of his efforts to launch a third party campaign to block the nominee of his party, split the conservative vote, and ensure the election of a Democrat whose party had provided a path to nuclear weapons to the Jews’ mortal enemy (and America’s as well). I picked the emotional term “renegade” because I wanted to shock Kristol and his co-conspirators into realizing the gravity of their actions.

However, I had no idea that this would provoke the reaction it did. A veritable tsunami of attacks were directed at Breitbart and myself from Kristol’s supporters on the “neo-conservative” right and from die-hard enemies of the Republican nominee in all political quarters. Even the Anti-Defamation League, which had once attacked me over my anti-reparations campaign) chimed in, calling the title of my piece “inappropriate and offensive.” This was actually pretty mild considering others were denouncing it as “disgraceful” and “an anti-Semitic slur.”

How by the way is the characterization “anti-Semitic slur” even possible? Are Jews immune to defecting from causes? When I publicly repudiated the radical cause, thirty years ago, the first attack on me appeared in the Village Voice under the title, “The Intellectual Life and the Renegade Horowitz.” It was written by Paul Berman, who years later became a somewhat chastened radical himself. Berman’s attack stung me – as I hoped my charge would sting Kristol and cause him to reconsider his course. But the epithet didn’t bother anybody but me. My current critics would stigmatize me not only as a defector from the conservative cause but as a double agent who never really left the left. After my Breitbart article appeared, Commentary editor (and Kristol relative) John Podhoretz sent me a one-line email: “Once a Stalinist always a Stalinist,” while Commentary writer Jonathan Tobin in a piece titled “Breitbart ‘Renegade Jew’ Disgrace,” suggest: “You can take the boy out of the Bolsheviks but you can’t take the Bolshevik out of the boy.”

Like many of the attacks on Trump, these squalid responses with their flimsy intellectual content call to mind a famous remark of Lionel Trilling’s, made more than 60 years ago. Conservatives, he wrote, did not “express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures that seek to resemble ideas.” It is not that Kristol or his defender Tobin haven’t had worthy and defensible ideas. They have. But this makes it even sadder to see the flimsy arguments they trot out to discredit Trump and to defend Kristol’s indefensible campaign. Criticisms of Trump’s personal attacks on his Republican rivals are reasonable. But not when they fail to take into account the 60,000 political ads that were aired by those same rivals whose purpose was to destroy him. (The ads were not, should anybody have missed them, about policies and issues.)

I have no quarrel with people who have doubts about what Trump would do if elected. It is the task of the candidate to allay those doubts. For reasonable critics Trump’s announcement of his prospective Supreme Court nominees should be important steps along the way. My quarrel is not with Trump skeptics, but with the effort to nullify the vote of the Republican electorate – a politically active and informed, and conservative segment of that electorate. Kristol’s third party effort exudes an elitist contempt for the will of the people, which is particularly unbecoming in a crowd that prides itself on being “constitutional conservatives.”

Finally, I am disturbed by the failure of the nullifiers to consider the perils of the choices our country now faces. For the life of me I cannot understand how my friends in the conservative movement cannot have qualms about derailing the candidacy of the Republican Party’s pro-Israel, pro-military, pro-American nominee, and electing the candidate of a party that has built its foreign policy around making Islamist Iran the number one power in the Middle East, providing its jihadists with a path to nuclear weapons, putting $150 billion into their terrorist war chest and turning a blind eye to their circumvention of international restrictions so that they can build ballistic missiles capable of destroying the Jewish state and causing incalculable damage to the United States.

Donald Trump Blames Terrorism for Downing of EgyptAir MS804, Gets Attacked for Lack of 'Evidence' by New York Times, Then French and Egyptian Governments Warn of Terrorism as Likely Cause

Via Instapundit, "Journalism."







And see the Guardian UK, "EgyptAir flight MS804 crash: debris 'not our aircraft' airline says – live":

Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said terrorism was more likely than technical failure to be the cause of the crash. “The possibility of having a terror attack is higher than the possibility of having a technical [problem],” he told reporters. French president François Holland, Egyptian prime minister Sherif Ismail and the White House said that terrorism could not be ruled out.

More.

Excerpt from Roger Simon's New Book, I Know Best

See Ed Dricoll, at Instapundit, "MORAL NARCISSISM AND THE LEAST-GREAT GENERATION."

And here's Roger Simon's new book, at Amazon, I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already.

Daring Reveal: Bombshell Bella Hadid Upstages on the Cannes Red Carpet

At London's Daily Mail, "Bombshell Bella Hadid upstages everyone on the red carpet as she goes underwear-free in a plunging scarlet gown with soaring split at Cannes Film Festival premiere of Unknown Girl."

Deal of the Day: 50% Off This Karcher Pro Series 3,200 PSI Gas-Powered Pressure Washer

At Amazon, Karcher G 3200 OCT 2.5 GPM 3200 PSI 196cc Gas Power Pressure Washer, Pro Series.

Also, Camco 57293 Deluxe Grilling Table.

Bonus: Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead.

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At Amazon, STERILITE 03078601 36Pc Ultra-Seal Food Storage Set.

And, Tumi Mission Bryant Leather Backpack.

More, Crocs Shoes.

BONUS: Peter Collier and, David Horowitz, eds., The Anti Chomsky Reader.

Democrat Party Chaos! (VIDEO)

It's getting so bad on the Democrat side that Donald Trump's actually getting a boost from the leftist disarray!

I love it.

At the New York Times, "From Bernie Sanders Supporters, Death Threats Over Delegates."

More at Bloomberg, via Memeorandum, "Clinton, Democrats Confronting Dangerous Divisions Within Party."

And at the Los Angeles Times, "Sanders and Democratic officials are engaged in an escalating dispute over Nevada violence."

And watch, via NBC News:

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky

Following-up from previously, "Noam Chomsky: Today's Republican Party 'Is a Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History...' (VIDEO)"

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine:

WITHOUT QUESTION, the most devious, the most dishonest and -- in this hour of his nation’s grave crisis – the most treacherous intellect in America belongs to MIT professor Noam Chomsky. On the 150 campuses that have mounted "teach-ins" and rallies against America’s right to defend herself; on the streets of Genoa and Seattle where "anti-globalist" anarchists have attacked the symbols of markets and world trade; among the demonstrators at Vieques who wish to deny our military its training grounds; and wherever young people manifest an otherwise incomprehensible rage against their country, the inspirer of their loathing and the instructor of their hate is most likely this man.

There are many who ask how it is possible that our most privileged and educated youth should come to despise their own nation – a free, open, democratic society – and to do so with such ferocious passion. They ask how it is possible for American youth to even consider lending comfort and aid to the Osama bin Ladens and the Saddam Husseins (and the Communists before them). A full answer would involve a search of the deep structures of the human psyche, and its irrepressible longings for a redemptive illusion. But the short answer is to be found in the speeches and writings of an embittered academic and his intellectual supporters.

For forty years, Noam Chomsky has turned out book after book, pamphlet after pamphlet and speech after speech with one message, and one message alone: America is the Great Satan; it is the fount of evil in the world. In Chomsky’s demented universe, America is responsible not only for its own bad deeds, but for the bad deeds of others, including those of the terrorists who struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In this attitude he is the medium for all those who now search the ruins of Manhattan not for the victims and the American dead, but for the "root causes" of the catastrophe that befell them.

One little pamphlet of Chomsky’s – What Uncle Sam Really Wants – has already sold 160,000 copies (1), but this represents only the tip of the Chomsky iceberg. His venomous message is spread on tapes and CDs, and the campus lecture circuit; he is promoted at rock concerts by superstar bands such as Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, and U-2 (whose lead singer Bono called Chomsky a "rebel without a pause"). He is the icon of Hollywood stars like Matt Damon whose genius character in the Academy Award-winning film Good Will Hunting is made to invoke Chomsky as the go-to authority for political insight.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Noam Chomsky is "the most often cited living author. Among intellectual luminaries of all eras, Chomsky placed eighth, just behind Plato and Sigmund Freud." On the Web, there are more chat room references to Noam Chomsky than to Vice President Dick Cheney and 10 times as many as there are to Democratic congressional leaders Richard Gephardt and Tom Daschle. This is because Chomsky is also the political mentor of the academic left, the legions of Sixties radicals who have entrenched themselves in American universities to indoctrinate students in their anti-American creeds. The New York Times calls Chomsky "arguably the most important intellectual alive," and Rolling Stone – which otherwise does not even acknowledge the realm of the mind – "one of the most respected and influential intellectuals in the world."

In fact, Chomsky’s influence is best understood not as that of an intellectual figure, but as the leader of a secular religious cult – as the ayatollah of anti-American hate. This cultic resonance is recognized by his followers. His most important devotee, David Barsamian, is an obscure public radio producer on KGNU in Boulder Colorado, who has created a library of Chomsky screeds on tape from interviews he conducted with the master, and has converted them into pamphlets and books as well. In the introduction to one such offering, Barsamian describes Chomsky’s power over his disciples: "Although decidedly secular, he is for many of us our rabbi, our preacher, our rinpoche, our pundit, our imam, our sensei."

The theology that Chomsky preaches is Manichean, with America as its evil principle. For Chomsky no evil however great can exceed that of America, and America is also the cause of evil in others. This is the key to the mystery of September 11: The devil made them do it. In every one of the 150 shameful demonstrations that took place on America’s campuses on September 20, these were the twin themes of those who agitated to prevent America from taking up arms in her self-defense: America is responsible for the "root causes" of this criminal attack; America has done worse to others.

In his first statement on the terrorist attack, Chomsky’s response to Osama bin Laden’s calculated strike on a building containing 50,000 innocent human beings was to eclipse it with an even greater atrocity he was confident he could attribute to former president Bill Clinton. Chomsky’s infamous September 12 statement "On the Bombings" began:

The terrorist attacks were major atrocities. In scale they may not reach the level of many others, for example, Clinton’s bombing of the Sudan with no credible pretext, destroying half its pharmaceutical supplies and killing unknown numbers of people (no one knows, because the US blocked an inquiry at the UN and no one cares to pursue it).

Observe the syntax. The opening reference to the actual attacks is clipped and bloodless, a kind of rhetorical throat clearing for Chomsky to get out of the way, so that he can announce the real subject of his concern – America’s crimes. The accusation against Clinton is even slipped into the text, weasel fashion, as though it were a modifier, when it is actually the substantive message itself. It is a message that says: Look away, America, from the injury that has been done to you, and contemplate the injuries you have done to them. It is in this sleight of hand that Chomsky reveals his true gift, which is to make the victim, America, appear as an even more heinous perpetrator than the criminal himself. However bad this may seem, you have done worse.

In point of fact – and just for the record – however ill-conceived Bill Clinton’s decision to launch a missile into the Sudan, it was not remotely comparable to the World Trade Center massacre. It was, in its very design, precisely the opposite – a defensive response that attempted to minimize casualties. Clinton’s missile was launched in reaction to the blowing up of two of our African embassies, the murder of hundreds of innocent people and the injury to thousands, mostly African civilians. It was designed with every precaution possible to prevent the loss of innocent life. The missile was fired at night, so that no one would be in the building when it was hit. The target was selected because the best information available indicated it was not a pharmaceutical factory, but a factory producing biological weapons. Chomsky’s use of this incident to diminish the monstrosity of the terrorist attack is a typical Chomsky maneuver, an accurate measure of his instinctive mendacity, and an index of the anti-American dementia, which infuses everything he writes and says.

This same psychotic hatred shapes the "historical" perspective he offered to his disciples in an interview conducted a few days after the World Trade Center bombing. It was intended to present America as the devil incarnate – and therefore a worthy target of attack for the guerilla forces of "social justice" all over the world. This was the first time America itself – or as Chomsky put it the "national territory" – had been attacked since the War of 1812. Pearl Harbor doesn’t count in Chomsky’s calculus because Hawaii was a "colony" at the time. The fact that it was a benignly run colony and that it is now a proud state of the Union counts for nothing, of course, in Chomsky’s eyes.

During these years [i.e., between 1812 and 1941], the US annihilated the indigenous population (millions of people), conquered half of Mexico, intervened violently in the surrounding region, conquered Hawaii and the Philippines (killing hundreds of thousands of Filipinos), and in the past half century particularly, extended its resort to force throughout much of the world. The number of victims is colossal. For the first time, the guns have been directed the other way. That is a dramatic change.

Listening to Chomsky, you can almost feel the justice of Osama bin Laden’s strike on the World Trade Center.

If you were one of the hundreds of thousands of young people who had been exposed to his propaganda – and the equally vile teachings of his academic disciples – you too would be able to extend your outrage against America into the present.

*According to Chomsky, in the first battle of the postwar struggle with the Soviet Empire, "the United States was picking up where the Nazis had left off."
*According to Chomsky, during the Cold War, American operations behind the Iron Curtain included "a ‘secret army’ under US-Nazi auspices that sought to provide agents and military supplies to armies that had been established by Hitler and which were still operating inside the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe through the early 1950s."
*According to Chomsky, in Latin America during the Cold War, U.S. support for legitimate governments against Communist subversion led to US complicity under John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, in "the methods of Heinrich Himmler’s extermination squads."
* According to Chomsky, there is "a close correlation worldwide between torture and U.S. aid."
*According to Chomsky, America "invaded" Vietnam to slaughter its people, and even after America left in 1975, under Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, "the major policy goal of the US has been to maximize repression and suffering in the countries that were devastated by our violence. The degree of the cruelty is quite astonishing."
*According to Chomsky, "the pretext for Washington’s terrorist wars [i.e., in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Guatemala, Iraq, etc.] was self-defense, the standard official justification for just about any monstrous act, even the Nazi Holocaust."
* In sum, according to Chomsky, "legally speaking, there’s a very solid case for impeaching every American president since the Second World War. They’ve all been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes."

What decent, caring human being would not want to see America and its war criminals brought to justice?

According to Chomsky, what America really wants is to steal from the poor and give to the rich. America’s crusade against Communism was actually a crusade "to protect our doctrine that the rich should plunder the poor."(9) That is why we busied ourselves in launching a new crusade against terrorism after the end of the Cold War:

Of course, the end of the Cold War brings its problems too. Notably, the technique for controlling the domestic population has had to shift… New enemies have to be invented. It becomes hard to disguise the fact that the real enemy has always been ‘the poor who seek to plunder the rich’ – in particular, Third World miscreants who seek to break out of the service role.

According to Chomsky, America is afraid of the success of Third World countries and does not want them to succeed on their own. Those who threaten to succeed like the Marxist governments of North Vietnam, Nicaragua and Grenada America regards as viruses. According to Chomsky, during the Cold War, "except for a few madmen and nitwits, none feared [Communist] conquest – they were afraid of a positive example of successful development. "What do you do when you have a virus? First you destroy it, then you inoculate potential victims, so that the disease does not spread. That’s basically the US strategy in the Third World.".

No wonder they want to bomb us.

Schooled in these big lies, taught to see America as Greed Incarnate and a political twin of the Third Reich, why wouldn’t young people – with no historical memory – come to believe that the danger ahead lies in Washington rather than Baghdad or Kabul?

It would be easy to demonstrate how on every page of every book and in every statement that Chomsky has written the facts are twisted, the political context is distorted (and often inverted) and the historical record is systematically traduced. Every piece of evidence and every analysis is subordinated to the overweening purpose of Chomsky’s lifework, which is to justify an idée fixe – his pathological hatred of his own country.

It would take volumes, however, to do this and there really is no need. Because every Chomsky argument exists to serve this end, a fact transparent in each offensive and preposterous claim he makes. Hence, the invidious comparison of Clinton’s misguided missile and the monstrous World Trade Center attack.

In fact the Trade Center and the Pentagon targets of the terrorists present a real political problem for American leftists, like Chomsky, who know better than to celebrate an event that is the almost predictable realization of their agitations and their dreams. The destroyed buildings are the very symbols of the American empire with which they have been at war for fifty years. In a memoir published on the eve of the attack, the 60s American terrorist Bill Ayers recorded his joy at striking one of these very targets: "Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon. The sky was blue. The birds were singing. And the bastards were finally going to get what was coming to them."(12) In the wake of September 11, Ayers – a "Distinguished Professor of Education[!] at the University of Illinois – had to feverishly backtrack and explain that these revealing sentiments of an "anti-war" leftist do not mean what they obviously do. Claiming to be "filled with horror and grief," Ayers attempted to reinterpret his terrorist years as an effort to explore his own struggle with "the intricate relationships between social justice, commitment and resistance."

Chomsky is so much Ayers’ superior at the lie direct that he works the same denial into his account of the World Trade Center bombing itself. Consider first the fact that the Trade Center is the very symbol of American capitalism and "globalization" that Chomsky and his radical comrades despise. It is Wall Street, its twin towers filled on that fateful day with bankers, brokers, international traders, and corporate lawyers – the hated men and women of the "ruling class," who – according to Chomsky – run the global order. The twin towers are the palace of the Great Satan himself. They are the belly of the beast, the object of Chomsky’s lifelong righteous wrath. But he is too clever and too cowardly to admit it. He knows that, in the hour of the nation’s grief, the fact itself is a third rail he must avoid. And so he dismisses the very meaning of the terrorists’ target in these words:

The primary victims, as usual, were working people: janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc. It is likely to be a crushing blow to Palestinians and other poor and oppressed people.

Chomsky’s deception which attempts to erase the victims who were not merely "janitors, secretaries, firemen, etc.," tells us more than we might care to know about his own standard of human concern.

That concern is exclusively reserved for the revolutionary forces of his Manichean vision, the Third World oppressed by American evil. Chomsky’s message to his disciples in this country, the young on our college campuses, the radicals in our streets, the moles in our government offices, is a message of action and therefore needs to be attended to, even by those who will never read his rancid works. To those who believe his words of hate, Chomsky has this instruction:

The people of the Third World need our sympathetic understanding and, much more than that, they need our help. We can provide them with a margin of survival by internal disruption in the United States. Whether they can succeed against the kind of brutality we impose on them depends in large part on what happens here.

This is the voice of the Fifth Column left. Disruption in this country is what the terrorists want, and what the terrorists need, and what the followers of Noam Chomsky intend to give them.

In his address before Congress on September 19, President Bush reminded us: "We have seen their kind before. They are the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follw in the path of fascism, Nazism and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history’s unmarked grave of discarded lies."

President Bush was talking about the terrorists and their sponsors abroad. But he might just as well have been talking about their fifth column allies at home.

It’s time for Americans who love their country to stand up, and defend it.

BONUS: "The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky: Part II Method and Madness."

Noam Chomsky: Today's Republican Party 'Is a Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History...' (VIDEO)

This man is so over the top, such a walking monument to hyperbole, it's ridiculous. And of course, the communist Amy Goodman just swallows this stuff down like it's the word of god, which for her, it literally is.

At Democracy Now, via Memeorandum, "Chomsky: Today's GOP is a Candidate for Most Dangerous Organization in Human History — Part 2":

We should recognize—if we were honest, we would say something that sounds utterly shocking and no doubt will be taken out of context and lead to hysteria on the part of the usual suspects, but the fact of the matter is that today’s Republican Party qualify as candidates for the most dangerous organization in human history. Literally. Just take their position on the two major issues that face us: climate change, nuclear war. On climate change, it’s not even debatable. They’re saying, "Let’s race to the precipice. Let’s make sure that our grandchildren have the worst possible life." On nuclear war, they’re calling for increased militarization. It’s already way too high, more than half the discretionary budget. "Let’s shoot it up." They cut back other resources by cutting back taxes on the rich, so there’s nothing left. There’s been nothing this—literally, this dangerous, if you think about it, to the species, really, ever. We should face that.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

In the Mail: Andrea Tantaros, Tied Up in Knots

Harper Collins sent me a copy, Tied Up in Knots: How Getting What We Wanted Made Women Miserable.

The book's an amazing page-turner. I'm almost half way through already, and I'm reading about a half-dozen books at one time right now, heh.

'Little Ben' Shapiro Attacks David Horowitz for Breitbart 'Renegade Jew' Piece

Following-up from yesterday, "Bill Kristol, Renegade Jew."

"Little Ben's" gone off the rails. He's been practically hysterical since Ted Cruz dropped out of the race, and he's torching all his old relationships, even to David Horowitz.

Bizarre.

Breitbart, ‘Renegade Jews,’ And The Anti-Semitic Wing Of The Trump Movement | Daily Wire https://t.co/ihWEz8jF8t pic.twitter.com/KWtVvJsl2y

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) May 16, 2016

Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands

Moving on to new pastures of critical anti-postmodernism, here's Roger Scruton's new book, Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left.

Actually, it's not new. It's an updated version of his 1985 volume, Thinkers of the New Left.

But seeing I've been on an anti-postmodernist high, I'm more than happy to take a warmed over update. Actually, I'm looking forward to reading it.

And thanks to all my readers who've been shopping through my Amazon links. As you can see, I've been plowing the proceeds into my own reading interests.

Thanks again.

Miss May 2016 Brook Power is Newest Addition to Playmate Family (VIDEO)

Watch, via Playboy, "Miss May 2016 Brook Power Chills Outdoors in Jean Shorts and Ponchos."

Some Democrats Starting to Get Queasy About Hillary Clinton

I am loving this campaign, heh. Loving it!

At Politico, "Hillary Clinton's primary quagmire":

Hours before the West Virginia polls closed Tuesday, Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers got a memo from campaign manager Robby Mook. The message: Even if Bernie runs the table in the remaining states, he still can’t win.

It’s a well-known point by now, but it’s still one Mook needed to make as Clinton sputters toward the finish line, loaded down with the baggage of recent losses in Indiana and West Virginia and the prospect of a few more losses still to come.

This wasn’t the way the Democratic primary was supposed to end. Clinton may have turned her focus to presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, but at the same time her campaign is forced to continue fighting a rear-guard action against Bernie Sanders, who shows no sign of surrender.

After going dark on television for several weeks, the former secretary of state is suddenly investing in television advertisements in Kentucky — a state that should have been in her wheelhouse. Deep into the primary schedule, Clinton is forced to reckon with almost weekly results highlighting her relative weaknesses with white men and young voters, and she’s only gradually been able to increase her swing state travel. All the while, Trump sharpens his day-to-day critiques of her.

Some Democrats are now growing uneasy over a rocky finish that has Clinton spending resources and political capital so late in the process.

“The defeat in Indiana I was just horrified at, frankly,” said former Democratic National Committee chairman Don Fowler, a Clinton backer, echoing others who say that for the moment it’s more of an annoyance than a deep concern about the candidate. “The longer Bernie stays in, and the longer he is not mathematically out of the process, the weaker we’re going to seem to be."

Clinton is still on track to pass the threshold to clinch the nomination at some point in June using a combination of pledged delegates and superdelegates, and her lead among pledged delegates remains above 275. That makes it extremely difficult for Sanders to catch up to her unless he can win over a large number of the party elites who vote regardless of their state’s decision. Yet the Clinton campaign, cognizant of the need to show respect to Sanders’ legion of devoted supporters, is unable to initiate the call to unite behind her candidacy...

More.

Interview with Kim R. Holmes (VIDEO)

Following-up from yesterday, "Should Be at Top of the Bestseller Lists: Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind."

Holmes discusses his book, The Closing of the Liberal Mind: How Groupthink and Intolerance Define the Left.

Here Are Four Things #NeverTrump Doesn't Get

I love this essay, from Anthony Scaramucci, at WSJ, "The Entrepreneur’s Case for Trump":

Principled conservatives fail to understand the benefit of putting a right-leaning entrepreneur in the White House: https://t.co/sSFVN48o9O

— Anthony Scaramucci (@Scaramucci) May 16, 2016

Here are four things that the movement from the right to stop Donald Trump is missing:

• He has empathy. Mr. Trump is both a beneficiary and victim of the soundbite generation. He has leveraged social media to run a thrifty campaign, but critics have also latched onto one-liners rather than examine the whole of his record. You couldn’t find one person who knows Donald Trump who thinks he’s a racist. While his stance on immigration has often been expressed in brutish terms, the substance of his message—securing America’s borders and pausing the Syrian refugee program—is not crazy. Mr. Trump’s empathy, when voters see it properly expressed, will lead to victory in November and to policies fortified by longstanding conservative values.

• He is a pragmatic entrepreneur. What elitists misinterpret as uneven principles, entrepreneurs understand as adaptability. Whether you like or dislike Mr. Trump personally, you have to respect the business empire and brand he has built. He has always demonstrated an ability to take punches and get up off the mat while others without his fortitude and ingenuity would have crumbled. Most of his critics have never dared to step into the entrepreneurial arena where there exists the potential of embarrassing defeat. Mr. Trump would be the greatest pragmatist and deal maker Washington has ever seen.

• He is a team builder. I have spent several hours over the past few weeks with Mr. Trump, and I came away with the feeling he has the analytical depth to excel at the job of the presidency. Mr. Trump has put his ego aside to reinforce Corey Lewandowski’s formidable campaign team with a talented group of people: Gov. Chris Christie, Sen. Scott Brown, Paul Manafort, Rick Wiley and Steven Mnuchin, to name a few. Mr. Trump has shown a willingness to welcome Republican establishment figures into his coalition. The establishment should be constructive in return. If he were elected president, like any smart entrepreneur Mr. Trump would continue to surround himself with brilliant people.

• He can win. Pundits cherry-pick polls to suit their narrative, but the reality is that Mr. Trump is already in a good position even before turning his full attention to Hillary Clinton. Skeptics point to a recent CNN poll showing her with a double-digit lead, but a Rasmussen poll showing Mr. Trump leading by two points gets less attention. The electoral map is ultimately all that matters, and a Quinnipiac University poll released May 10 showed the two candidates basically in a dead heat in three crucial swing states. All of the momentum in the general election will swing to Mr. Trump, but establishment Republicans had better realize abstention would in effect be a vote to put Hillary Clinton in the White House...

RTWT.

Denise Schaefer Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Casting Call 2017 (VIDEO)

Nice.

3 Dumb Ideas Progressives Have About Donald Trump (VIDEO)

It's Van Jones, heh.

He's just about the only leftist I've heard who's not in denial about the threat from the Notorious DJT.

Watch, on Facebook, "The only thing that can offset a "strongman" is a strong movement. WE CAN work together to make sure a Donald Trump White House is never a reality — Van Jones."

Here're the myths leftists need to reject:

Trump will self-destruct.
He’s bad on policy, so he will lose.
Demographics will save us.

Heh.

I love it.

Jackie Johnson's More Morning Clouds Forecast

Via CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Julianna Goldman Reports on #NeverTrump Republicans' Push for Independent Challenger to Donald Trump (VIDEO)

Basically, it's mostly a bunch of BS.

Via CBS This Morning:

Should Be at Top of the Bestseller Lists: Kim R. Holmes, The Closing of the Liberal Mind

I'm still plugging this book.

It's great!

At Amazon, The Closing of the Liberal Mind.

Deal of the Day: Intex Metal Frame Pool Set

Almost summertime!

At Amazon, Intex 12ft X 30in Metal Frame Pool Set.

Also, Up to 50% Off Timberland Men's Shoes.

And, Eneloop Rechargeable Battery Set With a Charger.

More, from Katie Pavlich, Assault and Flattery: The Truth About the Left and Their War on Women.

Plus, from Mark Landler, Alter Egos: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Twilight Struggle Over American Power.

Peter Schweizer, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich.

BONUS: Stanley A. Renshon, High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and the Politics of Ambition.

Daryl Hall Tells SJWs to 'Shut the F*ck Up' (VIDEO)

I can't go for that, heh.

At Heat Street, "Daryl Hall to SJW Nutjobs: You’re ‘Out of Touch’ on Cultural Appropriaton."

Among White Men, Donald Trump Leads Hillary Clinton by Over 30 Points in Battleground States

Heh.

This is going to be great!

At Brookings:

In swing states, Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by over 30 points among white men: https://t.co/DZ5kPUaqkj pic.twitter.com/snY3YYcqaq

— Brookings (@BrookingsInst) May 16, 2016

B-25 Bomber Refurbished and Air-Worthy Again (VIDEO)

This great!

Can you believe it, but this is the only B-25 remaining today.

At CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

Merciless: Little Is Off Limits as Donald Trump Plans Attacks on Hillary Clinton

This is going to be the freakin' best campaign ever. The Democrats are wiggin', heh.

At NYT (via Memeorandum):

Donald J. Trump plans to throw Bill Clinton’s infidelities in Hillary Clinton’s face on live television during the presidential debates this fall, questioning whether she enabled his behavior and sought to discredit the women involved.

Mr. Trump will try to hold her accountable for security lapses at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and for the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens there.

And he intends to portray Mrs. Clinton as fundamentally corrupt, invoking everything from her cattle futures trades in the late 1970s to the federal investigation into her email practices as secretary of state.

Drawing on psychological warfare tactics that Mr. Trump used to defeat “Lyin’ Ted” Cruz, “Little Marco” Rubio and “Low-Energy” Jeb Bush in the Republican primaries, the Trump campaign is mapping out character attacks on the Clintons to try to increase their negative poll ratings and bait them into making political mistakes, according to interviews with Mr. Trump and his advisers.

Another goal is to win over skeptical Republicans, since nothing unites the party quite like castigating the Clintons. Attacking them could also deflect attention from Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities, such as his treatment of women, some Trump allies say.

For Mrs. Clinton, the coming battle is something of a paradox. She has decades of experience and qualifications, but it may not be merit that wins her the presidency — it may be how she handles the humiliations inflicted by Mr. Trump...

OMG, I can't wait!

This is going to be absolutely delectable, heh.

Keep reading.

Bill Kristol, Renegade Jew

Man, David Horowitz really goes after Bill Kristol here. He just eviscerates him.

It's personal.

At Big Government, "Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew."

Obama's Title IX Power Grab Inflames the Culture Wars

It's actually sickening.

The country's barreling toward civil war.

At Politico, "Obama transgender edict incites the right":

Obama's transgender student directive inflames culture wars https://t.co/xm388aMhoo | Getty pic.twitter.com/yZZTexyFD4

— POLITICO (@politico) May 16, 2016

While the Obama administration’s directive on bathroom access for transgender students was praised by supporters as a historic moment for civil rights, the sweeping new rules have re-energized the right — and a top lawmaker in Texas even argues that Donald Trump can use the issue as a springboard to the White House.

The right has been consistently losing culture-war fights in the courts during the Obama era, most significantly in the Supreme Court case last year that legalized gay marriage. Now, conservative governors, state officials, education advocates and parent groups have extra motivation to unify in their revolt against a federal intervention directed by a president they loathe that will affect every public school in the nation.

“I believe it is the biggest issue facing families and schools in America since prayer was taken out of public schools,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick declared Friday, mere hours after the Obama administration’s letter was released.

The departments of Education and Justice wrote to public school districts across America on Friday, spelling out in specific terms President Barack Obama’s interpretation that transgender students are afforded sweeping civil rights protections under Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination in educational programs and activities. That includes allowing transgender students access to bathrooms, locker rooms and other school facilities that align with their gender identity — a position that social conservatives find deeply offensive.

“With this guidance, the Education and Justice departments are making it crystal clear what schools’ obligations to transgender students are under federal law,” said James Esseks, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project. “It’s about time schools understand that transgender students are fully protected.”

As it has done in its legal standoff with North Carolina over that state’s law blocking protections for gay and transgender individuals, the administration threatened Friday to withhold federal education dollars from schools, districts or states that fail to heed the order. But since the administration’s directive amounts to guidance and not a legal requirement, the debate is far from settled. In fact, the real fight has only just begun, and both sides are digging in for what promises to be a long, nasty and emotional struggle of politics, policy and law — one that appears poised to ultimately land before the Supreme Court...

Keep reading.

Hillary's Weakness as a Candidate

Man, just listening to Cankles squawking on the campaign trail is enough to make you turn off the TV.

She's a terrible candidate!

At WaPo, "Even supporters agree: Clinton has weaknesses as a candidate. What can she do?":

Hillary Clinton’s declining personal image, ongoing battle to break free of the challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders and struggle to adapt to an anti-establishment mood among voters this year have become caution signs for her campaign and the focus of new efforts to fortify her position as she prepares for a bruising general election.

More than a dozen Clinton ­allies identified weaknesses in her candidacy that may erode her prospects of defeating Donald Trump, including poor showings with young women, untrustworthiness, unlikability and a lackluster style on the stump. Supporters also worry that she is a conventional candidate in an unconventional election in which voters clearly favor renegades.

“I bring it down to one thing and one thing only, and that is likability,” said Peter Hart, a Democratic pollster who has conducted a series of focus groups for the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

To counter these challenges, Clinton is relying primarily on the prospect that her likely Republican opponent’s weaknesses are even greater. But advisers also are working to soften her stiff public image by highlighting her compassion and to combat perceptions about trustworthiness and authenticity by playing up her problem-solving abilities.

“Hillary Clinton is in a stronger position than Donald Trump, but it will be competitive,” said Joel Benenson, Clinton’s senior strategist and pollster. “All these races are.”

None of these Democrats said they expected Clinton to lose — but many said she could. For the most part, it is her qualities as a candidate that keep her allies up at night, not her fitness to be president, which they categorically do not question. They also lament how exposed these flaws have become during a long primary contest against Sanders, who has profited from suspicion and dislike of Clinton among ranks she now must win over.

Although Clinton has never trailed Sanders in the delegate count and is all but assured of securing the nomination in June, she is widely expected to lose more Democratic primaries this month, which could amplify her weaknesses...

Keep reading.

I'm ready to roll in the general election, heh.

How Donald Trump Convinced the Republican Party to Revolve Around Him

At the Guardian UK, "Seemingly overnight and without much effort, majority of GOP congressmen endorse or have come to accept the presumptive nominee as the face of the party":

Donald Trump was every bit the buyer ready to walk off the lot if he couldn’t be shown a bargain.

“Does it have to be unified?” he said last Sunday, musing aloud about the need for the Republican party to come together behind his candidacy for president. “I’m very different than everybody else, perhaps, that’s ever run for office. I actually don’t think so.”

Was the author of the Art of the Deal bluffing? It does not matter now, because in the last week Trump has gotten what he professed not necessarily to want: substantial party backing for his presidential candidacy.

A series of meetings between Trump and congressional leaders in Washington on Thursday turned out to be a victory lap for the candidate. His success with House speaker Paul Ryan, previously billed as his most powerful adversary, was typical. Ryan went from being “just not ready” to back Trump one week to “totally committed to working together” the next.

Or, in Trump’s words on Twitter on Thursday afternoon: “Great day in DC with @SpeakerRyan and Republican leadership. Things working out really well!”

The Republican coalescence around Trump is indeed working out really well, for the candidate at least. By the Guardian’s latest count, 45 of 54 Republican senators either support Trump wholeheartedly or have pledged to support the nominee. Only three senators have said they will not back Trump.

Senator Susan Collins, a moderate from Maine, is one of six senators in a third category: wait-and-see. In a statement to the Guardian on Friday, she said she expects to support the Republican nominee, “but I do want to see what Donald Trump does from here on out”, including whether he will dispense with “gratuitous personal insults” and “clearly outline for us what his vision of America is beyond a slogan”.

Collins said she would not make a decision until the national convention in July.

In the House of Representatives, the break towards Trump has not been quite so clean. Some members clung to “#NeverTrump” sympathies even after his run on the Hill. Republican governors presiding over states where Trump’s name is mud with moderates, such as Charlie Baker of Massachusetts, or with important constituencies, such as Susana Martinez of New Mexico, likewise have withheld their support.

A significant opposition remains among the party’s passé ruling class and current donor class. Both former presidents Bush have said they will sit out the 2016 campaign, as has former presidential candidate Jeb Bush. The 2012 nominee, Mitt Romney, said on Wednesday that Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns was “disqualifying”. Important mega-donors including Paul Singer and the brothers Koch have not visibly moved to back Trump.

But many Republican senators who once expressed misgivings about Trump have set those feelings aside, as a rallying cry goes up to join forces in an attempt to defeat the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton...

Still more.